Online video sharing comparison
Take a look at this page that makes it easy to compare competing video sharing players.
Kuler colour tool
Adobe, taking a leaf from their Macromedia acquisition, have been working on some interesting new applications and tools and releasing them as beta versions. Kuler is an intriguing and surprisingly powerful colour tool for designers.
No Music Day
Bill Drummond has announced today, 21st November, as No Music Day.
Can we choose ‘less choice’?
On the upcoming Windows Vista users are presented with up to 15 ways of ’switching off’ their computer.
Chris Ware in The New Yorker Thanksgiving edition
Take a look at these beautiful Chris Ware New Yorker covers for this year’s Thanksgiving edition.
Peanut Butter Manifesto
The problem with companies, such as Yahoo!, spreading themselves too thinly is discussed.
Copper website launches
Copper, a new recruitment consultancy set up by Celia Brasher and Sonja Smithers, have launched their website at copperlondon.co.uk. We designed and created their identity and website.
19 November, 2006
Vexed about technology, Christmas presents and life?
Take a look at the elegantly designed Uncle Mark gift guide.
Blood Diamond Action and Amazon S3
Our latest project, the Blood Diamond Action website, has just gone live. The website publicises the issues surrounding the film Blood Diamond that stars Leonardo diCaprio amongst others. Working again with Provokateur, the site is backed by Amnesty International USA and Global Witness.
The build of the site was fine. However, our problem was determining the potential traffic to the site. The film will be launched in the US in December and the UK early next year. This will raise the profile of the issue greatly and with it the profile of the site. The potential number of visitors to the site globally could be quite large.
It’s always great to have lots of visitors to a website. But it is, of course, not as simple as that. The website is designed for broadband and includes a 9MB video download. The main Flash-based element is approximately 190k. While these are not enormous files, a large number of global visitors could cause it problems. Even if the majority of visitors don’t download the video, the required bandwidth could become very costly and a surge in visitor numbers could even bring it down.
Our solution to this was to move all the key files to Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service), part of Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services use infrastructure that Amazon has already set up for their own products, and are now offering to other companies. Therefore, not only are we tapping into a very reliable system that one of the largest web companies in the world is using, it is also easy to use, very cheap and you only pay for what is used. So if a large number of people visit the site or the expected visitors don’t arrive, it won’t be a problem.
Update: The website is featured in an article in today’s LA Times (16th November 2006).
15 November, 2006
Blood Diamond Action, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey and Amazon S3 (edited)
This article was edited, and moved to another post.
Making Life Easy
A World Usability Day blog put together by some friends of ours at Flow Interactive. Oh, and I’d forgotten, but today (14th November) is actually World Usability Day…
Installing the Zune (usability is a brand issue, part 2)
I’ve refrained from mentioning the Zune (Microsoft’s wannabe iPod competitor) before as much discussion about it has been often very partisan guess work, but this post at Engadget about the nightmare of installing the Zune software (the iTunes equivalent) changed matters. Microsoft undoubtedly now understand why iPod/iTunes worked for Apple, hence the Zune vertical business model, but it sounds as if they are not looking after the fine details. Coupled with the Zune’s draconian licensing restrictions, the Zune, as a brand, has had a disasterous first few weeks. Microsoft’s very expensive advertising push for the Zune could be a huge waste, as these real usability issues threaten to engulf the brand. Update: The comments to the original post indicate that many people in contrast have had relatively simple installations of the software. Also, Ars Technica have some interesting points to make about the Zune’s future.
14 November, 2006
Spurt in Creative Review
The Spurt campaign, which we built the website for, is Pick of the Month in November’s Creative Review magazine, the world’s leading monthly magazine for visual communication. Working with Provokateur, the website backed up a press ad alerting readers to a spoof pro-aviation growth organisation, Spurt. Featuring bogus airline big-wig Sir Montgomery Cecil, the ad urged readers to ignore the tree hugging lobby with the motto “Sod them. Let’s fly”. Only when readers visit the site is it revealed that the ad was organised by a coalition of environmentalist groups including Enoughsenough.org, Airportwatch and Greenpeace.
8 November, 2006
Draw your own furniture
We want to be able to do this, not just for furniture, but any kind of object, logos or anything. Take a look at Front Design….
The Guardian covers Web 2.0
Featuring the web’s favourite alpha geeks in fashion photography mode, The Guardian covered Web 2.0. Significantly, this was the cover story in the ‘lifestyle’ magazine section, and not in a business or technology section. It convincingly covers the concept and has smaller interviews with a few of the key players. Take a look at the special page at The Guardian website. Update: The Guardian have now added a video report too.