For many of the guys that work here, the restaurant is like a second home – some of them have been slinging burgers, making shakes, and waiting on customers at this location for decades. Opened in 1938, the place hasn’t been altered since the early ’60s, and it looks all the better for it.Here the waiters and workers of Prime Burger discuss their views on their chosen profession, and the unique nature of the place itself.

(Found on New Vimeo)

(Originally published at Prime Burger Restaurant NYC)

(Via Telstar Logistics on Flickr)

(Originally published at How to Paint a Pan Am 727)

Highlights

Whilst all eight talks were off a high standard three really stood out for me and for quite different reasons. In no particular order:

• Dan Mall – Dan works at Big Spaceship who boast clients as diverse as Crayola and Star Wars. He gave us a fascinating insight into his design process and discussed how he and his colleagues push the boundaries, sometimes with great outcomes, occasionally less successfully. I also loved the way Dan presents his iPhone designs to clients (see slide 47 for a visual explanation). Above all it was great to see that big agencies experience similar problems to the rest of us on client projects.
• Trent Walton – Trent and his colleagues at Paravel are consistently turning out inspiring work as well as creating a number of great open-source jQuery plugins. I really enjoyed listening to Trent discuss his motivation for pushing the boundaries in CSS and “web type”. I was also privileged to chat with Trent the day after the conference as he kindly agreed to be part of our upcoming Insites book.
• Cameron Koczon – I was lucky enough to attend Brooklyn Beta last year. As well as working on a range of great products Cameron is one of the organisers of BB and his passion is infectious, not just for bringing interesting people together but also for encouraging them to get out there and make something great. His quick fire delivery and message was certainly inspiring and reinforced the route that Elliot and I are taking with Viewport Industries.

Belong

It was also great to see the Decode crew launch their new hand crafted t-shirt brand Belong. It’s a fantastic idea and I wish Dan, Rob and Tom all the best with it.

Video Highlights

I believe “official” videos of the sessions will be made available in due course. In the meantime you can capture a sense of the day with this video courtesy of Paul and Relly. Somehow they secretly managed to film this with their iPhones.

And Finally

If you couldn’t make it along you can still buy the NA newspaper, at only £1 it’s a bargain and a great read. You also get last years copy too!

Colly promises that New Adventures will return in 2013, I for one hope so. My only ask would be slightly longer breaks as there were far too many interesting people to talk to.

Useful Links

• New Adventures 2012 - Official web site
• New Adventures on Lanyrd - Links, reviews and much more
• The Mother of All Funk Chords - Referenced by Dan Mall, simply stunning!

(Originally published at 48 Hours in Nottingham)

Build in Burst Mode from Graham Smith on Vimeo

(Originally published at Build Burst)

Reverting to Type from Lima Charlie on Vimeo.

Whilst not a die hard typophile like some I can’t help but admire the sheer craftsmanship embodied in the production of letterpress prints. This four minute video highlights the work of New North Press – well worth a watch.

(Originally published at Letterpress Printing)

It’s been out of service since 2003 and was closed as it was apparently loosing the Post Office over £1 million pounds a day. It’s hard to believe that pneumatic powered driverless trains were sending mail across London since the 1930′s. Paddington to Whitechapel took around 14 minutes non-stop, I doubt above ground transit is so quick.

Here are some stats about the network as taken from mailrail.co.uk:

• Designed solely for movement of letters and parcels
• Operated 19 hours a day, 286 days a year
• 23 Miles (37 Kilometres) of 2 foot gauge track
• 70 feet (21 meters) below the streets of London
• Fully automated, computer controlled trains
• Carried the Capitals mails for over 75 years
• Once served 9 stations, including 2 mainline stations
• Once carried around 4 million letters every day
• Paddington to Whitechapel, with all stops, in 26 minutes

If you can hear past the pan pipes and “intereting” score this nine minute promotional video by the Royal Mail will tell you more about the history of the network.

Much like Open House provided us with the opportunity to see into buildings we would otherwise never see I hope that Royal Mail one day allow a guided tour or two of this fascinating underground system.

Further Reading

• The British Postal Museum & Archive
• Silent UK “hack” the network
• Google Image search for Mail Rail London

(Originally published at London’s Mail Rail)

What’s the Problem?

I am writing this from memory but I believe the issue PayPal has is that they immediately think the worst when a large amount of money lands into your account. You would think a simple email exchange pointing them to your web site which shows details of your event and the booking form would be enough to resolve the issue, sadly this doesn’t appear to be the case. It also appears that there is never a rush to deposit the money in your account, even after acknowledging the fact that you are running a conference.

Conferences and Cash Flow

Having worked in a conference organising company I know all too well that events rely on cash flow. You have to pay numerous deposits well in advance of the day and this is usually done with the initial burst of ticket revenue. This might not be an issue for big companies but for smaller more grassroots affairs it’s vital to have access to your revenue, without it your hands are very much tied. I therefore totally understand when organisers have had to pull the plug despite having strong ticket sales.

What’s the Answer?

Contrary to the mildly misleading post title there is a way to still offer PayPal as a payment option but not run into these problems. Whilst working at Carsonified I spent a week researching the numerous third party ticketing options available for event organisers. After weighing up the various systems I recommended the company switched to Amiando.

There were many reasons for this, not least their willingness to get on the phone and help us get the most from the system. However the massive selling point was the fact that whilst they offered the option of PayPal for payment it was their account, not yours, that receives the money. At no point do you enter your own PayPal details. Any issues with retention are resolved by Amiando. As well as PayPal they also offer the option of paying with credit and debit cards as well as American Express.

Your relationship as an organiser is with Amiando. You only ever pay their fees when you sell a ticket and it’s pretty competitive, currently £ 0.79 per attendee + 5.9% of the attendance fee. If you compare this to PayPal which is 3.9% + £0.20 GBP then you are looking at around 2% difference. If you factor that in as the rental fee for your ticketing system it’s not too bad at all.

Eventbrite has a similar model but it is my understanding you use your own PayPal account for payments. They charge a fee for themselves and then factor in the PayPal charges to give you a total cost of around 5.5% plus around 80p per transaction.

Getting your Cash

Amiando issue payouts directly into your bank account at regular intervals (usually monthly but you can ask to change the frequency) and will send an invoice showing you their fees and your revenue. This has the added bonus of reconciling your accounts much easier. They do retain some of your revenue until the event has taken place to cover potential chargebacks but this is normally deposited with in 7-10 working days after the event.

It’s for this reason that we chose to use Amiando for “Insites: The Tour” last year and will continue to use them for our future events. Just to put your mind at rest I am not affiliated with Amiando in any way and do not receive any discounts for using their system.

I hope this helps future event organisers and if you have any questions please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Update

Thanks to Seb and a couple of comments on Twitter it has been pointed out that EventBrite does indeed offer payment processing. However should you wish to use PayPal I believe those funds do end up in your account and could still be frozen. Viewed purely on this point I still recommend Amiando over other solutions.

(Originally published at How to Solve a Problem like PayPal)

(via swissmiss)

(Originally published at A Checked Bags Journey)

Each year, The Pastry Box Project gathers 30 people who are each influential in their field and asks them to share thoughts regarding what they do. Those thoughts are then be published every day throughout the year at a rate of one per day, starting January 1st and ending December 31st. 2012′s topic is “Shaping The Web”.

Alex has rounded up an amazing line up of contributors, or “bakers” as he calls them – it’s an honour to be included. Each one of us has a custom portrait, mine certainly comes in the “don’t mess with me” category but I kind of like it!

My first post was published today. In it I talk about how surrounding yourself with talented people is a great way to improve your own skill set. You can’t directly comment on the site but if you have some thoughts please feel free to let me know here.

(Originally published at The Pastry Box)

The result is simple, as always, but it feels good to have employed some of the techniques I have picked up over the last year. Here’s to a year of more words and less theme tinkering!

(Originally published at New Theme for 2012)