Zhoodles

Thought I'd just give a little mention to something I've dedicated a little of my free time to. Some of us in the team win Gold medals at the Ultimate Frisbee European Championships (Joe M), others of us take money off Joey Barton at online poker (no mentions), I run a food blog. Its called Zhoodles and it is slowly building into a collection of free recipes.

Saag Paneer anyone?

The Big Apple of My Eye

Black guy with clipboard: Anyone? A minute of your time to save the children! Anyone! 'Scuse me, pretty miss! Excuse me! [Pretty girl ignores him.] Oooh! I'm too flyyy fo' da children. I'm too hot fo' da children. [To old lady] Ma'am, do you wanna save the children?
Old lady: I hate children.

For more NYC quotes click here

For more of my NYC photos click here. Many more to be added later.

Glamour Models

'I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams.' Well Robbie is. Liz and I aren't as you see here. This is taken from the latest (Dec '07) issue of Glamour magazine for which we featured as part of their careers section.Glamour asked us probing questions and we answered... from the heart, delivering prophetic soliloquies on the future of the web, the imbalance between designers and programmers, where the growth of the industry lies, how to make a buck along with the passion that burns within us both. So what do Glamour do? Take 2 sentences stitch them together to completely mis-quote us AND take the quote out of context.

Hey ho. At least they got Liz's age wrong.

If that isn't enough to convince you to go and buy it you get a FREE Kinder Buena bar and a FREE pouch.

Yes... we know.

By Far The Greatest Team Building Website The World Has Ever Seen...

Love them or hate them, you have to admit Manchester United have a great team. They may not win every match. They may have had a slightly unsteady start to the season. But they are coming good right now as last nights 4-2 victory over in Kiev showed. And as with any great team, once they get into their stride there is no limit to what they can achieve.

I'd bet that if you offered offices up and down the country a glimpse into the Old Trafford changing rooms (not like that girls!) to see the tactical master that is Sir Alex at work and to see how great teams organise themselves, they'd bite your hand off.

Well now you can.
http://unitedinbusiness.manutd.com/teambuildingsolutions/index.htm



Manchester United have developed a team building and training programme designed to bring out the best in individuals and teams. The site has much more detail about it including a video of Sir Alex and testimonials. Now with newly up-to-date kit.


Shame it didn't help them in the 2-0 drubbing the mighty Sky Blues gave them the other day, eh?

Digital Facelift

As you can probably tell Call Of Digital has had a facelift. Yay!

It was bit drab in the standard-blogger noir look. With the winter nights fast approaching I've lifted the naked black and replaced it with a... err... lovely midnight blue. What a difference a bit of slap makes eh?

The photoshopped collage in the background calls inspiration from a few sites. Firstly, the lovely webdesignerwall.com and this fantasic tutorial in particular from the talented Neil Duerden.

Secondly, I took thin slice of grime from urbandirty.com to provide some texture in the background.

Thirdly, kuler came in handy for some cute colour scheme guidance. 1944mustang was what I plumped for in the end.

Finally, the four photos across the top are taken from the Stock Exchange. A great site that allows you to download free stock imagery once you have signed up. I highly recommend you get on there and start sharing your photos for the good of the web. It just happens that the photos used we're all taken by yours truly from a long time ago and forgotten about until yesterday.

Hope you like it ;)

'I must have some booze. I demand to have some booze.'

That's what you should be saying to your boss now that the Corporate Thresher Gift Voucher website has been incorporated into the main Thresher Group website. We did the Thresher group website back in March time. Unfortunately, I was tied over Ross's desk at the time so I couldn't actually get away to post on it.

So anyway, the site is seemlessly integrated into the main site and it now allows you to order your Corporate gift vouchers online.

If you fancy a quick peek visit http://www.threshergiftvouchers.co.uk/.

The Thresher website was developed by Joe Bragg & Joe McGrath, managed by Ross Hewitt & Anna MaWhinney and designed and scripted by Chris Ball.

Suits You Sir...

Hurrah, at last, the new Brook Taverner website is live! This site has moved their business on dramatically and has given the Digital team some useful reminders of what is involved in developing an online sales service. If anyone is in the market for a nice piece of tweed or some dapper slacks then look no further than www.brooktaverner.co.uk.

The Brook Taverner site was designed by Chris Ball and scripted by Joe McGrath. The project was managed by Ross Hewitt.

dConstruct 2007

I popped down to Brighton on Friday for this year's dConstruct conference. Having just missed out on tickets last year, and seeing that this year's conference was all about Experience Design, I was really looking forward to the day.

And I wasn't disappointed. The venue was great and the speakers all really interesting. Amongst other things, I leaned about chicken sexers, waterfalls & washing machines, some neat design tips, and the origins of flickr and b3ta.

A lot of the User Experience stuff was new to me, and most of it was fascinating. There's so much potential for us to be implementing the concepts that I heard about. I came away really inspired, and with loads of ideas - now time to figure out how to put them into action...

Yorkshire Air Ambulance Gets Off The Ground

Boasting a successful 18 month relationship with the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, Poulters have produced work on TV, Radio, Press, Poster and DM. To add to the plethora of work is the delivery of the brand spanking new flash website!

The Big Idea: it's in a cockpit. The bells and whistles: the flash interactivity, the sounds, the feather, the simplicity. The Objective: to increase donations.
There will be more activity to follow to increase donations over the coming months. Next on the agenda is to deliver the html site and the admin tool which will allow YAA to update their content for both sites as and when.

yaa.org.uk was lovingly produced by Poulters.
Creative – David, Mick and Gaz; Digital Design – Chris Ball and Liz Worsley; Flash work by Liz Worsley. The technical work on this project is being produced by Joe Bragg and the project was managed by Pam Manku.

http://www.yaa.org.uk/

Saving The Earth One Ink Cart at a Time

Here at Poulters we would like to think that we use our web design for good rather than evil and so we were overjoyed when the people at Bag It Up – a recycling business who take old clothes, mobiles and ink cartridges and make them into cash for charity – came to us asking for their website working over.

Last week we launched the new Bag It Up website with a fresh look and new functionality. The functional improvements allow Joe Public to register for Doorstep Collections and search for their nearest recycling Bring Bank - the Bring Bank search results are presented using a nice bit of Google Maps integration.

The site shows the recycling schemes and campaigns Bag It Up have with the likes of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, Springhill Hospice and the Hampshire Air Ambulance.

So we make a good site, they raise money for specific charities and we all save the planet.

http://www.bag-it-up.org.uk/

Bag It Up was designed by Chris Ball, Michael Wood and Liz Worsley, and built by Michael Wood. The technical work on the project was conducted by Joe McGrath and the project was managed by Pam Manku.

MUPC '07 Website Goes Live

The site for this year's Manchester United Premier Cup is now live.

http://www.manchesterunitedpremiercup.com/

The site currently shows the latest tournament news and information, an interactive map of the qualifying teams (as shown in the screenshot), and a gallery of the best images from last year's competition.

Watch out for the next phase of development, which will include the 'Players' Lounge' interactive elements such as message board and a 'Dream Team' competition. The site will also include up to the minute game results during the tournament itself, which runs from the 1st to the 4th of August in Manchester.


MUPC was designed by Chris Ball. The technical build on the project was conducted by Joe McGrath and the project was managed by Pam Manku.

Surface

Microsoft have launched their new 'Surface' system, bringing the 'Minority Report'-style interface that little bit closer.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ (warning - the first video contains that annoying American pronunciation of leisure)

In terms of in-store, this blog article talks about using it in T-mobile stores. I think this system will work well in ‘technology boutique’ type stores like a mobile phone shop, but also in any other situation where the store staff are in a 1-on-1 situation with the customer and want to present information on a screen. For example a travel agent could bring up pictures and videos of holiday resorts, or an estate agent could show walk-through videos of a house for sale. Lots of possibilities...

Wagg

The new Wagg site has gone live...

www.waggfoods.co.uk

Wagg was designed & built by Michael Wood. The technical work on the project was conducted by Joe Bragg and the project was managed by Anna Mawhinney.

Facebook is now officially classed as work

No more switching browser tabs when someone walk past 'cos you're writing on the wall of someone you think you once knew at school. With the opening up of the Facebook Platform, allowing anyone to develop custom applications for the Facebook site, this is now officially classed as development work, maybe...

http://developers.facebook.com/

This release seems to have led to an upsurge in custom apps being released for Facebook (eg. Poke Pro etc...) - some useful, most cr@p. But seriously, this really could be chance for clients to tap into the huge opportunities available within the social networking and branding arena.

Go-Go-Gadgets

Love it or hate it, we’re bound to all be using the new version of Windows (Vista) on our PCs within a few years.

One new feature of Windows Vista is the introduction of ‘Gadgets’ (Mac users may already know them as Widgets). These are mini-applications that live on the Windows desktop.

So why is this important? Because it enables brands to have a presence right on a user’s computer desktop.

If an organisation provides a useful Gadget to the user, such as displaying the latest news, offers, live video and commentary, or product information; the user will choose to install that Gadget. The user sees the Gadget on their desktop every time they switch on their PC, and forms an association between the useful information provided by that tool and the organisation’s brand.

The number of methods by which we can access information from the web is increasing all the time, and this is another one of those methods. An organisation can display summarised content from their website directly to the user’s desktop. The user does not have to open a web browser to see this content, but at the same time is more likely to visit the main website, so the Gadget acts to drive traffic.

The opportunities for marketing with Gadgets are huge. Microsoft claims that “In the first month of Windows Vista’s general availability, sales exceeded 20 million licenses”.

Here in Team Digital we are always looking for new ways to use technology creatively for the promotion of client brands.

Midland Mainlines Always Getting More

Midland Mainline's loyalty scheme - Always More - went live and has bedded in offering integration between the customer's offline experience and the website. The Always More layer sits seamlessly with the rest of the site and works effortlessly with broader promotions Midland Mainline offer.

Credits: Always More was built and coded by Joe Bragg using ASP.NET via EpiServer. The project was overseen by Anna Mawhinney.

The impressive version of the obligatory out of the window image

Every office blog has the digital camera from the window shot and this one is no different but the photo in question - taken by Digital's Heinz Schmidt - is impressive and has been picked up by the BBC.

Sometimes we go to the village, sometimes the village comes to us

Every website has a twin, sometimes two, which are still born at the point in the process where a client looks over the two or three designs put forward and gives the thumbs up to one leaving the other two standing at the sides like a Morrissey fan at a disco.

In 2001 I went through this with breakdown recovery people Green Flag. They took a design and made a fist of it but as always another idea was put out to pasture. That idea was simple enough - Super Tiny pixel art - but it was a little too esoteric for what they wanted then.

And so other pixel art moved on and my idea never really matched another client until now. This project - details to follow of course - sees the pixel design go to the client along with a rather impressive pseudo-newspaper design. The client decides tomorrow and while I love my children equally I'm rooting for the pixel art.

Five years long enough in the wilderness for anyone.

Going Shopping With Northern Rail

Christmas comes early in advertising - what is aimed for December is conceptualised in August - and so with earphones on playing the likes of Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time and Step Into Christmas the Northern Rail Shopper website snuck live as Direct Mail post drops started to hit door mats and posters went up in railway stations around the region.

www.northernrail.org/shopper

The site itself augments the offline work with freshly written city guides and other goodies. It offers free pamper treatment for rail users to de-stress during the festive period.

Credits: The website was designed from an original poster campaign by Michael Wood and he also coded the site in XHMTL/CSS - a technical aside, the site has no active server elements and is pure HTML - and the project was overseen by Ross Hewitt and Anna Mawhinney.

Meadowhall.co.uk Xmas reskin goes live

One very happy client and one very pretty website. www.meadowhall.co.uk

Credits: Chris Ball redesigned the elements of the website based on the original templates and coded the CSS implementation. Ross Hewitt oversaw the project.