Chris Samios

Just a quick update with another finished website project, this time for a small stationary design company in Cleveland (the one near Brisbane). The site’s at www.idowedo.com.au

This was done through Chaos Tamed, which I also just redesigned and came up with a new logo for.

I recently was brought in to make a website for a local independent film called Sleeper here in Brisbane, Australia. The site’s just gone live, and I’m pretty much a permanent part of the project as the webmaster in my spare time. I worked closely with their graphic designer to give the site the look they wanted and I think it turned out really well: http://www.sleeper-film.com/

I’ve just put up a new version of http://www.monstercolors.com.au/ after working with their graphic designer for the last three weeks. Unlike most of my recent sites, this one is not CMS driven. Instead I decided to make it from scratch with a little help from Ruben my sidekick here at Wicked.

Ken from UBSA (Used Bus Sales Australia) approached me to do a website for him for his business, which has now been completed and is live for all to see on the internet. I helped Ken with all aspects of getting his new site online from setting up new email accounts, training on how to update it, buying the domain and hosting the site, and of course building the site.

On this project I worked with a very talented graphic designer, Erica Schmerbeck, who produced the website layout.

-> Used Bus Sales Australia 

The Loot Homewares website has seen some changes in the few years since I left their offices, but I was the original designer and developer of the site which they still use a lot of code from. I designed a unique looking theme with an inviting ‘coffee-house’ style atmosphere which is not unlike their stores. When this design was created, they also had a coffee shop chain which I also managed the website for, as well as their wholesale company website (RAW Wholesale).

I also worked as a Point of Sale technician and IT Officer for Loot for over a year, based in their head office in Brisbane. In this role I was responsible for every machine in the company, and also every internet connection between stores and head office. Using these responsibilities I also started rolling out live webcams for each store, and also have first hand experience with both Secure Wireless networks and broadband connections over the mobile phone network.

The Firewheel website was one of my first commercial ventures into web design (which shall soon be updated, but shhhhhh), and was a very fun project to complete. The website was trickier than most due to the custom coding I had to do in the online store, but the site itself has turned out to be quite successful. The store was difficult because it had to take into account multiple distributor centres, which even as I write this is not included as a feature in most online store packages available on the net

Online store, downloads, image gallery, news section, FAQ and contact pages make this a good example of some of the custom programming I am capable of, and even the page design is my work specific to the project.

-> Firewheel Rubber Band Guns

I’ve been working at Wicked Campers for about a year as of writing this, and have worked on many websites in varying formats in that time. Here’s a very brief log of what I’ve done since I started here:

1. Completely rebuilt the Wicked Australian (and the New Zealand site) into ASP.NET in order to get away from a troublesome vindictive web host that they signed up with before I started. This included a new design, and constant monitoring of search engine traffic so as to ensure we didn’t lose any hits due to lost pages or bad links. The new site was designed to be a step into a much more Search Engine Friendly (SEF) website.
2. Rebuilt the UK site into ASP.NET to enable the UK director access to more advanced features and faster updating.
3. Developed BackpackersAutoShop.com for a sister business.
   -> http://www.backpackersautoshop.com/
4. Developed MonsterColors.com.au for another sister business. This site includes a simple online store.
   -> http://www.monstercolors.com.au/
5. Developed an entire website for the Wicked Campers Italy country site, in a new Content Management system, which enables much easier and quicker updating and adding of content, especially photos. It also allows incredible control over website links, which helps a lot with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It also included some unique features compared to our other country sites, such as a Euro to GBP Currency Converter.
   -> http://www.wickedcampers.it/
6. Developed a site for Wicked Commercial for another sister business, this time in a new Content Management System with a very simple way of updating content.
   ->http://www.wickedcommercial.com/
7. Migrated the Australia and New Zealand websites into the same CMS system, continuing the focus on ease of updating and SEO, as well as being pretty to look at!

-> Wicked Australia
-> Wicked New Zealand
-> Wicked United Kingdom
-> Wicked Italy
-> Wicked Ireland

-> Wicked Adventure Rally
-> Backpackers Auto Shop
-> Wicked Commercial

The words “Virtual reality” and “Exercise” don’t really fit together usually, but a project I was involved in at QUT recently challenged that statement as we set out to design and implement the worlds first ‘Virtual Reality Fitness’ system, also known as the Augmented Reality Fitness System, or AR Fitness for short. The project used two readily available technologies to create a bike (or rowing, or running) simulation program that speeds up or slows down depending on how fast you’re going on your exercise machine. To top it off, we developed head tracking technologies that move a camera in the virtual world whenever you move your head. This, combined with the use of Video goggles would allow a user to ride through a tropical rainforrest or around the great pyramids of Egypt without leaving their gym or living room!

We got published in the paper too, read more about it here:

Brisbane Times – Exercising in a Virtual World