Over the weekend I came across a great Web site called Map Channels, which allows you to take your Google “My Maps”, customise and embed them into your own site.

For those unfamiliar with Google My Maps, this is a feature launched in April 2007 that enables you to quickly and easily create custom maps. Gone are the days of needing programmers to create mash-ups, all you need is a Google account and a good sense of direction.

However, a major drawback of any Google My Maps creation is that they appear within the Google Maps site, and cannot be customised to any great extent. This is where Map Channels comes in, it creates a bridge between Google My Maps and your own site, allowing you to customise and embed your map into your site or blog.

Here is an example:

Last weekend our London office moved to 85 Strand, along with our partners Cedar. As a magazine publisher, the Cedar staff naturally has a wealth of knowledge of good London bars & restaurants. As we settled into the new space, these recommendations were emailed around, and I decided to create a map showing the locations. Google My Maps is a create free tool, and easy to use, so I started here. The result is an interactive map, but within the confines of the Google Maps site.

Next, I wanted to a) have this hosted on the new Cedar Web site, and b) design it within Cedar’s branding. Google, why don’t you let us do this?!

Up steps Map Channels. After creating a (free) account, I simply copied the KML URL, and then was presented with an array of options for customising My Map. It then presented me with a snipped of HTML to embed into a Cedar-branded template. Done! The result is a customised map that fits with the Cedar branding, without any coding required whatsoever.

I think that Google are missing a trick by not providing this functionality themselves, but hopefully it’s only a matter of time.

Your thoughts? Please make your comments below…

Tim O' Neill, Managing Director UK

Labels: Reactive, Technology, Web Culture and Trends

While I was reading the AFR article I noticed something funny. As I highlighted text in the article I noticed every second character had been switched out with a space. How bizarre!

See screenshot below:



Further investigation unfolded they use a fixed width font,create two layers, each with half of the letters and non breaking space (NBSP) interlaced between every real character. To put this together they use CSS to overlay the two panels and then they get the final text.

Think of all the issues with this technique. The use of a floating div tag to overlay one set of content over another would create a massive strain on server and bandwidth. Coupled with this, the accessibility of the site is non existent. Any screen reader would take the text as is and would output absolute gibberish successfully rendering the site unusable in this instance. Finally using your web browsers search facility to find copy in the body is useless too.

The underlying issue I have with this technique is the lack focus the AFR gives to usability. The Australian Blind and Vision statistics indicate that as of 2004, 0.25% of the population suffered from complete vision loss and 2.36% suffer from some soft of visual imparity. Read what you want into these stats but either way the Australian Financial Review is severely isolating a good proportion of the population with their site.


It's quite amazing that the AFR have gone to all this trouble to stop a user from copying and pasting an article. Especially given that anyone with a background in Javascript could circumvent this in about 5 minutes.

So the Australian Financial Review have successfully implemented DRM but at what cost? Well they’ve thrown out all accessibility, usability and readability not to mention any chance of a Google index.

Anthony Harrison, Project Manager

Labels: Design and Usability, Web Culture and Trends

Last week Warners announced that they will discontinue support of the HD DVD format, and this week Toshiba officially abandoned their HD disc format. Blu-Ray has won the High Definition format war.

It was much sooner than expected, with many analysts predicting the battle to last for many years, and dual format players to become common. I’m glad it wasn’t a long and painful death.

So why did Blu-Ray win? Both formats provided the same quality picture.

HD DVD players were cheaper. So that would suggest HD DVD should have had the advantage? Toshiba believed that they would sell more players because they were cheaper, and that by having more players in living rooms their format would win.


I think there were three key things that helped Blu-Ray win:

1) Content.
Blu-Ray started out with a good advantage by having more Hollywood studios on their format from the outset. This meant that they always had a potentially bigger library to release on their format.

2) Sony bundled the Blu-Ray drive into the Playstation 3.
This was probably a key move by Sony. With the PS3 these early adopters were getting a machine that played both HD games and HD movies. If Blu Ray lost the format war, the PS3 would still be useful for playing games. A standalone HD movie player had the potential to become useless if that format lost the war.

3) Marketing and Branding.

• 'Blu-Ray'- the name itself makes the consumer feel that it is a leap in technology.
• Blu-Ray has a logo. I'm not even sure if HD DVD has a logo.
• Blu-Ray is sold in blue coloured boxes.
• From my observations in Australia, and Asia, Blu-Ray discs were more available and presented better in stores. It was quite rare to see HD DVD players, and discs were always less in number when on display.

So the lesson for Toshiba is that it isn’t just a case of “build it and they will come”. You need to have a good marketing strategy for your product.

Now that the format war is over, some pundits are suggesting that Blu-Ray is still going to lose out to HD movie content online (streaming or download). However, I don' t think the technology to support this is really available in the medium term.

Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: Technology

A lot of people have asked me lately what Podcasts I am currently listening to (or watching to be more specific). So for all of you time-poor information sponges out there I have compiled a list of my favorite ones in no particular order. I didn't include everything but hopefully there are a few there that you haven't heard of.

There are a few towards the end of the list which are not strictly work related either so beware. Please leave a comment if there are any others that you think need to go on the list.

SVA MFA Design as Author
Guest Lectures Lectures by renowned critical graphic design writer Stephen Heller. Always very well prepared and incredibly insightful. Topics cover a broad range of historical topics.
http://design.schoolofvisualarts.edu/weblog/guestlecture/

SVA MFA Design as Author
Paul Rand Lecture series This is a truley amazing podcast. Visiting designers and critics talk with MFA Designer As Author students. Guests include such greats as: Milton Glaser, RIck Poyner, Jessica Helfand and many more...
http://design.schoolofvisualarts.edu/weblog/paulrand/

Design Matters with Debbie Millman
Debbie has kept me company on many long dog walks and I feel much better for it. She always have great guests on her show; Stefen Sagmeister, Chip Kidd, Barbara Kruger, David Carson, Malcom Gladwell, Art Chantry, Hillman Curtis, Rich Valicenti, Michael Bierut ... the list goes on. Great format, always time there for a few laughs in-between hard hitting questions and contemplative observations.
http://www.sterlingbrands.com/ListenLive.html

Tweed Museum of Art
Graphic Design Lectures The Tweed Museum of Art hosts numerous special events and artist lectures, including the Art + Design Lecture Series, a joint venture of the Department of Art + Design and the Tweed Museum of Art that brings artists and designers to UMD to speak about their work and experience. Events are held in the Tweed Lecture Gallery unless otherwise noted.
http://www.designernetwork.org/?q=node/46

Typeradio Podcast
This is a very entertaining podcast with lots of international guests - most of which are designers I should have heard of but usually haven't. One of the guys is from Underware.nl http://www.typeradio.org/loudblog/

Idents.tv
This is a great one to subscribe to. Particularily for those of you with a short attention span. As the name suggests it is just a record of all the latest television identity sequences (idents).
http://idents.tv/blog/

NGV Podcast and online audio
This is a great audio podcast for those of you who live in Melbourne and often frequent the National Gallery of Victoria. My only comments would be that I would like to see more frequent updates but otherwise good.
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/podcasts/

MoMA Think modern lectures
The Museum of Modern Art NY also provides a similar service which is great:
http://www.moma.org/visit_moma/audio/2006/pub_prog/downloadAAPAA_2006.html

Not quite art
Host Marcus Westbury, founder of the This is Not Art Festival in Newcastle and the former director of Next Wave Festival in Melbourne, takes on a tour of how the art world looks from the other side.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/notquiteart/

Cool Hunting Video
For anyone who cares anything about design and design culture needs to subscribe to this. And for those of you who are dads like me and don't have time to find cool stuff yourself this serves it to you on a silver platter.
http://www.coolhunting.com/

WFMU's Music to Spazz by with Dave the Spazz
This is literally what I'm listening to as I write this list. Maybe not everyone has the same musical tastes that I do but give this a go if you are open minded. A broad range of obscure, 50's, rockabilly, country, punk etc. Nothing quite like it.
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/MS

Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir
This is a fantastic audio podcast which analyses Films Noir in order to better establish the definition of Film Noir. Covering early movies like 'Double Indemnity' (my favorite) and "The Maltese Falcon" and much more recent Neo-Noir movies like "Blade Runner" and "Brick". It's just great knowing there are people out there that love Fm Noir this much.
http://outofthepast.libsyn.com/

Tim Kotsiakos, Creative Director

Labels: Design and Usability, Reactive, Technology

For all of those of you interested who haven’t had a chance to get into Actionscript 3 (AS3), Colin Moock, one of the gurus of Flash who wrote Actionscript 2 Definitive Guide and the new AS3 Definitive Guide, is being flown around the world to present an overview of AS3.

http://www.adobeas3tour.com/

The dates are

• Feb. 20 - Munich
• Feb. 27 - Amsterdam
• Mar. 3 - London
• Apr. 29 - Bangalore
• May. 5 - Sydney

Here is an overview of what he covers

http://moock.org/lectures/groundUpAS3/

For those who can’t make it I would suggest watching the video of a presentation he made at FITC.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2468935003205486599&hl=en


Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Design and Usability, Technology