We are proud to announce that today we launched the website for OBT Music. The launch of the website marks the formal debut of the the company. It also represents an unveiling of one of the most interesting, technologically complex, and advanced sites we’ve launched in recent years.

OBT Music is a stock film-music library designed for use by film and television producers, documentarians, corporate filmmakers, video game studios, and students, among others. The site features over 1,500 music cues, as they’re called in the industry, at launch. These music cues are designed for use in productions as transitional music, themes, to run under opening and closing credits, and wherever else you’d hear music in a production.

OBT Music is Tom Phillips and Tom Martin, two film music composers from central Massachusetts. Their resumes are impressive: Tom Phillips wrote the theme music for PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, both of them have had their work used in dozens of PBS series and documentaries, including The American Experience and NOVA. They have also done work for programs shown on HBO, The Discovery Channel, AMC, TLC, Lifetime, and A&E. Their work has contributed to many award nominations and wins, including Emmys.

The work that Tom and Tom do is different from what is offered by other music libraries because it is written exclusively to be used in productions and has the benefit of decades of experience in the industry behind it.

The OBT Music project took advantge of virtually every service that 3000k offers. To complete this project we employed:

• Website design
• Custom web application programming and databse development
• E-commerce design and construction
• Search engine optimization
• Email marketing
• Copyediting
• Hosting and Stats

The most technologically interesting components of the site — from our persspective, and likely those of other web developers — is the site’s search tool and licensing process. The search tool was built using AJAX. By employing this new technology, we were able to provide a user interface that is much smoother, more powerful, and more like a desktop tool than any other web-based music cue library we’ve seen. We hope this tool will really help OBT stand out in their industry.

The licensing checkout process also makes use of AJAX and a single-page checkout system that has been shown to reduce cart abandonment and improve sales.

We’ve very excited to see OBT launch. We can’t wait to see how it’s received by the film and television production industry. We expect it to make a big splash.

And next time you enjoy the music in a movie or television program, check the credits. You may see OBT Music listed there.

Visit the new OBT Music website.

We’ve just launched the completely revamped and redesigned website for Humanetrics, a consulting company dedicated to creating extraordinary performance, passionate employees, and creative thinkers.

Humanetrics is the brain-child of author, consultant, trainer, and keynote speaker Jay Forte. We built and launched Jay’s first Humanetrics site a couple of years ago. For the new site, he asked us to emphasize features that would enable discussion and collaboration — two values that are key to his training and consulting.

Jay’s work emphasizs sharing ideas and powerful discussions, so we built his site using WordPress, a blog-style content management system that allows him to easily update the site, add blog posts regularly, and gives users a chance to comment and discuss topics with each other. With this kind of group-communication tool in place, the new Humanetrics site has a framework to enable the sharing and creation of powerful ideas.

To create this site, we did something we’ve never done before: created a custom WordPress template. WordPress uses design templates to provide easily changeable “skins” for its sites. Many designers release templates free to the community, but in order to give Humanetrics a unique, appealing design to match its content, we created our own template.

In addition to that, we used WordPress plug-ins that will reduce spam, allow page-level search engine optimization, create a Google/XML sitemap for improved search engine visibility, and much more. When combining this new site with its blog features and Jay’s email newsletter, the new Humanetrics site is a dynamic communication and collaboration tool that will help grow business across the country.

Visit the new Humanetrics site.

Polyfoam Website Redesign

Polyfoam Corporation, a leader in custom-molded foam products, came to us as a referral from long-time client Cold Chain Technologies. Polyfoam produces extruded polystyrene products that can protect items during shipping or insulate anything from pharmaceuticals to fresh fish. In addition to a large variety of stock items for display, construction uses, and packaging, Polyfoam can also create custom molds to engineer packaging that meets specific needs.

Polyfoam came to us because their site didn’t present them as the industry-leader they are. They were looking for a more modern and professional image, and wanted to be able to update site content in-house.

As part of the updated design, we streamlined and clarified their navigation to give greater prominence to their services and markets. We also added a site-wide search, enabling users to quickly find Polyfoam products, which are presented through high-quality images.

The whole site is powered by a powerful content management platform, enabling Polyfoam to easily add and edit content on the site.

Visit the Polyfoam Corporation Website

MTI Systems, a developer of software that helps manufacturers accurately estimate and quote jobs to their clients and from their suppliers, recently celebrated its 25th year in business. We’ve worked with MTI since 2003 and they asked us to redesign and rearchitect their website to mark their silver anniversary.

Their goals for the redesigned site included updating the look and feel of the site to be more modern and to streamline the content on the site to make it easier to digest and more effective.

We achieved these goals by creating a design that positions them favorably in their market and demonstrates continuity with their old look while giving a fresh face to the website. We worked with MTI’s staff to streamline their sitemap and content to make the site more efficient and to help them prosper in their next 25 years of business.

Vist the MTI Systems website.

We’ve been working with Cold Chain Technologies, a manufacturer of packaging and indicators designed to keep temperature-sensitive goods such as pharmaceuticals within a safe temperature range, since 2001. A few months ago they came to us with the need to redesign, rearchitect, and refocus their website to align it with the company’s goals. Cold Chain had spent substantial time redesigning all of its print materials and rewriting its content and now it needed the website to reflect these changes.

The greatest challenge in building this site was finding a way to easily present the substantial amount of mission-critical technical and marketing content that needed to accompany each product and service offered by Cold Chain.

We did this by creating a structured page layout that lets you users expect to see the same kinds of content in the same area on each page. The result is a comprehensive new website that is ready to support Cold Chain in its next phase of growth.

Vist the Cold Chain website.

UMass Memorial Hospital in Worcester needed a new way for its physicians to communicate with each other, as well as a new way to distribute documents to physicians. They suspected that the web would allow them to achieve this goal, but weren’t sure quite how to do it.

3000k showed them.

By creating a secure, collaborative website using a content management system, 3000k built UMass Memorial a new place for physicians to talk, ask each other questions, work on projects, and learn. In the same password-protected area, hospital staff are now able to distribute electronic documents to physicians that can be printed and given to patients for education.

And, since the system is built using a content management tool, UMass Memorial staff can make almost all sites updates themselves, reducing long-term cost.

Visit the site

Nancy Hunter Denney is a nationally known and recognized author, speaker, and consultant who serves educational institutions, non-profits, and corporate clients to help the develop leadership and take charge of life. We built her main practice site a few years ago.

Recently, Nancy came to us with a new business: to share her training and development curriculum with clients. Now, instead of clients needing to bring Nancy on site, pay her airfare and expenses, and start a process with her in person, they would be able to buy her materials (curriculum documents, handouts, promotional materials, etc.) and run use programs to better their organizations and improve leadership on their own! And, for those who want special training and assistance, offering oceanfront leadership retreats would also be available.

Thus was born Zing! Leadership Development Systems.

We designed and architected the new site, and implemented it as an e-commerce system backed by a content management tool to let her add, edit, and delete products, photos, and prices.

Now even more people can benefit from Nancy’s powerful tools, development leadership, and help move their organizations to greater productivity, achievement, and happiness.

Visit the site.

HCR Group is an employee benefits and human resources consulting company that helps small and medium-sized businesses better provide benefits to their employees to increase employee satisfaction and retention and reduce costs.

When HCR Group came to us, they had different branding for different divisions of the company that confused customers and reduced marketing effectiveness. They were also unhappy with both logos and brands.

They tasked us to unify their branding by developing a new logo and brand. We delivered a modern, light, person-focused logo and brand, seen on their website.

To support this new branding, we developed a new corporate identity system: business cards, letterhead, envelopes, brochures, and a folder.

We also developed a new website to wrap the package up and drive new prospects to them. As anyone who has dealt with an HR department knows, they are piled high with stacks of paper, sticky notes, and paperclips. We carried this design motif through the website design.

Visit the website.

Write to the Top/Better Communications is a corporate-writing training and consulting company located in Lexington, MA.

They approached us with a pair of needs: to refine the look of their website and to create a “private sales tour” system that allows their sales force to give guided sales presentations to prospects.

The largest component of the job was the “private sales tour” area, which allows for the creation of user accounts to access the password-protected area, the addition of new sales content to that area, and security features to ensure that only authorized prospects are able to see this valuable intellectual property.

We also made a nice, clean modernization to the site’s main page and a corresponding minor changes to other pages.

You won’t be able to see the sales tour unless you’re in the market for corporate-writing training, but if you are, we suggest you click on over to Write to the Top and drop them a line. They do great work.

Visit the site.

The CentMass Association of Physicians (CAP) is a network of nearly 200 general practice doctors and specialists who practice in the Central Massachusetts area, especially Leominster, Fitchburg, Worcester, and surrounding towns.

When we began the project, CAP did not have a website. They needed to build an attractive, easy-to-use site that allowed people seeking new doctors throughout Central Massachusetts to easily search for and contact doctors and specialists in their area and in the medical areas they required.

The design for the site was created by our colleagues at Chiarella Design. We executed it as standards-compliant code.

The project was brought to us, and managed, by our partners at AP Associates, who also wrote much of the text for the site.

The website we created together meets CAP’s goals and includes a powerful administrative system that allows CAP staff to easily add, edit, and delete doctors and their information from the search database.

View the site.