This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but I still have a blog post draft called “Web Directions South 08 roundup” that I never got around to finishing. (Synopsis - it was an awesome conference). And so the time is upon us again, the Web Directions South line-up has just been announced.

I am super excited about some of the speakers. Kelly Goto is an inspiration to watch and I always learn something from her presentations. Elliot Jay Stocks is a great presenter, designer and all-round nice guy, I’ve heard Mark Boulton is awesome, and there are heaps more. Oh yeah, and us!

Scott and I are doing an SEO workshop for anyone involved in search and search strategies. Actually, it’s also for any developers, content writers, marketers, project managers and anyone involved in a public facing website.

So go and check out the lineup and get your tickets, it’s shaping up to be another excellent conference.

Tags: Conferences, Speaking engagements

Scott and I are really excited to announce the launch of interactive collective pinch/zoom, a new mobile applications agency specialising in iPhone applications, mobile web apps, web apps and a few other things such as web dev, usability and strategy.

pinch/zoom was founded by Brian Fling, iPhone guru and all-round awesome guy, and Garrett Murray, both of whom used to be involved with Seattle web agency Blue Flavor. pinch/zoom is a collaboration between mobile design and development experts who have a passion for creating new and useful mobile and web applications (that’s us!).

I’m so thrilled to be working with these guys, along with Tim Connor (a kiwi in Wellington), Charlie Barr, David Kaneda and Jim Dovey. They’re all doing some great, inspiring work in mobile and I’m really looking forward to working with them.

Mobile is one of the most untouched and exciting places in the web right now. The iPhone and its rivals and competitors such as Android, Blackberry, and multitude of other devices are competing for a place in your pocket and in your life.

The next few years will be about pushing these boundaries, discovering what place mobile has in our lives and how we can use this to enhance our day-to-day lives. pinch/zoom is about creating some of these cool and exciting apps through our combined expertise around the globe.

So if you need an iPhone or mobile web app, go check out pinch/zoom - we’d love to build your app.

Oh, and here’s the official press release announcing the launch of pinch/zoom.

Tags: Molt:n Digital, mobile

Skype have just released their brand book and branding guidelines on the web - if you have any interest in brand design, or great copy then it’s definitely worth checking out.

The brand book has two parts to it - “how we look” and “how we think”. “How we look” is a gorgeous, beautifully written set of design guidelines that most designers would love to work with. Their tone is cheeky, friendly and approachable, and the design guidelines reflect this.

The tone reminds me of the Virgin tone of voice - they have similar styles in that they shun corporate-speak and write like humans, for humans. They’ve written this little gem -

“The best test for copy is still ‘Would my mother understand this?’. If not, try again.”

It’s elegantly simple, everyone can understand it, and gives them fantastic copy.

“How we think” goes more into the philosophy of the company, which again, is admirable and different from the usual corporates. I kind of assumed Skype had the typical Ebay philosphy (staid, a bit dull, etc) but the brand book really gives an understanding into how they work.

Go and check out the brand book if you have any interest in copywriting, brand design or philosophy. It’s a great resource.

Tags: Design, customer experience, words

Sam Leith has written a fantastic article in the Guardian on the Home Office’s plan to start monitoring social networking sites. I assume it’s basically the government starting to monitor Facebook and Twitter, in addition to tracking who is googling how to make a bomb or take down a plane with some hair gel.

He’s written my new favourite description about Twitter (and other social networking tools).

For a start, anyone who regards social networking sites as private spaces needs their head read. MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and Facebook are the digital age’s way for the village idiot to caper around the parish pump singing “Tirra lirra!” with his poo smeared on his face and his pintle dangling out of his leather trews.

Jeffrey Veen made an interesting point in his Web Directions keynote last year - that my generation (actually I’m on the cusp of Gen X and Y) believes that everything we put on the internet is private unless we specifically make it public. But the new generation of digital natives work with the opposite assumption, that everything they put on the internet is public unless they specifically make it private, which is generally the case these days.

It’s going to make for some interesting social shifts as this next generation start becoming managers and calling the shots in terms of hiring policies and company procedures. I think it’s going to become less of a big deal to have drunken party facebook shots out there, and stupid thoughtless twitter posts indexed for all time - our digital footprint is going to become huge and employers are going to start realising that the personal life of an employee can’t be controlled, even if it’s available on Google.

But Sam Leith does make the best point in terms of survellience on social media -

Are we seriously expecting al-Qaida to organise its next atrocity through Twitter? “@Osama going to shops to buy fertilisers lol ;)” … “@Mo on bus, OMG, virginz here I cum!”

I think these people - murderous loonies though they may be - have a bit more self-respect than that.

I think all the home office is going to find is a lot of noise about breakfast, weather, traffic problems, smelly commuters, distracting co-workers, Lost, overpriced supermarket whinges, greetings and other inanities. Good luck trying to find a signal in all that noise….

Tags: random thoughts, social networking

Today is Ada Lovelace day, and I’ve taken the pledge to blog about a woman I admire in technology. Why is this important? Well, women are still a minority in the web space (and technology in general) and therefore women aren’t written about, talked about, asked to speak or in the spotlight as much.

I signed the pledge about a month ago and I’m still struggling to find the perfect woman to blog about. If this was technology in general it would be easy - I’d talk about Malcolm Gladwell, or Don Norman or Cory Doctorow. And I guess this is the point of Ada Lovelace day - why IS it so hard to think of a female role model who works in technology?

So I’m going to talk about a few women who have enriched my life (working or otherwise) in myriad ways.

Kelly Goto - Kelly is absolutely amazing. She has written books, runs her own agency, presents at conferences, is a mother, manages to always look glamorous, and is a really nice person and interesting to talk to as well. She has a brain the size of a Volkswagon but she’s not intimidating because she’s approachable and friendly. Oh and she’s asian as well as being a woman - two minorities with one stone!

Dr Jackie Moyes - I met Jackie years and years ago when she was the Usability consultant on a project I worked on. Jackie introduced me to the world of usability, which really changed the trajectory of my career. She is amazing at her job and made usability so interesting that started getting into it myself. Jackie has always been incredibly generous with her time and knowledge, even when she has to explain something over and over, or answering all my frantic questions when I get stuck. She can also drink vodka like a Russian and is usually the last one standing on a night out…

Maxine Sherrin - Maxine has done more for the Australian web industry than anyone I can think of. She runs the Web Directions conference and is instrumental in creating a community out of us bunch of geeks and weirdos. Web Directions has brought out some amazing speakers from overseas and really encouraged local web folk to present and share knowledge between ourselves. The web industry, and my life, is a better place for having Maxine in it.

Ally Sheedy in Short Circuit - Number 5 is alive! The details of this movie are incredibly vague to me as I haven’t seen it since 1986 but it’s the first film I can remember where a woman could be technical and know how to fix a robot, rather than being the love interest in the background.

There are loads of other women out there that make the web a better place, but I’m already a day late with my Ada post - all you women out there working in technology, good for us. In 50 years people will look back and say “I can’t believe there was such a minority of women in science and tech”, just as we look back and think it’s strange that women couldn’t work in the 50s.

Tags: random thoughts

I can’t tell you the passion with which I hate Fitness First. I was a member there for about 5 years (it was the only gym in my area) and I still get angry when I think about the way they treat their members. It’s with complete contempt.

So it doesn’t surprise me to see their new “guerilla” advertising campaign in Rotterdam.

Yes that’s right, after a hard day of work you sit down at a bus stop in exhaustion to find that Fitness First have decided to shame you by displaying your weight to everyone around you. Great job guys, public humiliation is a brilliant way to get people into your gym.

I’m sure they think they’re very clever by doing this but it really shows the attitude that is prevalent throughout the gym. Fitness First seem to have no knowledge of the psychology of exercise or weight-loss, or even how to motivate people into getting fit. They are the sort of trainers that yell at people until they cry, thinking that it’s going to help. (As an aside, I had a personal trainer at Fitness First tell me I should never eat carbohydrates, ever, as they were evil and made you fat. I think he might have gotten his fitness training certificate from watching Oprah).

What does surprise me is how a lot of people on twitter and blogs really love the ad. I really don’t understand what they like about it - I’m struggling to see how it’s clever or witty or will have a positive effect on membership numbers.

Do you know what I think the response to this ad will be? Every unsuspecting person that sits on this and is embarrassed is probably going to go home upset and eat chocolate instead of joining the gym.

I guess what else do I expect from a gym who’s advertising usually consists of muscle-men blocking the busiest parts of Sydney streets, harassing passers-by into taking “free” gym passes.

In the meantime, I’m going to go and join the Fitness First Hate group instead of their gym. At least I can leave that group without handing over my first-born, signed in triplicate…

Tags: Marketing

I had one of those moments last night that made me stop and think and realise how much technology has crept up on us and how much we take it for granted.

We were driving over to a friend’s place for dinner (looking up the address from my email into Google Maps in the car on the way) when we hit bad traffic just before the Anzac bridge. Traffic was just stopped for 4 lanes and nothing was moving. We sat there for 40 minutes with the engine off, and I was looking up news sites (news.com.au and SMH) to see what the problem was. Nothing in any newspaper, so I searched Twitter.

We suddenly had our answer, and a pretty gruesome one.

Traffic eventually started crawling to an exit for an alternate route and I used Google Maps to re-map us from our current location to our destination.

It’s interesting using Twitter as an important source of news - especially given that newspapers don’t tend to report on suicide attempts for fear of copycat attempts. No such rules govern social media.

A search this morning on Anzac Bridge in Google News has no reports on anything last night, whereas Twitter has about 10 tweets reporting the closure and the reason. The bridge was shut down for at least 3 hours last night so I’m sure lots of people stuck in traffic were wondering what was going on.

It’s the first time I’ve really found twitter so useful - I know lots of people were twittering about the Hudson river plane crash, etc as it happened but this is the first time it’s become more than an academic interest, given this was something the news couldn’t report on.

It’s funny how location based information has really crept up on us and it’s something I don’t even think twice about. It’s perfectly normal to search for the reason for traffic from my phone, and for my phone to offer alternate routes to getting to my destination - it’s just part of driving now. I don’t think I even have a street directory in the car anymore. I couldn’t have even imagined this 5 years ago.

Tags: random thoughts, twitter

Last year at Web Directions South Molt:n Digital sponsored the event in the form of some funky, cool t-shirts that we gave away before the conference (as a small competition) as well as during the conference at all the geek meet-ups.

Interest in the t-shirts has continued well into the New Year as Molt:n handed out our last t-shirts from the initial batch in Denver, Colorado to the attendees of Web Directions North. Geeks in both hemispheres continue to profess their ‘like’ to all those who will listen, or look in the case of the infamous Molt:n tee.

In answer to the many emails and verbals requests of “where can I get one of those t-shirts?”, we have decided to order a new batch and put them online at the new Molt:n shop. Now all geeks from Wichita, Kansas to Totoare, New Zealand can dress themselves in the sleek-fitting Molt:n ‘I like’ t-shirt.

With this batch we also ordered a limited run of ‘I like’ kids t-shirts. These are one-size only (suited for 6 years old), so order one now and force your geekery onto your own flesh and blood.

So head on to Molt:n shop and grab yourself a t-shirt or two. We’ll see you at the next conference!

Tags: Conferences, Design, code, words

After Snickers shamelessly stole a great idea from Spike Jonez and made it into a crap ad, Aero have joined the party and made an ad that actually reminds me of crap.

What is it with advertisers and skateboards lately? Don’t they know skating past its zenith in the 80s with Michael J Fox in Back to the Future? Yeah the Dogtown revival got some interest in the mainstream but that was 8 years ago.

Anyway, a bit of backstory first.

Last year a great video was released of Matt Beach skating through a bowl full of balloons. It’s an awesome video, you can see him gain confidence and start trying cooler tricks (or whatever the skate lingo is for it) as he realises he’s not going to come off. I like when he disappears into the bubbles and doesn’t come back up again after he stacks.

A really great video - so great that it inspired Aero’s new campaign for “Feel the Bubbles” - where a skater rides through brown balloons, much like the original video.

My problem with this ad is not so much that they ripped off the idea, but the fact that the brown balloons look very faecal. It’s a very fine line with chocolate advertising and this one really pushes the pooey angle. Look at all that poo fly out of the skate bowl! It’s following him everywhere.

They couldn’t have made the Aero look less inviting if they’d tried. I can’t think of anything I want less than a chocolate bar after viewing this ad. Again (as with the Snickers ad), who are they trying to target here? Skaters are all mad because they’ve stolen “their” ideas to sell chocolate, so they’re not the target audience. And again, skating is so niche that non-skaters wouldn’t even remember or notice this ad (except for the flying poo).

Couldn’t they at least have used this concept for the Mint Aero, where they could have used green balloons? Or maybe lent the concept to a laxative brand?

I think I’m going to leave snickers and aero to it and stick with skittles.

Tags: Marketing

I just read on Mumbrella that Glora Jeans launched a new marketing campaign today with a brand new shiny website. I knew their old site well due to analysing it as part of a competitor review recently.

The site starts with audio, which is my pet hate. It adds absolutely nothing to the experience and I really wish that agencies would learn that adding auto-play audio is a horrible thing to do to a website, particularly the sort of website people access from work. There’s not even a volume button to switch it off.

But the reason I’m blogging about it is that a site that just launched in 2009 is STILL USING TABLES FOR LAYOUT! Sorry for the all-caps but I find this so mind-blowingly unbelievable that an agency could say they are the experts in building websites (because the client doesn’t know better) and still give them a website using tables for layout.

Whoever developed this website, shame on you. Web standards became standard back in 2002 or 2003. You are developing using outdated modes and you have made the internet a worse place. It’s bad enough using Flash to write most of the content but I’m shocked that a professional web developer would still use bad code and launch it for a client. The galling thing is Gloria Jeans probably paid top dollar for this website - it’s not like a $5k backyard hack job. If you developed this website, have a look at the W3C guidelines published on 6 November 2000. Yes, 9 years ago. That is the correct way to code - they are standards.

And now you’ve gone and ruined my new years resolution to be more positive and stop griping about bad websites but honestly - you have just done the web equivalent of making a door handle out of elephant tusks. People might still do it, and some people might pay for it, but it’s very unsavory and I think it’s unethical.

Tags: Development, accessibility