FoxLand

Observations on how to grow a community

Andrew Fox — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:08:41 +0000

George Oates from Flickr talks about what they learnt building and working with their community. Very relevant for us right now…

Search engines over web domains

Andrew Fox — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:56:09 +0000

More and more people just use Google to get to websites rather than bother typing in a hard to remember web address. Read more on Search Engine Journal.

FoxLand goes all a Twitter

Andrew Fox — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:25:15 +0000

While we have had mixed feelings about Twitter in the past, we’re working with a client on a super simple news feed system (wanting to avoid a blog or full news system) and we realised that Twitter would be ideal. With that in mind FoxLand has finally climbed on board, as have Christian, Calum and Andrew.

Outsourcing your organisation

Andrew Fox — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:29:02 +0000

Jeffrey Zeldman talks about the demise of the personal website:

In the past 5 years or so we have witnessed a change in how people manage their personal websites. 10 years ago people tried hard to show-off with self-consciously cool websites, or odd little pages with hard to read text about their cat on garish backgrounds. Then came blogging were people wrote about their cats every day, but it was still on ‘their site’. Now we’re seeing people feel much less importance in the ownership of their space. MySpace was possibly the start of this trend, but now with Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Flickr, YouTube, etc., keeping your own personal space online just seems like too much hassle now.

What Zeldman does not discuss is that this is happening increasingly with companies and organisations too. Whether they have a Facebook page, a corporate Twitter account, video on YouTube, an eBay account for ecommerce, Amazon S3 for storage or tools like Basecamp, Salesforce and Google Documents for their intranets, the de-centralisation of organisations is happening, and we regularly recommend this for clients.

Acme Climate Action - still coming soon

Andrew Fox — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:23:01 +0000

A holding page has gone up for Acme Climate Action. Much more coming soon.

The making of Monocle

Andrew Fox — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:04:22 +0000

A fantastic article about how the website for the magazine Monocle came about, the thinking behind it, the design and the style. Written by Dan Hill who has worked for the last year on the site, it goes into great detail about the challenges staying true to the style and brand of the magazine while also working in the medium of the web. There are many good insights made, many that remind me of our projects. For example, while discussing whether user-generated content should be in the Monocle site: “my view was that we didn’t need comments on the site as people increasingly have their own spaces to talk, discuss, comment - whether that’s blogs and discussion fora, or the social software of Facebook et al.” — an insight many organisations could learn from and feel comfortable about. Monocle, the magazine and website, are also recommended.

After the Fire…

Andrew Fox — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:39:46 +0000

Finally, well over a month after the fire, we’ve made it back into the office. During our exile we’ve been based all over the capital, from the faraway wilds of Bounds Green and Brixton to the cosmopolitan chic of Ladbroke Grove and Brick Lane. But we’re now finally pleased to be all reunited and back in Hampstead. The office looks better than ever – it has been crisply repainted, has a spanking new floor and does not smell of acrid plastic soot. Our local coffee and sandwich providers are thrilled that their economy will be revived by our return. Many thanks to all of our friends, colleagues and clients who have been concerned for our health and well being. We are delighted to say that normal service has now been resumed.

Search vs. web addresses

Andrew Fox — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:05:04 +0000

In testing we know that many users search for websites rather than ever enter a web address, even when they search using a term such as “fox-land.co.uk”. As Cabel Sasser notes, in Japan things have gone one step forward, and web addresses are now not even used in advertising.