When the new whitehouse.gov went live many people questioned why it wasn’t open to comments and discussion. We have worked on a few projects where this is a very sensitive issue. We’d have loved the comments to have been more open, but issues of the appropriate use of language on sensitive websites could have opened them up to various problems (a subject for a much longer journal entry). That said there have been some intriguing innovations in how to handle commenting on blogs, discussed in this article on Wired.

(I’ve been out of action for quite a while, so I’ve been catching up on some interesting news from around the web and work we have been doing, therefore some of this stuff may be a bit old).

We’ve been doing a lot of work recently for London Youth Rowing (LYR) – a ground breaking sporting initiative that aims to develop young people through physical activity and make rowing accessible to all. We created a new look for LYR and designed and built their new website. The site is content managed (WordPress) and is also designed to interact with the CRM tool Salesforce.com.

As well as designing their online look, we have also been responsible for other design work – in particular the branding of an LYR initiative called Row East London! This is an initiative aimed at improving the fitness, health and well-being of young people in the ten East London Olympic and Gateway boroughs. The initiative was launched last week on 17th March in the company of Olympic medalists and Kate Hoey MP. The launch took place at The National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships (NJIRC) – which is the largest indoor rowing competition in the world with over 1,900 participants. Photos of the launch event, with the Row East London logo featuring prominently on t-shirts, can be viewed here.

It gives us great pleasure to announce that on 4th March 2009 Andrew’s partner Meadbh gave birth to a beautiful little girl called Charlotte Sóirse Metrustry-Fox aka just Sóirse. Mum, dad and daughter are all doing really well and are ecstatically happy.

Sóirse is already following in dad’s footsteps and we’re sure it won’t be long before she’s typing her first bit of code. In the mean time she’s keeping mum and dad busier than our clients ever have.