There’s background video, sliders for more info, and the page looks great on mobile devices and tablets.
We’re pleased with how this is coming together, and there’s much more to follow from our Motoriety collaboration.

I’ll be completely honest with you and say straight away that this post is probably for the more geeksome amongst you. I’m gonna be talking about the behind the scenes stuff and trends that have made 2012 a cool year for web design and development. So much of this years big news has been about the tech that we use day to day, the shift to smartphones and tablets becoming our de facto way of interacting with the internet and the world (as I keep going on about) and how the user interacts and benefits. I have neglected to discuss the inner workings of it much and what we are finding cool, helpful, ingenious and funny in the office as we go about making and creating the best damn digital stuff in the world.

1. Parallax Scrolling

Or One-Long-Continuous-Web-Page if you’re not into the lingo. And lets be clear, its not just about having a huge scrollbar and a shotgun approach to plastering info on a site. Its the lovely design of having a site that just keeps on inviting you to continue down the page for more information, or put more succinctly from 1stwebdesigner “In web design use, parallax refers to the scrolling technique used to create the illusion of depth on websites” . You can see an excellent example with some rather nifty floating object design at autographer.com.

2. Startups, This Is How Design Works

startupsthisishowdesignworks.com by Wells Riley does exactly what it says on the tin. It is just a great resource (and not just for startups) that gives you a very good idea of how important design is when creating a new website. So many companies, and again its not just startups but they do seem to be common perpetrators, have a great campaign, product or app to launch but just go for a generic website look. Or one without thought to the (Steve Jobs quote) “crossroad of technology and liberal arts” or form and function.

Helpful!

Even if you don’t have a new product, campaign etc this is a great website that gives you a fantastic overview of what works well and why great websites look like they do. Here at T3D we pride ourselves on trying to bring this way of thinking to our clients, and hopefully its reflected in a lot of our work (not to be pushy, but why not have a look through startupsthisishowdesignworks.com and then give T3D a call!)

 3. Type Connection

We have got into our types and fonts in a major way during 2012. Our top designery bod, Liam, came up with a great new font for Edelman when they asked us to spruce up their visual identity a bit. Since then he has gone font-crazy (watch this space!). With great fonting comes great resposibility and thats why Aura Seltzer came up with typeconnection.com – a dating game for fonts! It basically lets you look at what font families go well together and if they are compatible. Although its great fun as a game, it actually has huge potential and usefulness. So many sites use a terrible mix of fonts that are displeasing or awkward to look at, and quickly using Type Connection is a fantastic way to check what you or your designer is pretty and pleasing.

Sounds geeky, actually fun (and geeky)

4. Placektten

This is a jQuery pluggin that turns any HTML element into kitten. Need I say more? No. This IS the future of the internet.

In 2020 ALL websites will look like this!

Have a dandy week!

It kinda looks like I wasn’t alone in my opinion of the new iPhone last week. There were quite a few tech bloggers, journalists and reviewers who felt it wasn’t the leap forward we had hoped. In fact, Samsung even released an advert stacking up the features of the iPhone 5 vs Galaxy SIII:

Did you see what they did there?

And just for disparity the internet was as quick as ever to balance:

BUUUUURRRRRRN!

The meat of the matter.

With the worldwide release of iOS6 we have now seen a lot of the selling features for Apple (although sadly not Siri) transplanted to all post-2009 idevices. I haven’t had a full play yet so I won’t do a proper review but there are certainly a lot of good things there which might just save the iPhone 5 bacon. Firstly, all the new information you can get from the lock-screen – something that a lot of iPhone users (including some in T3D Towers) have wanted for many years. Also if you have all your apps backed-up on iCloud it will not only put them into your new idevice but will know log-in details and preferences, saving you a bit of time whenever you update. Passbook is another one which I can imagine will be (once all major companies have developed their apps suitable) incredibly useful, keeping all your tickets, vouchers and coupons in one place.

Unfortunately, they seem to have got a couple of bits wrong – apparently there are a few bugs in iOS6. A HUGE Apple fan friend of mine (we’re talking early adopter of everything i-based since about 2005) put this on Facebook about 2 hours after the iOS6 release:

 “ios6 – biggest waste of time ever. One big pile of bugs. Sorry apple but you’ve really dropped the ball.”  

And then theres the new Apple Maps app. A few months back when they announced they would no longer provide the Google Maps app there was a lot of worry, but with the data from TomTom people accepted that the maps might be ok. Well, as far as I can gleam they look great, the 3D satellite images loo beautiful. But the data is flawed. Very flawed. Funnily enough my Apple happy friend who updated about iOS 6 later posted:

“According to new Maps app in ios6 there are 15 Chinese restaurants in the UK, 12 of which are in London. Have I been away too long?”

This image has also been going around:

I’m gonna hold off on iOS6 for a wee while

And its made the news.

A pretty good summary of its failings can be found here. Some serious PR work needed by Apple I think.

Elsewhere…

So, in other (but not completely unrelated news) we have seen the launches of 2 other smartphones this week (clearly its the season!). Firstly there is Motorola’s Razr i, which is one of the first phones to launch with an Intel chip. Intel have been trying to break into the market for a while and their link-up with Google’s Android is just starting to come to fruition. The phone itself is fine and good, with a nice camera and supposedly a good battery life, but nothing really exceptional.

HTC’s effort, the 8 (X or S, depending on Sir’s size requirement), is their latest offering based on the Windows 8 OS. The device itself has some pretty nice slick styling and a 4.3in screen. It also features NFC  so it will be interesting to see if HTC can be one of the companies to get this tech off to a flying start. The only problem could be that HTC stock has fallen on hard times recently, so they really need there latest batch of smartphones to do well. I hope they do.

EDIT: Another interesting view (excuse the pun) on the merits/downfalls of Apple Maps

Today I shall leave you with geekculture.com’s The Joy Of Tech cartoon as it sums this last week up well.

Maybe I’m in a bad mood. Maybe I expect too much. But yesterday, with the launch of the iPhone 5, I was underwhelmed. I wasn’t impressed. In fact, I would even go as far as saying I was disappointed.

Why? Well lets start off with the good stuff. Its thinner, only 7.6mm thin – yum! Its taller, yet no wider so that it still fits in the hand perfectly, while now giving you a 16:9 widescreen viewing format and a 4in screen. The A6 chip is rather jolly quick. Oh and the colours are meant to be richer and nicer – ace! “But Phil”, I hear you cry, “you’ve missed one of the BIG things!” No, no I haven’t. I know it has 4G capability, and thats great. It should have 4G. But being in Britain means that 4G will only be available on Everything Everywhere – Orange and T-Mobile (which I’m not) – and only in 4 UK cities (which I’m also not). 4G will be spreading out to the other networks and more locations during 2013 but until then its going to be a VERY rarefied service and not a reason to buy an iPhone 5.

The screen looks nice and the maps are amazing… but thats an iOS 6 thing (via techradar.com)

Not Enough?

Look at the specs above, if that didn’t have the words iPhone attached to it you probably wouldn’t be bothered. I feel that with each previous iteration of the iPhone, and even when they have just added letters or numbers after the series, there has been something… Wow! Something making you wring your hands and go “I must have the new iPhone ‘cos it has feature x!”. Maybe I have missed something, maybe I am becoming too demanding or de-sensitised, but I genuinely don’t think I would notice any difference owning a 5 compared to a 4S in day-to-day use.

If you love Apple unconditionally then stop here…

Ok, I’m warning you, I’m going to be a little controversial now (well, in as far as this blog and within T3D). I think Android – and especially Android partnered with Samsung – might be drawing level, or…. (whisper it) ahead of Apple. I kinda think that with all previous iPhones, they released ahead of the curve and everyone else spent the next few months catching up. With the iPhone 5 I’m struggling to see how its better than a Samsung Galaxy SIII: Thin? Only 1mm thicker than the iPhone. Screen? Its 4.8in and Super AMOLED HD. Fast? With no exact stats for the iPhone 5 its difficult to say exactly but the SIII has a quad-core processor and 1Gb of RAM, more than fast enough for everything it needs to do so far. The only real winning point I can tell is the glass and metal casing on the iPhone feels more quality than the polycarbonate of the SIII. Other than that, its down to the OS and Android is certainly pushing Apple on that front, given its compatibility with NFC, its upgradable memory and constant development.

Is… is this the… the best phone on the market?! (via techradar.com)

 Is the jury out?

I’m certainly not saying this phone is a failure, in fact I am positive that it will sell like hot cakes and may even be Apple’s biggest ever seller. In fact, after everything I have said, I will probably upgrade to a 5 when my contract expires in the next few months. But, and its a big But, there needs to be something BIG, something really WOW with the 5S in a years time. Something that places iPhone very firmly at the top of the smartphone leaderboards. Until then I fear that the 5 is the least persuasive Apple product for quite a long time. Could it have been that this is the first iPhone that hasn’t had Steve Jobs in the decision making process, telling people “This is shit!” if something wasn’t good enough? Is this the first complete product from Apple that has had a nice development process? Heaven forbid or this could be the beginning of the end?

Have a great week!

That has been Samsung’s luck of late. After losing the latest round of patent battles with Apple, in which they have been asked to pay more than $1Bn in damages, they have now turned their own luck around with their latest products at the IFA show in Berlin.

Losers?

I wont dwell on the patent battle damages as it has been well publicised, probably isn’t over yet and has been going on waaaaaaaay too long! I will just point out the facepalming bizarreness of two companies who are major clients of each other suing. Oh well…

Meh… (via bbc.co.uk)

Winning?

So onto the good stuff. So why do I think Samsung are changing their fortunes? Well it comes from the whole range of products they have put forward at the IFA. I have spoken before about how iPad competitors don’t seem to have quite managed to surpass it and therefore are always going to struggle. But what Samsung have cleverly done is to introduce a wide range of smartphone, tablet and (I hate this word but it seems to have come into use) “phablets”. None of them are particularly the fabled “iPhone-beater” or “iPad-beater” but what it does offer is choice in screen size and power. This means that rather than do a lot of market research and R&D to provide a product that will fit the largest section of a consumer market, they are providing products for pretty much everyone. And if one of those products turns out to be less successful then thy will have many others to keep the bank balance happy.

So, what is the new Samsung line-up? Lets go small to large.

Activ S: This is a 4.8in smartphone running Windows 8 and will no doubt piss off Nokia as they planned to launch the first Windows 8 smartphone next week!

Galaxy Note 2: This is a 5.5in smartphone running Android Jelly Bean 4.1. Its got a slightly faster processor than Activ S and is also compatible with a stylus.

Galaxy Note 10.1: As the name suggests, this is the 10.1in tablet version of the Note that also runs Android.

Activ Tab: Again this is another 10.1in screen device but running Windows 8’s tablet platform RT and without the stylus option of the Notes.

Activ Smart PC: As you can probably start to tell by the naming conventions this is the big brother of the Activ S and Tab and uses an 11.6in screen and runs on Windows 8. It also has the added selling point of coming with a detachable keyboard (like the Asus Transformer Pad).

Activ Smart PC Pro: This is exactly the same as above only uses a faster processor (the Intel i5 as opposed to the Intel Atom).

Oh crap! I’ve just broken my laptop! Oh… oh I see… nope… its all fine. Sorry! (via v3.co.uk)

Jacks of all trades

So, as you can tell by that pretty comprehensive line-up you can have pretty much any sized device you like, you can choose between Android or Windows and you can even spec up to make it an occasional full laptop. I think that is pretty good. Its probably the first example I have seen of a manufacturer saying “we’re not going to compete with Apple on identical products, we’re going to offer a full range of alternatives” and I have to applaude that. I’m actually looking forward to getting my hands on them! (And not just cos I’m also buying a lovely new Samsung 3D Smart TV!).

멋진 한 주 되십시오! (Thats ‘Have a great week!’ in Korean)

This blog entry is a bit of a self indulgence but its still tech based so it counts. So, a week ago my wife had a bit of coffee to laptop connectivity issue (i.e. a cup of coffee connected all over a laptop) which has meant that we have been on the hunt for a new laptop.

Although I have been using a MacBook for the last 18+ months my wife has always had Windows based laptops so that was what she was after again. At this point its important to note the differences in making our selection: I look for the fastest, best specced, largest capacity PC we can get for the money. She wants a huge hard drive and a really cool and pretty chasis colour. To be honest, she isn’t, and has never been, particularly bothered about geeky tech specs but I certainly didn’t want her to end up with a something crappy, even if it was pretty.

Oooooooooooooo…. (via highsnobette.com)

I firstly went to the various great tech review sites that I look at regularly – cnet, engadget, Which? etc – to see which brands are topping the review lists at the moment (its been 4 years since we last bought a laptop and I wasn’t sure if the landscape had changed). What struck me was that laptops brands have ironed out the peaks and troughs of models from the past. According to Which (the largest group consumer tester in the UK) the top 7 brand’s (ignoring Apple) all have average test scores across their ranges of 63% – 66%! Even if you look at the best models from each brand they get scores around 71% – 75% and the worst come out at 57% – 61%.

Where have all the shit ones gone?

So I wondered why aren’t there any more AMAZING laptops or really shitty ones. It really all became clear once I started looking at the technical specifications. If you have a budget of around £500 ($800USD) and want a 15″ screened laptop then pretty much every option will be identical inside. They will all have Intel i5 CPUs, or i3 if they want longer battery life, they’ll all have 4Gb – 6Gb RAM and they’ll all have 500Gb – 750Gb HDDs. Not only that but most of the components will be made by the same companies – not just the Intel CPU but the RAM and motherboards and batteries. They are all variations on a theme.

Trust me, these people make EVERYTHING inside your laptop! (via blogs.ubc.ca)

In my day….

I don’t want to lament the past but I remember when I was after my last laptop back in 2004 there was a real art to chasing down and finding the very best laptop for your money. There was a thrill of finding something special. Well, now things are better. You don’t have to worry about getting a dud either. All the main brands have realised that R&D, production and shipping can be a real hit and miss exercise which can cost them dear, so why not all source their materials from the same places and ensure there aren’t any bad apples. Admittedly this means they are all pretty much the same machines just with a different logo on but if it keep the market buoyant then mazel tov!

So after all this research I bet you’re wondering what we went for? A blue one.

Have a great week!

Yesterday Adobe put out a press release saying that it will be withdrawing the Flash plug-in for Android devices form the Google Play store. For most people this will mean relatively little: they will carry on as they always have with their Android device and will find there are a few sites or videos that fail to load properly. C’est la vie. However, anyone with an iOS or Windows Phone (and who are geeky enough to care) will see this as the realisation they have been hoping for.

Some elements on the Peri-Adobe-ic Table are poisonous! (via prodesigntools.com)

A History Lesson…

To give you a bit of background as to why Flash, previously seen by many as the future of online content (web 2.0 – HA! Remember that?), is receding from the future then you need to look at its history with Apple. When Adobe started they actually had a pretty good relationship with Apple – in fact Apple owned a 20% share of the company – but things started to turn sour when the folks in Cupertino hit their rough patch in the 90’s. At that time Adobe, maybe understandably, regarded Apple’s OS as a dying breed and stopped wanting to produce a full range of software for them. This pissed-off Steve Jobs (not difficult) and he marked them out as a company not to be allied with. The irony of this was that as Apple started to turn its operation around in the late 90’s/early 2000’s the Mac, using the Adobe Creative Suite, became the default for anyone in the media and arts industries.

As the 2000’s rolled on there was an uncomfortable pact between them, both acknowledging that they each required the other to be completely successful. However, as the internet became more picture, animation and video orientated Adobe’s Flash became the industry standard to making that happen. You see Flash uses software , rather than hardware, to work its magic so it takes up a lot of CPU time and energy. With most people at the time using desktops the processing power to make Flash work wasn’t a problem – big airy boxes with large cooling fans running off mains electricity meant chip temperature, and therefore efficiency, was of little concern.

Is there anything a Mac can’t do?! (via blog.makezine.com)

But Apple was working on newer, smaller, more efficient products. They had never liked putting fans into their computers and as they were looking to pioneer the faster, smarter, more stylish laptops that were Power and MacBooks, with their one piece aluminium cases and thin design, the temperature, efficiency and battery life of any device became important.

Then we got to the late 2000’s and the launch of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad – at this point, more than ever, efficiency was everything. And using software to run graphically intense websites just wasn’t possible, it needed hardware. This was were the H.264 chip and video standard came in (I won’t bore you with the details) which allowed approx double the length of playback time for video on a mobile device. For websites HTML5, JavaScript and CSS were coming on leaps-and-bounds allowing designers and developers to do anything Flash could do but without its inefficiency.

So what started out as a corporate feud led to Apple (and Steve Jobs yet again!) being right about where the future of the internet was heading and how it should be viewed.

Here Endeth the Lesson

So, back to 2012 and Android being the last major mobile OS to support Flash. Hopefully it will mean that sites become less dependant on it – T3D already warn customers of the potential problems of using Flash – and every site becomes viewable and beautiful on any device.

Adobe is still forging ahead with Flash as a tool for the PC market but I suspect as the rise of laptops, tablets and smartphones becomes more and more prolific this wil subside too. Please, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Adobe is a bad company or that they create bad products, merely that they, like a lot of companies, need to keep what they are doing relevant.

I hope this hasn’t been too much of a lecture. Have a great day!

When I wrote a blog on the Olympics last week I talked about all that the BBC had got right in broadcasting such a huge event in the 21st century. I even mentioned that NBC had grand plans but I wasn’t sure how they were panning out. Well it appears its not so great.

They've made a Pea-Cock Up! Hahahahaha.... (via wikipedia.org)

Over the last few days I have been hearing a lot of criticism over NBC’s coverage of London 2012 in the USA and it has even led to  the hashtag #NBCfail being one of the most prominent over the last week. NBC paid $1.1 billion dollars for complete broadcasting rights in the US and laid out their big plans back in May to bring comprehensive coverage to the States. However it soon became apparent that this plan for “unprecedented coverage” would come at a cost, both in terms of money and viewers patience and tolerance.

Pride at a Price

So firstly the money issue. To be able to get live coverage over the internet via NBCOlympics.com will cost you $100. Wow! That is a lot to watch some of your favorite events online. So maybe you say “Nah, I’ll just watch it on any of the 5 NBC netowrks”. Well good luck, because ALL the NBC coverage is on a several hour time delay so that they can broadcast the highlights at primetime. Looking forward to Michael Phelps, the USA’s greatest ever Olympian, defending his titles? Well then you will need to avoid any websites, social media, TV and news for 8 hours to avoiding finding out if he did it. Want to see the fastest man in the world break the Olympic record? It might have only taken Usain Bolt 9.63 secs to do it but it will take American 6 hrs and 9.63 secs to see it.

Money well spent?

Ok, so lets say you’ve paid out for your $100 subscription and you have unfettered access to the Greatest Show On Earth, at least you will have concise, knowledgeable commentators to communicate it right? Ummm… not so much. At the opening ceremony the two commentators had no idea who Tim Berners-Lee was and suggested viewers “google him”. Fine if they were caught out live but remember this was 5 hrs AFTER the actual ceremony and NBC said one of the great things about a tape delay was that they could provide “context”! They then went on to discuss Kazakhstan’s  link to Borat, describe Luxembourg as a “central European nation”, talk about Uganda’s athletes as coming from the country of Idi Amin, mispronounce the names of Niger and the Cote D’Ivoire. Go USA!

It’s no wonder that so many people, and I mean SO many, are trying to view the BBC’s coverage (AnchorFree’s UK VPN software has seen an increase in downloads of 1,849% in the US since the Olympics began!). How have NBC failed so badly in appreciating that in 2012 their viewers just want the opportunity to watch things live? People will still watch the highlight shows broadcast at primetime but they don’t want to always find out Usain Bolt’s 100m record hours after the event.

If you are reading this in the US, then I feel genuinely bad for you – so far London 2012 has been one hell of a show!

In the US you also miss out on the this guy: Hugging Legend!

I’m not just saying that because its being hosted in London (Go Team GB!), but because every Olympics sees an advancement on the last and should try and outdo those before it. I’m not really talking about the Hawkeye/Goalline/Speedtrap technology, although that is mindbogglingly impressive (REALLY loving the virtual World Record line that moves along the length of the pool in the swimming!), I’m really looking at how Jo Public can view and experience this event like never before.

TV

Lets start with the basics: watching it at home. Firstly, this will be the first Olympics where British and American audiences will be able to view ANY event! Through internet streaming and UK Red Button you’ll be able to choose from any of the 300+ events in 36 disciplines from 26 sports LIVE! This is also the first Olympics to be completely broadcast in full glorious HD, allowing you to see every bead of sweat, every tear and every corporate logo at its best. However, they haven’t stopped there. This is also the first Olympics that has some of the events being broadcast in 3D! So now you will feel like you’ll be getting wet during water polo, you’ll duck during the javalin and may well admit yourself to hospital after the shooting.

Hurrah for Auntie! (via electricpig.co.uk)

Online

I can online really talk about the online content in the UK as I don’t know what its like for those around the rest of the world… but, my word, the BBC are doing a brilliant job!

The basics: every sport, venue, country and athlete have their own page so you can tell who will be on where, at what time and how well they did. This is some pretty comprehensive data coverage and so far I have found it impeccable.

Next up is the ability to select sports, events, countries and athletes as ‘favourites’ on the BBC website, which acts a bit like an RSS feed, meaning every time you go on you can click them and see what they are doing when.

As mentioned above they are also streaming every event online. But not just through a normal video stream, they have introduced a new interactive video player which shows it all in HD, allows you to instantly rewind or jump to key moments, alerts you to other favourite events about to start and will bring up other relevant info alongside the player during an event.

And finally the BBC Olympics App which is really very slick. Effectively working like a mini version of the website it allows you to stream any event live over WiFi or 3G, keep a calendar of events and see and share all the top stories.

Can't... watch... any.... more.... sport....

Uh-oh!

All of this means that the largest ever global audience will have absolutely no reason to get up off the the sofa over the next two weeks! Oh….