We’ll let you know the outcome!

Next week is vinyl week, followed by old photo week. Keep an eye out for some of the fun! Any suggestions for the following weeks?

Sometimes whilst down the pub, I get asked what I do. Depending who I’m talking to and in what context, it’s sometimes easier – and a bit of fun – to use a pseudonym.

So… Hi, I’m Andy and I design sports biscuits. Generally, people love it, “really?!!”, I’ve even been asked “can you design one with me on please?”

The reason? because energy and imagination can be engaged rather than a big budget.

Typically, guerrilla campaigns are unexpected and unconventional, quick to deploy, and potential recruits are targeted in unexpected places.

Guerrilla Flyposting

The objective of a guerrilla ‘Flyposter’ campaign is to create an engaging and thought-provoking instant desire to generate a phone call from the viewer, and, potentially turn the message viral.

Guerrilla ‘Flyposting’ involves unusual & mildly illegal tactics such as attaching posters to telegraph poles, windows & walls in public places.

Strategically placed, where potential candidates may pass, with a strong call to action, a name & contact number.

This method of recruiting is intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.

Any lurking gorillas out there?

We need a hand building and delivering our unique VITES back-end. You’ll probably have a good understanding of JavaScript/AJAX technology, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Ruby and comfortable with Linux.

£25-30k     Call Andy: 07590 293666

More info:

We require a back-end web programmer : £25-30k

Call Andy: 07590 293666

We are a small team of creative, fun-loving, ethical, sharing, bright, honest and forward-thinking people. We are also really rather busy helping our clients deal with some of the thornier problems they face on the Internet so we really need a hand or two to help us out.

The right people will want to help us to help our clients and enjoy the journey in the process so we’d love to hear from you if you think you can help.

Based in the historical wool-town of Halifax on top of the beautiful Yorkshire Pennines, we call the award-winning Dean Clough Mills our home, a stunning converted 18th Century carpet mill with art galleries, restaurants and a theatre on-site.

What We Need

We need a hand building and delivering our unique VITES back-end. You’ll probably have a good understanding of JavaScript/AJAX technology, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Ruby and comfortable with Linux. Based in our Dean Clough offices for a couple of days a week our ideal candidate will excel at home working.

You’re probably working at a software house that is highly web-enabled or a top web development agency and have a good understanding of the web, best practices and where it’s going. Self motivated, collaborative, comfortable with client contact, flexible and with an attention to detail you’ll find comfort in structure and the opportunity to work in small project-based teams delivering multi-million pound web assets.

We’re a lovely, social, bunch that appreciate work/life balance. We offer around 40 days annual holiday, flexible working, telecommuting and a great opportunity to grow in the future. When can you start?

Background

Founded in 1997 by Martin Dower and Jerry Pank, Connected is a private partnership operating zero-debt, a cash-flow positive financial model with no borrowings and no outside investors. Visit the team page to see who you might be calling colleagues.

I had the good fortune of being the one who had first dibs on the little critter so like a child at Christmas I opened it up, threw away the “Start up guide” (who needs them really) and fired it up. Aside from the physical device itself, the interface is a thing of beauty. Yes, the home screen does resemble the iPhone but as an iPhone user, that meant instant recognition of the User Interface (UI) and within a minute (literally), I had email, contacts, calendars and bookmarks all synced from my MobileMe and GoogleMail accounts. Obviously, this is in part due to the transferability of account information afforded to us by cloud computing.

I spent a bit of time getting reacquainted with my Inbox using the Mail client, responding to email, filing etc and the whole process feels like a seamless linear task. Holding the device landscape you get a fairly conventional layout displaying the contents of your inbox (or folder if you’re looking through your stored mail) with your selected email on the right. Turning the device to a portrait position allows you to focus on your chosen email, hiding the inbox/folder contents within a button in the top menu bar allowing you to access the information when you need it.

Of course I was still working so I did have to put it down and get on with other things but I periodically took a short break to browse various websites, reading blogs and news items and for me this has been the most eye opening experience so far.

I take a great interest in web design and read many blogs which are (like my personal site) designed in a way that each article or blog post is individually designed to fit the content, much like printed magazines, and I think the iPad makes this type of implementation really stand out. Ironically, they seem to resemble magazine articles more than blogs or websites.

This isn’t limited to design based sites either, all the sites I visited had a fresh new look about them, they suddenly became easier to navigate and information was more digestible. I must point out, this opinion is based on the orientation of the iPad being held portrait. Bizarrely, turning it to landscape, I think sites become normal again.

Room with (more of) a view

The problem with landscape is the orientation is the same as what we’re used to on computers, it’s the same letterbox shaped window with the site’s header, navigation and maybe the top 5 lines of body copy.

Turning it portrait opens up 50% more screen real estate which gives you a much better view of the information available on a page allowing your eye to digest more in one go. This view is very subjective and many sites I visited I was already familiar with the site’s layout and structure so others may (and will) have a different opinion on the matter. One thing for sure is if tablet computing picks up speed and becomes as ubiquitous as smartphones, it’ll add a whole new dimension to the fun debate of “the fold”

There are obviously downsides to getting to play with this early, namely the absence of the iPad app store (it’s currently only open in the US). My first 24 hours with the device was limited by what you can do with it’s native apps, which to be fair is quite a lot, but the real test will be when apps become available and I can test out the apps I use regularly on my iPhone to see how they fair.

Overall my opinion is set, I want an iPad of my own that I can carry around with me. I’d love to hear your opinions on the device, have you got one early? What do you think of it? What impact will it have on our day-to-day lives?

One of the benefits this brings is the ability to share problems and ideas with those you wouldn’t usually. Last Friday, I decided to sit and work next to Steve, one of our top flight developers. He turned to me and said “I’m having some troubles working this out, can you take a look”. Now most of the stuff Steve does is way over my head, so he started to explain what his program was doing line by line. “Ah!” said Steve, “don’t worry, I’ve spotted it, thanks bear”.

Had I not been sat next to Steve, he’d have never asked and probably spent the next half hour scratching his head.

Then came along the social media boom, with myspace, facebook and Youtube at the forefront. Introduction of online social media created a snowball effect for people using it more and more to connect with friends and using it’s tools to help promote up and coming events/share music/video/photos etc.

So as these sites gained in popularity I took advantage of this to tell the world what events are going on. Not using this method is without doubt selling yourself short to gain popularity of events. Facebook is the first port of call for whenever I am setting up an event by simply uploading related artwork, adding content telling people in detail, where? When? Who’s playing etc. and then distributing across my network. Then telling my friends to invite their friends and so on……after the event I add photos and video from the night to share with people who could or couldn’t make it.

Other nights such as the legendary Back To Basics (the longest running weekly club night in the world) uses Facebook heavily, posting information on events each week. See the below link:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=101739476531177&ref=ts

Here is a link to my next event:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=10150136403150301&ref=ts

So in many ways it’s been a rear-guard action as we’ve had to fight against the client’s, co-supplier’s and consultant’s wishes to drive home the philosophy of continual testing and letting the masses decide which page, landing zone, micro-site, call-to-action and design is better.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a hard slog and at a number of points we were on the point of giving up but after 2 months showing the results of real numbers and metrics they’re sold and quite rightly they should after seeing a dramatic upswing in conversion rate.

We’re in the final throes of putting together a case study on this client and I hope it will be ready sometime in April so if you want to reserve a PDF version of the case study now then drop me an email and I’ll make sure you get one of the first batch.

This will be the first time we’ve openly shared so much information about how we work and we’ll be showing actual test results with annotated screenshots. The case study is part of our 64Monkeys projects that was kicked-off in 2007 as an internal knowledge base holding the planning and results behind every test we’ve carried out (around 4,500 so far). We’re planning an alpha roll-out of 64Monkeys later this year to openly share and collaborate with our clients and encourage a great deal of cross-fertilisation.

There has long been a dynamic tension in ICT between getting a job done, in a commercial context, and getting a job right, from a technician’s viewpoint: the outcome is compromise.
Now, for the first time in 25 years, I’m in a team where quality matters so much and the ambition is so great that the business response is to produce the best in the field. Smart people, thinking-caps on, and the best tools. But, as they say, “Don’t watch the tool, watch the hand that wields it.”

I’ve built and maintain a secure network and the development environment for a talented team to roll out consistently good stuff.
It’s so refreshing where everyone is striving for the top. It’s exciting to question conventional wisdom. It’s challenging, too, to have my entire skill-set audited, updated, improved. But it really is the only way to travel!

Last Saturday most of the team went to Huddersfield Town Hall to attend the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert, as it was my first time going to see an orchestra I was a little skeptic but I can say I was pleasantly surprised and I enjoyed the concert as I think did all of the team.