As Lead Creative Developer I worked on larger projects involving teams of 3 or more Flash developers across a number of different client portfolios. I worked closely with Project Directors and Technical Delivery Managers to assess prospective work to ensure it could be fulfilled in the available budget and ensure that any technical challenges during production were overcome.
As a Senior Creative Developer I was responsible for developing and delivering Rich Internet Applications and rich media websites.
My final project in this role was for Orange and it won the FlashForward Rich Internet Application of the year in 2006.
There’s been a great deal of discussion recently about social network privacy, and in particular Facebook’s privacy settings since its F8 conference last month.
I’ve been more preoccupied with work recently and have only had the chance to keep up to date on what others have written about the subject, but there’s been a post rattling around in me for a while on this topic, and it’s gained more clarity through projects I’ve been working on. Whilst I won’t be going into any detail about the specific projects, I’m going to touch on some of the themes and trends that have been buzzing around in my day to day discussions and I hope it’s thought provoking. There are 3 trends I want to highlight:
Firstly, Mike Arauz wrote a great thought piece the other week on “One-to-Some” Communication, which I thoroughly recommend. The whole team over at Undercurrent continue to churn out some brilliant thinking and Mike’s post is just another great example.
Secondly, another theme that took off at roughly the same time was funding for a little known start-up called Diaspora over on KickStarter. Within a matter of days the 4 guys from Diaspora had been funded to the tune of $100,000 – great by anyone’s standards – It’s also worth noting (especially for the purpose of this post) that Mark Zuckerberg is one of the loudest voices for Diaspora and was one of the earliest investors. Lastly, was an interview Robert Scoble recorded with the guys from Wave Market. Here, the conversation centred around geo-fencing and location-based notifications, amongst many other topics. It’s well wroth a watch when you find the time.
What all 3 of the above trends are pointing to is a group of individuals within your social graph which naturally ebbs and flows based on the context (time & place), the topic and the interest of the content you are sharing. Such relationships can get complicated quickly, so it’s important to rationalise this thinking by starting small.
Maybe Google Me, Google’s worst kept secret is trying to solve this problem…
We’ve got a widget that needs some global share functionality added to it, so I got in touch with the company (Gigya) who’s helping us to do that. I went to their blog, which had some interesting insights and a ‘social bar’ at the bottom of the browser page. This is similar to the couple of examples I had in the deck I sent round the other day and could include any other number of social ‘connections’, such as QQ, RenRen, Orkut etc. I’ve heard rumors that Facebook will be launching their own in weeks.
In a nutshell, this and various other announcements, such as Facebook’s Social Plugins, bring into focus the idea that websites can now apply the latest open social technologies – like Facebook Connect, OAuth with Twitter, those provided by Yahoo, LinkedIn and more – to their own sites to drive traffic and highlight other social platforms where clients have a presence.
Re-dressing the balance
Most companies have learned to meet their customers on social networks, creating Facebook fan pages and Twitter pages, or integrating basic sharing, but only a few have made their own sites social in a way that truly takes advantage of the opportunity. Making the corporate site experience seamlessly connect to users’ social networks is the way things are moving. According to industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group, “In the future, consumers will be challenged to differentiate between corporate sites and social networks” because “destinations won’t matter, social context will”.
Many prominent publishers and retailers are buying traffic only to send it away to a social network. The next generation of social technologies – like Facebook’s Open Graph – differ from their predecessors. Facebook launched the changes on Wednesday with over 75 partners and partners are applying those technologies to their own sites to enable site visitors to help drive friends to those sites.
The various different social tools that Facebook and others have enabled can be collectively described as Friendcasting – Tools such as the ‘like’ button and Twitter’s @Anywhere solution enable customers to broadcast their comments to their 150 friends (the average number of friends/followers that social network users have these days).
5 best practices
There are 5 best practices for applying this “next generation” sharing (Friendcasting):
1. Keep users on your site
2. Build sharing into the activity flow
3. Use one single system for registration and sharing
4. Offer simultaneous sharing options
5. Track sharing results
K.I.S.S.
Many of our clients still don’t fully appreciate how impactful social can be – it’s not the old packaged good mentality now. Technically – it’s more that there are many agencies and people involved, so “Keep it simple stupid” is best. For many clients, making the functionality different or flashy instead of keeping it as clear and simple as it should be will be a great challenge.
The movement towards openness
Microsoft will be launching its new Windows Live platform soon and with it a raft of new social features, including the first version of Office in the Cloud. Microsoft will be placing Friendcasting at the very centre of their launch, in the same way as they have shown in their recent partnership with Facebook, http://docs.com.
These tools increase conversion on your own site because users can register in just a couple of clicks. Often, you’re not going to capture a full conversion upfront, but that doesn’t matter because you are getting permission to have a relationship.
Privacy
The data that is provided varies by the platform and the visitor’s personal security settings, but Facebook now provides an email address if they have approved sharing it. Both demographic and psychographic data is often available. More will be offered as Google and Microsoft join in with their own social services for 3rd party websites.
More things to consider soon…
Time is finite and is becoming more valuable to me every day.
I’m finding myself using my handset (an iPhone) to keep up with news via my RSS feeds (which I’m still a big fan of) and for casually grazing on Twitter for interesting insights & articles.
I use Reeder 2.0 for reading blogs & Tweetie 2.0 for Twitter.
I’m a paid up member of Pinboard (I got in early when it was less than a $1) rather than delicious for a number of reasons, one of them being that anything I favourite on Twitter automatically gets picked up and stored on my Pinboard account for future reference. Additionally, I can store stuff on Pinboard as something to be read later or as public; All very nice features.
I have a posterous account, a Tumblr account and this blog.
I am beginning (admittedly slowly!) to separate my own personal thoughts to just this blog (hence the lack of updates since they generally take longer to write). Comments I want to make on an article, video or image that I read, watch or view to my posterous blog and a general ‘river of interesting things’ to my Tumblog.
I generally auto-post to Tumblr and Twitter from Posterous, but I’m still playing around with auto-posting in general and haven’t found a sweet spot. On that note I’m looking into dlvr.it which is like a cross between Twitterfeed and Yahoo Pipes on Steroids. It looks really cool, just haven’t had the opportunity to sit down with it properly yet.
I have added my starred items RSS feed from Google Reader to my Tumblr account. I tend to ‘star’ anything that looks interesting in my RSS feed, particularly when I’m on the underground and have no signal.
If I read something that I’d like to comment on, then Reeder gives me the option to email the article and I’ll email that to my posterous email address, creating a post there. Depending on what tags I associate with the email that post will auto-post the same article to both my Tumblr account & my blog here…keeping up? ;p
If there’s something I read while I’m out and about using Reeder I can do one of 3 things:
I can email it to my posterous account and it will auto-post it to my blog and Tumblr based on the email address I use. (For more on how posterous works have a look at the FAQ section on posterous.com – It makes posting stuff really easy.)
I can star it and it will automatically appear in my Tumblog.
I can choose to Tweet it or send it to pinboard. Sending it directly to pinboard keeps it private, sending it via Twitter broadcasts it and then it gets picked up by pinboard and stored publically.
So that’s about it. I’m still tinkering, but I’m managing to keep on top of things mainly traveling to and from work. I’m still limited by not being able to work well off-line when I don’t have a signal, but I’m getting there and keeping my fingers crossed that it’s a feature of the upcoming iPhone 4.0.
There’s been a lot of announcements (here and here) recently about the partnership between Google and Adobe in some supposed hardened stance against Apple.
Whatever…
Something I haven’t heard mention of though, is how strong a browser-based phone solution such a partnership could offer. Has anyone heard of Ribbit? I think an implementation of Ribbit and Google Voice would be interesting…I haven’t read it, but this Google Wireless Telecom Strategy report is bound to unearth some interesting info.
Personally this is big news and a bold move by Adobe and Google, bringing more weight to the Open Screen Project.
I’ve been talking through a number of potential iPad applications with people at work and I’m gathering a fairly useful and extensive list of articles and considerations around the iPad. I’m sharing that list here and I’ll be adding to it as I find more.
A summary of the iPad UX Guidelines
Video – Highlights of the iPad native app presentation given by Steve Job
Video – Highlights of the iWorks apps on the iPad
Images – Detailed Flickr gallery of iPad UI conventions including comments
Images – Detailed Flickr gallery of iPad UI interactions best viewed as Slideshows
iPad scrubber navigation considerations
Heightened physicality & realism considerations
iPad Application Design
Great presentation on iPad application design
Books in the Age of iPad
Design Templates (not for production, but good for starters):
iPad icon template
iPad GUI template
iPad Omnigraffle template
The humble To Do list has been updated, with the Dunnit! iPhone app using gaming-style achievement points for every task completed. Sure beats scribbling on the back of an envelope I guess, though it’d be better if they translated into redeemable points.
Having some sort of incentive to tick off every task on the list would definitely make me more pro-active, especially if you could translate them into iTunes gift cards or something. Though at $4.99 a download, the developer Runloop would have to be raking in a lot of downloads for that to make financial sense.
Dunnit! lets you compete against friends who also use the iPhone app, and you can tweet your results to your followers—if you dare. [iTunes via Mobile-Ent]
This is a really nicely considered iPhone app. It does what it says on the tin and the achievement point-focused incentives is genius – kudos Dan, it’s wicked ;p
Go check out the app on the App Store.
Find out more about the development team here.
Many thanks to Albion London for putting on a cracking panel last Wednesday in Spitalfields for a discussion on Digital Democracy and the impending UK General Election. More info on the specific event can be found here, including a video with Alan Rusbridger’s insightful views on Us vs. Them and Open vs. Closed.
With the UK election getting into full swing, MPs have been scrambling over themselves to be interviewed by the MumsNet community. Both David ‘Call me Dave’ Cameron and Gordon ‘I’m Just about to Blow a Gasket’ Brown have courted the active and passionate Mums.net community, but having heard from Justine Roberts, founder of MumsNet, I’m really not sure what kind of impact either of them made with that community. They’re doing what politicians have always done; look at stats/results, target a particular demographic of disenfranchised, sitting-on-the-fence voters and trying to woo them.
But is that it? Is the UK election really ‘The MumsNet Election’? The UK election isn’t going to be anything like the US Obama election, that much is clear. So far all we’ve heard are fluffy promises and the same old negative politics and fear; this time though such tactics are being amplified for all the wrong reasons by digital. It goes to prove that in this general election you have to say something meaningful.
“We are going after the tens of thousands of young voters. If we get their vote, we will win by a landslide.”
Ms Omond said that if she wins the election, she will put a third of her salary into local projects selected by her constituents. She also vowed to do one day of community service each week and said she would ensure everyone in the constituency who is eligible to vote is registered by the end of her first period in office.
Ms Jackson, Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, last year repaid more than £8,000 in expenses she had wrongly claimed. Glenda Jackson has previously been shown to be one of the MPs who offers least value for money.
In 2007/2008, she claimed £136,793 in allowances despite turning up for only 27 per cent of votes and speaking in just two debates.
Ms Omond said: “The expenses scandal definitely influenced my decision to stand. People in the constituency I’ve spoken to are incredulous that Glenda Jackson would even bother standing in the election. She is the laziest MP in London.”
Ms Omond said the Climate Rush group would be “heavily involved” in her campaign: “We’re going to have people dressed as suffragettes going door-to-door offering to draught-proof houses and sort out insulation.
Should be interesting, if only as a side show…
Incredible examples of creating Light Graffiti – love it!
“Stanley Kubrick allowed his then-17-year-old daughter, Vivian, to make a documentary about the production of THE SHINING. Originally for the British television show BBC Arena, the documentary offers rare insight into the shooting process of a Kubrick film.”
Adrian Britton: ZURB Launches Foundation 3 To Take On Twitter’s Bootstrap Framework http://t.co/pfu7nlbf #TC #bootstrapping #socialmedia
Kernel Panic, by Volumique (2008):
This book is a personal collection of screen captures of computer crashes. The bug belongs to no one and no one wants it, not the programmer, nor the platform maker, nor the user! They all avoid it and hunt it down; no-one wants to take responsability…
A must watch! portraying what the future of tech feels like.. (W)
DJ Fresh & Mindtunes: A track created only by the mind
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Published on May 29, 2013
Download the track “Mindtunes” here: http://bit.ly/10zvhvi. Proceeds go directly to the Queen Elizabeth’s Foundation for disabled people. Find out more about QEF on http://qef.org.uk/
Mindtunes is a track created by Andy, Jo and Mark, 3 physically disabled music fans, using only one instrument: their mind. The track was produced by DJ Fresh. Watch the music video: http://bit.ly/18tDipD
At Smirnoff we believe there’s a creator in everyone of us. All you need are the means to get it out there, for everyone to see.
You have a mind, you can create. #yoursforthemaking
Special thanks to guest member Matthew.
Made with Emotiv EPOC technology.(Documentary) (by SmirnoffEurope)
Happy birthday to Will Eisner, who was born in 1917 and died in 2005; he would have been 96 today. Neil Gaiman called him “an American storyteller, like Ray Bradbury, like O. Henry,” and Wizard magazine named Eisner “the most influential comic artist of all time.”
Visit the Will Eisner Week website for listings of celebrations across the country.
Happy Birthday, Will. I miss you.
“Chief marketing officers say they are currently spending 8.4% of their budgets on social media and expect that to increase by more than 40% over the next year to 11.5%, and in the next five years, it will reach 21.6% the survey found… With the rise of social media and other forms of digital marketing, spending on traditional advertising continues to plummet as CMOs expect a 2.7% decline.”
- Social media spend by marketers set to more than double — led by consumer goods (via courtenaybird)
“Social TV market to be wroth $256.44 billion by 2017”
FDA Approves Swallowable, Stomach-Acid Powered Sensors
The Proteus ingestible sensor can be integrated into an inert pill or other ingested products, such as pharmaceuticals.
Once the ingestible sensor reaches the stomach, it is powered by contact with stomach fluid and communicates a unique signal that determines identity and timing of ingestion.
This information is transferred through the user’s body tissue to a patch worn on the skin that detects the signal and marks the precise time an ingestible sensor has been taken. Additional physiologic and behavioral metrics collected by the patch include heart rate, body position and activity.
The patch relays information to a mobile phone application. With the patient’s consent, the information is accessible by caregivers and clinicians, helping individuals to develop and sustain healthy habits, families to make better health choices, and clinicians to provide more effective, data-driven care.
Pringles minimalist packaging turns into a crisp bowl, very nice…Another continuation of the minimalist packaging meme…
“As we build Percolate and learn from our clients we are becoming more confident that in order for a brand to scale their communication strategy, it needs to start with flow. And as that strategy evolves, brands need to allow flow to inform the bigger investments they make in stock content.” James dropping some knowledge about the relationship between stock & flow over at the Percolate blog. We’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. The great thing about short-form content is that it’s easy to make and therefore easy to learn from and using those learnings to inform the bigger stuff is the right move for the future. Allowing flow to inform stock | Blog @ Percolate (via percolatehq)
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Tactilu - Bracelet for remote tactile communication / by @panGenerator
According to TorrentFreak, Game of Thrones averages around 3.9 million pirated downloads per episode. According to the great Internet resource known as Wikipedia, only 3.8 million people watch Game of Thrones on HBO. That means more people pirate the show than actually watch the show on TV. via Pocket
People have been predicting the demise of cable television for years. After this week, they might be right. Two small pieces of news yesterday could make for a big headache for TV. via Pocket
Perceptive Media has not been formally explained, only mentioned in passing here. However, outside the formal channels of BBC R&D, there’s been much talk about the concept of Perceptive media. via Pocket
I just broke my step target of 10000 and hit 23567 Feels good!!!
Eighty-five-year-old Chicagoan Martin Shafron, a self-described “computer illiterate,” steps into the rotunda-like entrance of AT&T’s flagship store in the city’s high-end retail district known as the Magnificent Mile. via Pocket
The internet is an information delivery and communications platform. It was created initially by the United States government to replace the other information delivery and communications platforms in our world. via Pocket
This year I.B.M dedicated its Five in Five series (an annual list of five technologies that are likely to advance dramatically) solely to sensors. Digital sensors of the touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell kind along with their potential are all profiled by I.B.M. via Pocket
Video: betaknowledge: Kernel Panic, by Volumique (2008): This book is a personal collection of screen...
Video: wildcat2030: A must watch! portraying what the future of tech feels like.. (W) DJ Fresh & Mindtunes:...
@matt_lodder @asip @tobybarnes This: That is all.
I just broke my step target of 10000 and hit 13246 Feels good!!!
From Google Glass to athletes' suits that record their speed, the age of wearable technology is upon us, writes design expert Oliver Stokes. Wearable technology is the big buzz area in consumer electronics today. via Pocket
Buried under the streets of Santander, Spain—or discreetly affixed to buses, utility poles, and dumpsters—are some 12,000 electronic sensors that track everything from traffic to noise to surfing conditions at local beaches. via Pocket
Health researchers are able to access and analyze your electronic health data, insurance claims and other kinds of traditional health information. via Pocket
One of the most important factors in helping digital innovation flourish is having a strong community that fosters it. If you have no community support for your endeavours, it makes it quite difficult to achieve something of value. But how do you achieve this in practical terms? via Pocket
Flat design – the design community just can’t stop talking about it. And feelings are strong. Most designers either can’t get enough of this trend, or absolutely hate it. via Pocket
Ghost, an open-source blogging platform that hopes to shake up the personal publishing space, is nearing the end of its Kickstarter journey. Almost a month ago, Ghost launched with what seemed like an audacious goal: Raise £25,000 to help create a new web platform dedicated to publishing. via Pocket
Forbes - "If Mr. O’Nolan and Ghost deliver on their big idea that is now a funded project, content innovation may return to the forefront of disruptive conversation." Wired - "Ghost aims to reboot blogging ... a combination of user-focused design, open-source code & non-profit company" via Pocket
Editor’s note: Matt Turck is a managing director of FirstMark Capital. Follow him on Twitter @mattturck. via Pocket
When I speak to technical founders, they often look back with fondness to days of tinkering with a Commodore 64 or Hypercard. via Pocket
Kickstarter might be better known for funding films and hardware projects, but it’s now getting its first synthetic biology proposal. A Singularity University alum, a Stanford post-doc and a Stanford Ph.D. via Pocket
As Branch’s only non-technical hire, I’m often described as some combination of PR, marketing, content, BD, or sales, depending on who’s doing the talking (or listening). Of these, sales has the unique honor of being both my least favorite and the one that best describes what I do. via Pocket
3:29 AM Veejay Lamba List of good Elgg Social Bookmarking sites to submit free blogs, links, bookmarks : Instant approval bookmarking sites (a mix of bookmarking websites from countries: USA, India, Italy, Germany, Spanish, UK, Indonesia.. via Pocket
When Byliner.com launched last month, there was plenty of enthusiasm about their new “Pandora of narrative non-fiction” from fans of long-form journalism. via Pocket
Bliss. #InboxZero via @Mailbox
Before last year closed out and we headed off for festivities and copious amounts of booze I mentioned a new idea to introduce Red Badger employees the opportunity to use their training budget (£2,000 each year) to invest in our own ideas. via Pocket
Hello there my name is and I’m a technical architect and founder of Red Badger, a creative software workshop that has been working with the BBC to develop features such as BBC Now. via Pocket
Hello, I'm the product manager of the BBC Homepage. In November 2012 I wrote a blog post about a project I was working on with an agency called Red Badger as part of the BBC’s Connected Studio initiative. via Pocket
Estimating how long something is going to take is a part of everyday life, and as most of us know, we humans stink at it. Yet as software developers, estimating how long features and functionality will take to develop is all part of the job description. via Pocket
As it stands, we have moved through a few core paradigms in terms of how we interact with computers and software. From the earliest days of physical levers and punchcards, through text (DOS etc.), onto the GUI and windows/Mac OS type interfaces, and recently now touch, gesture and voice. via Pocket
NEW YORK—Media consumers across the United States are reporting this week that sponsored content—articles and videos paid for by advertisers and distributed by print and digital publications—is easily the coolest fucking published material anyone could ever read or watch. via Pocket
The future came crashing down on me this week at the Google I/O developer conference while I stood at a bathroom urinal. I had just wrapped up a conversation with a man who owned a pair of Google’s Internet-connected glasses, Google Glass. via Pocket
Survived my first live interview: Talking to the BBC about #GoogleGlass
I just broke my step target of 10000 and hit 10137 Feels good!!!
I just broke my step target of 10000 and hit 17811 Feels good!!!
I just broke my step target of 10000 and hit 19889 Feels good!!!
Check out Iceber.gs! Visual organization for creative minds. via @icebergsapp/
RT @richardleggett: BitTorrent Live Streaming Platform
RT @rossmonstr: CAN WE ALL TAKE A MOMENT TO APPRECIATE MY MOTHER USING A KINDLE AS A BOOKMARK
RT @Lily_2point0: Hacking Digital Cinema at Google Campus with @FraserJNicholas
windowstudio watching an exclusive documentary of Bad Bad Not Good, who're playing afterwards - seriously…
The guy's filing with an iPhone 5 on a boon and he's all miked up! #sxsw @ Hilton Austin
@PatsMc Found this Tweet that was never sent….It’s lost its context but it still has lots of meaning…made me smile
Photoset: neil-gaiman: wwnorton: Happy birthday to Will Eisner, who was born in 1917 and died in 2005; he...
A 3D FPS engine using HTML5 and CSS3 3D...
House of Cards on Netflix is a game changer, in more ways than one. It highlights how flawed Nielsen & Barb are...
OpenFrameworks for Processing Coders – Video guide by Josh Nimoy
Photo: Open-source laser-cutting (via Lasersaur by Nortd Labs)
» Personalised 3D Pez head #want
PULP-O-MIZER: the custom pulp magazine cover generator Love it! (hat tip @guardiantech)
Like: Dot Matrix Haiku (hat tip @noisydecentgraphics)
cityofsound: Essay: On the smart city; Or, a 'manifesto' for smart citizens instead #goodread
Valve's Gabe Newell on Steam Box, biometrics, and the future of gaming - Brilliant interview, just brilliant.
PressureNet app feeds scientists atmospheric data from thousands of smartphones - lovely idea
I just liked "Algorithmic Architecture" on Vimeo:
Toyota GT86 site developed by Glue Isobar cited as Best Practice mobile experience . Well done guys!