Microsoft has just launched an ‘interactive table’ called Microsoft Surface. The web will be abuzz with this all day, discussing the ins and outs of how this will work in application. Time will tell whether it will only be found in hotel lobbies and shops, or whether it will be genuinely useful at home. Whatever - it opens up interesting new ways of interacting with information and even objects, and it will be worth watching how it impacts on the industry (especially Apple). Found via Techcrunch and Crunchgear.

The new look Faculty of 1000 Medicine marketing site we designed was launched last week. This saw the completion of the first phase of the F1000 website rebrand and redesign project we are working on. F1000 Medicine is an innovative database application that evaluates influential medical papers using a 2500-strong ‘faculty’ of the world’s top international researchers and clinicians. We are now working on the next phase of the project which involves a redesign of the look and functionality of the application itself.

Naresh Ramchandani discusses the much linked to website by Miranda July advertising her book “No one belongs here more than you” in The Guardian. He makes the case that it is important sometimes to do things simply, with an individual humour and creativity, rather than going for the big slick advertising schtick.

Jeff Jarvis in The Guardian discusses the papers recent homepage redesign and where news websites might go next (registration required).

Rob Gifford’s book “China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power” has been released in the States and to coincide our website has been launched.

Rob Gifford is a journalist who has worked for NPR (National Public Radio) and the BBC and has spent much of the last 20 years studying and reporting on China. He is now NPR’s London bureau chief. China Road is the story of a roadtrip he conducted with the photographer Patrick Fraser on Route 312, the Chinese equivalent of Route 66, through the heart of the country, the Gobi Desert and onto the Silk Road.

A discussion as to why web appilcations should not try too hard to look like a desktop application by Bill Higgins (via Signal vs. Noise).

New and very good review site that manages to show graphically a good overview of how much reviewers like and dislike a product (via Kottke and Daring Fireball).

“Peoples Archive requires and rewards patient exploration, but there’s so much here to enjoy that even a brief visit will turn up some priceless nuggets. This site is for us, not just our descendants and the list continues to grow: future contributors will include Chomsky, le Carre and - at last, women! - Doris Lessing and Paula Rego.” The Observer, 20th May 2007
Peoples Archive, one of our latest clients, was discussed in The Observer’s Review section this weekend.

Nothing to do with design, usability, or accessibility, but we love this (found via Panopticist). That said, we do love Vimeo, the YouTube competitor for the clean and simple video players.

Jakob Nielsen, Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress), Lynda Weinman and others discuss what is required to ‘create for the web’.

Nothing Earth-shatteringly new, but it always says something about an idea when the BBC deigns it is interesting enough to cover. Jakob Nielsen talks about the dangers of “Web 2.0” sites ignoring good practice, in the rush to ‘innovate’.

Over the last few months we have been working with the search engine marketing and optimisation company Latitude on a variety of projects. One of the most unusual was a brief to commission photography for two meeting rooms and the reception area in offices on New Oxford Street, London. Latitude wanted something to make their offices more interesting, to stand out from the typical. They didn’t just want the usual bland corporate art - they wanted something bold and unique to them - something that reflected that their offices lie between Soho and Bloomsbury. They didn’t want the usual postcard style images of these grand old areas of London, they wanted something that paid homage to the true rich character of the areas.

To this end we spoke to Fiona Campbell, an award winning photographer who we felt would do well to eke out the unusual and different. She spent a good amount of time researching the idea, and decided to talk to some of the characters of the area. (more…)

Apologies for using the term “2.0”, but as the web becomes ever more interactive and application-like, people are thinking about how to keep the web usable and accessible to all. Websites such as Facebook, Flickr and the whole Web 2.0 crowd are coming up with interesting ways for users to interact with information, which is great, but the danger is that each site will create it’s own method to similar actions. Luke Wroblewski discusses this: “This surge of new Web experiences that give users more control is probably the biggest change impacting usability online.”

Wordpress, a wildly popular open-source blogging and simple content management tool, is 4 years old. Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer, but very much not the owner or only developer, discusses the development of Wordpress and people’s expectations of him being a ‘Web 2.0 trailblazer’.

The Guardian, which is by far the most read British newspaper on the web, has redesigned its homepage and a few peripheral pages - and it looks great, finally giving space to more news, photography and revealing far more of the rest of the site than before. I like that they have kept the top-level navigation essentially the same as before, as it always was quite an ‘individual’ design and it makes regular users feel at home. It has a few potential negative points though. It is a very wide (940px) layout which will upset the people who believe in elastic or liquid widths. It also jars when you click away from this page and go to an old-style content page and is even inconsistent when you click into the recently designed ‘blog’ areas, such as Comment is Free, as these are left-aligned, while the new homepage is centred. They have also made the interesting choice of keeping the old-style Guardian Unlimited logo, and not aligning it with the new logo featured in the print-version. That said, I expect many of these issues to be temporary while they update - it is often better to evolve website design rather than make huge radical departures from the past, especially with such a popular and well-loved site.

Update: More can be read about the thinking behind the redesign in their News Blog. Interestingly, I was looking for comment about the redesign everywhere on their site, and could not find it, even after an internal seach. I then used Google, and it found the article immediately.