So the two big news items this Friday are Google Wave and Microsoft Bing. Here’s the low down.

Google Wave
Looks very cool. An über-communication and collaboration platform, integrating a bunch of functionality to create a rich mosaic of threads and conversations, or a 'wave'.

The screenshots look like Gmail on steroids but it’s not email, it’s not chat. It’s something totally new. The key takeout is that it’s collaborative, live and concurrent, more like a real conversation. The underlying principle behind the new service is something called 'operational transformation', which you can find out more about in this video (Warning! Very techy content):



Here’s the full Google Wave developer preview video which tells you everything you need to know and more (it's quite long):



Overall, I'd say Google Wave looks really innovative, and definitely 'new'. Especially because a wave is a stream of content about a subject or topic, and the content contributed to a wave is recorded over time; so it’s as much about the evolution or creation of the wave as it is about the ultimate result of that wave.

This also has implications for search because this will allow for the search of a wave, or stream, of content, rather than the search of a static result. So it’s like searching for a story about something rather than a static page of information.

So Google are again putting the focus on individuals and personal communication and experience. Giving the users the tools to make their own stuff.

If it works and isn’t as confusing as it sounds (the timeline stuff sounds like it could be 'Back to the Future' complex), then it will be awesome.

Microsoft Bing
So the other big news this Friday is MS’s new search engine called 'Bing', which is replacing Live Search (which no one uses). They’re pitching it as a ‘decision engine’ and have integrated categories of search, like shopping and travel. Not sure what else to say here except that it sounds interesting but we’ll wait and see how good it really is, the proof is in the pudding.

I’m a little skeptical though, simply because it sounds like they’ve gone down the portal model, which doesn’t really sound like a new concept, in fact portals are something which represents the legacy Web, and I can’t think of a good example of a portal that survives today which is very successful.

Maybe MS have developed a super smart Bing 'brain' which will know more than people know themselves about what they're searching for...but I'm finding it hard to see the innovation in this new search engine.

Whilst competition is a good thing, we're not sure how this changes the game nor really delivers on the promise of a 'decision engine'.

Google killer? Doubtful.

Here’s the promotional video:



Carl Panczak, General Manager Sydney

Labels: Search Engine Marketing, Social media, Technology, Web Culture and Trends

With a bit of negative news bouncing around at the moment, I figured it was time to focus our attention on some of the amazing stuff that I have stumbled across in the past few months.

Hobnox
First up is Hobnox, which is a relatively new digital youth channel in Germany/Europe and in my opinion is the MTV of the future. Do you need any more proof that TV is dead, sell, sell, sell...

Watch for the translation of UI methods used on TV for online content delivery..
http://tv.hobnox.com/index.1032.html#/en/Sly-Fi/iNterview/ufzmk

The most exciting part however AudioTool, built by Andre Michelle et al to help users create and share content and I’m guessing as a point of difference tool. Imagine being able to use these tools to collaboratively create tracks with your friends all over the world.
http://www.hobnox.com/index.1056.de.html

Sourcebinder
The next things is a component based flash system that allows you to add/edit/delete objects and effects within flash in real time with some pretty amazing effects, for those who don’t have

Check out the video here:
http://www.sourcebinder.org/vidplayer.html

If you want to geek out you can play with a sourcebinder demo (not the best user experience, but conceptually pretty amazing)

Labels: Technology

A subtle yet profound shift on the Google search results has probably gone unnoticed by many, particularly those without Google accounts. Called SearchWiki it lets logged-in users rank up, remove and comment on search results. Google are currently stating that it will have no impact on search results but given that this now allows users rank results I would place bets on it eventually informing the public result set.

Google have kept the tool simple at this stage, basically as you come across websites that you like you can promote them to the top of the pile, remove ones you don’t like and leave comments.

This has interesting ramifications on the tagging methodology employed by competitors like del.icio.us, diigo etc because it utilises the users natural language to record results. For example when you think of bicycle paths it could be; bike paths, bicycle paths, bike trails, riding trails, riding paths etc, by taking advantage of the public understanding of using search and your natural language your results are tailored to your mental model.

Here is video demonstration of the tool from Google and the Official Google Blog on SearchWiki



There is very little information about how Google are going to protect this new tool from abuse or how they intend to develop it moving forward. However given that Google have called it SearchWiki and Ward Cunningham said that, "Collectively editing thoughts is what leads to the unique wiki behavior and I didn't see that demonstrated in the video [source]" you can bet that they will be developing those features in the near future.


Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Google, Technology

Microsoft have a new “/web” brand, with a new look and content.
http://www.microsoft.com/web
It is like a big news aggregator.

They’ve also produced two bundle installers which are interesting.

Web Platform Installer
http://www.microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebPlatformInstaller.aspx
This bundle includes: IIS7, Visual Web Developer, SQL Express, .NET framework

Web Application Installer
http://www.microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebApplicationInstaller.aspx
This bundle includes: DotNetNuke, Drupal, Gallery, Graffiti, osCommerce, PHPBB, and Wordpress.

It’s exciting to see these changes, and the bundling of non-Microsoft products.


You can read some background on the /web site on Lauren Cooney's blog http://cooney.typepad.com/

Labels: microsoft, Technology

There is now a large market of 3rd party components you can add to your web site. In more recent years, these have become more common, more easily available, and easier to integrate.

The classic example would be YouTube videos. YouTube allows you to embed videos into your web site. They make it very simple. Each video on the YouTube site includes prominent embed scripts which you can quickly copy and paste into your site’s code by editing the HTML, or pasting the scripts into the CMS HTML content editor.

Let me dissect this a little. The scripts are running on your site, and they are pulling that specific video from the YouTube server. You have essentially put a small window on your page which looks at the YouTube site.

Great. It works.

There are many other 3rd party component you can add to your pages. Advertising banners. Tagging. Rating systems. Commenting systems. Google Maps. Search functions. Preview thumbnails. The list is long.

The integration method is most commonly via HTML tags (object, embed, img, iframe, div) or JavaScript scripts.

This makes it easy to create mashup pages on your site to provide a lot of functionality for the user, but there are some concerns you should be aware of.

• If the 3rd party component allows your users to submit data or content, then you might not have control or ownership of that content.
  
• The 3rd party might have different privacy policies.
  
• If the 3rd party service is free, then you have no Service Level Agreement (SLA), no warranty that the functionality will work at anytime.
  
• Some 3rd party components have been developed as an experiment, and they have no business model, no scalability. Many are in Beta. You should consider how the third party is making money to provide the service. Will they value your business and want you to be happy with their service?
  
• What is the usage agreement? Do you need to include logos or links back to the service site?
  
• Your web site has increased risk. Your pages become reliant on two systems rather than one.
  
• Can your pages still load if the 3rd party system is down or slow?
  

Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: Mashups, Technology

The final version of Silverlight 2 is out.

You can read about it on Scott Gu’s blog http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/10/14/silverlight-2-released.aspx

And on the Silverlight web site http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: Silverlight, Technology

Users of the iPhone (sorry to drop the “I” word again) know the benefits of location aware applications and have experienced the awesomeness of being able to automatically view data tailored to your current location.  Well, that location aware functionality will be coming to your web site in the future.

Here’s the W3C draft spec for the Geolocation API
http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html

This is talking about the next generation of browsers, or browser plugins being able to provide the user’s location data to your web site (if the user allows it). This is good. You will be able to build a location aware web application, and it will work cross-browser, cross-OS, and cross-handset (although we are far from a user interface that could span all these).

Remember that location aware functionality is only really beneficial for mobile computers. You will need to consider what you will do for users who are at home or the office and don’t have location data.

Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: geolocation, Technology

Yes, it’s another iPhone post.


The Apple site has a directory of iPhone web apps, but it's full of toys and games. It's difficult to find the useful web apps.

So this post is a list of good web sites that leverage web functionality, and tailor the interface for the iPhone:

News & Feeds

Google Reader
http://www.google.com/reader/i
A great way to read multiple feeds rather than bookmarking many different blogs and reading each separately.

Ninemsn
http://m.ninemsn.com.au

News
http://iphone.news.com.au

Google News Australia
http://www.google.com.au/m/news

Reuters mobile
http://us.mobile.reuters.com

Yahoo
http://au.m.yahoo.com

Zdnet
http://m.zdnet.com.au

The Age
http://m.gfg.theage.com.au/HomePage.aspx

Engadget (thanks Damien)
http://i.engadget.com

Social

Facebook
http://iphone.facebook.com
Yes, we’ve talked about this before. I think the iPhone app is better, but the web app was the first.

Twitter mobile
http://m.twitter.com

LinkedIn
https://m.linkedin.com

Tools

digg
http://m.digg.com

Google Translator
http://translate.google.com

Wikipedia
http://wikipedia.comoki.com

Other Google stuff
http://www.google.com.au/m/products/

Banking

ANZ
http://www.anz.com
ANZ bank have been advertising their iPhone friendly site, which includes personal banking features.

Commsec
http://commsec.com.au/iphone
I haven't got an account to test this.

Bank of America
https://www.bankofamerica.com/mobile
Has some nice location based stuff that gets picked up by the iphone mapping.

Property

Domain
http://m.domain.com.au
The header could be smaller, but the functionality is nice.

Transport & Flight Information

Qantas
http://www.qantas.com/mobile
Check flight times. No e-commerce.

Public Transport
http://iphone.itransit.com.au
Tram and train times. Bookmark this if you use public transport.  You can add shortcuts to your popular stops on your homescreen.

Fashion

Chloé
http://www.chloe.com
Nice site for the women's fashion label.

Local Information

Docoloco
http://www.docoloco.com/iphone

Australian Weather
http://i.ozpda.com/ozweather/

Google Movie times
http://www.google.com.au/movies
Not really optimised for iPhone but still very cool.

Magazine

Womans Day
http://apps.womansday.com/womansday_iphone

Cleo
http://cleomobile.ninemsn.com.au/mobile

To Be Categorised

Bright Kite
http://i.brightkite.com
Ah, not really sure what this is good for yet, but I know it’s cool

Get Leaflets
http://app.getleaflets.com

Thanks to Carl, Dan and Damien for sending through some great links.

Post comments with your favourite web app URLs, and I'll add them to the list.


Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: iPhone, Technology, Web App

The iPhone is selling well. Many people consider it to be the first real mobile web device. And now marketers are getting interested in the iPhone’s user demographic because these people tend to be more active online, more affluent and open to spending online.

There are two ways to develop applications for the iPhone. If you have a project that you want to target at iPhone users, it is important to understand the differences between the two so that you choose the correct solution.

iPhone Apps

iPhone Applications are programs that you download to your iphone through the iTunes store. They are installed as an icon onto your iPhone home screen. They consist of code and assets, and they can access the phone’s internal features such as the camera, motion sensors, GPS and local storage (database). They can talk out to the internet to get/send data, and they can perform complex graphics/computations for eg. Games. Yesterday Steve Jobs reported that 60 million iPhone apps have already been downloaded.

Some good examples:

• Facebook Application
• Supermonkey Ball
• Bloomberg
• Twinkle
  

iPhone App Developer Centre
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/

Key points about iPhone Apps:

• Require your users to search the app store to find your application
• You can charge your users for installing the application
• Can access the phone’s built in functionality
• Can perform complex graphics for animations/games
• Requires a developer skillset in Xcode/Objective-C/Cocoa/Open GL
• Can be a mix of offline and online functionality
• Can reduce the amount of data that you need to download to the iPhone compared to a webapp.

Webapps

iPhone Web Applications are just iPhone friendly web sites. They are built specifically for the iPhone’s browser, resolution and features. They are essentially HTML and CSS with JavaScript to provide interactivity. No Adobe Flash Support.

Some examples (you can interact with some of these in your normal browser):

• Facebook http://iphone.facebook.com
• Nikelab http://nikelab.com
• iOlympics http://iphone.toughturtle.com/olympics/

Webapp Developer Centre
http://developer.apple.com/webapps/

Key points

• Your users need to visit your site via a link on the web, in an email, or enter the correct URL in the iPhone’s web browser.
• Uses standard web developer skillsets (XHTML/CSS/JavaScript, server side scripting and database (eg. .NET/SQLServer/PHP/Java/MySQL/Oracle)
• Require the phone to be connected to the web (at least for the initial load, and perhaps more)
• Doesn’t support anything like Flash, Silverlight or Open GL, so advanced animations/interactivity are not available.

Thoughts

If you want to target iPhone users you need to consider your user’s point of view.

An iPhone App is something they have to search for to install, or install via a link in email or on a web site. There is the intermediate step of downloading and installing, so you need to offer your users value (especially if you’re charging for the app). Users aren’t normally going to install a program onto their phone unless it provides some of the following types of features:

• Information which they need quick access to
• Information which changes often (at least daily)
• Functions to put or send information somewhere
• Toy/Gadget or game features

Users will post reviews and ratings of your iPhone application on the iTunes app store, so a lame or buggy app isn’t going to get very popular.

An iPhone App is sticky. An icon on the home screen is going to be front-of-mind for users who install it, so it’s good branding and can be a good touch point, especially if you can offer the user a good experience.

Webapps can be built as a separate interface to an existing web site eg. Facebook for the iPhone runs on a sub domain. So it doesn’t necessitate a completely separate application, it can simply be a cut down interface to the current web site, with a tailored interface. Consider offering your iPhone users methods to browse your site through both the traditional interface and the cutdown interface.

An iPhone user who doesn’t install your iPhone App may still visit your web site, so it is still worthwhile to make your web site iPhone friendly regardless.

Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: Technology

This is the first mag I have received from Adobe (but it’s Volume 4 apparently),
and I was surprised by their choice of technology to distribute and implement a digital magazine.

The Adobe Magazine is:

1. Distributed via email to Adobe’s design marketing list (see the online version)

2. The email links to a downloadable ZIP file (10Mb in size)

3. Then extract the ZIP file and open the PDF file

4. And view from your desktop (I recommend viewing in Full Screen mode)

Adobe also makes Flash, which is a popular way of delivering online magazines with rich interactivity. So why have they decided to go old-skool and use PDF?

From what I can guess, it’s probably to showcase some of the nice new features of PDF that people seldom use (chaptering, hyperlinks, some interactivity, embedded video, image switching, etc). It’s also nice that from one big initial download you have a seamless experience, can view offline and PDF is naturally very printer friendly.

But you lose a lot. By using PDF you compromise interactivity, as compared to a Flash-based online magazine. And by being offline you lose even basic social-networking options such as the ability to make comment (Adobe have a very crude way of doing this: email the editor), social bookmarks, personalisation, tagging etc.

I think the format works for this particular magazine, but I also expect a lot of Adobe users would object to a 10Mb ZIP download on principle, it seems like a dated approach from a company that prides itself on technical innovation.

What do you think?

Tim O'Neill, Managing Director UK

Labels: Design and Usability, Technology

Welcome to iPhone article number 154,000,001 and counting.

Actually, this is not just about the iPhone, but about some interesting recent developments in the mobile space.

I’ve been using the iPhone for about three months now, as have 3 other Reactive staff. It is without a doubt the coolest consumer electronics device ever made, people who say otherwise are just jealous (let the debate begin).

Ok, so the iPhone is not perfect, but as far as I can tell the only real problems are; lack of Flash support in Safari; the poor email support (for business users) and no 3G. Other than that, it’s clearly superior to other phones in all other aspects. If this is Apple’s first attempt at a mobile communications device, after say 2 years of development, then one can only imagine how awesome they’re going to be in another 2 years.

A 3G iPhone is just around the corner with analysts predicting a release by mid-2008, as I’m sure is Flash support. Flash is processor intensive, so Adobe will either release a Flash ‘light’ version or Apple will simply implement better mobile chips – both are likely to happen.

Interestingly, Nokia is getting ‘multimedia’ support with the recent announcement that Silverlight is coming to the Symbian OS. So that means that you’ll also be seeing more integrated .NET 3.5 / Windows Live applications getting pushed by Microsoft and their partners to mobile platforms.

We at Reactive are excited about the imminent iPhone SDK (software developer kit) which will allow developers to build their own applications to run on the iPhone. Until now the only ‘applications’ you could develop were Web-apps, but even the best ones are pretty lame. So developers will be able to build cool applications like the iTunes mobile store, which is a light version of the iTunes store. The iTunes mobile store makes it so easy to preview and purchase songs, and so well integrated (syncing purchased music over to your desktop computer when you plug your phone in) that this application alone offers a clear view into the future of mobile eCommerce, and a good lesson in how to make this business model work through robust development and ease of use. It won’t be long before we see other iPhone eCommerce applications, like eBay or Amazon jumping on-board.


Developing iPhone versions of websites is also cool, and pretty easy if you follow the developer documentation provided by Apple. We’re working on a couple at the moment at Reactive for our clients. Essentially customising existing websites so they look and feel really nice on the iPhone. It doesn’t have to mean a massive investment for our clients, especially if the original website is developed properly in the first place, according to web-standards and user-centric design principles.

It’s been my experience that the iPhone can actually replace a laptop in the home, I recently sold my laptop intending to upgrade to the MacBook Air, but because I have my iPhone, I don’t actually find that I need a laptop anymore. I can check the news, weather, buy stuff and check email (both Gmail and Exchange) all through the iPhone.

It also integrates seamlessly with Outlook at work, so I can easily sync up my address book and calendar. In fact it’s way better at this than my Nokia E65 (Symbian).

Google have Android, Microsoft have Windows Mobile, Nokia/Sony Ericsson have Symbian and Apple have the iPhone/OSX. It’s going to be an interesting 10 years as these players battle it out for mobile operating system supremacy. My prediction is this: Android will become the Linux of the mobile world (i.e. for scientists and Über-geeks), Symbian will fade away, Apple will grow its market share through the successful delivery of seamless hardware/software integration, whilst Microsoft will continue to do what it does best and provide productivity software to those of us that just need to ‘get stuff done’.

As a side note, I got it to work by following the instructions on this site:
http://www.hackint0sh.org/


So bring on the iPhone, it’s definitely the mobile consumer product of the future


Carl Panczak, General Manager Sydney

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

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

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

As a bit of a music freak, I’ve recently started to think about the role of technology and software in the proliferation of electronic music in the past ten years.

Electronic music has always appealed to me due to the way in which even an ‘unmusical’ individual can make good music. With an understanding of rhythm and the ability to find a good groove, anyone can spend some time learning one of the many programs available and make a track. Some of the top producers out there at the moment wouldn’t be able to play a tune on a piano, but what they can do is manipulate sounds into a way that works in a sweaty club at 4am. This doesn’t mean it’s easy in any way, it just removes the old fashioned, and in some ways classist, system of learning your music theory and spending most of your youth forced into piano or violin lessons (yuk, flash back alert).

Punk may have started this in the 70s, but the tools needed for making techno are in pretty much every home – all you need is a half decent PC and a pair of headphones, and you’re off.

In the past 4 years things have become even more accessible, with intuitive programs being launched that have flattened the learning curve.
Ableton is leading the pack currently, with their Ableton Live software (www.ableton.com). A piece of software designed as much for the bedroom set-up as the high spec pro studio, or even the club. Based around one window, this integrates the production process (be it synthesis, sampling or loops) with the performance - allowing a budding producer to write a track, and then ‘perform’ that track with live edits, without having to use another program.

What this program also includes is probably the best ‘Help’ options I’ve ever seen. It can run through mock-ups of each section, meaning a complete beginner can be guided through any process they wish – even on your first session with the software you can be editing loops and creating synth patterns. Programmers should reference this ‘Help’ service, as it seems that this is often an afterthought, a searchable online manual simply isn’t enough anymore. We as web developers should be including this in large online projects– well planned Information Architecture can aid this – as users should be guided through any complex parts of a site.

Apple is also in the running with the new Logic 8 (www.apple.com/logicstudio/logicpro/). A massively powerful piece of software that is close to an industry standard (along with Pro Tools). This new version is both user friendly, but customisable enough for even the most complex projects. It is used by producers writing techno for sweaty Berlin clubs as much as it is by composers for Hollywood film scores.

Apple have made some enemies with Logic though, locking it as a Mac only program, but with the new iMacs dropping in price their gamble may have paid off, with many Windows fans making the big leap over.

There are a number of alternatives, and much cheaper alternatives at that. These are great for playing around, with many using drag-and-drop as a tool to build loops. You can even write tunes on your PlayStation these days…

Digital technology has become widespread in the DJ world also, with a huge number of performers leaving behind the chore of dragging a massive bag of vinyl to gigs, and instead opting for playing CDs or using on the impressive vinyl emulators – check out www.serato.com to be blown away for some digital/analogue integration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_Emulation_Software).

This technology is also adaptable for mixing videos (‘VJing’ – clever eh?) and allows a number of acts (check Diplo and DJ Yoda for some fine examples) to control the music and the visuals at an event – and who says digital technology is killing the DJ?!

On that note, all this digital talk doesn’t mean performance is dead, far from it. There’s a wealth of control surfaces in production, in small runs, that mean the digital performer is no longer sitting behind their laptop, clicking with a mouse (or checking their email).

This technology is allowing producers to be more creative, edit and add to the bones of a track in response to the crowd. It’s a very exciting time in this arena, just check out some of these links:

www.monome.net or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJwxbTKwONc
http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/ or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc (Microsoft Surface anyone?)



And even the big boys are getting involved… http://www.tenori-on.co.uk/



Matt Bachle-Morris, Web Producer

Labels: Design and Usability, Technology, Web Culture and Trends

Well now it is 2008 I thought I would start the year by giving you an update of a few things that are frying my noodle over the last little while.

First is the work by the guys over at Vizoo with their Cheoptics360 video projection system. It doesn’t relate entirely to the online space but I can see it being used with camera detection software to create 3D interactive kiosks etc, and just imagine the art installations you could create, amazing!

Check out one of the most unique fashion shows I’ve seen in a while:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phe82y69hG0&feature=related

The official showreel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZId2nywp6HQ&feature=related

For more info check out the official site:
http://www.vizoo.com/main.html

As a post script I would recommend checking out the live motion tracking video installation work by Frieder Weiss & Chunky Moves et al to start to get an idea of what you could do with this technology http://www.frieder-weiss.de/video/projects.htm

Watch this space for more...

Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

According to our Systems Admin, Mark Moynihan, the hounds are barking at Apple's door.

Okay, so I’m going incur the wrath of all those devoted Apple fans out there...Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPod Nano and I’m over my Zune, but if Apple continues heading along its current path of non-interoperability with hardware and software, it is going to attract the attention of those who have been attacking Microsoft for doing the same thing!

For example, the new Apple iPhone; to use it you have to sign a two year contract with AT&T, you can’t change the battery yourself, you can’t sync the phone with Microsoft Exchange, in general if it ain’t Apple it won’t talk to it. Subsequently the iPhone has been hacked so you can use it as an iPod without having to sign up with AT&T. People just don’t put up with this kind of forced usage - it's more like a challenge to buck big greedy business.

As the iPhone garners unwanted attention from unsavoury characters out there, further security flaws are revealed. Recently it was reported in The Australian’s IT section that the iPhone’s browser, Safari had been hacked. This security hole allows the hacker to make calls, send text messages, access emails, use the address book and interact with practically any application running on the phone. The security firm that discovered this flaw also went on to mention that the flaw could be found on their desktop version of the Browser.

What, a security flaw in OS X? Could this be true? Of course, it’s very hard to have something as complex as an operating system completely bug and exploit free.

If Apple continues to develop products in exclusivity (and does not consider interoperability) they will draw unfavoured attention. And mark my words; this will lead to a rise in attacks against the Mac!

P.S. I love my Nano ;)

P.P.S. Still puzzled about this blog title? Check it out at YouTube...

Mark Moynihan, Systems Administrator

Labels: Technology

Over the past year there have been a barrage of new technology announcements, especially from the big four (Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo). You might’ve missed some announcements, or maybe you’re getting confused with all the names.

So to help you out we’ve made a quick list of some of the new web related technologies, with quick summaries. Some of the summaries are a bit controversial, don’t take it too seriously!

• Expression Studio – Microsoft’s products for designers. Think Adobe Creative Suite.

• Web – Used to create html and css for the web (competitor Dreamweaver).

• Blend – Used to build create WPF and in version 2 create Silverlight content (competitor Flash/ Flex).

• Design – Design tool which integrates with expression suite (Flash).

• Media – Media manager which allows users to edit and encode various formats for use with the expression suite of products (competitor: Adobe Bridge?).

• Silverlight – Microsoft’s competitor to Flash. Combines numerous technologies including Ajax, XAML, .NET, LINQ, and multimedia.

• .NET 3.0 –(formerly named WinFX) .NET 3.0 isn’t a rewrite of .NET 2.0, it’s more like a expansion kit. You get a stack of additional powerful libraries in the form of (WPF, WWF, and WCF).

• WPF – (Windows Presentation Foundation) This is the visual side of .NET 3.0. It’s built into Vista and can be used for local and connected applications.

• WWF – (Windows Workflow Foundation) Libraries, Functions and Tools for developing any type of workflow/transaction in .NET.

• WCF – (Windows Communication Foundation) Libraries, Functions and Tools for Data Exchange within Windows, or to/from Windows.

• WPF/E – (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) Microsoft dumped that stupid name, and renamed this product Silverlight.

• Vista – The latest version of Windows OS, it includes .NET 3.0. and IE 7.0.

• IE 7.0 – The long delayed update to the highly popular, highly flawed IE 6.0 browser. Now supports Tabbed browsing, with many bugs fixed, but still has some issues.

• Ajax.NET – Microsoft’s AJAX libraries. Previously named Atlas. Microsoft must stop renaming products.

• Adobe CS3 – The new suite of integrated macromedia and adobe software.

• Flex – A development environment for Adobe Flash. It provides a lot more structure for developing applications and doing server-side integration with databases.

• Apollo – A client-side cross OS application environment for running desktop applications developed in Flash, Ajax, Flex, HTML.

• SPRY framework – Used by Dreamweaver to provide AJAX functionality.

• PopFly – An online application that uses Silverlight to allow users to easily create their own mash-ups (see yahoo pipes).

• GoogleGears – A client-side cross OS tool which provides a database engine for online applications to sync and run offline.

• Yahoo Pipes – An online application that allows users to easily create their own mash-ups (see PopFly).

• Photosynth – A combination of fast image scaling technology and 3D environments constructed from images of a location.

What is the biggest battle?

From the web development perspective there is going to be an exciting battle between Flash/Flex/Apollo VERSUS Silverlight/WPF/.NET.

Who will win?

Well, we don’t have the crystal ball answer. The success of most technologies depends largely on the acceptance and use by the global community. Flash currently has the advantage due to the ubiquity of the player and it’s utilisation on some major sites such as YouTube, MySpace etc. However Microsoft’s automatic update functionality will help with speed to market and they are targeting the advertising and media industries to directly tackle Flash’s hold on the industry.

There are some clear patterns in the aims of most of these technologies:

• Improving the user experience
• Improving the ease of development
• Improving the reach of applications

So, the end-user is going to be the real winner in all of this (cheesy by true).

Links worth checking out:

Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/Expression/default.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/
http://silverlight.net/
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=10CC340B-F857-4A14-83F5-25634C3BF043&displaylang=en
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.asp
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

Adobe:
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/
http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/
http://labs.adobe.com/

Other:
http://www.popfly.com/
http://gears.google.com/
http://pipes.yahoo.com/

Matthew Watson, Technical Director

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

Alright so this little thing has absolutely fried my noodle this morning!

A company in America called SeaDragon (recently acquired by Microsoft) have a written a piece of software which has a unique rendering engine to display images. Instead of loading an image and rendering all the information (or attempting to), the software appears to resample the image so that it only renders as much information as it can display (i.e pixels) at one time. This means you can have a very highly detailed image and you can interact with that image very very quickly and smoothly.

Now that unto itself is not that amazing however, they have combined this technology with a 3D rendering engine which is able to take a photos and using some pretty tricky algorithms determine similarities between the 3D model and the photo and display them in such a way that you can virtually walk through the space and view everything at an almost infinite level of detail.

As far as I am concerned if you need a way to explain the semantic web and how user generated content is going to revolutionise how we interact and access information then this is it!

Check it out at:

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
(Internet Explorer, Windows XP SP2 or Vista only)


For more info check out:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth

Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Technology

Recently Apple boss Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates shared a live interview onstage at a web conference. Amongst the shared platitudes (BILL: you da man Steve. STEVE: no no Bill, YOU da man – I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the idea) a question was raised about the future of the personal computer, given the increasing power and flexibility of web applications.

Jobs fielded it, pointing out that the death of the PC has been predicted numerous times over recent years, and it has never eventuated... something he put down to the fact that offline
applications by their nature are more powerful than web applications.


While this may be true, desktop applications cannot compete with the flexibility and availability of an web application which enables data to be accessed from anywhere around the world.

Up until now, this has been the web application's greatest strength, yet also its biggest weakness – its Samson's hair and Achilles’ heel all rolled into one, if you will. As useful as web applications are when they are online and you have a functioning and responsive network, they are rendered useless without a connection.

Google is the latest company to announce a product that attempts to address this issue. Google Gears sits alongside Adobe's Apollo platform, and Microsoft's WPF framework in providing tools focused on developing applications that can seamlessly bridge the gap between the web and the desktop.

Launched (with not an insignificant amount of fanfare) as part of Google Developer Day, a Google technology showcase event held in 10 locations around the world, this is a big announcement for Google in a number of ways.


So what is the big deal?

Firstly for Google themselves, Gears will allow them to offer offline versions of their popular GMail, Spreadsheets, and Docs applications. Gears launched with an offline version of Google Reader, Google's RSS viewer, and one imagines Gears integration for the others cannot be far away, a move that will see the Microsoft Office suite of programs firmly
in Google's sights.

For us web developers though, enabling web apps to work offline is the big drawcard.

Anyone who has lost an internet connection mid-way through updating some important data online will know the pain that this can cause. Up until now there has been no easy solution, the updated data disappears somewhere between your computer and the server you are trying to access.


An application utilising Google Gears however, could allow you to keep working in this situation, with the data safely stored on your PC, waiting for the moment when you reconnect and it can sync up with your online database. This means you could work with an online application anywhere, connected or not, at a time that suits you.

With three of the biggest online players (Microsoft, Google, and Adobe) all releasing platforms that focus on achieving this outcome, it is fair to speculate that the offline web may be the next major technology battleground.

So while Steve Jobs may well be right - that iPod you have on your desk is evidence that he has a knack for predicting trends – there is no doubt that there has been a shift in the role of the desktop PC in recent times.

A few years ago everyone was rushing to web-enable desktop applications, and now it’s all about desktop-enabling web applications.

Simon Stefanoff, Developer

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

Like most people you’re probably using Google Maps these days. So you may not have noticed that Whereis.com have released high-definition photographic images of the metropolitan centres across Australia. It’s impressive and considerably better quality than what Google Maps currently offer. Below is example in the difference in resolution:

Fitzroy Pool: Google Maps - Maximum Zoom













Fitzroy Pool: Whereis.com (beta)













Fitzroy Pool: Whereis.com (beta) Maximum Zoom













Whereis.com still have a few issues to iron out before the final release. Not surprisingly it’s much slower than Google maps, and it often produces JavaScript errors and then totally shuts down.

Worth checking it out at: www.whereis.com

Tim Fouhy, Managing Director

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

Watching this excellent Vodcast from Cool Hunting a few weeks back revealed an amazingly talented artist/storyteller Jonathan Harris who uses primarily Web technologies and the internet as his medium of expression.

His most accomplished interactive work (in my opinion) is the 2007 Webby nominated ‘We Feel Fine’. Described by the artist as ‘an exploration of human emotion’, it’s a Java Web Application which searches weblogs on the internet for postings that relate to feelings and emotions, and harvests the words and images. You can then search or filter the information to narrow the results, by type of emotion, for example ‘happy’ or ‘sad’, location, sex, age and time, and then view the snippet of the weblog.

Not only is it an excellent concept, but it’s beautifully executed both from an interface design perspective and from a code perspective.

A similar concept, with a specific focus on depicting the romantic lives of American teenagers is called the Dumpster. It also visualises content harvested from the internet, but more specifically ‘a fixed collection of 20,000 romantic breakups that occurred during 2005’. It’s also interesting in that it uses a playful and interactive visual interface to access the content, making for a fun and engaging experience.

Jonathan Harris’ most recent work, called Universe, is also a Web application and described as “a system that supports the exploration of personal mythology, allowing each of us to find our own constellations, based on our own interests and curiosities….Using the metaphor of an interactive night sky, Universe presents an immersive environment for navigating the world's contemporary mythology, as found online in global news and information from Daylife”.

Wow, super-cool. I hope by exploring these sites you’ll also be left inspired and encouraged to share your stories with the world.

Actually, all this reminds me of a project we did a few years ago for the Australian Drug Foundation, called Somazone, which gives young people a space to share their stories with others, dealing with issues such as sexuality, health and drugs.

Carl Panczak, General Manager, Sydney

Labels: Design and Usability, Technology, Web Culture and Trends

I came across a pretty cool search engine the other day called PodZinger. It’s a searching engine that scours the web looking for podcasts and then transcribes the file so it’s searchable by keyword.

BBN Technologies developed PodZinger capitalising on their 30-year history of speech recognition technology. Apparently this is the same technology used by the CIA and special agent Jack Bauer.

Even if you’re not trying foil terrorist plans, PodZinger is still useful to search podcasts that mention specific words or phrases i.e. searching for “digital convergence”. When you select a search result, PodZinger dynamically creates markers cued up to where that search phrase was mentioned.

PodZinger also allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds, so you can automatically download new podcasts that contain your search phrase.

And finally, PodZinger can now search the contents of YouTube videos.

Check it out at: http://www.podzinger.com/

Tim Fouhy, Managing Director

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

As most people in the world should know by now, Microsoft has finally released their latest operating system, Vista. So is it worth the hype, has anything really changed and is there any point in upgrading?

Vista definitely needs higher spec hardware. When you install Vista, it gives your PC a Windows Experience rating out of 5.9. Scores are given to Processor speed, Memory (RAM), Graphics card (A rating for Aero and a rating for gaming), and Hard disk. Your PC is awarded the lowest score of each of these. My PC gets a 2.

The culprit contributing to my PC's low score is the graphics card and how it displays the Aero effect. This is the fancy transparency or mac (as some are quick to point out!) effect. I have just noticed that Vista has turned Aero off on my PC. I’m not sure when as I’ve only just noticed. I did notice that when Aero was active it was a lot slower to switch between windows.

So is it any different to use? Well yes and no, a lot of the things you are used to doing in XP are there and look very similar, however it can be a bit tiresome to find their new locations.

Some of the features I do like are:

• The breadcrumbs in windows explorer which enable you to jump back a directory easily.

• Vista seems a bit more proactive in detecting and fixing problems.
  

• You can have multiple clocks set up in different time zones.

• The ‘All Programs’ menu in the start menu now only opens in one vertical list which you can navigate with a vertical scroll bar.

• A whole array of new and equally meaningless error messages!

• I also have Office 2007 installed. The new ‘ribbon’ tool bars which change to suit what you are doing are really handy.

• There is no need for Google desktop anymore, when you click on the start menu there is a search box at bottom. When you type into the search box, the start menu is then replaced with the search results... from files you’ve opened, from your emails... you name it, just like Google desktop search.

A side note on drivers... apparently there were to be anticipated problems with hardware without drivers but so far I haven’t found that to be the case. Although I am yet to plug in my dodgy $5 bluetooth adapter...

All in all, I like Vista and the overall experience has been positive. If you’re a techno geek and love new toys, then upgrade. If you are okay with the status quo, then there is no compelling reason to spend the money, just wait till you have to buy a new PC.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to go back.

Mark Moynihan, Systems Administrator

Labels: Technology

One of the main tenets of software development is that the developer must aim to keep the application structure and code simple. What may seem like an ingenious solution at the time could in fact become the costly problem later on if it is difficult to read, understand, and modify. Reducing the complexity of the application makes it easier to understand, manage, support, and change. So decreasing the complexity reduces the total costs.

This approach of minimising complexity is not only important for developers, but also critical for business owners. I am often surprised by just how complex some businesses make their product rules or business rules. The first web project that I led (many years ago now!) had a client with what I expected to be a straightforward product offering. However, when we got to the details of the product rules (e.g. only the curved products can be brown, and only products 1, 5, 22, 45 can have special coating “x”), we encountered a can of worms. When I questioned the client about simplifying the rules, they admitted that although there was no clear rationale behind the rule, they couldn’t change them!

Businesses should be aware of the cost of complexity. Complex business rules will result in increased costs due to the IT applications that require the implementation of these rules. If your business could be managed with an out-of-the-box application, then your modification costs will be negligible, and upgrades will be simple.

Complexity extends much further than just your IT costs. There are the associated costs in getting your staff to understand the complicated product offering, and the costs when customers abandon a purchase because they are confused or frustrated with the complexity.

Businesses should have good reasons to justify making complex business rules.

At this point we could even start talking about Information Architecture and Usability. Both of these disciplines focus on making things easier for your users: easier to find something; easier to use something; easier to buy something. Just like the costs, the benefits are realised to further than the Web site. Good Information Architecture within a business can save a lot of administrative time, and enable staff to concentrate on value-added activities. Well thought out Information Architecture in a shop quite simply helps shoppers find the product they’re looking for in turn increasing sales.

Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: Process and Methodology, Technology

The start of a new year seems like a good time to try and predict the future!

I was recently asked by a student my thoughts on the future of travel and tourism online. Good question. Although I find it difficult to predict the future (difficult, but not impossible), this is a topic I have a lot of interest in so I’ll give it a shot.

As described in our recent whitepaper ‘Web 2.0 for the Travel and Tourism industry’, as more Web site operators provide their functionality as Open API’s, the opportunities for interesting new mash-ups grows exponentially. Currently it’s hard to find a mash-up that doesn’t include either Google Maps or Flickr, this will change!

I believe this will start to overlap into hardware (it is already), providing interesting combinations of software, hardware and data. In my opinion, one big opportunity for Web travel is the ability for a traveller to find any information in any format on any device they choose.

For example, if Apple released an API for some of the cool aspects of the new iPhone interface, you could then use this on other devices (like my XDA Orbit Windows mobile). Then imagine having an iPhone interface on my Orbit displaying data from Kayak to search flights… this might be someone’s idea of the perfect flight-finding interface. Instead, Apple is sending Cease & Desist letters to anyone even putting a screen-grab of potential iPhone mash-ups on their site!

A more practical example is an online flight booking. Currently you are restricted to the search and display interface provided by the Web site operator (e.g. Kayak, STA Travel, Flight Centre etc), and you can only personalise this to a certain extent. It might be possible in the future to say “I prefer the Kayak flight search interface, but want to display flight data from STA Travel, and bundle it with Hotel listings from Expedia”. And I want it on my TV. I could choose this as a user, rather than needing a Web developer to create a mash-up of this particular combination.

This will be extremely complicated to achieve, and would require great strides in the standardisation and interoperability of systems (such is the goal of the OpenTravel Alliance).

Naturally this is only one aspect of what the future of online travel might hold, but as someone who books travel online frequently, I hope it becomes reality.

Tim O'Neill, Managing Director UK

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

Our popular whitepaper "Web 2.0 for the Travel and Tourism Industry" has had a 2007 refresh, and now includes a foreword from Craig Hepburn, Global Webmaster of STA Travel Group.

There is no ignoring, and certainly no denying, the current hype around Web 2.0, in particular here in the UK. Recently, The Guardian (a mainstream UK newspaper) published an interesting feature on Web 2.0 with interviews (and podcasts naturally) with the founders of Wikipedia, Flickr, Technorati, Blogger and other Web 2.0 rock-stars.

Reactive work with a lot of clients in the tourism and travel industries, a sector which has always been at the forefront of Internet technology, and so it is no surprise to see Web 2.0 features rapidly appearing in travel Web sites of well-known brands such as Contiki, STA Travel, Starwood, Lonely Planet and Eurostar.

However, many travel and tourism marketers don’t have the time to sit down and consider how these new horizons relate to their brand, so we thought we’d give you some help!

Our popular whitepaper (or is guidebook a better word?) titled “Web 2.0 for the Travel and Tourism Industry”. With it we aim to demystify some of the more common elements of Web 2.0, and show practical examples of how travel and tourism brands are using these to attract new customers, improve customer loyalty, and drive sales.

The whitepaper covers the following topics (with real-world examples):

• Blogging (Starwood, Eurostar and STA Travel)
  
• Podcasting (Lonely Planet, Orbitz, Virgin Atlantic, The Independent and Heartbeat guides)
  
• Social networking and user generated content (TripAdvisor, Yahoo, Contiki and Sheraton)
  
• Online video (YouTube, Travelistic and MGM Grand Las Vegas)
  
• RSS (Expedia, STA Travel, Virgin Holidays, Orbitz, and Conde Nast)
  
• Tagging (del.icio.us, Flickr and Travbuddy)
  
• Mash-ups and Open API’s (Locale, Virtual Tourism, Blogabond, 43 Places and TripAdvisor)
  
• Wikis (Wikitravel, World66 and TripAdvisor)
  
• AJAX (Kayak, Sidestep, Farecast and Google Maps)

If you are responsible for a tourism Web site or travel Web site, and interested in learning more about how 'Travel 2.0' could relate to you, please complete this form. The whitepaper is 15 pages, and will be emailed to you in PDF format.

Tim O'Neill, Managing Director UK

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

Google maps are certainly pretty cool and everyday people are dreaming up of more creative ways to use them!

But do they help or hinder us when finding directions? If you wanted an office or store location map on your Web site, is a Google map the right option?

Well I think that depends. If you want to pack your location map with interactive features like zooming, panning, satellite and hybrid image modes, then a Google map is a pretty nifty option.

But if you want to help people find your office as easily as possible, then it might be better to invest in a well crafted map by a graphic designer.

An advantage of commissioning your own map is it provides an opportunity to include colour, graphic and typographic cues from other aspects of your branding. This helps to maintain a visual consistency between the map and your Web site.

A good location map shouldn’t be too detailed. It’s probably not necessary to show every side street in 4km radius. Likewise, it’s probably not much use for a visitor to know the colour of the rooftops on surrounding buildings (i.e. Google satellite maps).

The user is more likely wanting to know where you are situated in relation to major landmarks, what major streets you’re off, and where’s the best place to park. By focusing on key bits of information and removing irrelevant detail, you are enabling the user to orientate faster and hopefully reduce any frustration trying to locate your office or store.

Another good idea is to provide a printable version of your location map that fits nicely on an A4 printout.

Tim Fouhy, Managing Director Australia

Labels: Design and Usability, Technology

For those who aren't already aware Microsoft is about to "push" Internet Explorer 7 onto 10's of millions of desktops this month. The statistics are already showing that the developer community has started using it quite extensively in beta format, accounting for around 2-3% of current internet users (just short of IE5 usage).

There are two primary issues Reactive have come across so far. The first of these is that the often used CSS hacks to target IE rendering differences no longer work. Secondly a security change has meant formerly "safe" ActiveX controls are now deprecated, triggering a security alert when detecting QuickTime and Windows Media player.

To resolve the CSS issue Reactive have started using Conditional commenting

Unfortunately there is no complete resolution to the plug-in detection issues however if you would like to find out more you can read the Security brief from Microsoft

To find out more check out the following links:

* Release notes on the IEBlog

* Support notes on the Microsoft site

* 'Internet Explorer 7 looms — be prepared' , by Woody Leonhard

* 'IE7 Imminent: Plug-in detection woes', by Lewis Francis

Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

Reactive have noticed some websites coming to market that are primarily text based that have been developed entirely in Adobe Flash which led some of our team pose the question: Why would you do that, aren’t you creating a lot more work for yourself?As the Interaction Director at Reactive my first reaction is, 'why not?' For starters Flash works on all platforms in all browsers and will remain absolutely pixel perfect no matter what. As opposed to HTML/CSS sites which currently need to be tested, tweaked and retested in a minimum of 6 browsers across two operating systems. If you need more reasons see my entry: Tackling the thorny issues with Adobe Flash.

The example cited is http://www.pierinc.com/ a company that develops online applications using Adobe Flex and there in lies the primary reason for delivering their entire website in this manner: If you aren’t using the technology then you are going to have a tough time selling it to clients.With the latest release of Adobe Flex companies have the ability to quickly and efficiently deliver these applications on an enterprise level utilising the agile development model with a Flash front-end which will not have any of the issues prevalent in CSS.

Flex is a server side code based on xml which allows you to write and deploy flash based applications like pier in a very short timeframe. It is specifically designed for use with modular/component based systems/sites where you write the component; let's say the "news module" and then you just have to write something like this for your home page
Code for Pier site (very simplified):

This would grab the components and build them on the fly on the server and the deliver them to the client making it more efficient.

Find out more about Adobe Flex here

Yahoo maps using Flex

And the hard sell

The primary reasons Reactive does not utilise Flex is the current license cost of $20,000USD per CPU and the extensive use of component based development process which does deliver a more robust solution but the ramification is an increase in the time lines a decrease in flexibility and of course an increase on the bottom line.

The advantage of Flash sites in general however is that they can deliver a much more seamless user experience with a higher degree of feedback and a quicker delivery of specific requests, currently known as Rich Internet Applications. A couple of great examples developed by Reactive using Flash include, Global Corporate Challenge and Ferguson Plarre's Design-a-Cake.

With cManager, the new Reactive Content Management System (CMS), Web-Services and good use of Object Orientated coding practices we have developed a quick way of rolling out data driven flash websites.

Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Design and Usability, Technology

A couple of quick thoughts on what I see as the three thorny issues when it comes to Adobe Flash websites: Accessibility, Search-ability and the back button.

Accessibility
In my experience making Flash websites accessible is not because you can’t it is because of the cost implication for the client of pursuing this process. (According to WebAim you can make them (flash sites) more accessible than html )

Search-ability
Reactive have addressed the second issue of searchable flash sites with the Release of cManager 3.0 delivering a static version of the site for search-bots and then using server side redirection to deep link to pages within the site.

Back button
In the past it has been virtually impossible to make the back button function from flash sites meaning that one of the primary user navigation tools was disabled. With a bit of tweaking and bashing our heads together Reactive have managed to come up with a solution which works in almost all the current browsers (some of them just don’t meet the standards…) meaning that users can now browse through a site as they would html and bookmark/email pages of interest.

What does this mean?
It means there is absolutely no reason not to develop your site using all the power and potential of Adobe Flash. Reactive can help you deliver an accessible, Google indexable, searchable, bookmark friendly, back button enabled and content managed website.

What more could you ask for?

Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Design and Usability, Technology