Last night around dinner time we launched a voting widget for BostonPizza.com's Designer Pizza Sale, where voters choose their favorite of six new pizza recipes and are entered to win free pizza for a year. You can also receive a free appetizer from Boston Pizza if you join their email club.  

In a later post, we'll dissect the functionality of everything we built, and for now I'll simply say that the whole thing is hosted by us, and is nested on the Boston Pizza site in an iframe.

In the meantime I thought I would just share these screens along with a few words about voting, because if you're reading this before November 8, 2008, there's still time to enter! Oh, and don't miss the "Share with a Friend" button on the bottom left. 

When you first visit the voting "page" you see the six pizzas rotating around in a circle, with changing perspective as they come into the foreground. I know what you're thinking, but no- there is no flash, and you can tell because it loads almost instantly (We'll have the smart dudes explain the javascript magic later.When you click any pizza, it rotates to the very foreground, along with a description for that pizza:

When you're convinced that you've found your fave, you click the "Vote for this Pizza" bubble and then you see the form:

For me, the best part happens AFTER you vote. A colored pie chart showsyou the results of the nationwide vote. At the time of the posting, the Canadian Classic was enjoying a healthy lead, but not a majority government. 

This is the first of many examples of Strutta-powered contests that we'll be featuring over the next little while, and I will make good on that promise to share more details of the technology that makes this all possible very soon, with the help of one of our (presently very busy) developers. 

Thanks for voting! If you have any feedback about this or future contests sites, feel free to leave it in the comments below. 

This morning I was granted access to the secret Strutta Laboratories to peek over the shoulder of Senior Developer Mike Holly, to talk about the leaderboard he's working on for our soon-to-be-released online contest platform.

As we sipped our coffee and periodically glanced out the window at a sunny, calm Burrard Inlet...who am I kidding- I had 89 seconds left of his attention before he delved back into his work. So like the hounding reporter I once was, I started firing questions at the tall, ginger-haired genius.

We conducted a very brief audit of USA Today's Ad Meter, the rating system charged with the task of choosing America's choice for best Super Bowl Ad. That's something of a high water mark for this kind of user voting, but our man Mike was quick to find errors with the Ad Meter, and seemed anything but impressed. To be fair, it's the off-season for Super Bowl Ads (and the Ad Meter) until during and immediately following the big game, so we turned our focus toward the features of our product, and how it measures up. 

When drilled about the specifics of the Strutta Leaderboard, Holly spoke of its flexibility, and how any third parties' use of it could be vastly different from the next. "Potentially, we're going to be ranking on any number of criteria, he stated. "We can rank not only by user popularity like votes or views, but also by groups like by school or by company." 

He pauses for a moment, and then quips with an ironic tone that is certainly not lost on me. "It's sophisticated sub-ranking technology." I can tell he's itching to get back to work, so I quickly blurt out one last question. 

I ask about the visualization and design of the way the data gets displayed, and Mike nods and assures me that clients will have plenty of control over the way the data is displayed, too. I notice he' already turned his gaze back to the lines of code on his screen. I've lost him, and it's now time to take the 15 step trek back to my own desk, a few feet further from the gorgeous view of the North Shore.

While we will still be launching examples of Strutta's platform at work in the very near future, our team has turned their attention to the the finishing touches of our software and the new .com site, which means the wait will be over soon! 

Barcamp Vancouver 2008 took place this past weekend, with over 300 registered attendees and hosted by three separate venues on Granville Island.

Several Strutta staffers could be spotted on Friday evening and at the main event on Saturday, and our office mates at Bootup Labs were among the list of sponsors.

What better way to show the Barcamp experience than with photographs? And so begins a slideshow of snaps from the Barcamp Vancouver Flickr Group:

Things are getting pretty interesting around lunch time at the office. It's the guys from Strutta, Bootups Labs and LayerBoom and some of the most delicious fresh ingredients you can put in a sandwich: 

I should say a proper thanks to my wife for supplying me with a steady of flow of great sammich fixins to keep my membership in Sammich Club current. 

Here at headquarters, the team is working quickly and diligently on developing our new contest platform.

I'm delighted to report that interest in our launch partners program has been plentiful, and there is a cue of exciting partners lined up that will be rolling out new promotions shortly. In the meantime, all of the interest we're getting from paying customers means a delay in launching the new Strutta.com. Oh yes, there will be a new site, one that will feature the exciting new ways to deploy our software for online contests.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be introducing some examples of contests we've built or are providing our software for. Then as soon as we can, we'll flick the switch on the new .com so you can get a better idea of what it it we've been working on.

The recently launched (and already finished!) Launch Party Vancouver 5 Startup Contest was the first example of what's to come, but offered only the iceberg's tip as to the options and functions available. Most of the fun stuff happened behind the scenes; judges had access to a slick, easy-to-use drag and drop interface to make their choices and leave comments, and the data we compiled from votes from judges and the public was automagically complied, assuring us that in the popular vote, the winner had an average of 3.82 stars out of 5. Well, that's not exactly the way it happens, but to a guy that doesn't understand the maths too good, like me, it sure seems that way, especially with the slick visualizations that display the info. Consider this my pledge that when all is said and done, I'll have the brains behind this operation submit some posts here with more details about what's under the hood.

For now, we're working with our heads down to make a crucial deadline on Sept 30th, so check with us on that date and we'll have another example of the Strutta contest "engine" in use. If you have questions about Strutta, about social media or online contests or anything else, leave a comment below or hit us up on the feedback form.

*img: "One of The Buttons Will Get Me Out of Here" by cayusa. Found during a search for "enter" on Flickr.

Can you beleive it has been a year since the first Launch Party Vancouver?

Back then, Strutta Founders Maura and Danny, along with Layer 7's Dimitri Sirota, wanted to create an event that would bring together folks from all sectors of our burgeoning tech industry. Vancouver didn't have much in the way of opportunities to celebrate the exciting products that are launched locally.  Over 120 people came to the first event at Section 3 in Yaletown, and the turnout has only grown at each subsequent event.  

Well, it's been a year, and tomorrow is LPV5, the fifth in the series. Not surprisingly, it's the biggest one yet. Vancouver Mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson is scheduled to address the partygoers, with an announcement that includes the launch of a new tech platform he's launching.

For the companies that are demoing at the event, the stakes have been raised too. The six companies featured at the event are also competing in a contest (powered by Strutta, if you please) to win $1000, with the winner chosen by a panel of VIP judges. You too can vote, and the "people's choice" gets luxury box seats to a Vancouver Giants game. Watch for the videos to launch tomorrow morning (Thursday, Sept 18th) and cast your vote. Winners will be announced early next week.

In the year since the first event, Launch Party Vancouver has featured over 30 startups from Vancouver, and a few out-of-town "party crashers" as well. The second event was co-hosted by Twiistup, a sister event in Los Angeles. At LPV4, Techvibes hosted a startup job fair before the main event, and we at Strutta were among the companies showing off their new software.

For Launch Party Vancouver, there are no plans of letting up- the sixth event is already penciled into the calendar for November, and it's never too early to sign up to be among the companies featured.

Hope to see you tomorrow night!

Those crazy lab-coated dudes from Eepybird.com (yes, the Diet Coke and Mentos guys) are at it again; this time with sticky notes.

And it looks as though this time around, they have a budget. I love how it conjures up images of Slinky commercials, Office Space and of course the original experiments with the aforementioned soda and candy. Watch with amazement as they give new life to an otherwise mundane office stationary product:

We're happy to announce that Ross Howard-Jones has joined our team at Strutta.

Regular readers will remember our lip dub video from a few months back, when we bobbed and weaved through Gastown to the Violent Femmes "Blister in the Sun."

Our video was a response to the "original" from Connected Ventures, and we were not alone, as a quick visit to OfficeLipDub.com will show. 

In case you're thinking about making your own office lip dub video, Valleywag recently published an article with "5 Rules for Making a Company Video Worth watching." Poaching their own editing gimmick, here's that list, as a <100 word version:

1. Get your people to either commit themselves fully to the project, or stay out of the way. Know what else doesn't hurt? Actually memorizing the lyrics.

2. Get the heavies involved. (Yes, this means your Founders). 

3. Plan meticulously and practice.

4. Learn to edit. A hint: Editing usually takes longer than filming. (in the case of some of the best office lip dub vids with continuous shots, ignore rule #4 and see rule #3)

5. Feature the most attractive coworkers prominently.

Here's an example of one that we think got it right. Vive le France!

And as a Friday bonus, I asked my friends on Twitter what was the funniest video they had seen all week, and here are the replies: 

• Phillip Jeffrey liked Andrea Mitchell buried in ballons at the RNC.
  
• James' pick was Demitri Martin's flip chart standup. (If you haven't seen it, watch NOW)
• Dustin Sacks pointed to a Sesame Street classic: Put Down the Duckie.