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Digital Predictions for 2012

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:58:12 GMT

Have you got bored of saying Happy New Year in emails yet? This may well be the last new year related article you read so I will try and make it a good one. 2011 was another bumper year for digital but like IE6, that's dead now. What does 2012 have in store?

Social Commerce

Conversion optimisation will be the SEO of 2012 (if it isn’t already). Ranking and traffic are crucial starting points but are irrelevant without conversion. Aside from applying user centric design, inspiring content and products we can greatly support conversion with social proof.

The weight of the opinion of our peers in commercial decision making is immense. Social proof is the theory that we look at what others are doing to reassure us we’re making the right decision. To date almost 50% of shoppers have made a purchase based on a recommendation through a social network. This will only increase with moves by Google to bring search results and social networking more closely aligned with Google+ data influencing rank. In 2012 brands will begin to invest more in taking a sophisticated approach to social commerce and harnessing peer power.

Location Based Marketing

Although Foursquare and Facebook Places have trail blazed location based marketing, uptake is still not that great. However targeting consumers by location is a sophisticated way to engage people in a way that’s personal to them.

Google recently announced it is working on new products that make use of its location based services. Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of product management, said during a session at LeWeb in Paris that they were exploring monetisation of check-ins. In a similar way to mainstream mobile web I can see this prediction hanging around for a while before it really takes off, but it will.

Mobile Payments

UK smartphone adoption is forecast to tip from 40 to 60% this year and for many the relationship with the phone will become more intimate than ever. 83% of millennials already sleep with their mobile. With large storage capacity and creative apps in abundance everything we need is on our mobile. In 2012 so will our wallets.

Roughly 170,000 UK shoppers a week are already using eBay's mobile app. PayPal saw mobile transactions multiplied by almost 6 times in 2011. Google Wallet should be launched in the UK for the Olympics. Near Field Communication (NFC), which enables data exchange between two devices will become a standard smartphone feature. This in turn will create opportunities for mobile operators and brands to engage with consumers in convenient new ways.

Gamification

The number one buzz word of the previous year was gamification. 2012 will be the year this evolves as brands embrace the concept, following early successes of Get Glue and Badgeville. Gamification will see brands integrate this technology into their own products and services, offering more sophisticated points and rewards systems.

Convergence of platforms

In 2012 we will see a greater emphasis on single build development projects that encapsulate all digital platforms into one single code base. HTML 5, JavaScript and CSS3 will form the foundation of all these builds with minimal native coding. This will be partly to save budget but mostly to create a consistent, real time user experience across all digital touch points.

In order to achieve this developers do require the widespread adoption of standards compliant browsers by users. Thankfully smartphones already use pretty sophisticated and up to date browsers. The acceleration of the innovative browser chrome, which is only 3 years old and already holds 26% market share, shows that we are beginning to see the stranglehold of IE, at 40%, loosen.

Social platforms to look out for

You might think its all about Facebook, Twitter and Google+ now but you might want to look out for these up and coming (mostly mobile) platforms in the next twelve months:

Going Public

The latest forecasts suggest that Facebook will be worth as much as $100 billion on its Wall Street debut, creating at least a thousand millionaires. The expectations for the Facebook IPO are very high. Many internet firms, including Groupon and LinkedIn, went public in 2011, but the response was mostly underwhelming. However investors have big hopes for Facebook and as regulators enforce the public disclosure of figures in the build up we will be learning a lot more about its business model and their future vision for the social web.

Did I miss anything? Please let me know in the comments below.

Copyright Protection - Choose your battles

hello@codegent.com (Kevin Danaher) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:43:06 GMT

So rather fortuitously (or not, depending on your point of view) Third Thursday this month has fallen slap bang in the middle of perhaps the biggest controversy to affect the internet since it’s commercial release (1995, for any budding geek historians out there). I think we can all agree that since then it’s done nothing but grow, the clear principle being that the more people who have access to it, the more the amount of content generated constantly rises.

And so we land in the here and now, a time at which the internet is no longer populated with reems and reems of text but also video, audio, images, satellite data, pointless conversation, pretty much anything you can imagine exists online (which is both fantastic and terrible at the same time). But hold on a second, isn’t that much the same as the real world? There’s good and bad, there’s philanthropy and there’s greed, those who give and those who take. In those terms surely it’s simple to think, we should police the internet in much the same way as we do the real world, right? Catch the criminals, and allow innocent civilians to go about their day to day business and innocent companies to carry on trading.

This is the of view I want to talk about SOPA and PIPA from, as someone who works in the tech industry I feel I have a pretty decent understanding of the internet and this is how I believe it should be viewed, as another (virtual) world in it’s own right, much like the “real” one in which we live. The opinions being bandied around by politicians and corporate execs don’t seem to recognise this fundamental fact but instead they think of the internet as a system, probably due to “technology” being involved. The internet is a living thing, a representation of billions of living beings (that’s us by the way) and therefore can’t be controlled, it will refuse to be, as we would refuse.

It’s this fundamental misunderstanding of the internet that is causing these IP owners to try and wrestle control of what we’re able to see and do online and it’s the fundamental lack of knowledge in the legal establishments that is letting them get so close to achieving it. For example, if I were to go out into the local community and look around for seedy criminal types, then go and chat to those people about their various activities (for the purposes of the metaphor I achieve this without being brutally murdered or robbed) then that would be entirely my own choice. It might not be a smart thing to do, it may even mean I have an implicit knowledge of illegal activities that makes me a person of interest, but it’s my own choice to do so.

Now imagine I do the same thing but instead what I find is the community (housing estate, street, town, etc) in which those people live, has had a 50 foot wall built around it, unfortunately cutting me off from visiting the poor innocent locals as much as their shadier neighbours. This is basically what rights owners have been arguing for with the presentation of SOPA and PIPA. Rather than targeting the criminals who steal, duplicate and distribute content, they want to take down entire sections of the web so these people can’t communicate with us regular folk and spread their ill gotten gains.

The more worrying aspect of the two bills is that don’t even operate on a “suspicion” basis rather than a “proof” basis. So if a site is reported to be under suspicion it could potentially be blocked somehow.

Up until this week the creators of SOPA and PIPA were suggesting achieving this through alteration of the DNS, or Domain Name System. A fundamental foundation of the internet that allows sites to be identified by names like www.google.com, instead of purely IP addresses, like 209.85.147.103

They wanted to be able to remove (on suspicion) a domain name from the internet registry, if that site was in any way associated with illegal sharing. This would potentially give them complete rule over the web space. So you’d either play by their regulations or have your site’s domain name removed. Fortunately, due to opposition from the Whitehouse this section of the bills has been dropped but that doesn’t mean the concept is gone. Discussions in the senate recently have been around how to block sites like this anyway, even without using the DNS.

Now as an every day internet user I have to ask some serious questions:
Firstly, what exactly is considered illegal behaviour, constituting a block on that site? They certainly haven’t gone into much detail regarding this but surely it should be incredibly well defined. I can’t be arrested in the real world without a damn good explanation so why should my online presence be impounded without a clear description of the precise charges relating directly to sections of the bills I’ve contravened?

Secondly, who’s going to police this and enforce the blocks on sites? It’s obvious that the movie and music industries want the power to do this themselves but in the real world don’t we call that vigilante justice? Surely a system based on these kind of “site blocks” needs to be run by a third, independent party, who are not on the payroll of the very companies seeking to exert more control.

Lastly, how will this affect social media? We once lived in a time when the majority of online content was created and owned by news agencies, corporations and private companies. We now live in a time where most of the content is, in fact, user generated. A lot of it may be utter rubbish but the internet is now a social space, a prime are for exchanging everything be it useful or the aforementioned utter rubbish. I’ve seen plenty of people tweeting or posting on Facebook about how to access football matches or movies online, some if it legal, some of it not so much. Would these industries seriously purport to block social media platforms because they contain normal human conversation, some of which is less than law abiding. That’s like shutting down a pub because someone once sold something shady under a table there.

And that’s what I’ve been getting at throughout this whole rambling journey. The internet is a world in and of itself, trying to control it is pointless and would cost (read: waste) billions as it will grow and adapt as it always has. Besides, (outside of James Bond movies) no one has ever tried to destroy the whole world just because it was a bit flawed. The internet is fundamentally flawed… of course it is, it’s populated by us and we’re only human. The biggest thing I’ve been able to read through all the myriad of situational analyses lately in the press though is this; the institutions pushing for these changes have a complete lack of understanding of the internet in its current form. It’s evolved to a point where it belongs to billions and declaring war on the internet just to solve a piracy problem is in fact declaring war on every consumer they have. This is hardly going to endear those consumers to them and gain their support in the war on piracy. Instead declare war on the criminals themselves in such a way that the ordinary users of internet services are not even aware there is a new system in place. It’s probably difficult to achieve but it’s the only solution that won’t cause an enormous backlash, the like of which we’ve seen in recent weeks.

Third Thursday - January 2012 News

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:58:26 GMT

Blimey, it's the first Third Thursday of 2012!

Rachel shows off her rock

Other links referenced...

TES Games, available on iPhone and iPad
Flutr (Beta)

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (Mel Thompson) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:08:16 GMT

This months Family Guy style light hearted rant is about my irritation of how people have started using Facebook and Twitter statuses as if they were lines in their own personal diary.

The informative nature of the Facebook or Twitter status has been downgraded. Do we really need to know what our 200 plus friends are doing every minute of the day? Do all our online friends want to know what we are doing every minute of the day? I can tell you the answer is NO!

Being part of the Facebook and Twitter generation has been incredible so far. Being able to connect with friends, share photos, and now music through the Facebook partnership with Spotify. Twitter, the social networks micro blogging system has gained over 100 million active users in just 5 years. With popstars such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber having over 10 million followers each, it is easy to see that it is a popular platform for fans to get a glimpse at what it is like to be a celebrity on a day to day basis. It gives them a digital friendship with their favourite stars that they never had before. Their followers get to find out what designer dress they are wearing, or what swanky Michelin stared restaurant they are going to for dinner. A far cry from some of the updates I get from my digital friends, who keep me updated very regularly with updates on how their kid just burped, or that they have just eaten a doughnut.

I love social networks, and working in the digital industry when Facebook and Twitter are evolving is great, with timeline for example which could change the way businesses communicate with their customer. Learn all about the Facebook changes in our previous blog post http://codegent.com/blog/2011/10/what_are_you_up_to_the_world_wants_to_know_apparently

I use both Twitter and Facebook every day, they enable me to see what others are doing on other digital platforms, they help inspire me, it could be a Facebook viral like the 'Take This Lollipop' campaign or an article on Mashable being thrown around on Twitter. They have become part of the creative industries modern DNA.

The openness to see and share photos, to communicate with friends in other counties, and of course the occasional stalk, and anyone that says they do not stalk their old friends or partners is a liar. Everyone loves a good self satisfying Facebook stalk.

However, this former pleasant experience has now been tainted by over enthusiastic status updaters. Now 70% of my Facebook newsfeed is clogged up with people telling me that they had beans on toast for dinner, or that they can’t sleep. What do you want me to do about you not being able to sleep, come round, get into bed with you and sing you a lullaby ? You can’t sleep because you are staring at a bright screen in the middle of the night when you should be de stressing and getting away from the technologies you are bound to all day long.

How did this happen? Is it from the influx of younger users on the networks, wanting to show off to their friends about what cool lives they lead? Is it just the users who are bored and just don’t have anything else to do with their free time?
Get out of the house, get some fresh air, go somewhere with no wi fi signal for a while.

The irritation of these insignificant, unhelpful status update is extended further with the use of incorrect, slanged English they are all written in. Incorrect spelling and punctuality is used in all of these ridiculous updates. I’m not sure if this is because of the speed some of them are written, or that some of them are written on smart phones so fat thumb syndrome and auto correct occurs. I have some sympathy for some statuses on Twitter, as there is a restricted 140 max character limit, so abbreviating a few words is acceptable. However, on Facebook you have over 60,000 characters to use, there is no excuse to cut words down, and use slang such as “bby, ppl, da, and bout” you can write a whole bloody monologue in there. It also takes me much longer to read it when it is in slang text like this, it you really want everyone to know and read your status, please write it in a language we can all understand.

I am a believer that I am not the only person that gets irritated by this topic. Some websites and blogs have dedicated whole sections to these pet hates about Facebook statuses; here are some of my favourites courtesy of http://failbook.failblog.org/

So I plead to you social network users, make your statuses interesting for your audience. Give some thought to the topic, as well as the spelling, grammar and punctuation, and we will all reap the benefits.

That my friends is what Grinds My Gears.

User Experience ? How to plot a user journey

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:33:26 GMT

This month I’m going to be talking about User Journeys: what they are used for and how to do create them.

User journeys – what are they?
It’s not hard to imagine what a user journey might look like if you hadn’t seen one before. We’re talking about how people using your site travel through it: the pages they land on, the decisions they take once there and the impact of those decisions on what happens next.

We’ve all experienced good journeys and bad ones online: some make a complicated process easy and painless, allowing you to sail through to the end with barely a thought, whilst others are infuriating and force you to re-enter details, send you off down blind alleys or simply fail to get you to where you wanted to be no matter how hard you try.

The difference between the two can often be something very simple. It might be something to do with semantics: calling something that we’re used to seeing every day something else, just to be ‘cute’. Or it might be that the logic of every possible outcome hasn’t been thought through properly. Maybe we’re forcing people to give us more information than is necessary. Often, the order with which we ask people information can be enough to send them running to the hills.

A user journey is a step-by-step diagram that shows each part of the process through the site, using visual sign-posts to group things together and identify the danger areas where particular attention needs to be paid.

If you’re creating a new service or a new product, it really is only by plotting user journeys, that you can be confident that you’ve thought of everything and that your solution is the simplest one you can come up with.

Seven considerations for plotting a user journey
1. Use your Personas

Last month I wrote about creating Personas. This is definitely a good place to start: even if it’s only to work out how existing and potential customers will have different goals. The likelihood is that your Personas will be more complicated than this, you may have a variety of stakeholders who need to achieve different things.

2. One diagram per outcome
We think it’s easier to create a different diagram for each key goal or expected outcome. Within that diagram there might be multiple routes that people take, but essentially you’re looking for a single final outcome. An example might be getting someone to sign up for a free trial of a product (as in the image above from our recently launched Schedule App).

3. Show each step of the journey
Don’t leave anything to chance – we want to try and think through everything that a user might do and what decisions he or she will take.

4. Logical grouping of steps
Deciding whether to go for a free trial or subscribe to a service straight away: they are two different steps, but they should be grouped together to give the people working on the site a shorthand reference that these things are linked. In a user journey with 20 steps, the more you can arrange things logically, the easier it will be to use.

5. Pain points
Pain points are something we talk about a lot when it comes to the user experience. There are some things that will be a joy: choosing which colour of shirt they want. But there are other things that will potentially turn them off: logging in when they’ve forgotten their username, or entering their credit card details. Where there is a pain point – make the box red or stick a big warning sign next to it. This will remind everyone that this needs special consideration and thought.

If things aren’t working well with an existing site, the pain points are probably the areas that need to be looked at first as they are most likely causing the problems. It’s much better to spend your time making your pain points as simple as possible than introducing whizzy new functionality, however tedious that might seem.

6. Notes
Finally, make notes across the journey: assumptions, other considerations or 3^rd party functionality that may have an impact on what the user experiences.

7. Workshop
If you’re plotting user journeys as part of a workshop with all the stakeholders inputting their ideas, they can be sketched out in a down and dirty way, the use of Post-It notes on a wall work well for allowing people to consider all the steps and iterate.

Ultimately, it is always good to reproduce that working into an electronic format so it can be referenced by the designers and developers throughout the project.

Once we get into user testing, it’s always good to reference it against the user journey to check that the assumptions we made were correct and things like pain points have been effectively overcome.

Third Thursday - December News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:52:26 GMT

Blimey, it's the last Third Thursday of the year!

David with the actors(!) from Skins in our 4Music Christmas Promotion

Other links referenced...

Our latest client Primesight (new site in Feb)
4Music - Hot Santa
4Music - Christmas Card
TES Games also available on iPhone and iPad

Google+ as a benefit to business

hello@codegent.com (Kevin Danaher) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:42:17 GMT

Google+... that’s been around a while now hasn’t it? It’s hardly taken off as a social network but recently it seems Google have their sights set much higher than that. They know that they can’t compete with Facebook, but then they don't need to. Google are still the most used search engine in the world, they have more traffic than Facebook anyway, so why shouldn’t their social network revolve around that aspect of their platform? Well, Google have slowly been revealing that it does, and I’m here to tell you that it’s a good thing for your business.

Combined with Google+ Business Pages, the whole Google platform can deliver more for you. It only takes 5 minutes to create a page so there’s really no reason not to. But what exactly will you get out of it?

Be Found Instantly

Not only are Google+ Business Pages another great channel to broadcast your business through, they are also an instant access point for users to reach you as a brand. For example, since the business pages went online big brands like Pepsi, McDonalds and Lexus have all signed up to the service. Users who want information or the latest news from those companies merely have to type + and the name of the company into the Google search bar.

Try it out now and you’ll see that as you type instant search literally offers you the Google+ page of that business, giving users an extremely fast way to access your social stream.

Obviously, if you’ve got a page Google will find that anyway but the Google+ integration with the search engine is just so fast and slick. It’s a service only Google can truly offer within the confines of their own platform and as users become accustomed to this unique Google offering (as we have done with so many others) it could become a winning feature.

Increased Search Ranking

Perhaps the single most relevant thing that will attract those of you who still mostly think of Google as a search provider is the ability of Google+ to improve your search rankings. There’s a new system at work to integrate with Google+ and it works like this...

Say, for example, I +1 something, a page, a product, a business (the +1 system can be integrated all over the web just like a Facebook ‘like’) and then you do a search for it. Because we’re friends (hello!), on Google+ your search results will have my relevant +1’s displayed. This means that users of Google get advice from their friends without even having to ask for it. An absolutely crucial marketing tool if you have a loyal fan base, allowing it to grow by subconscious word of mouth.

Additionally a friend of codegent who knows the guys at Google rather well recently told us that your Google+ page will be (can we say artificially?) promoted up the search algorithm for searches against your brand name. Its a very easy way to boost your search position and dominance of the first page of results.

Access to Your Customers Zero Moment of Truth

There’s been a long standing phrase in the marketing world, “moment of truth”. Traditionally this was broken down into two parts; the First Moment of Truth, when a customer sees a product they like and begins to gravitate towards it and the Second Moment of Truth, when a customer attains said product and uses it, reinforcing their belief that the product was as good as they believed it to be.

This traditional concept of these two moments is 100% accurate and has been proven over billions of sales of products worldwide since the dawn of the modern advertising agency. However, thanks to the connected world we now live in Google has assessed that there is another, more important, Moment of Truth which occurs through social media and dictates a huge proportion of peoples’ spending habits. As we now do more shopping online than anywhere else this makes perfect sense, why would we go out to do research when we have the largest compendium of human knowledge just a mouse click away? Not only that, but the benefit of the experience of millions of other customers.

This, is the Zero Moment of Truth. Gone are the days when you had to get a product home and try it out or luckily come across a good tester model of it in a shop to find out it’s real value to you. Social media doesn’t just drive peoples’ lives socially, though the name may allude to that. In reality Social media drives peoples’ opinions of everything, from football matches, to movies, to physical products. So if I were to be torn between two equally popular products, between Samsung and LG for example, not knowing what to do I might look to their social media pages. If one were to have several million more fans than the other it would certainly seem that their customers had a reason for acting in such a way and alter my perception.

That’s a high level example, but it can be equally important on a small scale, for a single product or campaign behind that product. If you publish a post (and there are over a billion a day on Google+) related to your product and it catches the right eyes it will spread. Knowledge of your product will expand and the hits on both your Google+ business page and that products own page online will increase, potentially exponentially. Many users will be experiencing a Zero Moment of Truth, proof by a large body of their peers that the product is good, appreciated, interesting.

It’s impossible to emphasise the importance of this effect to you and your business but Google are helping with that one too. They’ve introduced a feature called Ripples, which allows business people, marketers and general speculators to view the effect a post had, a sort of butterfly effect on Google+. Your post flapped it’s wings here and then what? You can see where it spread, to which users, how it spread on from them and the impact it had on your site traffic.The ramifications of this type of awareness are astonishing, allowing marketers to tailor their posts to mimic their most effective campaigns.

The simplest way I can summarise is - get your business on Google+. There’s never any telling how a new service or product will pan out but Google+ has a lot to offer you right now and you shouldn’t miss out.

If you’d like to know more about the Zero Moment of Truth and how it really drives your customers then Google literally wrote the book on it, which is a free download in all the common eBook formats and can be found at www.zeromomentoftruth.com.

Recurring Billing - Financial Heaven, Technical Hell

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:24:51 GMT

What is Recurring Billing?

Recurring billing is effectively subscription modelling for businesses transacting online. You automate charging customers for a product or service at a predefined cost and schedule. There are two key factors involved in planning recurring billing.

The time span between charges that affects how you retain and acquire custom.
The access model - usually different price plans, options and possibly a freemium service, which offsets the cost of giving away a limited but free service against the profits of more likely upgrades.

Why is recurring billing good for my business?

A business relying on one-off transactions may initially bring in more revenue but will most likely struggle to retain the customer over a long period of time. Recurring billing usually results in a higher Average Customer Lifecycle Value (ACLV), a predictable income stream (Monthly Recurring Revenue - MRR) due to a combination of customer inertia and commitment as the relationship shifts from a purchase to opt-out decision and has more potential for up and cross sell as you have good reason to be in regular contact with your users.

In terms of valuing a business these patterns of predictable recurring revenue are hugely attractive to investors and purchasers as they can see genuine opportunities to scale and mitigate risk.

What the potential pitfalls?

The two major areas of difficulty revolve around the security of the sensitive information you acquire and the technical systems you need to put in place to automate these processes.

Security
Storing sensitive financial data about your customers presents you with massive security risk and plenty of legislative red tape to boot. Your servers must be PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliant which is costly and complex to achieve.

In addition to that you may be more susceptible to direct fraud as criminals often use free trial offers to verify stolen credit information.

You might remember the Sony PlayStation scandal in April this year when its systems were breached and the personal data of 75 million customers including some credit information and passwords were compromised. It brought the network down for several weeks and caused a public relations furore. Their systems were not fully restored until June and the trust of their customers was severely damaged. The whole episode is believed to have cost Sony £105 million. A security breach is not something to be taken lightly.

Technology
Building a recursive billing system quickly mounts up to be a considerable technical challenge (and therefore requires time and investment). Here is a quick brain dump of functions you will need to deal with:

Daily invoice generation and account management
Sending emails and dealing with spam filters, bounce backs etc.
Multiple prices plans
Credit card fails and re-attempts to bill
Discount coupons and free trials
Upgrades and downgrades
Expiring cards
Different currencies (potentially)
Tax implications of multiple geographic regions (potentially)

A complex system like this is inevitably going to have errors and bugs in it at launch. Every system does. Will your early adopters tolerate this whilst you fix the problems?

On top of that you will have a system running that needs to be continuously up, processing data, being maintained and scaling in order to keep the engine alive and up to date. And of course you need to make sure it is secure! For an engineer’s perspective check out this blog from Freshbooks.

What recursive business model should you adopt?

Broadly speaking the model splits into Annual or Monthly billing cycles with free trials or “freemium” no cost limited accounts as a popular extension.

Annual payments give you more cash upfront, guarantee customer retention for at least one year and reduce invoicing and collection costs. However monthly payments are less risky for the customer who may not be keen on such a long upfront commitment or high cost. Monthly therefore creates a lower barrier to entry so you could see an increase in customer acquisition. Your sales process should shorten, as the proposition is less risky and more cost effective.

I think for most online businesses the monthly billing cycle is better for the reasons outlined above but also as it provides you with an opportunity to talk more frequently with your customers, make sure they are still using your service to it’s fullest potential, up or cross selling and reminding them you are here and happy to help.

With annual payments you run the risk that your customers may have completely forgotten who you are, or moved on from their jobs or decided to seek an alternative. There is also a legal implication (in the US at least) that if you bill on anything over 60 days you must send ample warning of the renewal, at least 30 days. This gives the customer more time to consider cancelling or shopping around. On a monthly billing cycle you can bill and email them the same day but as they should be used to receiving the emails this shouldn’t be too great a shock.

You could also consider a combo deal that has a monthly plan as well as a reduced annual option for those customers that know they will stick with your service and are happy to just to pay in one go and save some money. These customers are less likely to fall into the annual payment traps above.

A few golden rules for emailing your bill:

Always explain the charge. Remind them of the service they are getting and that it has been previously authorised. “You have been charged $XXX” does not cut it!
Don’t miss the opportunity to upsell or add value with marketing copy. A slight discount on the next product tier could be all it takes to bring more revenue in. Likewise a gift or a simple thank you could seriously impact your retention and reduce “bill shock”.
Make it super simple for the customer to access your customer service team. Preferably by simply replying to the email or with a clear phone number. This is really the point at which you want to be talking to them and cementing/saving your relationship.

What technology is out there to help me?

Over the last few years several companies have been launched to help alleviate the issues around recurring billing. These guys sit above payment providers such as Sagepay and do all the hard work so you don’t have to.

Chargify, CheddarGetter, Recurly, Spreedly and Zuora (more of an enterprise offering) are the major players in the space. Sadly most of them have quite poor UK payment gateway support so we plumped for Recurly for our apps who have been excellent. Spreedly also have good UK support and hopefully the others will catch up soon so you get a greater degree of choice.

Paypal have a recurring billing option but I would highly advise avoiding them despite the fact that getting setup is relatively painless. My reason? Poor support, random behaviour, tricky deep integration methods with a lack of features and customisation.

What you should be looking for in your billing partners, aside from price

PCI-DSS Level 1 Compliant service - which makes verifying your own business’ compliance easy
Support for your favoured currency(ies) and payment gateway
“Grandfathering” of costs - a pledge to honour the deal you sign up to if costs change in the future
Adherence for the Data Portability Standard to ensure you own your customer credit data
A complimentary feature set or flexibility for custom elements to fit with how you want to run the accounts of your business
Developer friendly tools such as well documented APIs and relevant code integration examples for your tech team’s preferred language

Phew, that was a longer article than I had planned! If you have any thoughts or questions on this please leave a comment below. Happy billing!

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (Rachel Green) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:38:00 GMT

This month’s festive grinds my gears is something that I'm only reminded of once a year, but every year without fail it gets to me. Christmas Pudding! Hot, delicious, moist, fruity goodness topped off with a bit of booze and cream. What could be better? Nothing.

So, why if it's so great, are we restricted to only enjoying Christmas Pudding at Christmas?

On Christmas Day millions of us tuck into the Great Christmas Pudding (herein GCP), even when we are ready to burst from a full days eating, we force it down knowing "eat it now, or regret it for another 365 days". Surely I am not the only one that wouldn't mind, after a dinner party in August, being offered a yummy bit of GCP?

I guess a similar thing could be said for mince pies, or even pumpkins at Halloween. Every year in early November there are loads of people serving up delicious pumpkin pie or pumpkin soup, under the pretence that they are just getting rid of the left overs from Halloween and it's the seasonal thing to do. If you look to other countries however, you can buy pumpkin no matter what season, because the fact is people actually like it and people generally buy what they like regardless of the time of year - there is demand all year round.

Which brings me to my tenuous link to agency life. Let's adopt the Christmas spirit all year round. At this time of year everyone is thinking "let's do something festive". Briefs suddenly have that fun factor, with clients wanting to be more humorous and light hearted....because that's the spirit of Christmas. But do their audience actually change at this time of year? Do people go from being miserable, serious types to jolly, cheerful folk just because it's December? Does what they desire from a brand suddenly change because the sound of The Pogues is in the air? I don't think so.

I think we stay the same. The way to capture our attention and engage with us stays exactly the same. What we like and don't like stays the same. What a brand/product/service is offering should be consistent with the audience, not the season. Fit in with what your customers want, not what tradition tells you to.

In an attempt to reinforce my point I'm going to turn to GQ's chef of the year Mr Heston Blumenthal. Last year his GCP's flew off the shelves, there was unprecedented demand, Waitrose (the only place to buy them) couldn't keep up and in the final days before Christmas the only way to get your hands on one was eBay for over £500. So what did Mr Waitrose do to respond to this demand, to capitalise on this cash cow? Well obviously, because it wasn't Christmas anymore he took them off the shelves. For 9 months in fact, only making them available again in September. And now EXACTLY the same thing is happening again. I just don't get it. Give us Christmas Pudding all year round!

And that my festive friends, is what really grinds my gears. Merry Christmas!

User Experience - Personas, the whys and hows

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:21:49 GMT

For the next few months I’m going to write a bit about User Experience. I firmly believe that User Experience shouldn’t be the dark art that some portray it as. There is no reason why good UX can’t be put into practice within a client company or by an agency (or both). Like most things, it comes down to common sense and an ability to think laterally – very laterally at times. Working with a professional UX expert can pay dividends, especially with a challenging content structure, and they will help you get to where you want to be quicker, but it's not impossible to get there yourself with a bit of time and thought.

The thing I love about UX projects is that it combines analytics with creativity. In many ways it is the bridge between the nerdy researcher and the wacky creative. Although in my experience, most successful agency people have a bit of both in them anyway.

One great way of focusing everyone’s attention on what they really need to concern themselves about is the development of Personas. A persona is a (largely) fictional snapshot of a typical user. It can be based on research or, in the absence of research, instinct. It can be an ever-evolving tool that is updated as the project goes along and more insights and ideas are generated.

Of all the tools in the UX professional’s armoury, Personas are the least statistically valid, accurate or meaningful. So you might be forgiven for asking ‘why the hell should we waste time creating them?’. And in some cases there isn’t the need, the time or indeed the budget, to develop personas. However, in many cases it can be a great help.

What is a persona?
If you think about your business, you will be able to picture a typical user. That person might be your customer. But then, after a few moments you’ll think that actually you will have more than one typical user – what about returning customers? What about small customers vs large ones? What about suppliers, or potential employees, investors, or the press? What about customers who have radically different needs: maybe one needs some detailed product information but another just needs a phone number?

Personas help you get all these ideas into one, “at-a-glance” place. They are a visual shortcut that allows everyone to think about their range of different users without having to keep describing them.

A good place to start is to imagine each of your core audience types, give them a name, an age, a gender and a profession. It is counter-intuitive in our age of politically correct avoidance of stereotypes at all costs, but just run with it for a bit. In some cases, there may be some research data about users that can be employed, but if there isn’t you can still have an educated guess – remembering that this isn’t meant to be an accurate piece of data.

Then consider how they consume digital media. Are they likely to be confident, need hand-holding, happy to explore or time poor? Are they going to be mobile? Do they like to interact using social media? You should also consider what types of things they are going to be looking for from your site: do they just want to find something and move on, or do they want to be inspired or convinced?

Image courtesy of cxpartners.com

Bringing this altogether will give you a series of references that can be used at each stage of the UX process:

Developing user journeys: the personas act as a way of ensuring that the key user journeys have been considered

Task modeling: a way of understanding how users behave and reasons why they may drop out before they achieve their goal.

Content auditing: looking at the current/proposed content and checking it against each persona allows you to work out whether there are any gaps.

Design concepts: for the designer, having a sense (however artificial) of the different users provides a backdrop against which to pitch the creative.

Functional idea generation: often having a persona will spark an idea along the lines of “you know what would be really cool?” It’s often only when you try and put yourself in someone else’s shoes that insights arise that you mightn’t have considered otherwise.

Third Thursday - November News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:51:46 GMT

It's the Third Thursday of the month... and the nights are drawing in.

Mark completes the New York Marathon!

Other links referenced...

The Advent of a New Agency Mantra

hello@codegent.com (Kevin Danaher) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:31:40 GMT

So it’s the third Thursday of November 2011, only 13 days from December and the undeniable “Christmas Season” that awaits us. Naturally in the world of the web agency it’s a very busy time of year. Several things are happening that contribute to this, firstly, every business that can make revenue from the Christmas season is attempting to fit in last minute updates to their digital presence. Secondly, most budgets will renew in January and eleventh hour ideas to use any remaining amount and capitalise on this year are being considered.

Which brings us to the subject of that big B word, Budget.

Many companies’ financial years are of course calendar years, which makes November and December months for planning - planning what to do with budget no one has actually got their hands on yet. Project briefs for whole new sites, web apps and major site overhauls fly around during this period and agencies are inundated with requests from both their long term customers and potential new business partners.

It seems like a period that should be conducive to synergy, ideas flow, budgets open up to accommodate them and deals can be struck. However this isn’t always the case as there’s a paradigm within this industry that needs to be stepped away from, the paradigm of the classic agency mindset. You see, people who work for agencies are generally very creative and therefore want to produce incredible work, something impressive, new, within the realms of “never been tried before”.

Clients on the other hand have a clear idea of what their web site/app needs to achieve and want creative ideas to surround that. It can be easy to slip into the mindset of competing on these fronts if not careful and it’s a big mistake, a throwback to a time when web agencies were “special”, when companies weren’t so technically minded and the agencies were needed.

Generally this classic idea of an agency lead to clients coming up with what they needed and agencies giving them a “big idea”, striving to reach the limits of their creativity and knowing they could command whatever budget they demanded.

This is a reality that could not last, it’s not the way Codegent operates and we’d like to hope we’re ahead of the game due to this, because there is an alternative. In fact there’s much chatter in our industry of late about adjusting the way in which we work with our clients, how agencies simply have to adapt nowadays to a new way of operating. Glue Isobar made this point very well at an agency conference recently, publishing an article hinting that there’s an emergence of a new operating system for agencies.

It boils down to the sentiment I’m alluding to here. Customers don’t always want a big idea, (some do, granted) but mostly they want you to listen to their needs. Most sites serve a particular purpose; ecommerce, social interaction, generating business and if you get hung up on the big ideas you can lose the core purpose of the requests being made of you as an agency. Clients will be living with the site you deliver them for the foreseeable future, they need it to be worth it’s cost, a long term revenue stream. Agencies want the short term revenue from completing that project and also the potential to flex their creative muscles. These two agendas are of course at odds with one another so how do you combat this problem as an agency?

The way to work in synergy with clients is simple, listen.

Understand the needs of your client's business, as well as the site they are asking for. If you understand their business you’ll understand why they have that brief, why they think they need those things. It may mean that you end up poking holes in the brief, pointing out what they really need and why it makes better sense for their business, but that’s the whole point. As an agency the goal should be to work collaboratively with a client, act as their advocate and understand their needs, the desired journey and the end goal. If an agency can do this then the relationship will only blossom, the customer will trust the agency and vice versa.

There’s the classic trifecta on any project which works on a principle that’s basically 100% true. You have cost, speed and quality. If you focus on two of these you will make a sacrifice on the other but the way to minimise the impact of these is by knowing one another. Clients who have no idea what work is involved in production often focus on speed and they don’t understand why the length of the process is so great. As an agency who’s attempting to work alongside your clients rather than against them why not educate them in this process? Don’t belittle their lack of knowledge, increase it and you’ll work much better together, with even more of the trust mentioned previously.

I don’t want to blow our own trumpet too much, there are several agencies out there who work this way, taking time to understand each client and forming a lasting partnership on their projects. In fact the Glue Isobar article I mentioned earlier speaks to much of this understanding of the client. Representing them in their digital endeavours, rather than battling them for more creative “fun” stuff to work on. Most needs are simple and every now and again those big, fun, highly creative projects come along, but trying to turn every project into one of those is a huge mistake and will mean missing the mark more often than not. Listen to clients, really know what they want, then understand why they want it, after that you’re on their side and it can only deliver the right result.

Third Thursday - Is it worth it?

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 14:55:10 GMT

“I love your videos” said a client recently, delivered with a slightly wry Glaswegian lilt. Was she being genuine or just taking the piss? A low-level paranoia has typified mine and Mark’s feelings about the monthly ‘2-minute to camera’ videos that we put out each month as part of Third Thursday.

This week saw the public lambasting of SapientNitro’s own take on just how cool it was to work there, with their “Idea Engineers” video. It lasted a short time on Facebook before the piss-taking became too much and they pulled it down. Publicis’ “I’ve got a feeling”, PHD’s “We are the future” and Agency.com’s “Going to work for Subway” have all come in for a similar amount of ridicule over the years, so there is always that fear that we could be next.

As you would expect from a busy agency, as the third week of the month approaches there is a bit of a last minute scramble to get articles written, a video recorded and an email produced. Sometimes Third Thursday has even become Third Friday.

The videos themselves are hastily planned, normally along the lines of ‘can we mention x yet?’ – ‘great, you say that bit then’. We don’t rehearse and we rarely start again if one of us messes up: resulting in an output that makes us wonder whether we just end up making idiots of ourselves.

Which all begs the question: is it worth it?

We thought we would practice what we preach and measure what it costs and whether it can be justified by ROI, and whether there are other intangible benefits to committing to a monthly newsletter.

So, what does it actually cost us each month to make? Well here is a rough attempt.

We write, normally, four articles: two serious-ish opinion-piece ones, one comedy one and one educational one. All but the ‘grind my gears’ ones take a few hours research, probably another hour to write and they all need to be proof-read by someone else and images found to go along with them. I’d say about 12 hours in writing time. Taking a point somewhere between raw costs of hiring and housing people and opportunity costs (the money we could have made had we been charging people out to clients rather than doing stuff for free), I’d estimate somewhere in the region of £800 to write the newsletter.

The video takes a few minutes to record, but about an hour to encode and edit. The design is probably another couple of hours. Building the email, testing it, messing about with various elements and then broadcasting is another 2-3 hours.

So all in all, we’re probably talking about somewhere in the region of £1,200 per newsletter. And we’ve been doing the full-on video-enriched Third Thursday thing since May 2010. So this month is number 19. Which makes it just slightly shy of £23,000 we’ve invested so far.

The newsletter goes out to just under 1,000 people each month, and we have an average open rate of approx 20%. So, about 3,800 ‘views’ of our newsletter email, plus the people who actually read the blog posts – about 6,000 (assuming most of them are newsletter recipients too).

So, all in all it costs us about £4 each time someone reads anything to do with Third Thursday. Would we be better off just buying everyone a sandwich?

ROI measurements
Ultimately, the ROI has to be financial. Unless it’s a vanity thing, at some point it has to deliver value. However, how this is measured isn’t always as immediately straightforward. Here are some of things we consider:

New work
Do we send out a newsletter and then see a load of orders the following week? No (is the simple answer).

But we do definitely win work off the back of Third Thursday, but bear in mind that most of the recipients are existing or former clients. If nothing else, it acts as a prompt to remind people we are here. They may have called us anyway, it’s hard to say, but often it acts as a catalyst.

Punching above our weight?
We’ve always loved the idea of out-teaching our competition. We know we have sector experts here because we only hire people who are passionate about the medium. And we know that bigger agencies are often forced to hire job-a-day software developers who just don’t care. So why not share the love? We actively encourage everyone in the agency to write. We think that their wisdom is of interest to our clients and ultimately shows us being thought-leaders (for want of a less hackneyed phrase).

New ideas
Much of what we talk about involves emerging technologies or practices. We think, if nothing else, we can give our clients a competitive advantage by keeping them abreast of what they need to know. And, hey, if they pick up the phone and ask us if we can help them, too, then that’s all the better.

Our company
We tend to be a bit too fluid to have anything that resembles a mission statement (not that anyone reads them seriously anyway), so writing about what we think seems to be a better way of reflecting who we are. It’s kind of low-key PR.

Personality
We all know people buy people. One value we’ve always espoused is honesty and transparency. It might put a few people off: but that’s a good thing. We only want to hire people who want to share those values and we only want to work with clients who do, too. So, in some ways, we get what we ask for by talking about it.

Hymn sheet harmonisation
Because it’s such a shared, collegiate kind of thing – and because we know we have to do it every month, it means that it’s not left to one person to think about. We don’t have a marketing department responsible for broadcasting the company line on “social media” or “Google” that everyone within the company promptly ignores. It genuinely means that we all have more of a stake in thinking about what we think about things.

Word of mouth
We’ve definitely seen our referrals increase over the last year or so, and many people when they write to us make reference to one or two of the pieces they’ve read on our blog. If we didn’t have this self-imposed monthly deadline, we’d certainly write less and there would be less for prospective clients to base an opinion on.

How was it for you?
The consensus internally is Third Thursday is worth it. It can always be improved and should always be evolving. But we’ve found a voice that suits us and we think that it can only be a good thing.

Bangkok Underwater - Transplanting Our Office

hello@codegent.com (Luke Hubbard) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:16:18 GMT

In August I flew north to Chiang Mai to attend Barcamp, a geeky gathering held once or twice per year. Looking out of the window of the plane shortly after takeoff I was shocked to see an inland sea. As far as the eye could see, sunlight reflected back off the surface of the water, roads were submerged, small villages and temples had become islands.

Prior to this flight I had seen news reports on TV, but only when witnessed from the air did the extent and magnitude of the flooding hit home. On the flight back I kept a close eye on the water and followed it right up to the northern edge of Bangkok. Over the following weeks slowly but surely the water progressed south, swallowing industrial estates, university campuses, and whole neighbourhoods in it's wake.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/11/thailands-disastrous-slow-moving-flood/100188/

By late October it became clear that those in power had little or no clue what they were doing. In scenes reminiscent of Monty Python, hundreds of boats were strung together and used to push the water down the river and out to sea. Daily there were assertions of "confidence" and reassurances inner Bangkok would be "100% safe". Once you have been in Thailand a while you learn that an assertion of confidence by someone in power means exactly the opposite. It was time to prepare for the inevitable. Bangkok was going to flood, and it wasn't going to be over in a few days.

We made a list.. sand bags, plastic sheeting, duct tape, boards, silicone sealant. I had nightmares about power cuts, or worse, losing internet connectivity! We sourced a generator, stored up water, and mentally prepared for the worst.

By now some of our team members homes were flooded or at grave risk of flooding. The water was putrid and they were forced to leave and stay with relatives. Our work continued without too much interruption thanks to distributed source control and a wide choice of communication options ranging from Skype chat rooms to Google hangouts.

Then one night it hit me. We didn't have to stay, we could do our best to protect the house then move our office. Once the decision was made we just had to work out on when to leave. I looked at satellite images of the flooding overlaid with elevation data and expert predictions. Based on my unscientific estimates it looked like we had about a week.

We booked flights and I found a few large houses in Chiang Mai and a reserve in the mountains. If you have to evacuate you might as well do it in style. Luckily I think we booked a few days before the main exodus started. As people left, Bangkok was transformed, the traffic jams evaporated and highways were lined for miles with parked cars seeking higher ground.

Moving our office isn't that hard. Everyone on the team has a Macbook and can live without hefty desktop computers. We packed a box with our office essentials:

Mac Mini - This acts as our dropbox server for file sync with London
Diskstation - Used for internal file share and backups
Apple Airport - So we don't have to deal with unreliable or unencrypted wifi
Android Phone - In case ADSL connection is unavailable we can fall back to 3G or EDGE
Power strips with surge protection - You never know how many sockets will be available
WDTVLive - Allows us to connect any old TV to our network
Spare Macbook power adapters - More the better
Network cables - A few short ones and a long one

Before leaving I setup some webcams and installed tracking software on the computers left in the office. If someone was to break in and make off with them we might as well have some fun tracking them.

The day the evacuation came was not without minor drama. Over night water had overflowed the canal and was within 500 metres of our house. In times of flooding a friend with a pickup truck is a friend indeed. Luckily our designer Nor had such a vehicle and that day was a saint coming through the floods to transport our family, luggage, and french bulldog to the airport.

Upon arrival I discovered my beloved laptop had been left outside the house! If you are a geek you will understand the terror this caused. Nor rushed back and thanks to the lack of traffic on the roads was able to return to the airport before our flight left. Phew!

Later that day she made yet more trips to the airport, collecting Jirasak from his flooded neighbourhood with his two cats and getting them out safely. We are all grateful for her help.

Once we arrived at the rented house in Chiang Mai we plugged in our network and settled right back into work. We spent a week working out of a house in the suburbs then moved to an amazing reserve in the mountains where we were reunited with the rest of the team.

We have been here for a week so far and its the best office I've ever had. The internet connection is a bit lacking but the view more than makes up for it. I grew up in Snowdonia,North Wales and so feel a certain connection to mountains. Waking up in the morning and watching mist roll over mountains while drinking your coffee beats commuting through busy city traffic any day.

I feel this break from our routine has been productive. We mix activities with long quiet periods of sustained focus. Fresh air, walks down country lanes, and wood fire under stars provides the perfect setting to discuss what really matters to us and has helped us define our strategy for the year ahead.

Next year be there floods or not I think we will return here. Arthur C Clark described a future in which knowledge workers have the privilege of working from anywhere. We are lucky to live in the future and yet we seldom get up from behind our screens to make the most of it. Just because we work as a team doesn't mean we have to be stuck in an office. If your team is small and your systems are lean you can work different.

We have one more week in Chiang Mai before we are scheduled to fly back to Bangkok. When we left I felt a little guilty leaving friends to face the floods but in retrospect escaping the mental stress and relocating the team was the right thing to do. The flood waters will recede and Thailand will rebound as it has done many times in the past. No amount of water can wash away the character, resilience, and pure ingenuity of the Thai people.

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (Mel Thompson) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:47:33 GMT

Another month and another light-hearted rant in a series that we have called “Grind my gears” after the popular US cartoon, Family Guy.

This month, I will be ranting on about the inconvenience of undelivered parcels, and my frustration of how other companies don’t have the same ‘communication is key’ and ‘get it done’ mantra that we here at Codegent follow.

Working in the creative industry we are familiar with deadlines; my irritation when others don’t seem to understand the importance of these, and having what is needed there and ready to go when it is needed has been bubbling at a high temperature this last fortnight.

The phrase ‘next day delivery’ is being spread thinly across every form of e-commerce, we expect everything to be in our hands instantly. Is this asking too much, or is it just part of our fast paced modern day needs?

Going through any online e-commerce purchase is often a strung out painstaking process. Click to add to basket, go to basket, proceed to checkout, double check that is what you want, proceed, address, address look up, delivery address, payment, pick payment, card details, address of card.

Then near the end, you get that little ray of hope, you can almost see the light at the end of your tunnelled problem, when you read the phrase “next day delivery”. You fork out that extra £5-£10 for that relaxing, reassuring feeling that the product that you have just paid hard earned cash for is going to be at its required location tomorrow.

“aahhhhhh” Time for a cup of tea and a sneaky choccie biscuit.

If only it could go that swimmingly every time. You sit there all day clock watching, imagining your parcel on route, wondering if your parcel is all lonely sat in an abandoned warehouse somewhere, or is just around the corner, in throwing distance. Some companies supply a tracking number for your parcel however, most the time this code does not seem to clear the muddy, confused location of your parcel any more than imagining where it is does.

When my deadline specific parcel did not arrive on its projected day, I called the store that I placed the order with to try and find out where the hell my parcel was. As you can imagine, my irritation and frustration was flowing through my voice box down the phone. I got passed from one person to the next just to ask the simple question – “where the f##k is my parcel?”. After explaining how I paid for next day delivery and it hadn’t arrived, I then asked them to find my nearest store and to have it couriered to me. Regrettably, I received a “computer says no” answer. I don’t appreciate being passed around like a new born baby, being charged a fortune on their phone line just to be back at square one. “arrrghhhhh”

To further my annoyance they then decide to deliver my parcel three days later, when I no longer needed it, and are yet to refund my ‘next day delivery’ payment.

The frustration comes from my own extended efforts of making sure things get done on time, no matter how short the deadline. I and others within the agency, go above and beyond to make sure everything runs to a schedule and clients are equipped with everything they need to attack their digital design problems straight on. It is just unthinkable to set a design delivery date with a client, decide you are not going to give it to them on that date, just sit on it and randomly post it through a few days later to their surprise. When they no longer need it, or have found another form of getting the same product somewhere else. So what gives others the right to do it?

Companies and people need to learn to stick by their word, if you state something will be their next day in black and white, then it should be there. Don’t give me the hope and optimism to think it is possible, for you then to rip it away from me, and turn me into a squabbling toddler who isn’t getting that bike I wanted for Christmas till after Christmas.

I was happy to hear this week that I’m not the only one frustrated by companies delivering habits. MP of Corby and conservative party politician Louise Mensch broadcasted her annoyance with Argos’ lack of delivery service on Twitter and BBC Breakfast on Tuesday 15th November. Her frustration was sound and clear, being told that her delivery had been cancelled and Argos have the right to not tell her. Utterly ridiculous lack of communication with consumers, she Tweeted that Argos “need to add reliability to complete the package, letting customers know is just good business”.

She encouraged her 41,000 followers to rally together and Tweet their delivery hells to the world and companies, GoGirl! Stories included @TaraLouRico who waited home for Virgin Media to arrive on five different delivery occasions, only for it to be cancelled each time without being told. Rightfully so, Virgin Media lost her as a customer and she switched to Sky.

Now, you could be reading this as a one in a million individual who has never had to encounter the irritation of delayed deliveries, thank you for letting me cry on your shoulder, and cleanse my soul. A big shout out to anyone currently reading this while waiting for a delivery, good luck!

Is it so bad for me to want things to run on time and to what was expected? Do I expect too much? Maybe I’m too demanding, but we can't afford to waste a day in modern day society merely walking back and forth up and down the hall way, peeking outside the front door to wait for something to arrive. We have much better, more productive things to do with our day, like writing an article about it, that I must clarify I delivered on time!

All I can say is Good Luck on your delivery quests for the future!

That my friends is what really grinds my gears.

Third Thursday - October News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 18:46:26 GMT

It's the Third Thursday of the month... what's that? Oh, so you noticed it is in fact Friday. Soz, we had a big go live yesterday.

Our live Social Media event at Square Mile Relay

Other links referenced...

PS We also won a W3 Silver Award in the Entertainment category for 4Music :)

The first version is the vision, and that alone

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 18:05:48 GMT

A couple of weeks ago Steve Jobs died. When he stepped down as CEO of Apple over the Summer it was clear that he was losing his fight with cancer although I don't think anyone expected it to be so quick.

There have been some excellent pieces posted by more eloquent writers than I so I will leave it to them to celebrate his life and achievements. Personally I have enjoyed re-watching some of his speeches (notably Stanford Commencement in 2005 and his 1997 keynote where he effectively illustrated the technical landscape of 2011) and if you have a moment I would suggest you do as well.

So I did want to write something on this and was chatting to Luke about what was at the heart of Apple's renaissance in the late 90s, domination of the last decade and how I could look at applying those principles to the projects we work on for ourselves and for our clients.

I bounced around some themes on single mindedness, design as first principle, sweating the small stuff, but as usual, Luke nailed it.

He reminded me that the first release of a new Apple product line rejects the status quo and solves a single problem, in a simple way.

The design may often be revolutionary but when you look at it, the feature set is usually pretty limited. But we don't mind, because the concept is so getable and enlightening that we are happy to be taken on the journey as the product evolves. We get on board through glorious simplicity and the liberating notion that we don't have to accept the way things are.

Let's take a closer look at some examples.

The iMac

The iMac was the first all-in-one computer on the market. It challenged the principle that a computer was a sum of various parts, peripherals and accessories. The visual screen, the ability to hear sound and the computer processor are themselves symbiotically linked so why not unify them into a single machine? The internet was clearly the future so a modem was included, it was not considered an optional extra.

Recognising the need for industry standards and compatibility the iMac was the first computer to solely adopt USB ports for connectivity. Controversially they removed the floppy disk favouring the CD Rom (built-in, of course). They correctly argued that recordable CDs, the internet, and office networks were making them obsolete.

Finally the iMac looked completely different. It was beautiful, with it's translucent plastics and Bondi Blue trim. It was time for computers to take their place at the heart of the home, not to be hidden away on retractable desks in the box room. It changed the way we felt about them.

The iPod

The iPod was certainly another iconic design but it was definitely limited. Effectively the iPod was a hard drive with an action wheel, 5 buttons and a single tone screen. But it was the quickest and easiest way to browse your library of music on a handheld device.

They got the interface and hierarchy absolutely right from the beginning and have hardly changed it since. Other mp3 players of the time had inherited the buttons and small displays of the portable CD player and were taking users on a familiar journey without challenging it.

The iPhone

Look at the home screen of the first iPhone. No App Store. So you couldn't add any apps beyond the native ones such as web, email, camera, notes, maps, calendar etc. But looking at the interface doesn't it seem bare? There was obviously room for more but at the time they said that the web gateway was the platform for any additional stuff.

It meant they didn't have to worry about the complex eco system for the app store and could focus on disrupting the mobile phone market and changing our perceptions of what a mobile phone was actually for.

The interesting side product was that developers reverse engineered the iPhone to personalise it and add their own work. They built a way of working around it because they liked the product and saw it had a massive future. I'm absolutely convinced that those early jail breakers helped Apple to roadmap the marketplace when they were ready to open it up.

Was it just Apple?

I think it would be wrong to suggest that Apple are the only company to have got this concept of first version simplicity right. The Amazon Kindle obtusely focussed on the reading experience and then iterated to perfect that before adding anything more.

I would argue that early days Nokia were the same. They reduced physical phone size and increased battery life. My Mum still loves her old Nokia because it does exactly what she wants it to.

Google's home page is just a search field.

Conclusion

By not doing the expected you can ultimately end up with a greater solution. By stripping back the acceptable functions of today you leave room for innovation in the future and greatly increase the chances of solving your focal problem better than anyone else.

I would like to invite every client we work with (and my own team) to embrace this concept together and be brave and bold enough to try and do this on our own work. I'm pleased to say this principle is deep rooted in our latest product - Schedule.

Apple saw where they wanted us to be back in the 1970s and have been slowly dragging us there ever since. Thank you, Steve, I will leave the last words with you.

"When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there."

Steve Jobs in an MSNBC and Newsweek interview, 14 October 2006.

What Are You Up To? The World Wants To Know... apparently

hello@codegent.com (Rachel Green) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:23:10 GMT

On the 22nd of September Facebook held its annual conference in San Francisco. Hundreds of developers on tenterhooks attended and Facebook fanatics around the world tuned in to hear Mark Zuckerberg’s big plans.

So was the event as much of an anti-climax as the launch of the non-existent iPhone5? What exactly was announced? And most importantly what does this mean for us as users and marketeers?

In summary there are four significant changes on Facebook:

Timelines
By now you’ve probably seen an example of the lovely new timeline. Big images and top stories from over the years brought to the surface for all to see. Great for those with a pretty history…not so great for those who thought their skeletons were firmly in the closet!

Smart Lists
Hot on the heels of Google+, Facebook will allow you to create lists of your friends….colleagues, family, close friends, enemies etc. This means you can share posts with specific lists only rather than sharing every status update with all 500 of your friends. It also means you can easily opt out of getting news updates from certain people.

Ticker
Like Smart Lists, the Ticker has already been launched and you will now see The Ticker in the right corner of your screen continuously feeding you real time updates of what your friends are up to –what they are liking, comments they are making etc. The main real estate of the page is now reserved for the big stuff - your friends’ posts, status updates, pictures etc.

Open Graph
Previously Facebook was about ‘Social Graph’ connecting people. Now it’s become ‘Open Graph’ connecting everything else. Rather than simply being able to ‘Like’ something, you can now share exactly what you are doing online - what you are ‘Reading’, ‘Listening to’, ‘Watching’ etc. And this is where it gets really interesting…

While Timelines are a significant change for users, nobody is really sure how, or indeed if, they are going to affect brands Pages. Facebook didn’t make any specific announcements around Pages but a spokesperson has said “we hope to make Pages more consistent with the new Timeline in the future.” This could suggest that brands need to start building up the history of their business on Facebook, giving them a richer timeline with information on heritage, growth and testimonials, supported by photos and videos. But although this will change how brands are presented on Facebook and hopefully mean more emotional connection and loyalty, it isn’t really going to affect how brands use Facebook or how users interact with them.

Smart lists and the Ticker are of more concern to brands. They allow users to filter what they see in both their main news feed and in the Ticker, which is great if you make the cut, but not so great if you don’t. No longer can a brand think “I’ve got 50,000 likes so I know my posts are appearing in 50,000 news feeds”. People are effectively filtering out brands and business from their Facebook experience. As quickly as Facebook gave us the ability to connect with 800,000,000 people, it’s making it just as easy for them to disconnect from us.

So what does that mean for marketeers? Well essentially this means that it’s more crucial than ever to stimulate and engage your Facebook fans - 1) to keep yourself interesting enough to make the shortlist and 2) to keep yourself visible in the both the Ticker and, more importantly, the news feed. Facebook describes the content for the Ticker as lightweight so you need to ensure that you are a heavyweight with valuable content, photos and videos for example. Since users now have more control over their news feeds, brands with boring or irrelevant updates will have lower visibility and the aim of the game is no longer to simply get your ‘Likes’ up.

Then this brings us on to the beast that is Open Graph or ‘frictionless sharing’ as MZ pitched it. Once you have ‘accepted’ a website it can now post details of your visit or consumption of its content onto Facebook automatically, without any prompt or acceptance. App developers can also define exactly how this interaction is reported – their users don’t have to just ‘Like’ their content they can now ‘Eat’, ‘Sleep’ and ‘Breathe’ it…..or whatever you want them to.

So, for example, you may have noticed in your new Ticker some handy updates like “John is listening to S Club 7 on Spotify”. So my questions are 1) does John want me to know he’s listening to S Club7 and 2) what are the implications of this next level of Big Brother surveillance?

There is some debate about how much Facebook is actually tracking you online. Some believe that every time you visit a webpage that displays the ‘Like’ button Facebook tracks that visit, whether or not you actually ‘Like’ the page. And now if you accept an App it will post this information to your wall, sharing the details about your visit. So for example, if I accepted the Guardian Facebook App (which got 198,000 users in 3 days after the Open Graph announcement!) because I was reading an interesting article I thought my friends might like and then the next week I went on and read an article about how to get rid of smelly feet, before I knew it all my Facebook friends would know I have smelly feet (totally hypothetical of course…)!

From a marketing perspective this opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Facebook is allowing your customers to publicise their interactions with your brand. It means deep personalisation with immense customer intelligence and the opportunity to amplify brand engagement. But it also means another ‘currency’ in which consumers are paying for content and services online. Rather than asking us to pay to watch videos, read articles etc., companies are going to start asking us to accept open graph. We allow them to find out everything about us, and promote their brand and in return they will grant us access to more content.

This is fine for companies whose products are consumed online, but isn’t it harder for everyone else? At the moment restaurants, bars etc. rely on check-ins for Facebook users to help spread the word, but check-ins are prompted not automatic based on online consumption. One would presume that this is the next step; soon we will automatically be checked-in to places without confirming that we want to. Therefore my main concern with this whole ‘frictionless sharing’ thing is… how am I supposed to pull a sickie when I’ve automatically been checked in at a bar at 3am...?!

Working In The Cloud

hello@codegent.com (Kevin Danaher) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:24:28 GMT

It seems the phrase "in the cloud" is used with great enthusiasm nowadays by just about every technology company around. Obviously the thinking is that people will respond with as much excitement at the idea. However, working in the tech industry it's become clear to me that only others in my line of work fully understand "the cloud" what working in the cloud means and what it can do for you.

So I'm going to take it upon myself this month to give a brief overview of cloud services, what they are, what they can do and what ones might be useful to you at home or work for everyday purposes.

So what is the cloud?

Honestly, it's tough to say exactly what the cloud is as the term is bandied around so much now and with various meanings. Boiling it down to the basic idea, "working in the cloud" is the facility to work online, with the item you're working on never really existing on the local machine but instead safely stored elsewhere. This gives you the useful ability to access your files from any computer as the machine you're working on is irrelevant as long as you're connected to the web.

As a quick aside I just want to point out that true "cloud computing" rather than "working in the cloud" means that a computer elsewhere does the brunt of the work for you, releiving the load on your machine. On an ongoing basis cloud computing like this is continuing to grow and will mean even low-end machines can run CPU and GPU intensive applications because all that power is coming from another machine, somewhere else in the world. Perhaps you'll even be able to get simple and cheap set-top boxes for your HDTV to allow tasks like this, much like the new service onlive does for gaming.

What services are out there and how can they help me? Overall there are loads, so I'm just going to cover a few of the big ones which are hugely popular and have practical everyday uses.

General Office Work

We all know what this means, documents, spreadsheets, the daily neccesities. There are two major cloud services that allow you to do all of this and luckily they're both free!

First off let's start with the market standard for editing your office documents, Microsoft Office, which has a really fantastic cloud based version called Office Live. Now Microsoft weren't the first to offer a cloud based Office alternative, they somehow let Google beat them to it but I'll get to that later. What they do have now though is a truly viable alternative to the full Microsoft Office Suite for desktop systems, which runs right in your browser. How do you get it? Go to www.live.com and sign in, it's likely you already have an account anyway as they have so many other online services. If you've been tolive.com before you may not have even noticed Office Live but hold your mouse over Skydrive and you'll get the option to start a new word, excel or powerpoint document. You can also click on your documents folder and view any documents you already have. I wont go into the specifics of what you can do with Word, Excel and Powerpoint as you probably already know, what you get here is a basic level of functionality which is instantly recognisable and usable.

So how does Office Live work seamlessly in the cloud? Well if you're on any computer at all you can browse to the site and use it. Your document is saved to the skydrive so you can log in somewhere else and carry on later. If you've got office 2010 then you can hook it up to your windows live account and work directly on documents stored on the skydrive too but with full desktop fuctionality. Lastly, if you have a Windows Phone then Office mobile on that also syncs to the skydrive and lets you work on those documents in the cloud too, so however you work and from whatever machine you can use Office Live.

Now onto the biggest competitor and the guys who very much got a head start in this arena, Google, with their offering of Google Docs. Google docs is over 5 years old now and like almost every other Google service is wildly popular. It offers much the same suite of services as Office Live, with a couple of differences.

How do you get it? Simple, go to www.google.com and sign in with your Google account. Then click Documents in the Google menu bar at the top of your browsing area. From here you're taken to a view which allows you to see all the documents you already have and arrange them by last viewed, date, etc. There's a handily big create button which allows you to select a kind of document to create and start from scratch, similar to Office Live you've got Document, Spreadsheet and Presentation types, which have nice basic functionalities much like Microsoft's offering. With Google docs you can also create forms and drawings too, which is a nice addition, they're pretty basic too but very useful, the drawing tool for example allows you to create basic sketches in 2D or 3D environments.

So how does Google Docs work seamlessly in the cloud? Just like Office live you can browse to the site and use it from any computer at all. You're document is saved with basically every edit you make, almost per letter in fact. So you can just close your browser and carry on when logging in elsewhere later. There's not a downloadable app for Google Docs, Google don't try to compete with Microsoft on the desktop Office software front. Google docs is entirely cloud based for home computers, so it's browser only. On your mobile handset it's also easy to access through the browser and works great on Android mobiles and tablets or iOS phones and pads. If you're on and Android device there is of course a docs app, making it even easier.

One final difference between Office Live and Google Docs is Office Live's inclusion of OneNote, Microsoft's handy alternative to opening a full office doc when all you want are a few notes. In the browser you can click to create a new notebook. You can then do this every time or open an existing notebook and just add new pages of notes, Windows Phone syncs this too, in fact it is the note taking app for that smartphone platform, so any notes you take on your phone always exist in the cloud. Finally Office 2010's desktop version sits OneNote in your system tray so you can call it up, jot a note and then hide it again quickly, syncing to the skydrive the whole time of course.

So why did I leave OneNote's cloud feature's last to mention? Because I'm about to talk about another great note taking app which is a good alternative if you don't need full office functionality but rather just cloud based brain dumps. It's simpler than Office Live or Google Docs but that's the point, some people will prefer simplicity, so here it is... Evernote!

Evernote has been around a few years now and there's a version of the app for all the major smart phone platforms as well as Mac and Windows. There's also a browser based "web clipper" as they call it. Evernote isn't comprehensive like the other two offerings, it aims to be a cloud based memory for you basically and it does it very well.

So how do you get it? Go to www.evernote.com and sign up for an account basically. From there you can start using the web clipper straigh away to jot notes that are saved in your account or add a whole webpage you want to read later to a note. Then, when you're out and about download the version for your smart phone too and you can do a lot more stuff like snap a photo which will sync to your Evernote account or add a document like a travel itinerary or map as a note. Best of all, the basic functions of evernote are free, you can get a premium version with more online space, note revision histories and a few more extras but the basic functionality will be enough for most private or business users.

So, onto another type of cloud service...

Basic, (no nonsense) Cloud Storage

The premise of this category is online storage for all your files, of any kind, so not just documents but whatever you want really. Ideally this should happen seamlessly and without your knowledge so you can just rely on it and get your files from anywhere, whenever you like. There are loads of these kind of services out there really but I'm just going to cover two which are widely considered the best.

Firstly Dropbox is probably the best known of the bunch and is just really smooth and simple, even for the novice user. So where do you get it?www.dropbox.com of course. Once you've created your dropbox account then download the client. You can get it for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and Blackberry OS and the install process is simple all round. After install sign in using the client and it will ask you to choose a folder on the local machine to be your dropbox folder, from this point on anything you add to this folder will be synced online.

What this fundamentally means is that if you install the client on each computer you use there will be a folder on all your computers which is always the same, all your documents on all your computers, handy right? So what if you're on a computer you shouldn't really be installing things on? Don't worry, you can log into your account on the website too and download any of your synced files and folders directly onto that computer, then when you're done with them upload via the website to update the files again. It's not as seamless but really does give you everywhere access to your stuff. Dropbox gives you 2Gb of online space for files but you can get an extra 250Mb by referring someone, up to a total of 8Gb for free. There's also premium options so you can pay for more space in staggered amounts or a get a huge, business size Dropbox.

Okay, so what's the alternative I mentioned earlier? Well it's another Microsoft product called Windows Live Mesh. Noticing the Windows Live theme among their products? Microsoft have been terrible at unifying their products in the past but in the last few years the Windows Live brand has been pretty well integrated if not marketed. As such this service ties in with the Office Live service I mentioned earlier, using the same account.

So how do you get it? Well there are versions available for Windows and Mac which you can download by logging into your account on www.live.comholding your cursor over the windows live logo and selecting the downloads option. Like hiding stuff don't they! Set up is easy, it's the standard Microsoft Live installer and will appear in your start menu or applications folder after that. The first time you run it you select a folder to sync and after that it does exactly that, syncs whatever you put in that folder to your skydrive and to whatever other computers have Live Mesh installed, Live Mesh can actually sync multiple folders which gives you pretty good felxibility. It's completely seamless like Dropbox, occuring in the background so all your files are always there, whatever computer you're on. If you're on a computer that doesn't have Live Mesh installed then you can also access your files through the www.live.com site in your browser by looking through your Skydrive page and downloading them and uploading files there. This merges well with Office Live as I mentioned before as if any of the files are spreadsheets, documents or presentations you can start editing them right there in the browser.

So there you have it, a few options to get you into the world of working in the cloud. As cloud computing is a huge growth market at the moment there are plenty more options out there but hopefully these productivity options ideal for personal and business use will get you started.

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:25:12 GMT

Another month and another light-hearted rant in a series that we have called “Grind my gears” after the popular US cartoon, Family Guy.

This month up 2012.

Not the Olympics and what life might be like in living and working in London, or the outlook for our economy and the way it seems to be sluggishly making its way to another year or underwhelming growth.

No, the thing that really grinds my gears is the fact that right now we appear to be living in the year 2011 (pronounced two thousand and eleven), whereas on the strike of midnight on 31st December, we’ll be in 2012 (pronounced twenty twelve). So why the change in the structure of how we pronounce the year?

"Is that it? Is that your gripe for the month"? I can almost hear you saying. OK it’s not a massive issue, but doesn’t that kind of thing bug you? It’s the sort of thing that I lie awake thinking about and I’ve got a 10 month old baby at home, so lying awake really does grind my gears.

I can kind of understand why we had two thousand and six because pronouncing 2006 as twenty six would just make it sound like 26. But, in theory, we could have just switched to twenty ten once that confusion could be avoided. But we didn’t. We stuck to the two thousand and ten pronunciation, maybe out of a sense of continuity or a feeling that twenty ten sounded a bit too zingy. As in, “Hey catch ya on the flip-side in twenty ten, dude”.

I think, however, that when we won the Olympics back in 2006, we all somehow assumed that 2012 would be pronounced in the same way as 2020 or 1980 and so it became part of our collective consciousness. But once we get to 2012, will we carry on the tradition in 2013 and beyond, or will we revert back to two thousand and thirteen? I just don't know.

All this led me to wonder what they did at the beginning of the last century. Did they ever say nineteen hundred and eleven or was it always nineteen eleven? We all know how we pronounce the 1914-18 war, but are we only seeing that through the benefit of history? We refer to 1908 as nineteen o eight but did they say it like that? I think that once we have got used to the pronunciation of 2012, we’ll refer backwards to the years 2011 and 2010 in the same way and so the notion that it was ever two thousand and eleven will be lost to history.

And while we’re on the subject, when we were in the 1980s and the 1990s it was easy to refer to them as the eighties and nineties. We occasionally hear reference to the years 2000-09 being the naughties but it somehow feels cumbersome and trying to be a bit funny so most people don’t bother. But if naughties is the correct term, what are the hinter years before we reach the twenties supposed to be called? The teens? Surely not – it’s not even accurate: you wouldn’t call an eleven-year old a teenager. Maybe the tens?

Anyway, these things shouldn’t occupy my mind. They don’t matter, people don’t get sick, nobody cares and the world doesn’t fall over because of it and I have more important things to be contemplating. But, folks it’s the very fact that I can’t help myself and now I’ve wasted another 20 minutes of my time writing about it (and if you've got this far, a couple of minutes of yours too), that really grinds my gears.

Third Thursday - September News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:54:56 GMT

It's the Third Thursday of the month... already!

Codegent Curry Club

Other links referenced...

Patent Wars

hello@codegent.com (Kevin Danaher) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:54:01 GMT

Recent months have seen patent law suit stories hogging the headlines of broadsheets, tech websites and blogs. It is becoming a popular debate in the digital industry, and seems to be getting bigger and more common by the day. Patent law isn’t a new concept, they’ve been knocking around since 500BC, and I don’t think anyone would argue that they’ve done a pretty good job of fostering innovation. King Henry VI in 1449 granted the world’s first 20 year patent to John Of Utyman for demonstrating the creation of coloured glass in England – a genuine advance in design that was well worth paying for, but there’s a limit to how far patents should be allowed to go. I think we are seeing that limit become increasingly obvious in the smartphone and digital tablet market. Making it a frustrating, time-consuming period for developers and users.

To make sure we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet - A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor, on agreement that they have created a particular product that is new, non- obvious and useful or industrially applicable. This written patent gives all the rights to the inventor and prevents others from making similar products, using or selling this product without the owner’s permission. When owning a patent you have the right to sell, license, assign or transfer your product. The space of time you own the patent for can vary depending on countries and international agreements, but must be re-issued and updated when out of date to stop others from using your idea.

As I said, the most notable patent problems at the moment surround the Smartphone and tablet market. Each smartphone may involve as many as 250,000 patent claims. Very recently infact (9th September 2011) patent law has seen Apple take Samsung to court in Germany, claiming that Samsung infringed the recognisable iPad design. The court judge Johanna Brueckner-Hoffman highlighted “the minimalist, modern form is a clear impression of similarity”, and had the Samsung Galaxy Tab removed from sale in the majority of European countries. However, the ban has now been lifted from European countries, apart from Germany, and put on hold while the court reviews whether the original ruling was appropriate. People are desperate to get their hands on these pieces of technology; a ban in Germany is not going to stop them importing it from other countries.

Apple and Samsung will also face each other in courtrooms in Australia, North America and Asia over similar claims. This appears to be a legitimate claim, with Apple at the forefront of design, they have created a new product that has a unique look and appeal for the digital market. The original iPad and the iPad2 have become iconic design symbols for 2011, surely no one can get away with creating something so similar.

While that claim might be at least vaguely sensible, we are starting to see a lot more that don’t sound so genuine. With claims of Google buying a patent, then selling it to HTC who promptly uses it to sue Apple it almost appears that each of these competitors are trying to get one over on each other. One-upmanship on a huge scale, with everyone being sued by everyone else, the only way to get one up and make their money back, is by finding another patent law they can buy, and then sue others for breaching it.

The growing popularity and potential profit of suing for breach of patents seems to be creating an influx of companies setting up businesses just to get money out of others. Therefore creating what appear to be ridiculous patents, for example LCC created a patent on sending confidential information over the internet, and is now suing large companies such as Microsoft and Monster.com.

Another crazy patent involves a court spending two months reviewing 675,000 pages of documents about a pattern on toilet roll. Yes, toilet roll, Georgia-Pacific claimed that Kimberley–Clark’s use of an embossed diamond pattern on Cottonelle violated its trademark and patents for a similar pattern used on Quilted Northern since the early 1990s.

Here are some of the strangest patents I have come across recently:

Buttock Parter - International Patent W002069773
Yes, that is a patent that parts your buttocks while you sit on the toilet seat.

Poop Catcher - German Patent DE4020440
One end of this devise connects where the sun doesn’t shine, and the other is connected to an all purpose suction pump. I think you can picture the rest for yourself.

Unicorn Maker - US Patent US4429685
This bizarre patent demonstrates how to create a unicorn by joining the two horns of a goat together creating one central horn. Abracadabra a unicorn.

Santa Claus Detector - US Patent US5523741
This child’s Christmas device uses its inbuilt power source to flash and tell you when Santa has arrived.

This has been quite the topic of conversation in the Codegent office recently, you can see why in this BBC News article.

The Long game: Users as products

hello@codegent.com (Kevin Danaher) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:53:20 GMT

This week the world’s favourite micro-blogging site Twitter announced that it’s crossed the 100 Million users mark. Quite an achievement for any online business and let us not forget that Twitter is a business. Their most recent round of venture capital funding will leave their value at 8 Billion dollars, but where’s the money coming from to justify that value?

Well as we all know, Twitter currently makes no money, it’s free to users and is a bottomless pit for the aforementioned funding. So what are the market speculators valuing at 8 Billion dollars? The site and all its posts? The technology behind the service itself? No, of course not. That myriad of information (purely narcissistic, or otherwise) although interesting is worth nothing, even the news reported on Twitter is usually a short version of what exists elsewhere in a much more readable form. Even the infrastructure itself over the years of R&D and redesign is probably worth somewhere from a few hundred thousand to a few million at the most (although the 24/7 running costs must be remarkable).

So what’s worth 8 Billion US Dollars to the many investors who keep Twitter running? You.
Quick calculation $8,000,000,000 ÷ 100,000,000 = $80

That’s pretty reasonable! Each user being worth $80 is a great deal, for it is you that they own. Unlike Facebook, to date Twitter seems to remain relatively unscathed in this regard. Facebook has come under plenty of fire for user privacy issues in the last 12 months. Mostly this is because Facebook is very clear that the user is their particular commodity, but people don’t like being seen this way. Facebook knows all about you, what you like, where you go, who you talk to.

Twitter is no different. It knows who you follow and therefore what you like. It knows who you tweet to and even where you are when you tweet. The reason it has escaped criticism is largely because it hasn’t taken advantage of this. Yet! But at some point the investors will want their $8 Billion back. Thus the conversation has been sparked, how long will it be until Twitter introduces advertising to their service?

On a wider level this has happened on similar services and successfully too. Google for example saturate you in advertising throughout all their services. They are so good at it though, the advertising itself is so subtle and so well targeted, that users rarely find it irritating. However, they achieve this in much the same way as Facebook, that being collection of personal data. Google know all about you, it’s just not as obvious as Facebook, who are recently the whipping boy for privacy issue gripes.

In fact, when Google bought out YouTube for close to $1.7 Billion in late 2006 they began the process of heavily commercialising the site. At first this resulted in the usual condemnation of any change but has been largely embraced and accepted by the sites users. And no doubt it’s this advertising that brings in the much needed running capital to ensure a site as complex as YouTube keeps going.

The fact is social media companies treat the user as a product, that’s just an underlying principle of online business. If you (the consumer) appear to be getting something for free, then you are the product. Overall, we have to recognise that this is a trend which is prevalent online now, the long game is king.

As members of this industry the strategy of these companies should be obvious to us, find a niche and populate that niche with great content for free. This will draw thousands, millions or even hundreds of millions of users to you. Once traction is that high, sell these users (or at least access to their prefrontal cortex’s) to the highest bidders.

Sounds horrific, doesn’t it but it’s actually not always a bad thing. The reason Facebook came under such scrutiny was their willingness to share user’s details with partners by default. If user’s have the ability to control what’s shared then bad press can be easily prevented, unfortunately Facebook learned this the hard way. That said, the other usage of our information by Facebook was internal, Facebook’s servers simply determined which, of their myriad of available adverts, were relevant to us. This actually works and personally I find it’s always showing me things I’m genuinely interested in. Google’s extensive algorithms seem to do much the same, with plenty of advertising, but all of it related to the searches I’ve made and hence, things I’m interested in.

We can only hope that lessons learned by others are taken into account when Twitter inevitably begins leveraging their huge user base for something more profitable. If adverts appear in my feeds which are relevant to me I should be happy, right? It’s a balance of course; most users accept that adverts are needed to support their favourite sites and services. This is still a learning period and both sides need to forge some tolerance. Users need to understand that who they are and what they like is up for grabs and online services need to understand there’s a limit to this, users will only tolerate being owned by their favourite service if that trust isn’t abused.

Creatives, make the most of your day

hello@codegent.com (Karine Tonson la Tour) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:52:14 GMT

As a creative in a medium-sized digital agency, I often find myself juggling five different projects at a time. It demands concentration, finesse and a great playlist (I recommend Yuksek). I appreciate these moments, they create adrenaline and are hugely motivating.

When a big wave of work passes, and all the designs have been sent, it's suddenly a lot calmer at my desk. I call it the “waiting for feedback” period, or the “in between” stage. It can be great, but as someone who thrives on pressure, I don’t like sitting there with nothing to do. So I’ve come up with a list of things I do, that you may find useful.

You'll thank yourself later

Your personal library
When it’s hectic, you need things quick: photos, icons, buttons. Looking for them on a website, designing them, or picking them from another file costs precious time that you could be using more productively. So I bring them all together on the same PSD. Having everything together in the same place means no mucking around. Organise it like a pro and name all the layers. Doing this from the offset means you won't have to re-name each one of them on your final design... and we all know that’s a pain.

Be consistent with guidelines
Having all sorts of raspberry shaded colours for your links, or 5 different sized fonts, all fighting for their supremacy within your design, is always going to start looking like a dog’s dinner in no time. Templaters will be pulling their hair out on the development side if you present them with something inconsistent. So I create guidelines. A base on a photoshop file with the HTML colour codes, the font used, and the size for title, subtitle and content. Being as precise as possible, I use it for each of my projects instead of creating a new one. Then all I have to do is pick up elements as and when I need them.

Look forward

Wave your “availability flag”
When I’m not 100% work mad and I’ve finished my projects, I happily let my mind wander. This is the time to go for a walk around the office, wave your availability flag and be nosy. Designer mates might need help. Project managers may bring some new insight on future projects; or your boss might have some news on upcoming pitches.

Discover what's going on around you
Being up to date with what’s going on in the agency isn’t everything, it’s also really important to know what's happening outside the office in the fields of design, gadgets and informatics. Everything evolves so quickly in the digital world and technology is developing constantly. It's important to know what you are talking about and what is, and isn’t possible.

If I get any down time, I go hunting through my “Must read this!” bookmarks. Mashable, Smashing, and many other art/digital magazines are on the list. Igoogle normally has some tasty news. Thinking about what’s going on outside your immediate environment can pay dividends, Tmobile did this brilliantly with their adaptation of the Royal Wedding (around 23 million views) http://www.youtube.com/user/lifesforsharing?ob=5.

Hang around on your favourite design blogs and refresh your mind. Check out your competitors’ websites. And my personal favourite: awards websites. I'm always amazed by some ideas and it helps me think deeper and forget about boundaries. I am the design eyes of the agency; so if I find something great, I like to share it.

Open your mind, observe and learn

Watch out for great exhibitions
Plan your weekend. I am a pro when it comes to last minute planned weekends. Time Out London, Spoonfed and other websites are packed full of arty days outs. British people, you don't know how lucky you are being able to step in a museum for free. I had to pay a fortune back in France to access Beaubourg, le Louvres and le Musée de l'Orangerie, even with my Art student card! So now I visit exhibitions as often as I can: pop into galleries and practice street photography with my old Olympus. It teaches me to think about my shots and act with my mind rather than my finger. There is always a book shop on the way treasuring interesting books about Design, Art and Digital. Things you've seen, photos you’ve taken, people you've talked to, places you've discovered will all inspire you.

Ask Techies
I’ve never understood the distinction between designers and techies: after all we all do both, it’s just that my specialism is in the look and feel and theirs is in the build. Designers have to be technically aware and techies need to be creative - or at least they do in the world of digital. So, if I have an idea, however outlandish… I find picking a developer’s brain can pay dividends.

Back on the bench
In design, you need to be proficient in several softwares: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects... and their versions evolves all the time. There are always new shortcuts, new actions, new filters... if watching tutorials is not enough it's time for a course. Constructively use some of your free time to look out for interesting courses to improve your current skills, or help develop new ones. Photography is great for being able to master all sides of a photo shoot. Yoga or strategy courses to calm yourself, focus, and inspire your inner temple. Anything that helps you discover the unknown, gives you added value and helps you enjoy life.

Projects immersion
Finally, one of my multimedia professors told us once to be passionate about your projects. That was one of his main criticisms, you must be able to understand the subject fully and you must produce a piece of design in complete symbiosis with its purpose, respecting its target. To illustrate his point he told us about a salsa website he was working on that made him end up in a ... salsa class (if you saw him you’d find that hard to believe). Anyway, I’m waiting for a luxury spa project.

So, immerse yourself in your project, become the target, read books and magazines around a subject, think about it all the time, become a geek.

Or... write an article and enjoy your downtime, however fleeting it may be.

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (Kevin Danaher) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:49:26 GMT

I’m recently new to Codegent but I’ve been working in London for a long time and there’s one thing that really grinds my gears lately. Not involving work, or home, or the digital world but rather all three, that being the bit in between, the journey to work.

Now I’m happy to admit that I’m a bit of slave to the digital world myself, I’ll agree that we’re in a new age of digital connectivity and therefore the easy access we have to the internet just about everywhere can greatly enhance our lives. Increasingly we can interact with the world in incredible ways through tiny devices we all carry in our pockets. I’m completely up for that by the way.

Just the other day I was out in London and spotted a lovely view of the Thames, which I snapped and popped onto Facebook, for my friends and family to enjoy, within a few seconds. While looking for a decent lunch in the West End recently I simply typed restaurants into my smart phone and saw every restaurant local to me. This was unheard of until recent years and is extraordinarily useful.

So these devices can enhance our interaction with the real world in a truly profound way, giving us information about the world, letting us record the world, even allowing us to enhance it. One thing I think people forget though is that they do live in the real world. I probably read my email and the news on my smart phone every morning and while sitting on the train this is easy. However, I then put my phone in my pocket and depart the train to walk to the office.

Some people though, have a very difficult time taking their eyes off the tiny screen that populates their vision. I’ve genuinely seen the train doors open and the person standing in front didn’t even move due to their smart phone induced stupor, causing what is popularly known as a Blackberry jam behind them.

People are texting and walking into the road obliviously, or into other people, or walking incredibly slowly down the pavement causing everyone behind them to move at a snail’s pace. I was just trying to get to work, I didn’t expect to be doing the conga through Wandsworth at 9am, I’d have dressed up a bit if only I’d known.

What I’m saying is, okay, great, we have cool smart phones. They can do some great things, brightening our experiences of the world and the way we interact with it. So if you’re wandering down the street browsing the net fair enough, the digital world is a vibrant addictive place. Just don’t do it in a very busy station, or while crossing the road, or piloting a shuttle mission or basically… in front of me. It just really grinds my gears!

Third Thursday - August News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:17:30 GMT

It's the Third Thursday of the month and we are both in the office!

A focus group for our Clever Kids iPad Puzzle Game

Other links referenced...

Our 'Responsive' Learn Apps Website
Clever Kids First Puzzles Learning Game
Building Trust Online - Airbnb User Safety
Tuborg Promotion with 4Music
We are seeking a Project Manager - know anyone good?

Going responsive for Learn Apps

hello@codegent.com (Maxime Boulin) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:53:32 GMT

The way we browse the Web has changed. People no longer only use desktops or laptop computers: they consume the Web through a multitude of mobile devices, sporting all kinds of screen shapes and resolutions.

The traditional fixed-width layout doesn't really cut it anymore. People expect to be able to view sites on their phones just like they do on their desktop computer. Sites need to adapt to these different browsers and screen resolutions. But what's the right way to do it?

The common response has been for sites to provide a mobile version as a nice little "extra". That's good, but it doesn't always mean the site will display nicely on an iPad or non-iOS mobile devices. This also often means developers will have to maintain two distinct websites, with their own sets of content.

Unfortunately, this doesn't scale well, and it restricts access to the content to only a few selected devices.

The better way to do it is with what we call Responsive Web Design.

The idea behind Responsive Web Design is that the websites' layout and design should adapt to fit any device that chooses to display it.

As Ethan Marcotte explains, "Rather than tailoring disconnected designs to each of an ever-increasing number of web devices, we can treat them as facets of the same experience. We can design for an optimal viewing experience, but embed standards-based technologies into our designs to make them not only more flexible, but more adaptive to the media that renders them."

This is why last week, codegent released a revamped, responsive and mobile-friendly website for our Learn Apps. The site is still a work in progress (there's a few things that need to be ironed out), but we think it's good enough to take a little tour today!

Learn Apps homepage as seen on a desktop browser

The homepage adapting to smaller resolutions

Here's the effect in video

The Learn Thai page adapting to various resolutions

Some small details that make the difference:

One website "code", working on a wide range of desktop as well as mobile browsers (including Safari Mobile, Firefox Mobile, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini)
The header "Our Apps" dropdown is automatically replaced by a Select dropdown for ease of use on mobile devices (ie. works with touch screens devices as well as non-touch screens devices).
The iPhone and iPod will see an iPhone 4 capture of the apps, while Android handsets should see captures from a Nexus S
The Contact form uses the JavaScript library called "Chosen" to make it easier for users to find and select apps/devices, by replacing the default Select dropdown with a custom dropdown with auto-complete search (on desktop browsers)

We invite you to go through the website yourself: www.codegent.com/learnapps and have a play!

We are quite pleased with the results so far, and are thrilled to offer more "responsiveness" in future projects! Let us know what you think in the comments.

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (Nicola Copsey) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:49:46 GMT

Welcome to 'what really grinds my gears' - a corner of the Codegent blog to vent about the things that are getting under our skin. Lately for me, a digital Project Manager here at Codegent, it has to be mobile sites, or probably the lack of suitably designed mobile sites.

With more users switching to using the internet on the move, it's now even more important for websites to have a suitable mobile version which can easily be accessed by mobile handsets. We’re not just talking about having a mobile site suitable for iPhone and iPad users. Apps have become a crucial accessory to the Smartphone user.

The experience for the mobile user should be quick, and smooth. Allowing them to access the content they’re trying to get to without blocking them with functionality limitations, such as “this site requires Flash to access this content” and “sorry, this content isn’t available for your device”. Like every other mobile user, when I am out and about, I need to check my e-mail, reply to messages, and check out a street address on a map. All of these things you can easily do nowadays on mobile sites, except for maybe the mobile maps (you still need an App for that).

Mobile sites should be friendly for all mobile users. Not everyone is using an app-friendly handset. Remember not to alienate your customers and audience by not considering their needs. We understand you can’t give a user full functionality on a simple mobile version of your site, but give them the crucial elements they need to use your site.

Bearing that in mind, here are my top tips you should consider when designing a mobile version of your website:

1) Prioritise your content.
Mobile sites usually include only the most crucial information, including time- and location-specific functions and features.

2) Keep the graphics light on your mobile site.
Images take time to download, and when you’re mobile, time is money, quite literally in data fees from your provider!

3) Navigation
Let your user get from A to B and back to A again with a simple navigation. Research shows that vertical navigation works best on mobile sites, with over 90% of sites using a vertical navigation instead of horizontal.

Give me the information I need in a quick and timely fashion, keeping me on time and not wound up by error messages. And that is what will keep me from grinding my gears!

Should social media be banned during riots?

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:32:00 GMT

Wow. Only a few months ago, Karine wrote an article about how for the first time social media had allowed people a taste of freedom during recent uprisings in places like Egypt and Libya.

And here we are wondering whether social media is a menace as it appeared to be so central to the recent riots and looting in the UK. As David Cameron told the Commons:

“When people are using social media for violence we need to stop them”

As we all know, Twitter and Blackberry Messaging appears to have been widely used to organise and even incite groups of rioters firstly in London and then further afield to other cities in the UK. With this in mind, should the authorities somehow shut down access to these services if a similar thing happened again?

Is it practically possible to shut down ‘social media’?
Yes and no. In the UK it would be disastrous for the government to completely shut down all internet traffic because so much business now relies on it and frankly it would be ridiculous. So they would have to lean on ISPs and people like RIM who own Blackberry Messenger to block specific sites and applications.

Is it right to do so?
It’s part of the human condition to want to explain things in a simple way. As designers and information architects, a lot of what we do is about organising content to make it easy for people to assimilate. Nobody has the time or inclination to go through a list of pages to work out which ones they might want to read, instead they rely on visual signposts and grouping of content.

In explaining why so many (mainly) young people took to the streets, destroyed buildings and helped themselves to other’s property, the same thing applies. It’s variously been concluded that bits of society are simply “sick” or they are just greedy opportunists, or that the corruption shown by politicians has somehow given them a sense that if you can get away with it, then it’s OK. Others have said they were just bored or having a laugh or simply swept up in a tide of excitement fuelled by social media.

It’s all too easy to say that one thing is the problem and so much harder to say in a headline or a soundbite that lots of combinations of factors may have been at play. Which is partly why I think that shutting down “social media” however that is defined, would probably not have the desired effect and sets a dangerous precedent.

Put it this way, people have been rioting way before social media was invented. In 1985, during the Broadwater riots that culminated in a policeman being hacked to death, there was no pre-digital equivalent of Twitter that galvanized people into action. Social media may make the process easier and faster to disseminate, but it’s people, not technology, that starts riots.

And who is to say what constitutes civil disobedience.? Isn’t one man’s demonstration another man’s riot? The student marches earlier this year and the public sector workers one more recently, were by and large peaceful. But when one moron starts swinging from the Cenotaph or another lobs a fire extinguisher from a roof, should that trigger an instant shut-down of social media?

There’s another thing, too that goes back to the unrest in Egypt and Libya. When protestors were using social media to communicate with people, we in the democratic West were shaking our heads in horror that any government would be so scared of the will of the people that they would be prepared to shut down their right to communicate with each other online. We start shutting down social media in the UK, for whatever justification, we lose that moral high ground.

From the printing press to the internet, every time any advancement in communications is invented, the people tasked with ruling us get twitchy. They feel the need to control and restrict it. But I don’t think it’s down to the people we elect to decide how or with whom we communicate. Of course this makes things harder for the authorities, but so it should be: having the freedoms we enjoy have been hard-won and we shouldn’t give anyone who wants to take them from us an easy ride.

Building Trust Online - Airbnb User Safety

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:38:18 GMT

Is user verification an essential part of your business?

Many websites rely on their users' identity to be verified in order to create trust, especially when it comes to the exchange of money or even to ensure physical safety.

If you follow any of the major tech blogs you will have heard about the nightmares that Airbnb, the highly valued online marketplace for peer-to-peer travelling, have had recently. Airbnb enables people to earn money by renting out extra space, and offers travellers a viable alternative to hotels and hostels. However, after one blogger’s flat in San Francisco was ransacked by a “guest” concerns over safety and security were raised by the community.

Airbnb have rapidly added a load of new security features to their platform, including our very own Webcam Snapper app to help validate user identity.

Snapper is just one ingredient though so I thought it would be interesting to list the forms of verification they are using to build up a comprehensive user trust profile.

Webcam Photos
This is ideal for helping you build trust that your users are who they say they are. A webcam photo taken whilst the user is logged into their account is far more likely to be authentic. Photos can also be date stamped and you can also request the user holds up an ID cards, driving licenses or passport to add further proof.
Validating a Phone Number
Entering your mobile number and being sent a code automatically via SMS to input is pretty simple but very effective. Of course not all mobile numbers lead to trackable contracted folks but having a verified contact number is helpful.
Connecting your Social Network Profiles
Over the past couple of years we have seen the rise of social logins where users can create accounts on websites and apps by authorising facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. to act on their behalf. Originally this was designed for convenience and end user security. However this use case is all about extending the digital footprint of a person for trust verification purposes. LinkedIn is an especially interesting use case here as an account on this platform very much places the user profile in a real life context.
User on User Reviews
The power of comments from total strangers has meant big business for the likes of Amazon, Apple, eBay and Trip Advisor and this is no different. Over time the web has built up a degree of community, camaraderie and social responsibility amongst total strangers with a unified goal. The principle being that if we collectively share our thoughts and experiences we can all benefit from better products and services, as well as avoiding disasters!

Taken one by one none of the above (sadly even Snapper) can realistically say they crack the issue of online trust. However as a collective they build a compelling picture of a person that would be very hard to fake. Dodgy users are clearly not going to try and follow these steps which will weed them out as potential people to avoid.

In that regard Airbnb can say with some conviction that home owners enter into deals at their own risk. The vast majority of good apples won’t have any issues with that.

Third Thursday - July News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:14:59 GMT

It's the Third Thursday of the month and continuing the theme of exotic locations I am in Italy.

Links referenced...

Codegent selected for the BBC Digital Design Roster
The new 4Music site
Our Learn App Series (table below)

THAI	CHINESE	KOREAN	JAPANESE
iPhone Lite	iPhone Lite	iPhone Lite	iPhone
iPhone Pro	iPhone Pro	iPhone Pro
iPad	iPad	iPad	iPad
Android Lite	Android Lite	Android Lite	Android Lite
Android Pro	Android Pro	Android Pro	Android Pro

Google+ the cornerstone of social networks

hello@codegent.com (Karine Tonson la Tour) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:52:20 GMT

Since Google+ was unveiled on June 28th 2011, its propagation has known no boundaries. It’s everywhere - on the internet, on mobile, on tablets - has attracted 18 million users in less than a month and a billion shares per day. People are begging for invitations, a tactic that increased interest dramatically, just as it worked for Facebook’s launch.

With "+1" popping up everywhere, it looks like it soon will be naturally integrated into the landscape. We’re discovering exactly what it offers and are clicking everywhere like thrilled kids in front of a smart new toy, ready to compare and dissect. But we must face it…

It’s the same, but slightly different

Google + is the social networking side of Google and has many traits that we are familiar with from other social networks.

First, it allows you to rate webpages and share them with your contacts like Stumble Upon. Sites recommended by your friends will have a lot more value and will make your browsing easier and safer.

Second, you can chat on Google+ and have video conferences like on Skype. You can also leave messages, share pictures, albums, videos and links like on Facebook and Twitter.

If you are on the go, you can check-in and be joined by your friends as per Foursquare. You could even turn your Google+ feed into a blog, not far from what Tumblr offers.

You start to notice that Google+ has borrowed pieces of everything and mixed them together. This is networking made easy because it’s all on the same platform and this is how it's different.

A friend of mine used to complain about how much work she had to put into her social networking life. Updating her news on Twitter and Facebook, writing articles for her blog, adding pictures on Instagram, it’s a real workout considering she is also a busy young mother.

Google+ gives you an easier life. The all-in-one package rather than needing to download applications, register, familiarise yourself and post across multiple networks, wasting time that could be spent at a good gig enjoying life.

The plus of Google+

Not only is Google+ combining many networks, it also brings all your contacts together. AH! At last. Drag and drop your contacts into organised ‘circles’ to avoid an embarrassing post meant for your friends being read by your boss, and instead of running between Facebook (friendship orientated) to Twitter (work and acquaintance related) all you have to do is select a circle before posting. You have your family circle, your work circle and any more you want in order to be extra accurate when posting: "Geeks", "BFF", "Band of ducks"… be creative!

More seriously, this circle concept is particularly interesting when working on team projects. Imagine being able to create a Project Team circle that everybody can join without having to download anything. Members can share ideas, pictures, videos and comments on this platform and make your project progress faster. Easy.

In the past, we’ve had clients thrilled by the idea of putting social media icons all over the place. Well now, one will be enough: Google +. However it does raise the question will the two main social networks, Twitter and Facebook, survive?

The interface of Google+ looks like an improved version of Facebook with even more features. I believe people will choose simplicity and shift to Google+ unless Facebook comes up with a brilliant idea. It would be time for them indeed: studies have revealed that people are closing their Facebook accounts, tired of it and its privacy issues.

On the Twitter side, the concept of tweeting small and quick notes is not clearly present on Google+, but it does give you the ability to follow someone who is not following you and allows you to express yourself without the 140 characters restriction.

Google+ has taken the best of both Facebook and Twitter, improved them and left the inconveniences on the side. The Huddle to chat with everyone and receive push notifications to keep the conversion alive is brilliant, the multi-face video chat gives everybody a presence and invites people to talk and exchange, the capacity of Google+ to provide analytics of your profile page is more than interesting from a business perspective, the smartphone app is clear, smart and ergonomic and eventually, you'll click on "sparks" to check the latest news organised by theme.

Trends show that the use of Google Mail is falling as everybody uses the Facebook message tool instead. Well, we can safely say that Google is making an attempt to inverse the trend with Google+. A massive attempt.

There is no + without -

Google+ brings together all we ever wanted, plus what we didn't know we wanted. It’s exceeded expectations and is a huge step forward for Google. Soon enough it will be one of the most used social networks as it's based on the empire of Google and these sorts of things help.

The dark side of having an all-in-one platform launched from the top of Google is that it will increase the supremacy of Google massively. Why is that so wrong? Well, history has proven that when there is one person leading without equal competitors their attitude changes from helping to using. See Facebook and their privacy deficiency as an example.

The fact that the success of Google+ is massively due to its parent Google doesn't seem to be fair for all the other social networks which have built themselves with blood, sweat and tears. They will be overtaken by somebody using their ideas. Yes, Google+ took other social networks' ideas and brought them together and this is called plagiarism. Google+ plagiarises Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Skype and Foursquare.

Supremacy and plagiarism are not the only minuses. My life is on my mobile and since I bought my iPhone I rarely open my laptop in my free time and do everything on the go while travelling. Excited by the Google+ site, I couldn't wait to try the app. But there was no Google+ iPhone app or this is what I thought. The app for iPhone was actually only available on the Apple website, not on iPhones app store, confusing 28% of smartphone users. This is what I call a minus.

To sum up, Google+ is a sexy project on a simple and smart interface providing an intuitive experience in a clean and ergonomic environment. It is pushing social networking forward with a more human and logic profile. However, Google+ might weaken some other social networks and use its supremacy for its own sake like eBay in the e-commerce field with its always higher fees. We also have to consider that people might get bored by the monotony of using only one social network. It’s just a supposition and only the future will tell us, but for now, give it a go: https://plus.google.com/up/start/.

A better way to upload images?

hello@codegent.com (Aidan Kane) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:54:39 GMT

In creating the new 4Music site recently we ran into the age old problem of how to best crop uploaded images. Traditional cropping tools tend to be clunky, especially when you need to crop a single image in different ways as we did.

We hit upon the idea of just allowing editors to pick a focal point on the image and having some clever little bits of mathematics sort out all of the details.

It worked incredibly well for the 4Music project so it's a technique that we plan on using on all of our sites in the future. When we get a bit of spare time we are going to release the source code so that others can make use of it in their projects too.

Check out the video to see it in action.

TV and web convergence

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:11:44 GMT

The worlds of TV and the internet were once quite separate but now seem increasingly converged. We can easily watch TV on our computers using tools like iPlayer and 4OD and even stream TV live to your mobile phone using services such as Slingbox. And you can send content from your computer to your TV through AppleTV or just plug your computer into one of the inputs of your TV and use your remote to flick between the TV and your computer.

But this is really only the start. This is the convergence equivalent to humans inventing the wheel.

We see the future of TV convergence being more than TVs having an Ethernet port on their back so they can plug straight into the internet. We see convergence as meaning platforms become nothing to do with the kind of content that you can get, but more about the use case for accessing content on that device.

So everyone will watch TV on their TV sets, their computers, their tablets and their mobiles. But your reasons for watching content on a TV might be different to why you would watch on a mobile: TV might be about getting a high quality experience that you possibly share with friends or family, whilst a mobile might be for getting quick bites of information whilst on the move.

In effect, the TV screen that sits in the living room will just be the best quality output in the house but will have the same functionality as a computer in that you will be able to access apps, browse the internet and send messages.

So what does this actually mean?
Well, we think that TV programming won’t be thought of as something that is only broadcast to a passive audience. Having a TV show that isn’t intrinsically linked with a variety of online services will be like showing a movie with no sound.

Examples might be that you are watching the main TV screen in your living room and the presenter mentions a Tweet that someone has written. You click on the link that appears on the screen and it opens the hashtag for that subject in Twitter. But you don’t want Twitter to obscure the main screen, so you ‘flick’ Twitter to your tablet and watch it there. Someone references a historical incident and a Wikipedia reference appears, you decide to pause the show and read the wiki entry they recommend. This is really interesting so you pull up a couple of YouTube videos and watch those.

Your wife moans at you:
“Can you just watch the programme or watch YouTube and stop surfing, you’re doing my head in”. So you flick the YouTube stuff over to your tablet and save it to watch later.

The TV presenter introduces a chef who is going to make a dish. You’ve always wanted to be able to cook this so you add the ingredients to your shopping basket via your Tesco app that sits in your TV tray and it reminds you that you’ve run out of beer so you quickly scan the barcode of the bottle of beer you finished earlier with your phone and that adds beer to the same shopping basket. The programme finishes and in the break, one of the adverts is playing a tune you really like so you scan it and add it to your Spotify playlist.

How far away are we from this Utopian world?
Well, services like YouView are scheduled to launch next year. YouView is a tie up between BBC, ITV and Channel4, but also BT and TalkTalk. The plan is that they will offer broadband integrated digital TV with on-demand anb catch-up TV services, but will also open content out to new providers who will be able to create their own content portals. Plus application developers will be encouraged to create games, tools and other services (I’m guessing like the iPhone has done). So you can see, we are tantalizingly close.

Is there anything we need to start thinking about now then?
The answer of course is ‘depends’. But like anything that is new, there will probably be some benefit in being an early adopter. Nobody quite knows what this will look like, even the likes of the BBC and Channel 4 who are reaching out to digital agencies for content ideas instead of just sticking to traditional TV production companies. We will all have to start thinking more about our brands in terms of richer content. But also understanding that convergence actually means many more potential touch points.

When we talk to brands today it is so rarely that they just want a microsite to support a single campaign: now it’s so much more about trying to find a clear roadmap through the many ways in which digital will support their objectives.

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (Rachel Green) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:06:43 GMT

I’m new to Grinds my gears, but was quick to put my hand up for a light-hearted rant about agency life, because something has really got to me this month: sales calls.

I’m one of the Project Managers in Codegent’s London office and nine times out of ten one of us will answer the phone…cue posh phone voice, ”Hello Codegent, Rachel speaking…”.

Now I’m more than happy to answer the phone to a client, someone who wants to talk to us about their digital strategy or even a colleague’s mum phoning to say hello. What I’m really fed up with is the endless barrage of people trying to sell us stuff, every single bloomin' day.

Admittedly they don’t often want to talk to me and that’s fine, no offense taken, its David. He is the chosen one, the untouchable target and just me and my handset stand in the path of victory…cue defensive mode “Who is it, where are you calling from, what’s it regarding?...”

Now I wouldn’t mind if I got Tom from the Apprentice knocking at the door using a gift as a way to get my attention. That’s innovative, yes it’s a bit cheesey, but at least shows some effort. Instead they are more like Jim, full of b*llsh*t and following the top 5 cold calling rules….cue standard responses from me…

Keep it casual and sound like a good friend
You’ll have his mobile number then
"I’m calling regarding new business”
New business for us or for you?
Say companynamereallyquickly so she can’t tell what I’m saying
Pardon?
“I’ve sent him an email so I just want to check he received it”
There’s a 99% he has and is still ignoring you
Be rude and aggressive and she’ll think I’m important
(Hangs up)

These all are sure fire ways to wind me up, and not get through to David. But alas! Last week I got a call from someone who was happy to talk to me woo hoo!....

Hello Codegent, Rachel speaking

Hi I’m calling from blahblah business directory and I’d like to update your listing

OK

Is the company registered name still Codegent?

Yes

Are you still at 516 Wandsworth Road, London?

Yes

How many commercial vehicles do you have?

Seriously, that’s the third fact you have in a digital agencies listing?

(Phone goes dead)

Arggghhhh!

I’ve got a job to do and interruptions from pointless calls drive me mad. Leave me alone, let me get on with my work and if we do ever happen to need the service you are offering, we are a digital agency and pretty adept at using Google.

So if you do ever call with a valid reason and get a rather abrupt response from me, sincere apologies, I do want to speak to you. It’s just that most of the time I pick up the phone it’s a sales person wasting my time. And that folks, is what really grinds my gears.

Third Thursday - June News

hello@codegent.com (Julie Coassin) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:47:35 GMT

It's not the Third Thursday of the month but there is a good reason: 2 major exciting launches today!

The team in Singapore at the Echelon2011. launching Dash

Other links referenced...

E chelon
G et Dash
4 music

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (Bjorn Jansen) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:10:12 GMT

Another month, another time for ‘what really grinds my gears’: a light-hearted take on the things that get under your skin in the world of work and digital. This month: design by committee.

Design by committee happens within agencies and within clients’ organisations and sometimes even spans across both and it is one of the most frustrating things in the world for a designer. It’s not just because I don’t like being told what to do, in fact it’s the opposite of that. Obviously I don’t like “being told what to do” but as a designer I do like being given a very clear brief that everyone understands and isn’t going to get diluted a few weeks down the line.

The biggest problem with design by committee is that it ALWAYS results in the lowest common denominator. The trouble is, on the one hand, we’re all designers and on the other hand none of us designers. What I mean by that is that we can all have an opinion on design, but we also know that we can’t actually design ourselves so we pay people like me to do it for us. So when it comes to a committee, what happens is that everyone feels they should have an opinion, but a lack of confidence means that if we’re not sure about something we tend to tone things down rather than innovate.

Imagine you were an ice-cream maker and a customer came into your shop and said, “it’s my daughter’s birthday and I want you to make her a special ice-cream that will show her how much all her family think about her. I want her eyes to light up when she first sees it and I want her to be surprised and delighted when she firsts tastes it.”

So you work all night making what you believe to be the perfect ice-cream for a little girl’s birthday. Mixing the ingredients, making the colour a riot of pinks and reds, adorned with crushed nuts and chocolate. You chop fondant fruit and mix it up with the cream to give added texture to the dish and you invite the customer and his family back to sample your creation.

Everyone stands back and smiles as you show them what you’ve done – they hadn’t imagined that ice-cream could look this way. But then the dad says that he feels that maybe the chocolate is a bit unnecessary, the mum is worried that one of her friends has a nut allergy so probably best to take those off too. The uncle’s view is that everything is perfect but red and pink don’t go together so maybe lose the pink, everyone nods in agreement. The cousin says he hates fruit, he doesn’t mind the flavour but hates the texture and he’s pretty sure the majority of people would share his view. The sister says she thinks that the taste is a bit too strong and points out that her sister never usually chooses anything but vanilla. Everyone congratulates her on that observation and leave you to ‘incorporate’ those suggestions into the final version…. which of course, in this case, would be a plain vanilla ice-cream.

I know it’s hard to get consensus, especially where there are lots of stakeholders but if you think that a huge room of people shouting “left a bit, right a bit” is going to get you the best results then you are sorely mistaken. Better to give the task to a few people to work with the design team, to go through all the rationale and thinking together and to trust them to produce something that is right for the end-user rather than something that least offends a committee of onlookers.

Because as a designer, to produce great work, and I know this is a cliché, but you sometimes have to be brave and push the boundaries. Doing this with people who trust you to do that well on their behalf is great. Having your ideas go through a wash and spin cycle of a committee isn’t and it’s that, folks, that really grinds my gears.

Fake Lesbians and Krusty the Clown

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:06:03 GMT

I want to start this by saying that I won’t even pretend to understand the effect that the hoax blogger purporting to be a gay woman in Syria has had on people’s struggles in that country. So my intention isn’t really to comment on the specifics of what happened, but instead to consider more broadly what it illustrates about the validity of content online.

When it was revealed that a blogger claiming to be a gay woman in Syria called ‘Amina’ was, in fact, a 40 year old US man living in Scotland called Tom, people were shocked.

The site that uncovered the hoax blogger is called LezGetReal.com but a few days after the revelation it was discovered that one of LezGetReal’s editors, “Paula Brooks” was not who she said she was either. In fact 'she' was 58 year old Bill Graber. He said he posed as a gay woman because nobody would take him seriously as a straight man. No shit, Sherlock! Somehow Amina's heady mixture of sex, politics and an old fashioned triumph over adversity seemed less engaging when you learn it was nothing but the fantasy of a middle aged man.

When I read this I was reminded of an episode of the Simpsons. Krusty the Clown decides to call a Sex Chat Line. When he gets through it turns out that he is in the company of Apu, the Mini-Mart store owner and two other guys. The conversation goes like this:

Krusty: Ooh! Sex Chat! (dials)

Female voice: You've reached the Party Line! In a moment, you'll be connected to a hot party, with some of the world's most beautiful women! Now, let's join the party!

Krusty: Hello?

Man 1: Hello?

Man 2: Hello?

Apu: Are there any women here?

Krusty: Hello!?

Apu: Are you a beautiful woman?

Krusty: Do I sound like a beautiful woman?

Apu: This is not as hot a party as I anticipated.

(listen to it here )

Since then both hoaxers have been at pains to apologise and explain that their intentions were noble, but as one activist in Syria pointed out “I could have put myself in grave danger inquiring about a fictitious figure.”

But, the subject of the hoax aside, it does pose quite an interesting point about the validity of content we read online. We assume that when a newspaper or TV show reports something they will have checked their facts as far as they can and will be clear about what is fact and what is fiction (and what is a reconstruction), but can we assume the same is true online?

Given the ability to be anonymous and without any need for editorial integrity, we have no idea whether what we are reading is accurate or indeed written by the people who we think are writing it. So often (and I’ve done it myself) we use Wikipedia as a source, believing that there are so many people out there scrutinising this stuff that it’s bound to be true, but you only have to look at the history of a Wikipedia page to see how many malicious changes get uploaded. You just have to hope that when you read it, it's a corrected version.

And is it ever OK to lie online and say you’re someone you aren’t? How many celebrities and politicians pay other people to write on their behalf? Is that mis-leading, or is it something we should just expect? From people uploading false information about themselves on a dating site to companies posing as unbiased members of the public defending or promoting their own products, this looks like a problem that isn’t going away anytime soon.

5 essential tips for mobile commerce success

hello@codegent.com (Julie Coassin) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:07:10 GMT

Research by eBay recently revealed that mobile shopping could receive a £4.5bn boost in the UK by 2016, rising to as much as £19bn by 2021, if nurtured correctly. The rapid growth in smartphone penetration has clearly helped mobile commerce to gain increasing acceptance amongst both users and retailers.

Smartphones represent 24% of all mobiles sold worldwide between January and March – up from 15% a year before - and the 50% tipping point may only be a year or so away (via The Guardian). This is an exceptional opportunity for retailers to speed up their mobile efforts and drive more sales.

However although mobile commerce’s popularity is growing and the majority of retailers are convinced that it will eventually become as popular as e-commerce, just 16% have a strategy in place, and 28% have no plans to implement one (Vanson Bourne survey of 100 marketing and IT directors at UK retailers, and 1,000 consumers).

Smartphones are taking a central position in our daily routine, not just to make phone calls but to access the web, look for recipes, check our Twitter, Facebook, find a restaurant, read news... Now users are also showing an increasing appetite for carrying out transactions on these devices; however their expectations of mobile commerce are pretty high so when jumping onto the “m-commerce” bandwagon you need to make sure you do it well. There are 10 million UK consumers using mobile commerce but 83% say they have experienced problems. (Tealeaf survey)

Below are few of the important things to think about when developing your mobile commerce site that will help you mitigate against potential problems that some mobile users experience.

Mobile site or Native App. What is the best?

First let’s define both terms: a native application is a piece of software designed and developed to run specifically on a computer, smartphone, or tablet. So for example a native application developed for the iPhone will need to run on its proprietary iOS platform. The mobile web refers to the browser-based Internet experience on mobile devices. Mobile websites have the ability to run across essentially any platform with a built-in web browser.

There is no “best route” and you can’t just pick and choose which channels to support without a bit of research as it mostly depends on who your customers are, what devices they use, what they are trying to do and when. You need to be there when the customer is ready.

In a report revealed at the end of last year, comScore’s MobileLens indicates that nearly twice as many smartphone users accessed online retail via a website rather than a native app, BUT some other reports seems to show higher conversion rates for native iPhone apps versus typical mobile websites.

My recommendation would be to start with a mobile site, and then upgrade at a later stage to an application. This is actually a very good way to first test on mobile web what works or not, take learnings, customer’s feedback from their experience and then use that as a foundation to build applications for iPhone, Android or other mobile platforms.

So why should you start with a mobile site? Well, a mobile site has a greater appeal to customers across a variety of phones. Basically you don’t need to design multiple apps and anyone with a web connection can access your mobile site. It is therefore also a cheaper option! If you opt for an app you will restrict your mobile customer base to users of compatible handsets. In the case of Apple you will also need to wait for approval before release and before you can make tweaks to your app.

Having a mobile site means you are freer, in control and users always get the latest version as you can push updates whenever you wish! Another good thing about a mobile site for commerce is that users looking for a particular product can come across your mobile optimised site using any of the search engines and via links from other websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and those embedded in emails. Whereas with an app, users will have to actively search for it and then download it to their phone. That sounds like a lot to ask of your customers, especially if they are new ones.

Additionally, there are several apps stores gathering tons of apps. Unless you are a large retailer (and even so), it usually takes a lot of effort to feature in the App Store charts and you will need a very well defined strategy to break into the top list for your category in order to not get lost in the crowd. (Find out more about app store optimization)

One argument for apps over the mobile web is the additional functionality that apps can offer but the next generation of the web language HTML5, although the completion is expected in 2014 and its implementation on mobile devices is still both fragmented and incomplete, is able to offer many features that make it possible to create web based applications that behave like native apps (geolocation, access to the phone’s camera, offline storage, video/audio streaming...). HTML5’s advantages of cross-platform compatibility, channel freedom (not being dependent on the app stores), enhanced discoverability due to better search engines etc. provides the opportunity to develop both faster and cheaper, with a wider audience to sell to. The Financial Times just launched a HTML5 Web App that enables readers to access content across tablets and smartphones.

Please don’t think I am against apps, I’m really not! I love apps and they should be developed when there is a need to provide functionality that goes beyond what HTML5 can offer (richer experience, photo function, games, augmented reality...) but when it comes to retail I truly think mobile sites are great. This is even truer if you are a small business, as it will end up being more financially effective. However if you already know that a large percentage of your visitors are iPhone or Android users, then you might want to look into developing dedicated mobile apps. Finally if you really want to do a massive push in the mobile area, why not try developing both a mobile site and an app like Ebay has done?

In case you want to read more on the recurring subject:
Will HTML5 Replace Native Apps Any Time Soon?
HTML5 Is An Oncoming Train, But Native App Development Is An Oncoming Rocket Ship
HTML5 vs. Mobile App. The Winner is…
Mobile commerce: should you have a site or an app?
Mobile commerce: ten reasons to choose the web over apps
Native App vs. Web App: Which Is Better for Mobile Commerce?
Redirect mobile searchers to the mobile version of your site.

This sounds obvious but detecting which type of device a user is browsing with and redirecting to the correct version of the site is essential. You made the effort to build a mobile site so promote it! This will provide a great user experience and it will likely make your users stay on the site. In addition, if you are going to develop a mobile site, it is important all pages deliver the same user experience – i.e. sending users to pages non-optimised for mobiles is a no-no.
Keep your mobile site simple, but not too simple.

Your mobile site should be a “lite” version of your desktop site, first of all because it needs to load very fast but also because of the size of the device. Any funky and flashy features should be left to the desktop experience. However, there should be no real disadvantage to using a retailer’s mobile version and users expect the same sort of browsing and buying experience as they would from their laptops and PCs. Consumers want to find the exact same products and the same product availability as on the main site. Therefore you need to provide full product specs, quality photos, videos and reviews.

A few tips:
- Provide obvious buttons and call to actions that stand out by using different sizes and colours
- For users who know what they are looking for offer them a search function
- Think of users who are likely to make mistakes whilst typing a search term from a smartphone and add an autosuggest to your search box
- Consider slow connection speeds and ensure you are minimising the amount of data each of your page uses (ie: reduce the size of your images, limit the quantity of text)
- Provide an effective filter option
- In addition to all the various information about the product (price, photos, details...), display delivery details on your product page as the user will certainly not take the time to go up to the checkout to find that information. You will most likely lose a sale.
It seems paradoxal, but you will have to find the right balance between making your mobile site simple and very quick to load whilst still maintaining as much functionality as possible. The M&S mobile site is a great example, you can browse their entire product range, yet the navigation is very simple, you can sort items and search. Their mobile commerce site has generated over 1.2m unique users and taken single purchase orders exceeding £3,000 since its launch in May 2010. Pretty impressive!
Don't make registration compulsory and offer mobile payment options.

First of all, don’t force your users to register before you actually close a sale. That is something I explained a while ago on a blog article: how to build an effective sign up form. Let your customers purchase first and then let them deal with registration afterwards (if they want). This is even more important on a mobile with a smaller screen and keyboard as you want a very smooth and pain-free process. By making users register before the checkout you are adding at least three fields to fill in and most of this information will be asked during the payment process anyway!

When it comes to entering credit card details on a smartphone, it is likely many customers will abandon rather than try. So try and work around that barrier and really make the purchase experience very friendly. The aim is to reduce as much as you can the number of clicks to make it really easy for existing customers to shop and keep shopping on your site. The Amazon model is one to follow. It is so easy to buy on their site that it’s no surprise to me they have such large mobile sales figures.

If you are a recurrent Amazon user, they already have your payment details stored and in less than 6 clicks you are done with your purchase on the mobile. At checkout, they ask your email address and password to generate a page asking you to choose a delivery option. Then on the next page you will be asked to select your payment method, all the cards you have previously added on your Amazon account will appear with their expiry date. Consumers can then either enter a new shipping address or opt to send to one already linked with their account. Once these choices are made, the consumer clicks on the checkout button and the transaction is completed. Pretty easy and even easier with their 1-Click order option.

By storing credit card details in the registered account profile of existing customers you are removing the laborious process of entering the credit card number, expiration date and delivery address on a small screen. You probably think saving customers payment details on your site is adding a bit more PCI compliance hassle, but it will turn out to be an excellent way to attract repeat business from mobile users and most third party payment platforms have this functionality freely available to be integrated with.

Some users will prefer using other payment options such as PayPal or any other alternative payment (Google checkout) that they know as secure and legitimate. The payment process is reduced to entering a username and password. These options reassure customers that are concerned about entering their card details via mobile and they also eliminate the need to fill in lengthy forms.

Another good idea is to offer phone support to sceptical users who need more reassurance to get involved. Make sure you always have a phone number available on the product details page and on the checkout page so customers can complete the transaction by phone.

Finally, you could look into offering “collection in store” rather than mobile checkout options. The famous “reserve and collect” from Argos is an excellent method of generating sales from offline shoppers, but to make it work, keep the time between reservation and collection to a minimum.
Location, location, location.

In mobile, location is context so it is important you know where your users are when accessing your mobile site.

Apps and now HTML5 employ some of the smartphone’s most advanced features and functions, such as the GPS system, to fetch the user’s location. This is such a great thing to customise a mobile site experience to a consumer’s location. It often grinds my gears to see that some global retailers are not able to direct me straight to the right local version of their site and ask me to choose my location... (I am particularly looking at you Ikea and there are so many others). I think it is important not to forget users are using a mobile which means small screens, smaller keyboards but are still in the need of information quickly without too much effort! Inflicting a bad experience on consumers who are nicely trying to connect with you on your mobile site might end up in you never seeing them again. 66% of consumers would be less likely to buy from a brand following a poor mobile experience (Tealeaf survey).

In addition to locating where your users are and directing them to the most appropriate local site, it is also a good idea to offer a store locator. Surveys show that it is amongst the most popular features of both mobile sites and apps. Sometimes consumers just go on your mobile site to look for an item or stock levels (Argos) but would rather buy it from the offline shop. Store locators are a great way to drive traffic in store and provide distance, store facilities, contact details, opening hours and directions. Argos and Tesco are 2 retailers that do this very well.

It would make sense to detect a user’s location by using smartphones’ GPS to present the nearest offline stores rather than having the users to type in their postcode (especially sometimes it might be tricky for them to know the postcode of the area). Only mobile sites developed in HTML5 and apps can offer that feature. Rightmove mobile site in HTML5 is a great example.

So as much as you can try to make the most of these location-based tools as they improve your consumers’ mobile experience and they also appeal to users who are shopping locally and looking for particular products and services.

What are you waiting for? Hopefully not for your competition to take the advantage! Get involved NOW.

Many retailers are waiting to launch their optimised mobile website until mobile commerce becomes more significant, but all the current stats show that the opportunity is now.

The longer you wait to launch your mobile site, the more time you give your competitors to establish a successful mobile presence. Mobile commerce might be in its early stages but it is quickly gaining popularity as a way to shop. I would use this as an opportunity to take the advantage, test what does and doesn’t work for you, create a "WOW" factor amongst your customers and give them something about you to share with others. It can only raise your brand awareness and simply differentiate yourself from your competition.

Do you need help? Codegent’s Mobile division might be able to give you a hand.

If you want to talk to us about your mobile commerce strategy, then please do get in touch.

5 Reasons the Recession has helped Digital

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 09:24:22 GMT

Since the global economy tanked in 2008 things have been pretty gloomy for most of us. Inflation is soaring, unemployment is high, credit has all but vanished and the debt-laden government is cutting at a faster rate than happy hour in Sweeney Todd’s. Not great. However in an effort to try and look on the brighter side of life I thought I would examine how these economic conditions have actually helped progress the digital industry.

1. User Centric Design

I have worked in digital since 2001 and in that time one of the most frequently frustrating experiences has been persuading people to design for their users, not themselves.

Design solutions should be based on a thorough understanding of the core target audience and clear business objectives that you wish to convert on. However I have spent many hours in meeting rooms trying to persuade decision makers not to commit design hari-kari by letting personal preference dictate the path we took. I have tried everything from blunt refusal to regaling the fable of Homer’s Car but could never seem to surmount the issue.

However, when market conditions are tough and budgets need to work hard you cannot afford to risk losing valuable eyeballs and custom because you prefer pink to blue. Briefs have always pertained to place the user first but we have noticed clients like Channel 4, BBC, The British Library, Pearson Education and others I cannot directly mention put increasing emphasis and budget on analytical research, user focus groups and thorough usability testing during the design phase.

It is very illuminating that when budgets need to work harder you see increased investment in a particular area. You might think the trend would be to “best guess” and cut corners but when you have to get results, you can’t afford to muck around on design.

2. Wider adoption of new ideas and trends

Similarly I have also noticed corporate brands embracing and adopting fresh ideas and trends that I previously would have associated to forward thinking geeks and start-ups. Open source software is now pro-actively requested rather than suggested and a lot of the old wives tales about lack of accountability and support have been put to bed. Did anyone ever try calling Microsoft when their .Net site crashed anyway?

I no longer spend a significant portion of my week scanning signed NDAs as people have begun to appreciate that the best way to succeed online is to share and iterate your great idea rather than hide behind password protection for months whilst crafting the all-singing all-dancing solution. Instead I am pleased to see clients shipping the minimal viable product and holding budget for future iterations once real users have got their hands on it.

If the economy doesn’t sort itself out soon we might even see the Agile project process becoming a regular fixture but I think it will be a while before people can fully trust the cost effectiveness of that path.

3. Customer Service is fashionable again

About 10 years ago it was decided upon high that customer service units should be offshored to reduce costs and this would be a great deal for the consumer because of more competitive prices. I am not so sure the consumer agreed, or got a better deal, but it didn’t really matter, as they had no way of really being heard beyond mouthing off in the local pub to a few disinterested souls.

I guess the powers that be didn’t anticipate social media. When your margins are tight and undercutting on price is not viable customer service can be the differentiator. As consumers feeling the pinch we want to spend our pennies effectively and that means taking informed recommendations from others. It is near impossible for a brand to buy a good online reputation. Brands have to prove themselves if they want to build trust and loyalty. Simply put, they have to engage.

And many have! I have anecdotal evidence of BT sorting out a huge billing mess triggered by a frustrated tweet I sent out and I know of many others. It has spawned the Thank You Economy and has proved to be a champion bottom line strategy by guys like Tony Hsieh. It is a return to the principles of the local store where properly serving the community made all the difference between success and failure. Mass consumerism killed that off for a while but it is back now with a vengeance.

4. Death toll for IE6

Internet Explorer version 6 is over 10 years old and the time has come for it to take its place in the historical archives. In a tough environment you need to differentiate from the competition and maximise your budget reach. Neither of these is likely when you are catering to the low-tech needs of 2.9% of your user base (and it’s shrinking rapidly).

I was heartened to see that Google is dropping browser support on its products for anything beyond the previous two versions and the new Alpha Government Project spearheaded by Martha Lane Fox deviated from traditional Government website guidelines by ignoring IE6 and focussing on modern web standards to create delightful experiences for the vast majority. I highly recommend reading their design principles blog post.

5. Innovation in technology embraced

In much the same way we have noticed an embrace of new trends by previously conservative decision makers we have also seen dramatic shifts in how clients look at tech. Cloud platforms and virtualisation servers have been around for a while but have only been seen as acceptable solutions when the cost effectiveness of them became a determining factor on whether a project could happen or not.

Previously we were dreaming up physical dedicated server solutions housed in Central London using traditional (expensive) CDNs to distribute media. This often meant large up front costs to buy expensive licenses and kit. There used to be a sense that it was important to completely own and house your own web architecture, and there was a real distrust of using someone else’s platform, it felt that it even cheapened the offering.

Now we are not only seeing powerful and scalable cloud services becoming common for site hosting but within offices virtualised documents, file sharing, and other software as a service is being widely adopted. We are using a more diverse and tailored toolset to increase efficiency as team sizes shrink, budgets reduce and competition intensifies.

In conclusion...

I do think all of these trends were coming regardless of the economic situation we faced but the recession has certainly brought focus to what is important, killed off a few ridiculous old wives tales that were holding us back and opened our minds to new and improved ways of working.

Would you add any other items to the list? Let me know in the comments below.

Mobile Web Browsing

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:11:11 GMT

Source: Tecmark

The time for waiting is over

Back in September 2009, when mobile was being heralded as the next big thing, the amount of web traffic that actually came from a mobile was still only a measly 0,02%. Most of us thought, let’s just wait and see.

By September the following year … it was just above 3%. Still… wait and see?
By January of 2011, it had grown to 8.09%. Erm... that’s getting significant.
Predictions are that it will reach about 15% by June 2011.

We think this is so significant that we have invested in a dedicated mobile division within the agency. It’s a small team of six people at the moment but we’re already at production capacity.

So how do we feel about the experience that 15% of people who access your website currently have?

There are 3 key considerations when it comes to thinking about mobile traffic:

User experience. We determine how the user is accessing the site and render in a way that the user experience is a rewarding one based on their device. There shouldn’t be any horizontal scrolling or the need to be constantly growing and shrinking the page.
Consistent. Your mobile site should use the same database as your standard site. If content is updated, it should be updated everywhere at the same time.
Use case. This one is a bit trickier, but think about your own experience. When you are browsing a site from a mobile, chances are you are doing it on the move and you have a different set of requirements than if you are browsing from work or at home on a regular computer. This means that the type of content you surface might be different across different platforms.

Some examples:

Codegent
Well, maybe we need to put our money where our mouth is. We created a mobile version of our site over a year ago. And we applied the three considerations above. We believed that anyone accessing our site from a mobile was probably doing so because they wanted to get in touch with us. So we ensured that they could call us straight from the homepage and that a map was easy to find.

Illy Issimo
This is a very simple site. But there is no need for horizontal scrolling and the use case is that people will be online if they want to either find a store when they are out and about, or possibly even buy online there and then. The regular website focuses more on the products themselves and the store locator function is given less importance on the page.

About.com
With About.com, the use case didn’t change drastically between mobile and computer interfaces. The site gives people information that they need to do the things that may enrich their day-to-day lives. So, this information could be relevant at home or on the go. But their site does make best use of the space a mobile platform provides. There is no horizontal scrolling and all the same content is featured attractively, with the hierarchy laid out in the same order as the main site: whereas on the main site hierarchy is broadly arranged left to right, top to bottom and large to small, on the mobile version, the more important items are featured nearer the top of the page.

What about apps?
Obviously, with the rise of mobile browsing has come the rise of mobile apps. Apps can either be free or revenue-generating in themselves.

Whilst apps can pull in location-based information and data from online, some companies are using apps as a means of giving people their content in a simplified way without the need to always be online. This depends on how immediate the content needs to be of course: there isn’t much point in having a social network or news site sat on an app that doesn’t need internet access, however if your site contains information that doesn’t change that often but is useful for users for regular reference, then an app might be the route.

The issue with apps however, is that people will only ever want a finite amount sat on their phones. So, if your site is primarily sales information, unless it somehow supports the end-user regularly, then an app might not be the route to go.

Winston Churchill – Official Wit & Wisdom
We developed this app in association with The Times newspaper and the Winston Churchill Estate. An app which gives people access to the quotes and writings of Sir Winston Churchill was ideal content for an app.

Inside Ferrari
Meanwhile, photographer Jon Nicholson, recognised that the iPad was a great device to showcase his work. We started with a project he did behind the scenes of Ferrari’s Formula 1 team.

We’ve written more about the business of apps for those who want to explore this further:

App Store Optimization
App Payback - What Business Model Works Best?
Publishing on the iPad - Where's the Paper Boy gone?

Codegent’s Mobile Division might be able to help

If you want to talk about how you should be presenting your brand and your content across mobile, then please do get in touch.

Third Thursday - May News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 19 May 2011 18:01:06 GMT

It's the Third Thursday of the month and I am all alone :(

The mobile team working from the garden

Other links referenced...

Our first Chinese site for Skechers
UPDATE: Our Learn Chinese App for iPhone
British Library Out of this World Exhibition

App Store Optimization (optimisation)

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:22:02 GMT

People are buying Apps for phones, tablets and computers all over the world. There is big money in it and it is not just going to Apple. For example, Gartner predicts that by 2015 Android will account for 49% of smartphones.

The best way to source Apps is through App Stores. Apple, Google, Nokia, Blackberry and even Amazon have them, plus there are many spin offs proliferating the web.

App Stores provide a consolidated location for developers to upload their products and gain instant visibility and traffic from millions of users. However, these stores are quickly getting crowded and competition is intensifying as we strive to build awareness and recognition. Step forward App Store Optimization (ASO).

Optimizing for App Stores

The App Store search algorithm works quite differently to Google. Relevance is driven by downloads, ratings and keywords so, once optimised, popularity is very important. As free apps are downloaded far more than paid ones it supports the theory that a free or “lite” version is advisable. This, in turn, promotes your paid-for upgrade. It’s no coincidence that the same app will often occupy the top spot on both the free and paid charts.

Unlike traditional search engines App Store rankings are not built up over time. Baptiste Benezet of faberNovel came to the conclusion that "The formula for App rankings only accounts for your last 4 days of sales." The formula is 8 times the sales of the current day + 5 times the sales on the 2 proceeding days + 2 times the sales on initial date.

Source: ReadWriteWeb

It would seem that short, sharp campaign bursts are the best way to achieve high rankings, break into the category charts and great a self-perpetuating cycle of high download figures.

However more recently Google and now Apple are including user activity as a factor. Daily or Monthly Active Users are logged and those Apps that are used more frequently will also rank highly. The Android Marketplace takes note of the percentage of users that keep the app installed on their device as space is generally more of a premium with users removing Apps that don’t cut it far more frequently than those using Apple devices.

The Apple App Store search is exact-match only. Your app will only show up if there is an exact match against the app or company name or keywords you have specified. Apple does NOT search against your description, which means that text should be purely around convincing the user reading it to hit install/buy. However, the iTunes Web Preview page is often indexed high on traditional search engines and the first three lines of your description can be indexed so it is still worth optimising the start of your description text. Other App Stores such as Android Marketplace do include description in their search criteria though.

Keyword optimisation is therefore pretty crucial. You should follow similar techniques to standard SEO. Prioritise the words and try and think of what keywords or phrases a user would think of to find your type of app. This could also include popular competitors or major platforms you have integrated with, as their names are popular search terms. A word of warning though. You do risk being rejected by Apple if you blatantly hang on the coat tails of a competitor so you try and be a bit subtle.

That brings us onto the name. Unfortunately a buzzy sounding app name will rank poorly against a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin title. You should also consider starting with a number or early letter in the alphabet for when the user orders their result by name. Including popular search words such as “fun”, “easy”, “exciting” and “free” would do you no harm either.

For example on our new Learn Chinese App we have used the title "Learn Chinese Lite - Mandarin Phrasebook for Travel in China" to capture as much keyword traffic as we can. We have substituted "Lite" with "Pro" for the paid version and also linked to it heavily in the free app to prompt upgrades.

Design & Build

The icon that represents your App is hugely important. It should be eye catching and well designed to give a solid first impression and communicate that this wasn’t cobbled together by a talentless nerd playing with a bit of code. Check out this superb guide on good app icon design.

Whilst your icon design might gain you a view, your screenshots are likely to tip the balance. They should be well chosen examples that flatter the app, demonstrate it’s usefulness and grab the user’s attention.

Additionally the filesize of your app can affect its popularity. An app under 10MB in size can be downloaded over a 3G network whereas anything over that requires a wifi connection or it has to be downloaded via a computer associated to the device. If you can’t access the app the moment you find it, you may never come back.

Building Downloads

A well-optimised app will still not rank well until it proves to be popular. In order to maximise your potential download figures you should get listed in app directories.

Reaching out to bloggers can be very powerful. We noticed this after we launched Learn Thai and it was picked up by a prominent blog within a few days, skyrocketing downloads. Don’t be afraid to contact bloggers, they need fresh content to write about! Just keep it short, friendly and relevant.

Be social! It is easy to integrate Twitter or facebook connect into the app and encourage users to share their scores, activities or even that they like the app on those platforms with their own audience.

It is also worthwhile asking your more active users to rate the app. If a user has had the app for a while and has used it quite frequently it is worth popping up a simple message asking for a rating or review. If this is done in an unobtrusive manner it should not harm your app at all.

There is quite a lot of information to take in there but I hope I have communicated just how vital it is to plan, research and test your search and marketing tactics to avoid your masterpiece lying unused in the murky vaults of an App Store server.

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:06:25 GMT

It’s time for the regular, light-hearted rant that is Grind my Gears. This month is an extension of last month’s rant from Nick about courtesy. I’m gonna call it common decency in business.

The thing about our agency, or any organisation really that is consultative, is that there is an element of giving something up front for free. It might be an idea, it might be an approach, it might even be some creative execution. It may involve writing a document, working out what things are going to cost, or may require a formal presentation of our thoughts and ideas.

In many ways, the sales element of what we do is the equivalent of test-driving a car, or tasting a bit of sliced sausage in a delicatessens. The view is that you need to have an idea about what it is you’re going to buy before you commit to it.

And just like cars and sausages, it all costs money. Granted, if you don’t buy the car, or the sausage then it doesn’t cost you anything, but it will cost someone. If nobody test drove a car, then the costs of cars would be cheaper. Someone has to pay for the petrol, for the car that they can’t now sell as new, for the salesman’s suit. Moss Bros ain’t giving these things away for free you know.

Yet, there is a sense – and I know because I probably sub-consciously felt this way when I worked on the client-side – that by asking an agency to write you a proposal or give you a quote you are actually doing them a massive favour. It’s easy to confuse enthusiasm at having the opportunity of finding an interesting new project with a desire on the agency’s part to work for free for a bit. But, they are two different things, believe me. They may just look the same, but nobody wants to work for free. You don’t like to work for free, I don’t like to work for free. We provide free work because of the promise of bigger, better and more interesting work down the line and to prove to people that we have the ideas and talent to take on the challenge. But it’s not free. It actually takes a lot of time and careful consideration, and this in turn costs us money. Money we expect to spend, but money nevertheless that at one point was ours and now isn’t.

Despite thinking that we’re pretty darn good at what we do, we don’t expect to win all the time. We know that some times we may be too big, too small, too expensive, too cheap, too specialist, too generalised, too busy, too English, too funky, too boring…

You can never always be everything to everyone – we get that, but… when you have approached someone and asked them, in good faith, to do some work for you at their expense and you decide for whatever reason that it’s not for you, would it hurt to acknowledge their efforts? Would it kill you to say thank you, to explain why you have taken the decision you have, to take a little time out to give some feedback as to where you think a response could have been better, more useful?

If you went for an interview and didn’t get the job, or applied for a mortgage and didn’t get accepted, or emailed your boss about a great initiative you’d had, or anything where you’d put a bit of yourself into it and hadn’t had the outcome you’d hoped for, wouldn’t you expect some sort of response? Of course you would.

But, for a small minority of people, they think that we are only too delighted to spend weeks of our time considering their businesses and thinking about ways in which we could address their needs. The fact that for whatever reason they choose not to use us, somehow also means that they can ignore us and we won’t care.

Well, the fact is we do care. Because we put a lot of care into what we do and, frankly, it hurts our feelings! Really, it’s just a question of common decency and that, folks, is what really grinds my gears.

Websites are like...

hello@codegent.com (Rachel Green) — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:04:36 GMT

If you’ve ever seen The Social Network you may have noticed a very interesting comment from the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. When talking about the launch of Facebook Mark is asked, “When’s it going to be finished?” to which Mark responds, “It’s never going to be finished. Facebook is like fashion. It never ends”.

This got me thinking, not only about how much of an accurate analogy that is, but also what else are websites like…?

...fashion

So why is Facebook so much like fashion and why is that of interest to the rest of us?

Well, think about the early days of Facebook. What could you do? Add a friend. Give the odd poke. Write your status. Upload some photos. Now what? You can play scrabble, own a farm, sell stuff on the marketplace, check-in….the list is endless. Mark Zuckerberg knew Facebook would evolve over time, just like fashion.

And although we can’t all be a Mark Zuckerberg and create a multi-billion dollar site, we can learn from him. He didn’t set a completion deadline. He didn’t try and include everything on the site that he could think of at the time. He didn’t put the site live, sit back and relax. He started with the basics. He made sure the core functionality was right and allowed people to become familiar with the site before gradually adding more features. He launched phase one in the knowledge that seven years on he would still be releasing updates.

This is exactly what anyone should do when launching a new site. Adopt a phased approach and treat your site like fashion, allow it to develop over time.

...fat dogs

Fat dogs don’t ask to be fed so much food. Their owners just keep on giving it to them. Is your new website your dog and are you making it fat?

Most people not only want an all singing, all dancing site ready for the big launch, but they put pressure on themselves to generate tonnes of content. This can seem like the best thing to do. Create a rich content site so people spend ages reading through all of your amazing content. But this can create issues. It can mean that you rush out lots of content ready for launch that isn’t of the best quality. Visitors may arrive on the site and read everything, but then they have no reason to come back. Or when they do come back they may see all of the same content and think there’s nothing new to read.

Don’t be scared to start slim. You may have a CMS with which to feed your dog but remember a dog needs to be fed small amounts every day, not just one massive meal a year.

Start with solid foundations on which to build. Allow yourself time to learn and adapt to user behaviour, slowly generate content that you know will be of interest and drip feed your site. Keep your audience interested and excited about what’s going to come next and, most importantly, keep them coming back.

...Big Brother contestants

Websites are there to be watched and analysed. So play the part of Big Brother. Use the tools available to you as your cameras and microphones.

One of the major advantages of working in the digital world is the extent to which you can track user behaviour. If you allow yourself the time, resources and budget, you can monitor your site carefully and make any changes accordingly.

General site stats can give you massive clues as to where improvements can be made, for example:

Registrations not as high as expected? Are people going to the registration page but then dropping off? The form might be too long. Shorten it and see if that makes a difference.
Got loads of great career opportunities but not many people applying via the site? Maybe they can’t find the careers section? Try adding a link to Careers on the homepage.

With a basic tool such as Google Analytics (or something similar) you’ll have even more insight. How people are getting to the site, which pages they are going to, the sections they are spending a lot of time on, etc. You’ll know which sections are working well and which need some TLC.

You can also carry out usability testing. There are a range of techniques you can use, including heat maps to see where users are clicking and setting user goals to see how quickly they can achieve them. For example how quickly can people get to your contact us form? Are they missing the “prominent” link on the homepage?

You can also test different designs or content in what we call an A/B test. It’s fascinating and you’ll be amazed at what a big difference small changes can make. For the phase one launch you could have two different homepages that people are sent to randomly. Find out if people are clicking through more on one design than the other. Or you could change the wording. Does Find out more get more clicks than Click here to view?

It all means that, if you are allowing your site to evolve, you can not only make the changes you feel the site needs but also the changes your audience have told you it needs. Analyse your site constantly and keep making updates before it gets evicted from the Big Brother house.

...women

Websites may seem like they know what they want, but they can change their mind. Just like women (as a female I can get away with saying that!). What they want and need will change over time. Not only because of what you have learnt about your customers but because of changes within your business or, more often, it will be other changes in the digital world.

Think about Flash and how popular it was a few years ago. Every site wanted flash. But now with the lack of support from mobile devices and advances in alternatives to flash, websites are turning their noses up at it. Another example is Search. Whilst we know exactly what a site wants in order to perform well at SEO, all it takes is one change in Google’s algorithms and updates are required. Consider a time when no sites had Join us on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter links on their homepage. Now every site wants it added to their homepage.

The sensible thing is to make sure you have a flexible site that allows you to adapt to these changes and new requirements. Although you may be able to build a site that is 100% perfect, it won’t last, because nobody really knows what women want.

...burgers

Think about your website as the burger. Your bun is the mobile site. The chips are Social Media campaign. SEO is the cheese. PPC the bacon etc...

The burger is the daddy of the meal, but it really needs its accompaniments to do the job properly. If the burger’s bad then the meal is ruined. If the burger is good it will do a half decent job on its own. The sides are OK but not really anything without the burger. When they are all on one plate…that’s when you’re talking.

If you’ve followed the process correctly then you will have gradually developed a site that is performing on all levels. Visitors are looking at the areas you want them to, returning to the site and responding to your calls to action. Now you have a good burger you can you start thinking about adding other stuff to the plate.

Add a bun. You will have learnt how many people are accessing your site from mobiles and you may find your audience are more mobile than you thought. Do you need a mobile site, or maybe an app to make it accessible and fully support their needs?

Some chips? You have a site you can really be proud of, so get people talking about it. The power of Facebook and Twitter are yours for the taking. Give your audience a reason to talk and interact with your brand. This will both drive traffic to the site and build your brand into a truly digital one.

A bit of cheese and bacon. Both SEO and PPC search campaigns can be used to raise brand awareness and drive traffic. By now you will have a thorough understanding of user behaviour on your site and can tailor these campaigns accordingly for most effect.

It’s not only about the key ingredients but adding them at the right time and refining them until you have the perfect combination.

...a million other things

The analogy list is probably endless, but these few have helped me think about what we should all remember when launching a site.

Take your time and use a phased approach for launch. Think about future proofing your site. Ensure you build a flexible website platform that allows you to evolve and adapt. Work out who’s responsible for constantly analysing user behaviour. Ensure you have budget to make any required updates. Start planning to support your site with other digital campaigns - when it’s ready for them.

There’s a lot to think about but it’s easy; just consider your new website as a fashionable female fat-dog owner eating a burger on Big Brother!

(Micro) publish and be damned, and the new Microsoft Skype

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:01:50 GMT

Twitter’s been in the news again. This time because one Twitterer decided to publish the names of people allegedly the subject of super injunctions to prevent details of their private lives being written about. I say ‘alleged’ because it appears that in at least one case, the information was false.

Of course, tabloid newspapers are using this as a way of both making the case for a relaxing of the privacy laws that see them being prevented or sued for writing salacious stories about the rich and famous, and showing that whistle-blowing members of the public don’t check their facts first.

It also shows how we’re all publishers now. It might be micro-publishing with a limit of 140 characters, but it’s still publishing nevertheless. And the injunction Tweeter managed to clock up tens of thousands of followers in a short time. I just wonder whether he or she knew what they were doing….was it someone who just knew some info and decided to share it, or was it more of a deliberate plan with a full expectation of what would follow? The fact is, they’ve committed an offence and could possibly end up in jail. Actually, potentially, so has anyone else who Re-Tweeted any of these messages. Seems a high price to pay to embarrass a few celebrities.

Talking of high prices. Why has Microsoft decided to buy Skype for $8.5bn, a company that lost $69m last year? A number of theories abound and I’ve tried to summarise them here:

Brand. Skype is a massive brand. It’s one of those brands that has become a verb like Photoshop, Twitter and Facebook. Microsoft isn’t exactly unknown, granted, but even a giant like them wouldn’t be able to build a brand like Skype anytime soon (or ever, anyone here using Microsoft’s Zune at all?).

Business. Maybe Skype will be directed at professional users. If Microsoft product managers can be tasked with integrating Skype into Office or Sharepoint, then it increases the value of those product lines.

Defence. There are a lot of people saying that Microsoft only did this to keep Skype out of the hands of rivals such as Google or Facebook.

Gaming. Or is it more to do with stealing a march on Sony by integrating video chat into the X-Box Kinect?

Keeping up with the Joneses. Apple has Facetime, which works across their phones, tablets and computers. Microsoft would trump Apple with Skype and it would bode well for their Windows 7 phones. Although they have said Skype will work across multiple platforms, what if they decided to discontinue supporting Skype on Apple products?

Microsoft has run out of ideas. They can’t innovate, and their shareprice has fallen 11% in the last 12 months, against Apple’s growth of 44%. Some argue that this is CEO, Steve Ballmer’s last-ditch attempt to show that he is up to the job.

Ahead of the wave? Video is only going to increase as we move to 4G/5G and super-fast delivery of data. Microsoft want to be able to be at the head of the game when developers are integrating video chat into their apps.

Money. There must be someone thinking about how they are going to monetize Skype. Maybe the freemium route is one that they will be able to roll-out.

All in all, I hope that this will be good news for users of Skype, although Microsoft’s track record of late doesn’t bode terribly well. I’m very glad it doesn’t fall on my shoulders to demonstrate a justification for the investment over the next few years.

Third Thursday - April News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:02:23 GMT

It's the Third Thursday of the month and the sun has got his hat on!

The Technical Architecture of the Hoxton £1 Sale.

Other links referenced...

We re-launch the global websites for Skechers
A new design for Hamleys E-Commerce site
Ski - Win a Fridge!
Learn Thai Pro is available for download

Regulation of digital advertising in the UK

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:53:48 GMT

From March 2011 digital advertising falls more strictly under the remit of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). In short this means that any digital content in the UK that may result in or prompt a sale must now comply with the Committee on Advertising Practice (CAP) Codes on advertising.

This seemed to me like quite a big step and not one I fully understood. If you actually go to the ASA website you will find the CAP Code there but unless you are au fait with legal jargon and have a lot of time to spare you will be none the wiser. In essence I took the CAP Code to broadly mean, “don’t lie” but there had to be more to it than that.

Aside from the announcement itself I could not find much editorial on what the implications were. Thankfully the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) that David is Vice –Chair of organised an event with lawyers Kemp Little to explain it all. The remainder of this blog post is shamelessly paraphrasing their excellent presentation.

Why the need to introduce changes?

Digital has woven itself into the fabric of our daily lives and is now the first port of call for our consumer decision-making research. Digital marketing has also become a lot more sophisticated. Banner ads and paid search are only part of the tool set for influencing businesses and consumers online.

It is worthy of note that £200 000 of the funding to extend the ASA came from Google whose paid-for listings were already being regulated (see next section). Why? Because Google needs the content appearing in it’s natural listings to satisfy the user and not mislead. They are protecting the authenticity of their brand.

Additionally there is growing concern in our society over the role of the Internet in the lives of our children, young people and vulnerable adults.

Between 2008-2009 the ASA had to reject 3500 complaints relating to content on websites that fell outside of their existing remit. The claims were often regarding misleading information.

So how is digital advertising regulated in the UK?

It would not be fair to say that digital has been unregulated in the UK prior to this year. In 2008 two pieces of legislation - Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations and Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations - were passed through government. They were created in order to:

Treat consumers fairly
Not mislead through acts / omissions
Stop aggressive commercial practices
Stop misleading advertising
Create a framework for comparative advertising

In effect this helped to put an end to hidden adverts on websites and also pushed bloggers to declare affiliation with a product they were seeding.

The ASA added a self-regulatory element into this mix. It may surprise you but they did actually have a limited digital remit prior to this year covering emails and advertisements in paid-for space including:

Banner and pop-up advertisements
Paid-for search listings
Commercial classified adverts
Paid-for listings on price comparison sites
Sales promotions in paid-for and non-paid for space online (social networks)

Summary of the changes

The CAP Code now also applies to:

Advertisements and other marketing communications by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid-for space online under their control, that are directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services, opportunities and gifts, or which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of their own fund-raising activities.

What you should take note of:

The catchall term at the start
That this excludes individuals selling online e.g. on Craig’s List
That all content of social networks (not just paid-for space or obvious sales promotions) applies
The fact that anything resulting in a sale is covered
That this also includes charities

The following is exempt:

Marketing communications that promote causes or ideas
Investor Relations (that has enough regulation already!)
Heritage advertising such as the old “Guinness is Good for You” campaign

User Generated Content is outside of the ASA unless it is adopted in marketing communications or is featured on your own website or online space under your control.

This could strike fear into the hearts of marketers but I think context is key. Consumer feedback as part of a chat flow is not going to be taken as a serious breach compared to say, highlighting the same feedback on the homepage.

What are marketers required to ensure then?

The CAP Code requires digital advertisements to be:

“Legal, decent, honest and truthful”
Socially responsible
Prepared in line with the principles of fair competition

How is it enforced?

Although it is very unlikely that any financial penalties will occur for falling foul the ASA has an incremental scale of sanctions that it will follow:

Most guilty cases will result in a public adjudication on their website (negative publicity that journalists looking for a story will pick up)
Withdrawal of trading privileges
Pre-vetting of future advertising (for repeat offenders)
Referral to OFCOM (for extreme repeat offenders)

Agencies are also not allowed to submit any work that has breached the Code for any awards and media owners are permitted to refuse to run ads by offending companies.

The ASA can ask search engines to remove the marketer’s paid-for advertisements and can themselves place paid-for ads referring to a public adjudication. However they cannot impact upon natural search listings.

One thing that we do not know yet is just how SEO friendly these public adjudications might be in search results for a brand name. It could be that adjudications hang around for years. The impact could be extremely damaging to a brand.

What should you be aware of?

The lawyers I met at Kemp Little have already dealt with the ASA on behalf of digital clients and had these words of warning should you ever be investigated:

They are not always consistent and their previous judgements do not set a legal precedent.
They can raise their own issues so an investigation is not necessarily triggered by a complaint from the public.
There do not need to be obvious grounds for a complaint to be investigated. Their remit is to protect the most gullible consumer.
Just one complaint can trigger an investigation and the consumer’s identity is protected. This may lead to “guerrilla” complaints, for example a family member of a person working for a competitor who complains.

I hope this has been helpful and prompted you to think more about the new regulations. Although I am sure this will create a lot more red tape and hassle for some advertisers I am in favour of a more accountable, safer digital space. The more credible it is, the more we will continue to use it as the foundation for our future lives and thus further innovate and improve.

However, I do hope that the ASA keep a balance on what is fair and reasonable and that we don’t end up in a similar position to some of the ridiculous Health and Safety laws we currently have to abide by. I for one like to take the chance of drinking my coffee without a sealable lid on it and I also believe I have some good sense and judgement when it comes to spending my own money.

Please do let me know your thoughts in the comments below and thanks again to the lawyers at Kemp Little for all their help.

Social Media: A revolutionary tool

hello@codegent.com (Karine Tonson la Tour) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:55:18 GMT

Every revolution needs a spark, enough exasperation and people sharing the same thoughts with plenty of hope and courage. But to put this frustration into action and really make a difference it needs organisation and passion spreading. In recent months around the world we have seen a new channel for this...Social Media.

"I'm -- I -- I'll -- I'll call it Revolution 2.0."
Wael Ghonim, Google executive, principal organisers of the massive anti-Hosni Mubarak protests, Egypt

Never, would I have imagined that Social Media could support such moments in history. That Facebook would be the main interface to plan historical demonstrations, by directing followers to congregate and how to avoid blockades. That Twitter will share information and motivate people over the boundaries of Northern Africa.

But can you imagine how much stronger you would feel if you received worldwide support via these channels? Well, that would give me an amazing, overwhelming feeling of power.

Switch off operation

Nobody was prepared for the rise of Social Medias to this end so it took some time for those in power to react. But when they did, Social Media’s weakness was revealed. When you cut off the Internet, all is lost

China was the fastest to react, but what should we expect from the world's second-largest economic power? The Chinese have developed sophisticated cyber-control strategies including strikes against organisations that challenge control such as Google. This explains how Chinese protest echoes have been strangled and repressed as soon as first signs appears.

Following the lead of China, other authoritarian regimes began to step in front of human rights and blocked Internet access. In Lybia for example, indications are that the DNS (Domain Name System) protocol which allows browsers to navigate on the Internet, has been cut. But in doing this aren’t they just exacerbating feelings of hate, despair and rage which makes people even more determinate and audacious?

Alternatives to "free a society"

Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at the City University of New York, recently blogged that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are fast becoming the "Gutenberg press of the Middle East because they provide similar tools that empower people to speak, share and gather". As stressed by Wael Ghonim: "If you want to free a society, just give them Internet access, because [...] the young crowds are going to [...] go out and see and hear the unbiased media, see the truth about [...] other nations and their own nation. And they're going to be able to communicate and collaborate together."

In the past 3 months I've seen some interesting tweets about how to get Internet back: "FDN opens internet to Egyptians http://tinyurl.com/6jyglpo" and "Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen... Many revolts, one tool. Tor, the interface of the freedom movement. http://j.mp/gldxCr".

The battle for freedom of speech is so intense that a competition has been organised to award the best activists: The Free Expression Awards 2011: New Media.

This event, supported by Google, unveiled three nominees:

Tunileaks by Nawaat (extension of Wikileaks) is an independent group blog run by Tunisian net activists. They not only spread transparent news through Tunisia but also help build media networks linking communities that had been cut off by government censors.
The Tor Project enables whistleblowers, dissidents and activists to communicate safely. How? By protecting them against a common form of Internet surveillance known as "traffic analysis”. Traffic analysis can be used to infer who is talking to whom over a public network. The use of Tor technology in Egypt increased fourfold in the weeks leading up to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, and a similar pattern was seen in Tunisia.
Wen Yunchao is one of China’s best-known bloggers under the alias Bei Feng. As an Internet activist, he works to remove restrictions on information and champion’s freedom of speech. He also organised Twitter’s “empty chairs” event to mark Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

The winner of the Free Expression Awards 2011 was, without much surprise, Twitter. The social networking and micro-blogging service firstly stepped up during the contested 2009 Iranian elections. Its pivotal role to mobilise protesters and help activists to spread transparent news has been widely recognised since then.

The number of people following the same movement, the same ideas, sharing the same spirit: Freedom of speech and respect for Human right, has no end. But will these online activists enable the Internet to help change the face of the Arab world and progress towards democracy? Nobody knows, but what is clear is the terrible need for the Internet, particularly Social Media, as a tool for revolution.

Do we like 'likes' in our search results?

hello@codegent.com (Agnieszka Oslak) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:11:30 GMT

The number of people using social platforms as a source of information is constantly increasing and search engines are understandably trying to keep up with this trend and benefit from it. Google knows that if they finally get their social strategy right they will become an integrated search and social platform with new revenue opportunities.

So, after some not so successful attempts at going social with Google Buzz, Wave and Orkut, Google has launched its latest new social concept, Google +1. But what is so special about this new development and how much of an impact may it potentially have on our existing search behaviour?

Google +1 has been considered by many to be a copycat of the Facebook model. Similarly to Facebook, once you are logged into your Google account, you can “like”...or “+1” in this case, recommended websites, blogs, advertisements etc to make them visible to others.

Unlike Facebook you are not restricted to sharing content with friends; you can exchange +1 content with all of your Google social connections, including people from the outside your network of friends (Google social connections includes everyone in your Gmail chat list, all Google Contacts and people you are following in Google Reader and Google Buzz). This makes the Google community more impersonal compared to Facebook particularly as interaction finishes the moment a recommendation is made. With Google +1 none of your social connections are able to comment further on your +1 content, as can be done on Facebook.

However Google’s trump card is that +1 content is remembered by the search engine and gets displayed in SERPs in a real-time. This means that any +1 content is highlighted in your search results allowing you to quickly identify content recommended by your connections. Google believes that the +1 function will earn more credit than its previous social initiatives as the recommendations show the opinion of people you know and trust, as opposed to authorities that aim to influence your opinion.

But do we really need our peers’ recommendations in our search results? So far Google has earned its credit and become trusted to deliver reliable and accurate search results. Is socially influenced search really going to improve the existing mechanism?

My concern is that our search results will become cluttered with opinions from our social connections and there should be an option to turn them off. Imagine all of those +1 buttons popping up in your search results telling you what all the people from your contact list think. Could they pose a threat to the reliability and clarity of Google search? As much as you might feel that you are happy to rely on your peers’ opinion, at some point you might need more viable information i.e. based on factual or aggregated global measurements.

Google +1 has attracted lots of attention so far but is still in its early days. I suppose we need to wait and see how the experimental and testing process eventually shapes this new concept. It looks like it could have huge potential and there is a big chance that these improvements will take Google on a new social path.

Let’s just hope that Google +1 will eventually facilitate rather than clutter our search process and that we learn to love our “likes”...

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (Nick Woodbine) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:24:08 GMT

It is the day before Third Thursday, I'm sat in the garden at 9am waiting for an electrician to come and fix my lights, delaying a meeting and my work day so that I can actually see when I am in my house at night. The only problem is the electrician isn't coming. He didn't call me to let me know, oh no, that would have been too courteous. Instead I had to phone him (he wasn't there), speak to his wife and find out he is in Malaga, playing golf. I am torn between LMAO and WTFing, although the WTFs are edging it.

Courtesy seems to be one of those things that was thrown out with the Betamax and horse-drawn travel. Left spinning in the wake of the million-mile-an-hour lives that we lead like a hubcab on a motorway hard shoulder.

Well I, for one, want it back. I want to say 'Good Morning' to people on the street without seeming like a deranged social misfit and I want them to say it back (it would be even better if gentlemen wore hats again so we could doff them to passers-by). A 'thank you' when I hold the door for someone or pull into a gap to let another car past shouldn't be too much to ask should it? I want to live in a world where electricians don't disappear to play golf without so much as an apologetic phonecall but turn up, on time, in neat overalls to fix my lights. COME ON PEOPLE!

In part I blame the Internet. It removes the need for social interaction; why talk to someone when you can type what you want to say in 140 characters? The Internet and its bedfellow Brevity have taken our beloved 'yours sincerely' and replaced it with the semantically nonsensical 'best regards', with its cold, disingenuous implications. Suddenly it is fine to not capitalise the start of a sentence because 'it is only an email' (I'm looking at you Aidan Kane) and there are countless other charges to be levied against our digital world. Mrs Elliot, who taught me how to structure correct, courteous English, would be turning in her grave (although I think she still lives in Norwich).

As an Internet professional I suppose I should shoulder some of the blame for this. I do try to rage against the storm of discourteousness in my own little way, haranguing production teams to write sincere and genuine Thank You pages on our sites or penning beautiful, thought provoking and engaging automated emails but I fear I am fighting a losing battle and it saddens me greatly. This shameful passing of courtesy, my friends, is what really grind my gears.

Living in the future, educated in the past

hello@codegent.com (Luke Hubbard) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 12:07:48 GMT

What the pioneers of computing can teach us about the future of education

We live in a world full of technology, a world constantly changing, where information travels at the speed of light and knowledge is but a click away. I don't know about you, but I can't shake the feeling we are living in the future.

Today your phone has more computing power than global super powers had access to less than half a century ago. In the developed world and much of the developing world we have passed the tipping point, computers are now ubiquitous and there is no turning back.

And yet despite the amazing advances in technology that each decade has brought we are yet to realise the full vision of the pioneers who started all this. The area which has the biggest potential is education, but things are only just starting to change.

Before getting into the topic of education I want to tell the brief story of a few people who were crazy enough to think different, who imagined and in many cases invented the world in which we are living in today. By understanding their vision for the future we can see how far we have come and draw inspiration for what lies ahead.

Augmenting Human Intellect

Lets start with Douglas Engelbart, best known as the father of the mouse. Whilst impressive, this claim to fame does not do his research team justice. Way back in 1968 at the dawn of computing he worked at the Stanford Research Center for augmenting human Intellect (SRI). In the mother of all demos Douglas presented oN-Line System NLS using many of the features your computer has today. Multiple windows, networking, collaborative file editing, hypermedia, video conferencing, and yes even a mouse. While the system was crude the vision that drove the innovation was clear. Here is a quote from the 1962 paper on his research.

By "augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems

We are where we are today not because a bunch of geeks were obsessed with technology for technologies sake, but because visionaries dreamed of a future in which computers would change how we learn, think, and interact with the world.

Xerox PARC

You can trace the lineage of your PC and even the iPad back to the research done at SRI. In the early 70's around about the time HP (the calculator company) was turning down one inspired employees's plans to build personal computers, Xerox (the photocopy company) was setting up a new research center called PARC and hiring many of the SRI researchers who worked on NLS.

PARC was a melting pot of ideas and that lead to many innovative technologies such as the Alto computer, advances in operating systems, ethernet, laser printers, and the first production mouse. While most of these were not a commercial success for Xerox, they did serve to inspire the next generation. A young Steve Jobs (business partner of now former HP employee Steve Wozniak) toured the facility in 1979 and then borrowed many of the ideas leading to the development of the Lisa Computer in 1983 and the Macintosh in 1984. In turn these were borrowed by Bill Gates at Microsoft and the rest, as they say, is PC history.

Dynabook

Where does the iPad fit in this story? Well take a look at this sketch.

This is a sketch of two children using their Dynabooks taken from the 1972 paper A personal computer for children of all ages by Alan Kay. Alan worked at PARC and together with Nicholas Negroponte (the One Laptop per Child guy) saw a future far beyond the Alto. As part of this research they looked at how children could learn to use a computer and imagined how this would change education. Key to making this happen would be transforming computers from big grey boxes into devices small and smart enough for children to interact naturally with. It's well worth reading the paper in full to understand quite how far ahead of the curve they were.

Four decades after Alan Kay's published his paper long time friend Steve Jobs steps out on stage and introduces the iPad changing the world for a second time. Within a couple of months my three year old son is at home with his first computer, a post PC device.

Seeing Taan pick up and interact with the iPad like a pro I can't help but marvel at Kay's vision. He believed that given the right technology, children can do a much better job teaching themselves. He was right.

A few weeks ago my son asked me how to spell "Pink Panther", slightly taken aback I asked him why? He had the YouTube app open, had gone to search, and now needed to learn how to spell in order to reach his goal of watching a fun cartoon. Typing was not going to be a problem. You don't need to force children to learn, they are naturally inquisitive and if given the means will teach themselves.

I think I was eight before I ever touched a computer and eleven before owning one; imagine how access to technology from infancy will shape our children's lives. Today we are lucky enough to have the tools; what is needed are the modern day pioneers willing to think different and put the technology to best effect to transform education.

Future of education

Ken Robinson makes a strong argument for this in his talks Do schools kill creativity? and Changing education paradigms. He points out our education system is broken, designed during the industrial revolution to produce standard workers for factories. That time has passed, we are now in the midst of an information revolution, creativity and self-learning are in high demand. It's about time our education system evolved to meet the demands of the future.

An unlikely hero who more than embodies Kay's vision is Salman Khan. A financial analyst who through his YouTube videos went from tutoring his two nephews to challenging the existing methods of education. He has now recorded over 2000 videos and runs the Khan Academy, helping kids and teachers find a more effective way of learning. He suggests that we let children learn at their own pace using online resources and that teachers monitor and step in to help where needed. Rather than sit though a one size fits all lecture in class and do homework on your own, it's better to watch a video in your bedroom and do the practical work with your peers in school. You can watch his inspiring TED video embedded below. It's worth mentioning that Bill Gates, through his foundation, is helping to fund his work.

I'm trying to do my bit, I recently joined TED-Ed a group of 10,000 of people keen on transforming education. It's too early to say where this initiative will take us but I want to help in any way I can. Last month I had the opportunity to attend Barcamp unconference in Yangon Burma where I talked about Khan Academy and distributed the videos to students, who in turn shared with their peers. It was an amazing experience. Technology and access to new ways of learning have a big potential to bring about change even in the most isolated parts of the world.

My son will be four soon, it won't be long before he is watching Khan Academy videos on his modern day Dynabook. Kids grow up fast, it is time to think differently about education and learn from the crazy ones who started all this. If we don't, our kids will grow up living in the future, being educated in the past.

Third Thursday - March News

hello@codegent.com (Nick Woodbine) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:28:56 GMT

Christ, it's Third Thursday again and low and behold we are scrabbling around trying to pull the newsletter together. We may look look a swan gliding serenely over the water but...

We hope you enjoy this month's Third Thursday and see you next month for Easter Eggs and Royal Weddings.

App Payback - what business model works best?

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:12:04 GMT

How do you make money from mobile apps? With all the hype that has surrounded Smart Phone Apps in the last few years it all seems so simple. Design and build a killer app, release it to the various market places and then sit back and watch the money roll in. For some lucky punters this has been the case but the psychology and tactics for successfully making money through apps is nuanced with a few key factors to consider.

Straight Purchase

I won't linger too long on this as it is a pretty simple concept to grasp. Build an app people want, then sell it to them. A word of warning though. Unless your app generates a lot of marketing hype, favourable blog or in-store reviews or charts on the best selling lists for your category then be prepared for fairly barren sales, especially if this app is not an extension to an already established brand. Mobile users do not speculatively part with their cash unless there is some sort of validation that this is the app they are after, normally from ratings from other users. So in order to make money you better be prepared to spend some on advertising and promotion.

Additionally as competition intensifies between app developers a price war has also begun and the Average Sales Price (ASP) of apps has been steadily decreasing over time. Nobody wins in a race to the bottom though so what other options are there?

Make it free?

It does seem counter intuitive to put all of that effort and budget into a mobile app to then just give it away for free, however there are still some benefits to doing this. Apps are frequently bolt ons to existing web services that make it easier for mobile users to access and consume. There is a school of thought that people will start to access the web purely through apps rather than directly through the browser as the quantity of content and noise proliferates users will want some form of filter to it all. There are more than 200 million (of the 600 million total) active users accessing facebook through mobile devices and those that use facebook on their mobile are twice as active as non-mobile users.

So a mobile app is a natural addition to your existing web presence if you want to keep your user base engaged and active. Unsurprisingly free apps also get downloaded a lot more than paid ones, especially on the Android platform so you could also consider this an exercise in brand building as well as facilitating user consumption.

Ad Supported

Including adverts in your app seems like a pretty simple revenue model. There are established Ad platforms such as AdMob (owned by Google), iAd (Apple's own advertising platform) and InMobi which dominates the Asia-Pacific market. However the revenue cuts are not great and in order to really sustain a decent income you need to have a lot of active users for your app. There is no real harm in supporting your free app with Ads aside from a bit of user distraction and the fact they may well click off your App completely if lured in by the marketing (although iAd has the benefit of being completely in app). You could also consider offering a premium service that removes the Ads which your most engaged users will want to take up.

In-app Billing

In-app billing has long been lauded as the answer to the free versus paid debate. Essentially the download of the app is free (which helps maximises the potential user base) and then the app either becomes chargeable for certain features or content. This way users get to try the app out without cost and if they like it can pay for more. It is essential to provide just enough functionality in the demo version to entice the user to try it and then advertise just how much more the user will get when they upgrade to the full version.

Sounds great! But take up of this option has been very slow so far. Bango reported that a mere 5% of the sales it facilitated in 2010 used this method however they also forecast that by the end of 2011 In-app billing will account for 30% of mobile payments as technical limitations that have encumbered developers are gradually resolved.

In-app purchase falls broadly into two camps:

Unlocking content and features in the classic upgrade model from a light version.
Building in micro transactions to buy things like digital goods in a game. For example a new bird charcater in Angry Birds or a facebook badge.

Subscription (The Holy Grail)

Marketers often cite subscribed users as the most attractive as income is predictable and regular (although naturally there is attrition). Each user that comes on board adds to the bottom line created by the previous. The sales cycle is gradually upward rather than peaking and troughing.

Not all apps can warrant a subscription model but if your app provides an ongoing level of service or is a source of valuable fresh content then it should be on your radar. I have heard anecdotally that users are also more open to it rather than a high one off purchase as they feel they can leave at any time and might not spend as much even though they normally end up spending more.

In February Apple and Google raised the stakes by announcing two different “one-click subscription models”, with the key difference being the amount each party will get for each subscription sold. Apple will get 30% for each subscription sold. By contrast, Google's “One Pass” system is a flat 10% charge (i.e., the publisher keeps 90%).

Previously subscriptions were handled externally to the app through a web interface but the ability to do this easily in-app is potentially huge. However the heavy cut that Apple have demanded has prompted a lot of unrest as the 30% cut eclipses many profit margins and Apple have said that there cannot be any "Apple Tax" (where users subscribing through their platform get charged more than anywhere else). This effectively stifles the competition unless there is a complete withdrawal from the App Store. Additionally the subscribing user's data is not released back to the publisher in the same way it would had they signed up direct. That argument needs more time to full play out.

Despite the negative issues Apple now offers an operating system that controls over 100 million high-value consumer accounts all connected to credit cards. Google and Microsoft are also both investing enormous resources in this area as well and are showing more willingness to be flexible to both publishers and advertisers.

The only downside is that users are only happy to manage around 6 subscriptions at any one time so get in quick before the gold rush!

Either way now might be the time to start thinking of your future app business model.

Content Strategy: 5 things I learnt last week

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 09:23:55 GMT

Thanks to our guest writer for this month, Catherine Toole, CEO of the digital copywriting agency Sticky Content.

“In 2011, content strategy will be bigger than social media”. So declared Kristina Halvorson in her keynote at last Spring’s Content Strategy Forum in Paris.

And what a difference a year makes. At last week’s Digital Cream event, Sticky Content moderated 6 tables made up of over 60 senior UK digital professionals eager to get them some content strategy.

Here’s 5 things I took away from that day:

1. Nobody knows exactly what content strategy is yet. And that’s ok. There are various definitions and processes flying around and what people consider to be the key content strategy tasks varies depending on whether they come at it from a UX, IA, marketing, development or editorial background.

Yet in general, people agree that it’s about planning for better, more effective, targeted content – meaning dedicated budgets and much earlier/more prominent consideration of how and what content is to be created and produced. And that’s a big leap forward from filling in lorem ipsum sites.

2. Some people just need to produce that PowerPoint. On the flipside, I’ve been asked a lot recently to simply produce a ‘quick PowerPoint’ outlining a content strategy for us. So it can tick a box and lie in a dark cupboard somewhere no doubt. But few organisations are agile enough to embrace content strategy overnight so in the meantime, anything that raises its profile and gets a content advocate a louder voice in an organisation has got to be a good start.

3. If you can’t sell it all in, just do something small and strategic with your content – and then publicise the uplift.

I’m giving a NN/g usability week seminar in NYC this year called ’24 quick copy fixes with high ROI’. The idea is that you do something small, inexpensive and clever with text (but it could be any kind of content) prove its worth and then stand back as you are flooded with requests to ‘do it again’. A kind of reverse engineering of content strategy, if you like.

4. We forgot what we did well in print. We all know that writing for digital requires a completely new skills set and many talented print writers come a cropper when asked to provide scannable, searchable, ecommerce copy in a specific brand tone of voice. But you tell me when any self-respecting direct marketing agency last said: ‘Yeah, well, we’re doing this mail shot. It’s purple, A4 and has a picture of a dog on it. It’s all done, we just need you to drop some text into it’.

Offline, we always started with a messaging strategy. Equally, what journalist is allowed to write whatever they like and publish it? Magazines have formats, word counts, style guides, sub editors providing QA and publishers and editors determining the balance between what readers need and advertisers want. Content strategy is a return to these disciplines that made the British press admired the world over.

5. ‘However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results’. So said Sir Winston Churchill. There was lots of talk around the table last week about what we can put in place to measure and evolve a content strategy, so what begins as an inspirational PowerPoint begets a set of processes and internal changes which actually allow you to create more effective content ongoingly. It was generally agreed that the stronger the strategy, formats, processes, insights and guidelines, the more content creators can concentrate on execution itself and certainly most websites will be the better for it.

- Catherine Toole, CEO Sticky Content

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 09:08:07 GMT

Three months into the light-hearted rant that really grinds the gears of the people here at Codegent. This month: time.

The reason time really grinds my gears is that there is never enough of it when you need it. Take this article, I thought someone else was writing it and it turns out they didn’t so I’ve had to do it at the last minute. I wouldn’t mind, but I also have to finish a presentation that I’m giving to a client in a few hours time, sort out this month’s payroll, go through a site review, write a case study, have a think about a new idea that someone has asked me to consider, renew my car insurance…

Last year I did an analysis of my previous year’s Tweets using some tool I don’t have time to go back and find. But I remember that the word “time” was my most-used one. Ironic that I wasted time on Twitter moaning about not having enough time.

Trouble is, I think we all feel like we’re constantly chasing our tails and worry that we do some things well and ignore the rest, or do lots of things badly. It seems odd to me that somehow the requisite amount of time for doing work is 5 days per week of 9am – 5pm and anything less means you haven’t got enough to do and any more means you are over-worked. But who decided that? What would happen if we all only worked 2 days a week?

Here in Codegent Towers, a few people have been using the Pomodoro Technique: sticking on headphones and setting the timer for 25 minutes of uninterrupted concentration. It works. You do a day of Pomodoro and you get into bed at night and feel like you’ve achieved masses. But you’ve also not answered your emails, not taken phone calls and ignored your colleagues. To quote John Donne “no man is an island” and human interaction is a kind of key requirement of being part of a busy agency. Yet being a continent (or whatever the opposite of an island is) takes longer. A lot longer than the sum of your list of 'To Dos" for the day.

Anyway, I’ve spent too much time on this already. Sorry it’s so brief and not particularly well thought-through, but I just didn’t have enough time.

And that, folks, is what really grinds my gears.

Third Thursday - February News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:34:56 GMT

It's the Third Thursday of the month. 3-2-1 go!

We are looking for a new developer. Click here to find out more.

Other links referenced...

Learn Thai iPhone and Android App. "Head and shoulders above the competition..."
The Tepilo Nokia App launches
Introducing our new Creative Lead Bjorn Jansen
We got jobs for Developers and Project Managers

4 reasons why you need to change your website

hello@codegent.com (Agnieszka Oslak) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:19:02 GMT

Your website is your marketing tool and should reflect what you do and who you are. With that in mind do you like the image that you are projecting to the world? If no, then probably it is time to start reconsidering your options. You don’t necessary need to overhaul your old website; it might be only a matter of tweaking your existing one. To help you to make a decision here are 4 reasons that may mean it is time to change.

1. Your current site doesn't allow you to communicate with your audience

Sorry, this is another social media stick to beat you with but it’s the world we are now living in. It doesn’t apply to everyone but increasingly users expect to be given the opportunity to interact with your content – share it, recommend, express likes and dislikes or comment. But it isn’t just about users, social media will also benefit you. Properly optimised sites can increase your conversion rates, SEO and help spread the word – all for free!

2. Is it stuck in 2004?

If your site was developed in and built for older browsers and on old kit then you might want to try using it on big screens and modern browsers because that is how the lion’s share of your users will see you.

3. Does your website still represent who you are and what you want to say?

As an agency what we offer our clients today is not what we offered them 2 years ago, let alone 6 years ago. We are beginning to think about v5 of our website because, although v4 (released in 2009) is great, it no longer communicates everything about our offering today. We have evolved and therefore so has what we want to tell the world. You would think that as a web design agency this would be pretty straight forward, but as is all too common, making time for ourselves amongst our clients is tricky to say the least. But make it we shall because if we don’t no one else will be telling clients about our usability experience or brand work or… you get the picture. Take a look at what you are saying about yourself but don’t be surprised if you don’t recognise yourself any more.

4. You might be the same old dog but has your audience changed?

How much has your online behaviour changed in the past few years? Are you reading this on your iPhone? (I bet it is a 4). Your audience and their expectations are developing as the technology does and your site should reflect those changes. Is your site optimised for a mobile or tablets or have you even considered what people coming to your site on those devices might be after?

Hopefully you are not feeling too stressed out reading the above. Get in touch for a cup of tea and a chat with us if you need a bit of therapy!

Where's the paper boy gone?

hello@codegent.com (Maxime Boulin) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:47:17 GMT

Murdoch was right claiming that the iPad was going to be a "game changer": it's been dominating the "tablets" market ever since its release in 2010 (From the second quarter to the third quarter 2010, the overall media tablet market grew 45% percent and has been driven "almost exclusively" by the iPad (1)) and has had a tremendous impact on how people consume information. As of December 2010, 14.79 million iPads have been sold, making the iPad the best-selling tech gadget in history. iOS and its "exclusive" apps have definitely contributed to its success, and have drastically changed the way we experience Web browsing, gaming and media. I don't know about you, but I haven't purchased a single magazine (nor read news on my computer) since the iPad introduction. I've been purchasing, reading and sharing news & articles right from the comfort of my couch. The iPad has become my breakfast companion, and I thought I'd give you a tour of how it got there in this regard, app by app.

The pioneer

Wired Magazine (now Wired Reader for iPad)

Wired for iPad was the first (good) example of what publishers and content creators can achieve on tablets, offering additional value compared to the print version (explanatory animations, videos inside the content, gesture-driven reading, animated/video ads etc.). Although this first attempt at a tablet magazine wasn't appreciated by everyone (many disliked the fact that users had to purchase every release as a new app), it kicked off the wave of "newsstand" apps.

Personalised social magazines

Pulse News Reader

Pulse was introduced as a "clean and elegant news reader" and redefined the way we consume news feeds on a mobile device. By providing a manageable grid of boxes on the iPad display - each row being a new feed - coupled with its snappy interface, it transported Pulse News Reader into the "top paid" category in just a matter of weeks.

Flipboard

Flipboard is a more personal, social magazine. It integrates with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and displays news in an easy-to-read, magazine-like format. Flipboard got notorious for it's animations and simplicity (e.g. you "turn" pages just like you would do on a paper magazine). Flipboard is still my favourite way to consume news on the iPad and keep in touch with my friend's activities.

Flud

Flud is the latest visual news-reader app coming to the iPad, and describes itself as "a modern, beautiful and personalized mobile news ecosystem with the vision to empower it's users to engage and broadcast relevant news topics to their social networks". Flud takes Pulse's concept one step further, offering a much tidier experience to it's users.

The big name's magazines

Popular Science

Published by Bonnier, Popular Science on the iPad continues in Wired's footsteps: bringing a paper magazine to life on the iPad. Its interface is amongst the best around, offering a nice level of interaction possible with the content.

Project Magazine

Project Magazine, produced by Virgin, is one of the most recent additions to the magazines category on the iPad. It's an incredibly polished magazine, covering a rather broad array of topics, with really great content and few advertisements (especially compared to Wired). Definitely a tablet magazine done right.

The Daily

The latest arrival in the magazine category is no less than Rupert Murdoch's creation: The Daily. With a $30 million initial investment, and costing around "half a million dollars" to produce each week, The Daily has been highly anticipated. It's also the first app to introduce and rely on Apple's new subscription system. Unfortunately, The Daily suffers from numerous crashes and slow (to say the least) startup times. Hopefully, these problems will get addressed in coming revisions.

What's next?

Far from being monotonous, there is still room for improvement in this category of apps, particularly in the area of interface design and how the content is experienced. I think this is where companies like Push Pop Press can enter.

Push Pop Press was founded in February 2010 by a team that includes ex-Apple genius designer Mike Matas. They present themselves as "[…] bringing together great content and beautiful software to create a new breed of digital books. Books that let you explore photos, videos, music, maps, and interactive graphics, all through a new physics-based multi-touch user interface".

We know very little about it yet, but John Gruber from "Daring Fireball" has made laudatory comments on what he has seen from the app so far. Judging by his post, it looks like they have done an amazing job, and it could very well be the precursor of the next generation of tablet-specific "newsstands" & magazines. It's definitely an app to keep on your radar.

The iPad has changed, and is still changing the way we consume information and media, yet we're just at the beginning of the tablets era and I am sure we will continue to be amazed by future tablet-specific creations. Just like Sinatra would say "the best is yet to come"!

(1) Data sourced from http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/01/tablet-market-grows-45-quarter-over-quarter-driven-by-ipad.ars

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:30:22 GMT

What really grinds my gears #2

Following on our new series where someone grumpy in the agency has a moan about what hacks them off. This month: political debate.

What has politics got to do with a digital agency you may ask? Well, when we write our corporation tax cheque each year, caring about how it’s spent becomes a concern. And, let’s not forget, decisions taken in parliament have a direct affect on our commercial well-being.

The problem is, politicans treat political debate like some sort of game show, where the rules are to avoid answering difficult questions whilst simultaneously insulting your opponent and sticking to your message. Trouble is, this isn’t an extension of their University Debating Society, it's real decisions that affect real people's lives. Take the recent clash in the Commons between Ed Balls and George Osborne, where Mr Balls begins by referencing an increase to the bank levy. Here is a shortened version:

Ed Balls: Good job I didn’t have a breakfast meeting this morning or I would have missed his rather hurried ‘mini budget’.

Cue: laughter from his side of the House (because the implications for all of us of raising taxes from the banks is funny, right?)

It snowed so badly in December in the UK that…the economy slumped and unemployment rose. In America it also snowed badly but the pace of economic growth increased… could the Chancellor tell the House, is there something different about British snow?

More laughter (our economy’s woes clearly an endless source of humour for those in opposition).

George Osborne: I must welcome him….now he and the Leader of the Opposition know what it’s like to be the people’s second choice.

Laughter on the other side of the house (they feel that their guy is the funnier stand up. But joking aside, this is a serious question: why exactly is the economy growing in the US and has stalled in the UK? Will the Chancellor explain the situation and reassure us)?

When he was at the Treasury… Britain had the largest housing boom, biggest deficit…he is a deficit denier.

(So, just use it as an opportunity to attack the opposition, then…)

EB: Mr Speaker, no answer to the question about America, then. Perhaps he should have spent less time on the ski slopes of Switzerland and more time in the conference halls of Davos listening to the American Treasury Secretary….will he have to stand here in 6 weeks time and downgrade his first growth forecast?

(Nobody cares about Osborne skiing, but we would like to know if he still stands by his growth forecast.)

GO: He clearly had a lot of time to prepare for that but I’m not sure it came out as expected.

(Nobody wants a critique on his delivery, Mr Osborne, but they would like an answer to that question.)

What I will say is this: we have had to deal with his economic legacy….

(Ad nauseam)

And at the end of this exchange we learn absolutely NOTHING. All we are left with is a sense of frustration that we have bothered to waste our time listening to two not-very-funny men trying to get one up on each other.

The one thing I did hear that resonated was during Prime Minister’s Question Time when MPs were shouting and jeering like a bunch of morons and the Speaker said “these exchanges are excessively rowdy and I must ask members on both sides to consider what the public thinks of this sort of behaviour”. Indeed.

If I had my way, questions in Parliament would have the same gravitas as questions in Court – and anyone not answering them or treating them seriously would be held in contempt.

But there is a wider lesson that I think Social Media is teaching us. And that is that, just because you stick to your line and refuse to answer a reasonable question, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t drawing their own conclusions.

We all know that people are talking about you on Twitter whether you like it or not, but how would we deal with a sudden torrent of criticism that is coming your way? If you were a political party you’d most likely ignore it, or publish an unrelated Tweet that just repeats your message. But I think this is a mistake. Ignoring it is says either you don’t respect the people who are talking or you’re too stupid to realise that it’s being said in the first place.

When Nick Clegg was being berated on Twitter for breaking his election promises, what did he do? He has a Twitter account, with over 50,000 followers, so how do we think he chose to use it to engage with those people venting their frustration? Well, surprisingly on the day of the student riots, other than referencing an interview, he did nothing. I’m guessing that everything is so carefully planned and spun through his media adviser that they advised that he shouldn’t stoop so low as to respond.

But the truth is, this is a world of instant opinion and we all need to embrace it. We need to put our hands up when we mess up. We need to explain how we’re going to do better next time. And we need to do this by engaging on a human level, because you can’t be Tweeting trivia one minute and lying low the next. Political parties are out of tune with sentiment when they continue to wriggle out of answering genuine questions and treating it as a game, rather than the serious business of running our country.

And that, folks, is what really grinds my gears.

Look what you're doing with your torrents!

hello@codegent.com (Nick Woodbine) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:46:58 GMT

The thoughts of Rachel : Friend, erstwhile Music PR Bod, current Ukulele maestro and regular contributer to The Independent and The 405.

The business model of a record label is a funny one. It has been said that about 8 out of 10 albums lose money, so it is the 2 out of 10 that hit the jackpot who have to bail out the losses of the other 8. It is a ridiculous system, but in an industry that is at the mercy of fickle music lovers alongside vast production costs, it seems an unavoidable one. In the ‘olden days’, when fans were happy to part with cash money for records, the labels had enough revenue to nurture new bands, spend a bit of time in the studio, develop talent for a long term career – think Bowie, Rolling Stones, U2. Things are a little different nowadays. With the advent of torrent sites, P2P sharing and legal streaming sites such as Spotify, Last fm and Pandora, the labels simply aren’t making money anymore. Or at least, not as much money. Pair that with the falling cost of CDs, forced down by loss leaders in the market such as Tesco and Asda, and what we have is a great big money-haemorrhaging mess. The labels were slow to recognise the vast potential the internet offered an industry such as theirs, playing catch up with sites such as Napster, Pirate Bay and Limewire, but when they finally got round to monetizing digital music on their own terms it was too late. The public had seen the goods, and the goods were free.

With a burgeoning P2P and torrent ‘scene’, naturally the profits of the labels are reduced and so new measures have to be introduced to maximize the money making potential of their products. Where at one time bands would be signed because they showed long term potential, now artists are being signed because they are already fully formed, instant and a dead cert in terms of record sales. A & R scouts are less likely to take a punt on a new artist unless they have clear commercial potential and Labels don’t necessarily have the money to spend on developing new talent over a 5 album deal. What they want are record sales, and so dawns the era of disposable pop music, artists who are here today, gone tomorrow along with the descending production values that brings. It’s a strange time when the ‘one hit wonder’ becomes the norm. There’s huge pressure on artists to score a number one hit on their debut single and album, and if they don’t, they are deemed to have failed. Of course, this isn’t the case with every single band or artist signed to a label, but it is definitely a growing trend, brought on by the need to make money, and to make it fast. It is a frightening thing to think that if this had been the attitude fifteen years ago, Radiohead would have been dropped by their label immediately after their poorly received first album, Pablo Honey.

Independent labels have always been the quiet, underlings to the behemoth majors and have tended to have a less commercially minded approach to their artists. However, they too are suffering from falling record sales. Even independent labels need a big hitter to pay for the rest of their roster. Domino Records have Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand; Beggars Banquet have The White Stripes and Adele; Rough Trade have Arcade Fire and The Strokes. Although artistic integrity tends to remain intact longer at independent labels, they too are shying away from new signings that don’t at least show some commercial potential, demonstrated by the recent influx of break through artists signed to the smaller labels.

Some artists have done away with record labels altogether and have recognized that music has lost it’s value - the only real way to make money in today’s climate is to sell out massive stadiums tours. This doesn’t help unsigned or new bands in any way, but it sure as hell helps the likes of Prince, who gave his last album away free with The Daily Mail, but played 21 sold out shows at the O2 for huge personal profit. He’s not daft, is Prince.

All of these changes come from a need to make money in a market with shrinking revenue streams. The Internet is the maker and breaker of the music industry as we know it. We have unprecedented access to music from all over the globe at our very fingertips, unsigned bands have a forum unto which they can distribute their music, promote themselves, do away with the shackles of a record label. But at the same time, the Internet has destroyed the value of music. Great for music fans, not great for brand new bands who want to make money or get signed. Because you can’t touch it or see it, people seem to think that music should be free, regardless to the hundreds of skilled and talented people involved in producing an album. Labels are faced with the ‘bottled water’ quandary: How do you get people to pay for something that they can get for free? Evian seem to have figured it out. The music industry, however, have some way to go.

Third Thursday - January News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:12:34 GMT

It's the Third Thursday of the month. David was a man of few words this month, mostly because he is knackered out by baby Max!

David auditions for Scrubs but was told they'd filled the role of cleaner

Other links referenced...

Quora - building your personal brand?

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:45:56 GMT

You have probably heard about the recent social media explosion surrounding Quora. There have been some pretty grandiose claims about how it could be "bigger than Twitter" and "the future of blogging" so I thought I would give you a closer look to see what all the fuss was about.

What is Quora?

"Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organised by everyone who uses it." - their definition

You ask a question and the community answers it. You can also subscribe to topics, answers or people that interest you.
It utilises your existing connections via close ties with Twitter and facebook so you are more likely to start getting answers from people you're already engaged with.
The best answers get voted up Digg style, the dross is pushed down so you iterate towards quality.
Relevant content is collated into a facebook-like feed enabling new content to be brought to your attention (via notifications).
It has a strong, intelligent search engine for easily finding topics and answers surrounding the question you might have.

So it's like a discussion forum then... wow!

Indeed! Plus Q&A sites are not exactly unique either so why has it carved out its space on the web and been so highly praised by the big players of Silicon Valley? The answer lies in building personal reputation. Aside from the pleasure of writing, bloggers generally publish in order to share their opinions, experiences and expertise so they can build an audience and ultimately become influential. However this can be at quite a considerable cost in terms of their time creating and marketing that content (ask me how I know!) and is rarely successful.

By engaging with Quora on topics that you have sound knowledge and opinion on you can build audience and influence much faster than before. A well constructed and timely answer will get voted up towards the top and therefore will be read (alongside links to your profile) by everyone following the topic. Invariably, you will pick up more followers and be inclined to write better quality answers to help increase your votes. It's this game mechanic that has really set Quora apart.

Ok, I'm liking this anything else cool?

Funny you should ask. The SEO benefits are actually astounding. Q&A sites are doing particularly well in natural search at the moment (as are video and real time social media content) as the space race for relevancy and fresh content continues between the major search engines. It is completely feasible that your post on Quora could top the search term for the topic whereas your own blog post would normally nestle somewhere on page 5. Now that is powerful, and it's already started happening.

The quality of the current conversations is really high, primarily because of the extremely engaged early adopter community who buys into the concept and is committed to producing good content. Additionally there is the chance of commencing discussions with the top people in each topic field. Thought leaders and CEOs such as AOL's former chairman Steve Case are talking openly with regular users on a level playing field (not from a lofty conference stage). This is your time to be seen and heard by the right people.

It is not to everyone's taste though!

It wouldn't be right if I didn't list a few faults would it?

The site does spew out a lot of notification emails which can be a little annoying, especially during this massive growth period. Although do you remember how many invites you got to join facebook initially? However, it was enough to prompt one developer to create this spoof site.
You are building your reputation on someone else's platform. No different to doing the same on Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace etc. but Quora is still in its infancy and anything could happen. Maybe best not to shut down that blog just yet and possibly repost what you write on Quora there as well?
As the platform expands into the mainstream there is a danger that it will dilute and get spammed causing the big guns that are currently engaged to get bored by mediocrity from the wider community of fools. Some people feel Twitter is moving this way and it certainly is the reason Yahoo! Answers is widely derided. In this case we could see questions outstripping answers. The community must continue to police Quora for quality but will they stay engaged?
You can edit another person's question. This is a marmite feature and does feel reminiscent of the warring editors of Wikipedia battling for supremacy. Where reputation matters, big ego also lurks.

Do you use it Mark?

I must admit I did sign up pretty early (last summer) and just clicked about, followed a few of the geek guys I take note of on Twitter and pretty much left it there until the explosion around Christmas. I am following a few topics like "Getting your startup featured on TechCrunch" and "What's the best CMS to build a corporate website?" and the quality of answers are really high! It's undoubtedly a useful resource.

However I'm not addicted to riding on the sweet high of Quora as yet. That may be because I am not really trying to build my personal brand as much as I am for our agency. Quora is currently positioned around the individual although inevitably in the future it will open up for companies in much the same way facebook did. Brands are being mentioned right now so if you represent one I would start searching straight away and getting in on the conversations early.

You can follow me here if you like and please do tell me what you think of Quora in the comments below.

Writing for the web

hello@codegent.com (Michael Wells) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 15:29:40 GMT

When I offered to write an article for this month’s newsletter on ‘Writing for the web’ my first concern was that there wouldn’t be enough information out there. How wrong I was! The good news is that all the information I came across is easy to understand and implement and is consistent across all of the sites that you visit. However the bad news for me is that I then had to try and write an article for the web on ‘Writing for the web’ that follows these principles.

So here goes!

Whether you are having a new website built or managing one on a day-to-day basis, it can take up a lot of your time, especially when you start factoring in tasks such as managing enquiries and payments. As a result, creating the copy is often left to the last minute or isn’t refreshed or reviewed on a regular basis. It is essential that your site looks and functions correctly but it is also imperative that you are giving your users the information they need in the correct format.

Nobody will know your business as well as you do but when writing copy it is important to consider whether you have the necessary skills in-house. If not, I would always recommend using a copywriter and, providing you give a good, clear brief, they should have no problems in conveying the right information to your audience.

It’s web, not print

Writing for the web and writing for print are very different as the user interacts with the mediums in very different ways. Never try to take what you have and what works offline and apply it online. Users read online text a lot slower than they do printed material. Also copy on the web tends to be a lower resolution and therefore isn’t as much of an enjoyable experience, so it should be short and precise.

‘As a guide copy on the web should be 50% less than the paper equivalent.’
Cornell Information Technologies, Cornell University.

The reader’s attention span is also reduced online. They will scan a web page to get the information they need and will quite often be doing this whilst undertaking other tasks or flicking between other sites. They can also be distracted with flashing banners or other things on their screen. So again short, concise copy is essential to get information across.

Target audience

You will have specific audiences and geographic locations that you are targeting. However a website, as a general rule, will be available to anyone in the world so it is suggested that you should always write for an audience of all ages, locations and languages. And always write your copy on the basis that the reader has English as their second language.

Structure and content

Here are a few pointers that you should bear in mind when thinking about your copy

With the web, users will scan the page to find the information they want. It is therefore important that your copy follows a consistent structure throughout.
Before you start you should list the key objectives for the page first - what do you need to say and why. This will help you to keep the copy concise and informative.
Headings should be explanatory and informative as users will make a decision there and then as to whether they are going to get the information they need from that page and your site.
Following the pyramid rule – give the conclusion first and then expand this out further down the page with more information – the who, what, when, why, where, how.
Restrict your ideas to one per paragraph so as not to over load the user or run the risk of them missing a key point.
Use calls to action at all relevant points and make sure that they clearly highlight what the user needs to do and why.
Use bold and italics sparingly so as not to confuse or overwhelm the user. Bold the words that summarise the information on the page and make sure that when combined they make sense.
Ensure that linked text stands out on a page but again make sure that on scanning the page the user can see what they are clicking through to. ‘Click here’ doesn’t tell the user what they would click there for – this is especially important when you audience might be using screen readers.
Capital letters are also a big no-no as it gives the impression of SHOUTING!!
Break up big blocks of text with smaller paragraphs, bullet points and quotes.
Keep sentences short and to the point.
Don’t use unnecessarily complicated words and avoid slang, abbreviations and acroynyms.

Tone of voice

Keeping it simple and to the point shouldn’t mean that your branding message and tone of voice online isn’t consistent with the rest of your branding communications – but do remember to keep it informative rather than ‘fluffy’.

SEO

It is essential that your website is optimised for search engines particularly through the use of keywords within the copy. Keywords should fit naturally into the copy you are writing, but if not make sure that they are not in there at the cost of making a sentence sound unnatural or forced. Users will notice! As a general rule a keyword shouldn’t appear in a paragraph more than twice.

Translation

If you are looking to translate versions of your site then the points I have mentioned above are still just as important. Ensuring that you retain the correct tone of voice in a different language and that the copy is appropriate to that culture is essential and should always be done by a native speaker.

Testing

There is no reason to expect that your copy will be perfect first time. So don’t be afraid to test different copy, headlines and calls to action where possible. User testing will enable you to get an insight into what works well. When trialling different versions track page visits and users subsequent actions such as clicking on a specific link to assess what works and what doesn’t. There are various tools available to let you run A/B and multivariate tests, from Google Webmaster tools to specialist software such as http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/.

Make it about you

Finally, your website is the window through which the world can view your organisation. It is how they will judge you and get to know you so above all, let your copy portray your brand personality.

Digital Trends 2011

hello@codegent.com (Agnieszka Oslak) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:31:11 GMT

It doesn’t look like we are going to be bowled over by a flood of new digital trends in 2011. All the trends that have been predicted to dominate the digital world this year are those that we are already familiar with, but improved, innovated and expanded.

We are already “social” and “connected” and we go online to fulfil great deal of our personal and professional needs. We will clearly continue spending more time online as more and more aspects of our everyday life becomes dependent on technology. Now we can access internet on the go and anytime we like through smart phones, tablets and the like. As a result, digital trends are becoming an integrated part of cultural trends as they seem to shape and alter the way we interact, exchange information and live our everyday lives. I have therefore picked a few digital trends that I believe will have a significant impact on the way I do things and also those that will be fun to watch evolving.

To start with, there will be shift from ecommerce to social commerce, which has been coming for a while now. Since we can make our buying decisions based on advice from those we trust, why should we rely on the advertising? As a result, we will be more likely to make a purchase online and we will increasingly do so with our smartphone. In addition, our online shopping activity will be facilitated by the relevant app that will make our shopping experience easier and more enjoyable. Mobile apps such as scoutmob.com and shopkick will improve accessibility, help us to get all the product information we need and make transactions fast and painless. Moreover, the use of geo-localised apps will help us save as we benefit from discounts and special offers that come with collective buying. Apart from being kind to your pockets, using apps such Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite or Loop will also be social as they let us check where our friends are and what they are up to.

As the digital world is enters all areas of our personal and public lives there will be more and more issues around privacy. This debate has become a driver for innovations and improvements i.e. Facebook groups etc. and it will heat up in 2011 shaping the digital world further.

Let’s look further at these 5 top digital trends of 2011:

1. Apps, apps everywhere

Apps will continue the move beyond mobile, invading other platforms such as desktops, tablets, TV etc. As user expectations grow apps will continue to innovate and 2011 will see the improvements in the relevance of Apps as users look for a more personal, tailored experience

2. Digital convergence

2011 will see multiple devices coming closer together. Experts are predicting that in the future we will have only one device to do everything. The most exciting thing here is the potential of “web-enabled TV”. We have already seen this happening with Google TV and Apple TV. As this trend continues to grow it won’t be long before our tablets become our computers, TV’s, phones and anything else we might need. Expect to see the first “connected TV”, right on cue for the Olympics.

3. Geo-location, Geo-location , Geo-location

We are already used to Google,Yahoo and Bing displaying our search results according to the location we are in but prepare for things to get even more localised and personalised as Google plans to add contextual discovery to search.

This will mean that Google will work out your location, conduct a search and choose the best results for the particular user. Google’s aim is to push search results to users based on their location and their preferences - Google Places and Hotpot will be the means of gathering these preferences.

We will also go local when “checking into” places via our smartphones. We’re all familiar with Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loop, Google Latitude and Facebook Places. Geo-location combined with social media will be huge in 2011 we can expect numerous Groupon and LivingSocial copycats to spring up. You should also expect Google to dominate location (primarily via mobile) with embedded social elements to it.

4. Ecommerce is over - Long live social commerce

“If I had to guess, social commerce is the next area to really blow up” Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) Social commerce involves the use of social media, in the context of e-commerce, to assist with buying and selling products and services online. In the last few years users are increasingly reliant on collaborative ecommerce tools that enable them "to get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them."

This Social Commerce includes customer ratings and reviews, user recommendations and referrals, shared online shopping, advice forums and so on. Facebook’s virtual currency, “Facebook credits”, will initially allow users to pay for virtual goods such as games, but will eventually let them buy anything, with the network expected to take a 30% cut of all transactions… Procter & Gamble has started selling its Max Factor brand cosmetics through Facebook as part of what the FMCG giant calls ‘small-scale direct-to-consumer’ initiatives. The ability for users to buy products without leaving the site could have major implications for retailers.

"Major brands will create social transactional applications and it will become commonplace for users to be able to make transactions on social media platforms rather than simply using social media to influence their purchasing behaviour," predicts Justin Cooke, chair of the British Interactive Media Association.

5. Internet privacy

The concerns regarding data protection and safety will continue to be a subject of numerous discussions. The debate will heat up this year as the privacy issues have to be regulated and there will need to be consensus between regulators and the industry about the scope of personal information which forms an online identity.

We can expect online activities such as Cookies, digital fingerprinting and behavioural targeting to come under strict surveillance in order to get them regulated and safe. In addition, online marketers will have to work harder to provide transparency and build credibility as consumers are becoming increasingly more scepitcal. They will have to be clearer about their data models and enable users to manage their own profiles.

With the coming changes and developments in digital technology expect to be given even greater ability to engage with all the messages coming at us as we are constantly encouraged to have our say, express our “likes”, comment and make recommendations to our friends.

You can read more about the digital trends here:

http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7014-digital-marketing-trends-2011-by-econsultancy-ceo-ashley-friedlein

http://trends2011.clickhere.com/

http://www.briansolis.com/2010/09/the-decline-of-asocial-shopping-and-the-rise-of-social-commerce/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/dec/30/facebook-2011-sophy-silver

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/digital/forget-e-commerce-social-commerce-is-where-its-at/3016388.article

http://socialcommercetoday.com/speed-summary-wired-feb-2011-cover-story-on-social-commerce/

http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/content/11-digital-trends-2011

http://www.slideshare.net/eMarketerInc/emarketer-webinar-key-digital-trends-for-2011?from=ss_embed

http://www.mediabizbloggers.com/media-biz-bloggers/113093094.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/192803/geolocation_101_how_it_works_the_apps_and_your_privacy.html

What really grinds my gears

hello@codegent.com (David Hart) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 11:44:41 GMT

What really grinds my gears #1

We’re starting a new regular section for the newsletter, entitled “What really grinds my gears”. Anyone who watches Family Guy might remember the episode when Peter gets a slot on a news show to rant about nonsensical issues such as the inability to find Droids when you need them or the lack of cars in the 19^th Century. Anyway, this is a light-hearted rant about life in a digital agency and beyond.

So, first up is over-use of the word ‘entrepreneur’ to describe anyone with a vague idea for a digital business. It sounds so much better to describe yourself as an ‘entrepreneur’ than a guy who had a lame idea whilst drunk with a mate in the pub.

“You know what would be really great? An iPhone app that could, like, automatically order you a kebab and deliver it to your home after a night on the tiles. You know, just looks in your diary and works out that you’ll need a kebab at one in the morning and just orders it. You don’t have to do a thing: they can even open your front door and place it on your lap as you slump in front of the TV. We could call it Key-bab.”

If you break down the word itself, entre means ‘between’ and preneur means ‘taker’. It was first coined by the French economist Jean Baptiste Say (thank you, Wikipedia) to describe someone who sat between capital and labour and took a profit. It didn’t refer to disillusioned management consultants, humiliating themselves in front of sneering Venture Capitalists in a desperate bid to become the next Mark Zuckerberg.

What is worse is the term “serial entrepreneur” being used to describe someone who has had more than one idea, especially when self-applied. “I guess I’m a serial entrepreneur” spoken as if they have some compulsion that means they can’t help but be brilliant.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for innovation, especially in our industry. And there are some great start-ups out there: we work with several people who I would genuinely describe as entrepreneurial because they understand that taking something from idea to successful fruition is a hard, ever-evolving journey. We’ve even put our money where our mouth is with our joint venture with Sarah Beeny on Tepilo.com and the launch of a series of applications for developers.

But let’s not kid ourselves that launching a new online business or application is anything other than very hard work which requires an understanding of the technology as well as knowing how to write a business plan: which needs customers as well as, dare I say, a fantastic website: and which needs dedicated hard graft perhaps even more than an ability to network amongst fellow entrepreneurs.

And that, folks, is what really grinds my gears.

Third Thursday - December News

hello@codegent.com (Mark McDermott) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:47:00 GMT

We wanted to wish you a happy and fortuitous 2011. But instead of the normal David and Mark video 'chat' we decided instead to get the London office to express our sentiments via the medium of dance. Enjoy!

* This was filmed at Pineapple Dance Studios at Old Skool Hip-Hop Dance class for our Christmas Party.

There's no place like phone?

hello@codegent.com (Matt Jukes) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:09:00 GMT

Hi my name is Matt, and I am an addict. It’s been 34 days since my last tweet, check-in or status update. I am a social media addict who, in a single 24-hour period, is capable of posting upwards of 20 tweets, five check-ins, and three status updates – on a quiet day.

I became acutely aware of my addiction on the eve of my latest holiday, when I dropped my iPhone and shattered the screen. In one absent-minded swoop, I had destroyed my book, my camera, my watch, my calendar, my MP3 player and... my phone. The tiny electronic object, which could never be further than 2m away from me, was useless. This left me isolated, disconnected and clamoring for internet cafés, just to get a fix of what my friends were up to – and that was just the start. Apart from the obvious lack of incoming and outgoing phone calls, I couldn’t perform tasks that would ordinarily slip off my fingers without a second thought.

For starters, I had to print out maps to navigate the most basic city streets; I couldn’t even refer to my phone to orientate myself North. I would walk past store fronts, displaying items I wanted to research further and be at a loss without a search engine and a quick bookmark for later reference. Cute little landmarks that reminded me of my friends were past and forgotten, since I had evolved into a state of clicking and uploading. So to stop and take out a camera was way beyond my limited attention span. I also constantly found myself asking passers-by for the time.

Most tragically, I was unable to ‘check in’ at the North Pole. For a whole month I was plunged into a state of what is now known as ‘nomophobia’.

I am not alone in my addiction; nearly 50% of 16-24 year olds have an internet-enabled phone. This instant access to the internet is set to radically change the purchasing habits of future generations of consumers and it is vital that retailers are prepared to respond.

Before the social media revolution, advertising was often focused on getting the consumer into a store. This mindset is in need of drastic change, for the simple reason that even if a potential customer is in your store, a few simple taps on their phone could easily take them to a competitor’s website, comparing prices. Guy Laurence, the Chief Executive of Vodafone reports that “20% of consumers on Oxford St on a Saturday are online at the same time, checking Facebook and checking rivals prices”.

Mobile social networks like Twitter and Facebook have put all of your consumers' friends into their pocket. And the consumer is happy to have this support – not least in the changing room. Gone is the impulse buy, along with the perennial question, “Does my bum looking big in this?”. Now this question can be answered with a quick photo post. Laurence again reports that this in turn has led to a drastic increase in time spent in a store’s changing rooms, as the potential customer waits for their friends to respond. This is social sharing at its most intimate and empowers the consumer to either purchase the product or, in the face of new information arriving whilst they’re switching between skirts, leave it behind.

Amazon has further empowered the consumer with their latest iPhone application. A shopper can be wandering through a store and upon finding a product they are interested in, whip out their handset and simply scan the barcode. The app then hops online and proceeds to show all the retailers who stock that product, arranged from cheapest to the most expensive. And yes, there is a large ‘buy-now’ button. This gives the consumer unprecedented power over the retailer; never before has direct product comparison been so simple.

In practical terms, this means that bricks & mortar retailers can no longer compete on price alone; logically, this should push the retail industry back into the realm of the service industry.

The internet trade body, IMRG, is estimating that £6.4bn will be spent online this Christmas, and 20% of that through mobile applications. That is £1.28bn changing hands through iPhones, Blackberrys and Android phones.

This bourgeoning market is rapidly being catered for by many high street traders, who are building mobile websites – rather than apps – in order to capture the consumer in the heat of the moment – and specifically whilst in the competitors’ shops, when there isn’t time to download an app.

Marks & Spencer has just launched a fully transactional e-commerce mobile site, to connect with this mobile audience. This is a simple site which works on almost any mobile browser and allows a user to search through their extensive range. But something is missing: nowhere on the site can I find a store locator or contact details. These two features are vital to today’s consumer, who might be checking out the competition while trying on an item of clothing in another retailer’s changing room.

In an effort to get the consumer to spend more time in store, department store Debenhams has initiated a competition with the children’s game of ‘four-square’. Anyone who “checks in” (via the Foursquare app) on a Friday is given a free cup of coffee in their in-store café. This is a fantastic way to get the mobile consumer in the store and keep them inside longer. The only weakness with this is that this free coffee potentially gives them time to sit down, take out their smart phone and check the competitors’ prices of a product.

It’s easy to forget how quickly this change in the consumer's mindset has come about. It was just a year ago that it was only online retailers who were investing in mobile platforms, and the thought of making a payment on your phone was foreign to the mainstream consumer.

But with the advent of the iPhone, which put the internet into everyone’s pocket and Apples App store, which made it easy (and acceptable) to pay for goods through your handset, we now have a new and formidable generation of mobile consumers who are educated about retailers and competitors at the point of purchase.

From the classroom to the office...

hello@codegent.com (Agnieszka Oslak) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:30:45 GMT

What kind of skills do school leavers really need in order to be successful in today’s job market? Is it a good degree, real work experience or both? Now that university fees are about to soar I wonder what the value of a degree is and what kind of skills graduates like me really need in today’s rapidly evolving job market.

I am currently doing my internship with Codegent. Even though I am educated to a university degree standard and I specialised in marketing, I do feel like I am taking “baby steps”. Undeniably the course that I completed gave me a strong starting point. It shaped my point of view and gave me a valuable understanding of the industry. Leaving university with a good degree made me feel very optimistic about my future career - as all students do at that point. After graduation some went travelling, some started working in unrelated jobs and some started their marketing career straightaway. I did not go travelling and did not start my marketing career but worked in the hospitality industry instead. I have learnt a great deal about customer service but this has stalled my marketing career. Eventually three years after graduation I started searching for a marketing role. As you can imagine it was a challenging experience as I lack the relevant experience and in some respects my degree already appears to be obsolete. During the three years since my graduation things have changed due to the rapid development of technology – at the current rate of change I believe that even one year away from the industry would make you feel out-of-touch.

Looking back I regret that my studies were not supported by relevant work experience. A work placement or internship is as valuable as the university course itself. It would have definitely helped me to kick start my career with more confidence and provided me with some valuable skills and tools. Work experience is evidence of your practical capabilities whereas a degree shows your understanding of the theory. The theory and the practical experience complement one another and appear to be the most advantageous way of getting prepared for the real work environment.

My internship with Codegent started over a month ago and I have enjoyed every day so far and have learnt a lot. There is always something new and interesting to learn about or to research. Codegent is known for the great websites they produce such as Tepilo, The Hoxton Hotel and Searcys to name just a few, but they also work across so many other areas of digital including: Mobile Apps, SEO, SMO, viral marketing campaigns etc. I am always happy to get myself involved and help as much as I can. In my eyes the best way to learn is to get involved, listen, make mistakes and learn from constructive criticism. This is how I have approached my internship and I do believe that my attitude is typical of most interns out there who are looking for that first opportunity. Had I not have been given an internship or postponed my job search for a bit longer I would have probably never experienced what it is like to work in marketing and my marketing degree would have been in vain.

During my search I have noticed that some companies are reluctant to recruit interns as they do not see the benefits. Here at Codegent they believe that “the mighty oaks from the little acorn grow” and really value the benefits of running an internship programme. From their perspective interns provide an opportunity to nurture new talent and learn from them.

Have you had experience of running internships? Or have you been an intern yourself? It would be great to hear about your experiences.

2010 at Casa Codegent

hello@codegent.com (Nick Woodbine) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 13:19:23 GMT

Well, that was quite a year... It is curious how the days go by so fast yet January seems like such a damned long time ago. It’s been a busy one for us and in true schedule-filling style we thought we’d give you a little synopsis of ‘la dolce vita’ at Codegent in the year 2010.

The New Year heralded the birth of the Codegent Apps team, headed up by Mark and Luke, to focus on the development of web applications. And they’ve been busy bees, launching webcamsnapper (as seen on Brizzly, Twitpic, Daily Booth), Twilert and Twitbooth and developing getDash which is due for launch in early January. We even brought Dustin Curtis over from the States to work with us on the interface development of getDash back in March.

Mark has also been making his voice heard around the globe, invited to attend South by South-West in March as part of the UK Digital Mission. He’s also been out and about in London, speaking at live events and hobnobbing with the bright young things of the internet.

On the agency side there have been launches a-plenty for clients old and new: a few stand outs include sites for the British Library, 4 for the Mental Health Foundation, The Hoxton and Searcys. We’ve run Facebook campaigns for Pepsi and built a healthy collection of iPhone and iPad Apps: you can get a bit more info on of this work on our portfolio. It’s also been another year of awards, with Tepilo and The Hoxton picking up silverware in the w3 Awards and nominations in the BIMAs.

We’ve been pretty busy too on the staff front with people coming and going. Lauren packed her bags and went off travelling, whilst Aidan finally caved in and joined us full-time along with Nor, Panu, Bruna, Agnieszka, Michael & Joseph – quite the band of merry men! The office is starting to get a bit full and it won’t be too long before we need to start thinking about a new home.

There have been weddings (Mr and Mrs Kane and Mr and Mrs Tangnoi), babies (David and Jane – due in about a week), a new swanky office in Bangkok and I got another bike.

So Father Time marches on. Au revoir 2010, I think you could say it has been a successful one. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.