http://www.metia.com/group/steve-ellis Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:10:00 +0100 Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:10:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2012/04/creativity-is-often-best-small-but-perfectly-formed/#number-of-comments Big ideas can be difficult to execute well and high risk. Personally, I often prefer my creativity small and perfectly formed. Here is an example. Our esteemed clients over at Capco - clever marketers, all of them - like to stay connected with their own customers in the banking industry through a series of timely, relevant surprises. This isn't the sort of audience to be impressed by high value gifts but they will be wryly amused by something a little bit clever and topical. It is all about Easter (pre-selecting customers on the basis they might celebrate Easter, of course). The creativity isn't in the concept itself (we sent them Easter eggs, get it?) but in the low key but elegant punning visuals that were used. Below are the various creative visuals that we wrapped around the gift boxes and used for the postcards. Sometimes agencies work too hard to take an idea and make it complicated. It takes self restraint - and a good client - to keep it simple. /group/steve-ellis/2012/04/creativity-is-often-best-small-but-perfectly-formed/ /group/steve-ellis/2012/04/creativity-is-often-best-small-but-perfectly-formed/ Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:10:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2012/01/mobile-speedo-something-for-windows-phone-fanboys-(and-girls)/#number-of-comments We just published a new app to the Marketplace, called Mobile Speedo it turns your phone into a speedometer, direction and route mapping device. There's a quick description of Mobile Speedo here. In simple terms, if you have a Windows Phone, Mobile Speedo allows you discover your current location, direction and speed, and then share that information. So a bit like foursquare but for people who are going places ;-) You can share with your followers on Twitter, or by SMS or email. Needless to say, you should be a passenger, not the driver if you are going to do this! You can also map your current location and save routes. I will be giving this feature a tryout on the mountain bike at the weekend. A technical exercise in exploring the use of GPS, cell tower data and compass info, Mobile Speedo was created by the Metia Labs team. While using it for car journeys springs to mind first, the train commuters in the team have enjoyed using it to check their rate of progress (or not) into Waterloo each morning. The Labs team went the final yard to make sure it looked good on the latest generation of Windows Phones and then released it to the Marketplace, to see what others think of it. If you give a try, please pass your feedback along via comments here, or a review on the Marketplace. Some examples of the great looking screens below: /group/steve-ellis/2012/01/mobile-speedo-something-for-windows-phone-fanboys-(and-girls)/ /group/steve-ellis/2012/01/mobile-speedo-something-for-windows-phone-fanboys-(and-girls)/ Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:41:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2012/01/tripadvisor/#number-of-comments TripAdvisor was recently pulled up by the UK's Advertising Standards Association (ASA) about presenting reviews on its site as being trustworthy. The ruling only applies to TripAdvisor in the UK who immediately changed some of the wording on their UK site. Although I'm sure the Fox and Goose (below) is worth its star rating. The ASA said TripAdvisor must not: claim or imply that all its reviews were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted. Not great, given TripAdvisor's business model. But I suspect TripAdvisor is no better, or worse, in this regard than other large scale consumer sites that publish user generated reviews. And I'm sure they are keen to eliminate rogue reviewers that reduce the credibility of genuine reviews. Tim Harford posted here on the economic impact of positive and negative reviews. Apparently, a negative reviews hurts the victim more than positive reviews benefit the recipient. This economist's perspective generally supports what we all instinctively know, we pay attention to reviews, more so if they seem independent, informed and from people who share our point of view. Even more so if they are from people we know and trust. At Metia we spend a lot of energy working to spark word of mouth online about our clients and their services. We bundle some of these activities up under the label of customer advocacy. We apply legitimate community and relationship building practices, use a number of online and offline channels and various tools including social. The more programs we work on (we got started over ten years ago), the more I am convinced there is no shortcut, there is no easy win. It is all about building relationships of trust, built by being authentic, honest and generous. Building a community of advocates is a long term investment and is tightly connected to other aspects of incorporating customer experience and the use social tools into the fabric of a business. A couple of recent events show that many organizations still aren't quite getting this, or are being led by short termism, or seduced by agencies offering to fix everything asap. The Irish Times unearthed a story of a hotel group orchestrating positive reviews from its employees. Not the most heinous corporate crime but the detailed advice on how to do it (not from a company IP address) is cringeworthy. We recently experienced a statistically anomalous surge in the number of Facebook likes for a client. This was claimed as a great success by the agency responsible. A bit of detailed scratching around showed the source to be a country in Asia that was an unlikely location of community members and an even less likely source of customers. A less technically literate client would have been happy to simply report the spike in likes to their boss. In another scenario, a site manager claimed the reviews on their site were "self moderating by the community," upon closer inspectation of a couple of areas we knew well, it became clear that what they meant to say was: 'not moderated at all, and often being gamed by those with a motivation to do so'. Building communities of advocates is a long term commitment. There are best practices but there aren't short cuts. Which is a dour message to communicate to a prospect or client. The positive is that, if established on a solid foundation of trust, a community of advocates can become a tangible asset to any business. /group/steve-ellis/2012/01/tripadvisor/ /group/steve-ellis/2012/01/tripadvisor/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:14:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2012/01/look-to-the-skies-to-beat-olympic-travel-chaos/#number-of-comments I'm surprised Boris hasn't got one of these organized for himself. Maybe he has. Have a look.   Certainly, a Metia airship is a lot more appealing than the official advice being offered to businesses in Central London, and the idea definitely appeals to the megalomaniac Dr Evil in me. But before you start asking for rides, Metia's virtual blimp was created by our interactive design team as a technical exercise. The interactive team are doing lots of great movie and animation work for customers to use in web and intranet experiences - but sadly most of it we can't show externally. So when I stumbled across this internal skills development exercise, I figured it'd be good to share. This piece was motivated by seeing what we could do with standard DSLR cameras to capture low cost video footage for photorealistic compositing projects. The team used a Canon 550D for the video and five or six different applications to manipulate the imagery. /group/steve-ellis/2012/01/look-to-the-skies-to-beat-olympic-travel-chaos/ /group/steve-ellis/2012/01/look-to-the-skies-to-beat-olympic-travel-chaos/ Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:23:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/11/having-a-nokia-moment/#number-of-comments I'm having a Nokia moment right now. And it is only going to increase. It started a few weeks ago, when Nokia launched a clutch of new phones, many using the Windows Phone OS. Not being a tech spec obsessed person, the review frenzy detail passed me by somewhat. But at the time I was struck by the general feeling of positivity toward the Nokia brand. This was not so much among professional observers, as among normal punters. Presumably this is a residual affection that goes back beyond the memory of GenY. Either way, made me think Nokia might stand a fighting chance of making a plucky comeback in terms of mobile mindshare and smartphone marketshare. Then on Saturday I was invited along to hear about the ALPHALABS.CC initiative at the British Film Institute. A collaboration between Nokia and onedotzero, ALPHALABS.CC is an experiment in seeding Nokia Lumia devices together with lots of knowhow and peer support to developers and creative artists of different types. The aim being to get them to collaborate and create innovative work for mobile experiences. There were a number of early projects showcased, which illustrated how to bring together different features of the Lumia device, the capabilities of Windows Phone and lots of creativity. There's a couple of images below but all are interactive experiences, so best to find them on the ALPHALABS.CC site for full impact. Its not impossible that Metia Labs could get involved, although we usually do more commercially driven projects. Continuing the visual experience theme, tonight Nokia UK are launching the Lumia with a 4D light mapping show by deadmau5 onto Millbank Tower in London. If you want to see it and can't get along, there'll be a livestream here. I'll be going along, armed with a Lumia device... that I'm looking after for maybe a day or two before delivering to the dev team. BTW: If you think getting a loan device has influenced me in writing this post, the only way to prove it is to send me loads of great devices and see if I do or don't post about them. Disclosure: Microsoft is a client, but Nokia isn't. We do develop for Windows Phone, but then we also develop for Android and iOS too. And while, yes, Microsoft is a client, that hasn't stopped me using an iPhone4 for the past 12 months. /group/steve-ellis/2011/11/having-a-nokia-moment/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/11/having-a-nokia-moment/ Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:15:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/10/mango-looks-fresh/#number-of-comments Good piece here in The Guardian about the strengths of Mango or Windows Phone 7.5, and also the elegance of Metro.  Having worked with Android, iOS and WP7.5, we can support the general tone of the article, that is: set aside personal preferences, the playing field in mobile OS is now more level than it has ever been. My acid test of this is to look at the comments articles like this attract. Generally, these are pretty reasonable and balanced. We've got a number of WP7.5/Metro apps in the pipeline, about which we can share more later, but if you want to see how Metro can present a web based service or e-commerce site, one that our team in Seattle completed recently gets a nice promotion over on the AmazonFresh site in an introductory product tour. Take a look here - scroll down to the Windows Phone section and click on: Preview the AmazonFresh Application for Windows Phone 7. Better still, if you live in an AmazonFresh delivery area, download the app and tell us what you think. /group/steve-ellis/2011/10/mango-looks-fresh/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/10/mango-looks-fresh/ Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:07:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/10/steve-jobs-died-today/#number-of-comments Woke up this morning to the news that Steve Jobs has died aged just 56. Very sad. And a poignant moment of reflection for anyone who has worked in tech for any length of time. Jobs has been there throughout my career. Walking into the office I was struck by the number of times the Apple logo came into view. Woman holding a phone. Man at an ATM with an iPad under his arm. Past the Apple store in Covent Garden. And then past Toy Story characters in a shop window. Difficult to think of any other individuals who have managed to touch so many consumers, change so many industries. I'm not connected to Jobs in any way but you have to salute the passing someone who makes that much of an impact. /group/steve-ellis/2011/10/steve-jobs-died-today/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/10/steve-jobs-died-today/ Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:00:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/10/code-cutters-and-code-breakers/#number-of-comments On Friday I was lucky enough to be among a crowd of developers as they took a journey to their spiritual home. Well, actually I was at Bletchley Park, attending a mobile developer conference: Over the Air 2011. As well as enjoying the conference, I was also struck by the emotional bond between the developers and the ghosts of previous generations of codebreakers that seem still to haunt Bletchley.  While I knew about the historic sequence that links developers and code breakers. I hadn’t properly grasped the spiritual connection between developers, who write code today, and the original code breakers, who pretty much invented programmable computers as a means to an end (that end being shortening the duration of WW2). Bletchley Park is a classically English experience. A place of great wartime heroism and endeavour, it was an official secret for thirty years, ignored for another twenty years and only saved for the nation in the past year or two. It is ramshackle, run down, and in some places actually falling down. As a result of which it oozes authenticity and atmosphere. If you are a geek, you should go and pay your respects. You’ll love it. Pick a sunny day and don't take the kids with you. There are better round ups of Over the Air from Silicon Britain here and Giorgio Venturi here. To give a flavour here are some shots of the Bletchley Park 'campus' if that is the right term. /group/steve-ellis/2011/10/code-cutters-and-code-breakers/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/10/code-cutters-and-code-breakers/ Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:40:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/09/quot-jamming-to-a-packed-house-quot-overtheair-2011/#number-of-comments   Someone else said that, not me. An American. But I do rather like it. And that's @dgem above jamming on APIs. Spent the day at Bletchley Park at Over the Air 2011 conference and hackathon. Great vibe among the participants, they seemed to be enjoying the presentations, code and sunshine. By now they'll be enjoying the beer as they hack on through the night. Brilliant choice of venue by @MobileMaggie, very much in tune with the audience. I was there to help out the Pearson Plug & Play team, who were talking about their APIs, which were open for the devs attending to use and abuse for the hackathon, which should be kicking off about now (at the time of writing). That's Dan above and Stephanie down below. Our deck can be found here on SlideShare. I was banging on about ShowMe London and our experience as a guinea pig for Plug & Play (all good). My one call to action was for the folk to download the app and give us some meaningful feedback. So far we've had over 1,000 installs and four reviews. All, suspiciously, giving us five star ratings... No-one has fessed up at this end. But if anyone out there wants to tell us what they think, we and the Pearson team would find it really helpful. /group/steve-ellis/2011/09/quot-jamming-to-a-packed-house-quot-overtheair-2011/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/09/quot-jamming-to-a-packed-house-quot-overtheair-2011/ Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:24:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/09/showme-london-mobile-travel-guide/#number-of-comments After last week's launch of the Pearson Plug & Play Platform, I promised more news on the proof of concept app we built using Pearson's APIs. This is it. Today we launch ShowMe London, a geo-location aware itinerary planner and travel guide for visitors to London. The app runs on Android based mobile phones and tablets and is available for free download from Android Market. It is designed for use both in advance of a trip, when planning routes and choosing places of interest to visit, and when you are in town as a handheld navigation tool and spontaneous source of extra information that might be of interest or useful to the visitor. ShowMe London uses information from the DK Eyewitness Guide to London, one of the APIs made available by Pearson's Plug & Play Platform. The DK Eyewitness series are pretty much established as the leading illustrated travel guide, to work with that quality of content and re-package it into a digital experience for travellers was exciting and challenging. For more information, today's press release is tagged on below. I'll also write a separate post on some of the technical and UX angles to the project, which was undertaken by our Metia Labs team, shortly. If you want to know more, try the app or get in touch. NewShowMe Londonapp offers geo-location itinerary planner and travel guide for mobile phones and tablet devices First app using API for DK's market leading Eyewitness Guide to London, from Pearson's Plug & Play Platform initiative London, 6th September, 2011- Metia, the global digital marketing agency, today announced ShowMe London, a free application that allows visitors to London to plan their itinerary and navigate their trip using an Android-based mobile phone or tablet device. ShowMe London can be downloaded for free from the Android Market. ShowMe London provides the following functions: Contextual descriptions and essential contact information on places of interest (including tourist attractions, hotels, restaurants, clubs etc.) from the DK Eyewitness Guide toLondon. Creation and saving of multiple itineraries. Geo-location using Google Maps to guide the user through their planned itinerary and offer additional places of interest based upon proximity. Supplementary information on nearby attractions from Wikipedia. Intelligent use of search and filtering to increase the utility of the app. ShowMe London is a Metia Labs development project undertaken with the support of Pearson's Future Technologies team. It is the first application to be created from the DK Eyewitness Guide to London dataset provided through Pearson's new Plug & Play Platform initiative. The Plug & Play Platform (http://developer.pearson.com) provides independent developers, businesses and agencies with datasets from Pearson's award winning content  to allow them to create innovative new experiences and services. Built using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, the ShowMe London app runs on both Android 2.2 and the latest Android 3.0 devices. Diana Stepner, Head of Future Technologies, Pearson says: "It is great to see how Metia has taken one of the Plug & Play Platform datasets and created a really useful tool for travellers and tourists who are planning to visitLondon. The Metia team invested great creativity into ShowMe London, not just in the user interface design but also in terms of the external web services they have integrated to create a complete travel itinerary planner." Steve Ellis, Chief Executive, Metia says: "Pearson has made some fantastic content assets available through its Plug & Play Platform. The datasets allow a creative technology agency like us to explore the limits of what is possible. We are excited to learn what travellers toLondonthink of the new app, especially how they think it can be improved and extended. It will also be interesting to see if travel, holiday and transport companies use it to consider how they might add value to their own customer experiences." Notes to Editors Additional images of ShowMe London are available upon request. About Metia: Metia is a digital marketing agency with operations in London, Seattle, New York and Singapore. Employing over 230 professionals, Metia delivers experiences, solutions, services and tools that are focused, smart and repeatable - and that generate measurable value. For more information: www.metia.com About Pearson: Pearson is the world's leading learning company, providing consumer publishing through the DK brand, educational materials and services, and business information through the Financial Times Group. Pearson serves learners of all ages around the globe, employing 36,000 people in more than 70 countries, and is listed on theLondonandNew Yorkstock exchanges. For more information, visit www.pearson.com. About DK (Dorling Kindersley): DK publish award-winning reference books for adults and children. One of the world's leading illustrated reference publishers, its designers and editors are now applying their unique skills to creating apps and ebooks. DK content in all its forms is characterized by quality, expertise and accessibility; it is a brand that inspires trust around the world. For more information, visit www.dk.com ###     /group/steve-ellis/2011/09/showme-london-mobile-travel-guide/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/09/showme-london-mobile-travel-guide/ Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:31:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/09/api-evangelism/#number-of-comments Or maybe that should be banging on - and on - about APIs generally, as it is a subject I like. Yesterday I spoke at the launch of Pearson's new Plug & Play Platform, which provides developers with access to the company's content via a series of API datasets. I was speaking about a proof of concept project our Metia Labs team had developed using one of the new Plug & Play APIs (but more about that shortly). We've long advocated that companies from all sectors should explore the use of APIs, and given that Pearson has taken that brave leap, I'd better give a good plug for Plug & Play. Visit their site here, read the Pearson announcement here, checkout their coverage on TheNextWeb, The Bookseller and ProgrammableWeb amongst others. Pearson have have done a thorough job in setting up the Plug & Play Platform. They are using API management vendor APIgee, amongst others listed here, to build out the sort of management features and testing facilities developers regard as essential. But first and foremost the Plug & Play team have a great attitude. In my experience API programs divide into two camps: there's the 'take or leave it' approach, or the 'listen and learn' attitude. The Pearson crew are definitely in the latter category. During our proof of concept project the Pearson team were great about taking feedback and refining their APIs. Typically our feedback was categorized into three big buckets: things that affected our ability to create a richer user experience (especially around UI presentation); things that improved efficiency (both minimising calls to the API and to make the app more agile); and things that improved the utility of the service (especially in areas like search, filtering and the like). Here's a good example of Dan introducing versioning. Inevitably opening up API access to pre-existing content assets means the start of an iterative process of improvement and refinement. It is inescapable. If one of the key reasons organizations make APIs available is to allow third party developers to explore the use of their content in ways they could never imagine. Well, understandably, no-one can be completely prepared for something that can't be imagined. That's why it helps to know the attitude of the API providers before committing to a project. We always reckon the willingness to listen and adapt is a very positive signal. /group/steve-ellis/2011/09/api-evangelism/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/09/api-evangelism/ Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:48:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/07/trainhound-live-train-departure-board-anywhere-in-the-uk/#number-of-comments Bored with staring up at train departure boards? Want to see what's happening at the station before you head off to it? Trainhound finds the live train departure information you need, and delivers it to your mobile or tablet. Trainhound is a free web service that allows you to see live train departure board information from every railway station in the UK. That's not the pre-published timetable information but the live departure and platform data that is pushed up onto departure boards. It's a beta version, so we are quietly slipping it into the hands of friends and family to give it a try and feedback. Using Trainhound you can check your train's departure time before you arrive at the station. Or, if you are at the station already, without being stuck in front of the departure board for updates. We are hoping this could be a handy little web service for Britain's commuters. Using the geo-location capabilities of your internet browser, Trainhound will identify the station closest to your current location and automatically show you the live departure board information from that station. The Trainhound service can be accessed by mobile phones, tablet devices or desktop PCs. All you need is a modern internet browser that supports HTML5 - so the newer versions of Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox - which means Android phones/tablets, iPhones and iPads, should all be fine. Visit www.trainhound.co.uk to try the service. Trainhound is a proof of concept (PoC) project developed by Metia Labs, our research and development team here at Metia. Having advocated the use of HTML5 as a cross platform, cross browser technology that allows brands to escape from AppStore lock-in and to efficiently support multiple mobile devices, and having advocated the creative use of APIs to repackage and create services for consumers, we thought we could bring the two together in a single proof of concept project. Trainhound uses data supplied by National Rail Enquiries. Again, as a learning experience it has been interesting to be on the receiving end of an API program aimed at winning over developer audiences. We'll follow with some of the insights gained in later posts. Trainhound is a free to use beta site. Don't expect too much from it, it's free after all. It should work fine - but sometimes it might not. It depends upon the quality of mobile phone coverage and the reliability of data supply. We've already noticed a little quirkiness around how the geo-location thinks the crow flies to the nearest train station (around the M25, it would appear sometimes). In that case you can simply search for the station you need. Any other strange behaviour, do tell us. If you think it is good, tell us and we'll spend more time making it even better. Or if you can think of ways to improve it, tell us that too at trainhound@metia.com. Metia Labs runs PoCs to explore the practical application of new technology so we can feed that knowledge into client consulting projects and build the skills of our development teams. I'll follow up with a post around the use of HTML5 for this purpose and a look into what the analytics we derive from the site are telling us about mobile and geo-location usage. /group/steve-ellis/2011/07/trainhound-live-train-departure-board-anywhere-in-the-uk/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/07/trainhound-live-train-departure-board-anywhere-in-the-uk/ Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:25:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/07/developer-economics-2011/#number-of-comments Finally, I caught up with VisionMobile's Developer Economics Report for 2011. I can't recommend it highly enough. It is sixty pages of accessible, well organized insight into the current state of the mobile development marketplace. And it is free. You can download the report at DeveloperEconomics.com. If you are in the industry - telecoms, software, devices, development - it is obvious why you would be bothered to pay close attention to the report. If you aren't, it begs the question: why is this relevant to me? Well, if you work for a brand or business, then you too need to pay close attention. You probably think you know that already (we all know mobile is big, right?). And you are probably doing something or other about it already. Exploring with an app for advertising or PR objectives is usually the first step. But it is possible you underestimate how profound the changes will be and how urgently you need to address them. To do that in an informed way requires a broad understanding of the mobile landscape, the platforms and players, and the dynamics driving their rise and fall. And the Developer Economics report is a great place to start - especially for anyone whose job isn't dedicated to tracking the mobile world. Like everyone, I know that mobile has been looming up in relative importance for years now. But sometimes it takes personal anecdotes, rather than endless analyst guesstimates to force one to stop and notice that a critical threshold has been passed. Here's a couple of stop and take notice reasons I had last week: We run some big sites for clients - tens of millions of visitors per quarter in some cases. The percentage of users accessing them via mobile devices is rocketing skywards. The single biggest trend in traffic I can recall in recent years. Incidentally, it is far, far bigger than the referred traffic from social media. Last week I was listening to a senior manager from one of the leading search engines. He quoted: average time from first desktop search to purchase is one month, average time from first mobile search to purchase is one hour. In the same week, our Seattle team launched the new Windows Phone app they have built for AmazonFresh. While here in London, we have two or three similar client projects ready to be pushed out into the relevant appstores/marketplaces or onto the web as HTML5 sites. Similarly, our Partner & Developer team, which manages programs that identify, recruit and engage developers are increasingly getting calls from brands, rather than platform providers or software vendors, for advice on designing and delivering developer engagement programs. So over the next month or two, I'd hope we can contribute some local colour and rich illustrative examples of mobile (and tablet) development, to inform and reflect the trends documented in VisionMobile's report. If that interests you, stay tuned or get in touch. /group/steve-ellis/2011/07/developer-economics-2011/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/07/developer-economics-2011/ Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:45:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/06/hp-sauce/#number-of-comments My colleague and co-founder here at Metia, Clare Walsh is speaking in an event at the Houses of Parliament next week. She is never short of a point of view, so it should be an interesting session. The Policy Breakfast event is organized by the Industry and Parliament Trust, a cross party organization which brings together business and government policy makers, in order to broker a better understanding between legislators and wealth creators. The topic next week is entrepreneurship. Other speakers include serial entrepreneur Luke Johnson, Chairman of Risk Capital Partners and @iaindodsworth, the founder of TweetDeck (who surely should be sunning himself on the beach in tax exile after closing the sale of TweetDeck to Twitter, not getting up early and hacking in to the Houses of Parliament for a breakfast briefing). There's more information here. Presumably there'll be talk of Silicon Roundabout, capital gains tax rates, and government investment in technology (or not). I'll ask Clare to report back. /group/steve-ellis/2011/06/hp-sauce/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/06/hp-sauce/ Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:02:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/05/just-50-bucks-to-see-sir-tim-vint-and-lawrence-discuss-the-internet/#number-of-comments If you have an opinion, now you can share it with Sir Tim, Vint and Lawrence for just $50. Sometimes the projects we are lucky enough get involved with amaze me. Right now, we are working with The Internet Society to promote their INET series of events (disclosed that then). The next one is in New York, June 14th - and discusses the proposition: What sort of internet do you want? It will be debating various questions of instructure, policy and privacy. The work of the Internet Society might lack the buzz of organizations like TED but its membership is responsible for doing a lot of the hard stuff that makes the internet work (do you like my deeply technical description?). More broadly, it also helps propagate conversation and discussion on the future evolution of the internet. I can strongly recommend the Society and their work. All well and good, but the amazing bit is that The Internet Society can pull speakers like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Lawrence Strickling and more, and then offer tickets for just $50 (only half that if you are a member). Most of the conferences we attend have - at least - another zero on the price tag and seldom serve up the founding fathers of the web to share their ideas and insight. If you are anywhere near New York in June and even mildly interested in the future of the web, that has to be $50 (and a day) well spent. /group/steve-ellis/2011/05/just-50-bucks-to-see-sir-tim-vint-and-lawrence-discuss-the-internet/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/05/just-50-bucks-to-see-sir-tim-vint-and-lawrence-discuss-the-internet/ Fri, 13 May 2011 15:00:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/05/important-things-t-shirts/#number-of-comments I like marketing when it is clever and subtle and well targeted to the audience. You have to be very, very clever to market to developers. They can sniff out b******t from a mile away. So I like this story about The Mystery of the Google I/O t-shirt in MobileCrunch. T-shirts are probably not the biggest concern when planning a huge devcon but someone invested the time to come up with an idea that was engaging, challenging and was perfect for both the audience and the brand. Even better, it would get talked about. Nice work that person. PS: its not about the design, you have to read the story to get the idea /group/steve-ellis/2011/05/important-things-t-shirts/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/05/important-things-t-shirts/ Fri, 13 May 2011 08:05:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/05/nothing-beats-the-nationals/#number-of-comments Having a deja vu moment. Thanks to some smart work by our PR team, client Maxcap are featured in the Wall St Journal Europe this morning (link here for subscribers). At my age I probably shouldn't admit it but it is still a buzz getting clients into the quality media. If you are Justin Bieber, then Twitter is all well and good, but if you are in B2B - or aiming at high net worth individuals like Maxcap - then the WSJ, FT or Economist still rate pretty high on your priorities. /group/steve-ellis/2011/05/nothing-beats-the-nationals/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/05/nothing-beats-the-nationals/ Mon, 09 May 2011 10:43:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/04/did-anyone-mention-the-royal-wedding/#number-of-comments We did. Unashamedly so, in fact, plugging our work with MSN which is helping to make the Royal Wedding a bit more of a social event. Here is the latest update. The MSN Royal Wedding Live Video Player link is now live. It's here although until the big day it will only be playing recorded related content. On the day there'll be a live broadcast video stream, supplemented by MSN's own commentary and various social sources. If you want to quickly and easily find out about the player, then watch Matt Ball, Editor in Chief of MSN UK explain what you can enjoy on the day by going here.  Having been a sofa based early adopter of consuming social commentary adjacent to mainstream TV shows (mostly with Twitter on my laptop and news/current events programs like #bbcqt on my TV), it's a great move by MSN to go the next step and provide social content streams integrated into a single experience. We are working with a number of media organizations at present, mostly via our Labs team investigating the reinvention of services around HTML5, so I'm aware of the leap of faith MSN is taking in mixing content types and sources. It's a brave experiment to make. MSN deserve a lot of kudos for making the leap. Regardless of whether you are a fan of the royals or not, if you are into social media, tune in to see how it plays out on Friday. For anyone simply too lazy to watch Matt, here's some screen shots. /group/steve-ellis/2011/04/did-anyone-mention-the-royal-wedding/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/04/did-anyone-mention-the-royal-wedding/ Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:44:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/04/making-the-royal-wedding-a-more-social-event-for-msn/#number-of-comments We have just completed a new project for MSN, it is the latest in a series of HTML5 based rich user experiences we have been developing in recent weeks. This one is a Royal Wedding inspired timeline for MSN UK. The timeline allows MSN users to explore what was happening in the world on key dates during Prince William and Kate’s lives. It is great to see Microsoft so committed to embracing and applying HTML5 standards and the new capabilities they offer for creating rich experiences. For digital agencies like Metia it means we have a whole new spectrum of creative capabilities available to us. As well as exploiting some of the strengths of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9, we’ve focused on providing added colour and value for users by incorporating news content from MSN and music content from HMV. You can check out the experience at: http://timeline.royal.uk.msn.com/ The site can be viewed with any HTML5 compatible browser. We’ve also developed MSN’s Royal Wedding Video Player, which on the big day will deliver live streaming video of the Royal Wedding. This has been integrated with Twitter and Facebook to enable real time conversations. The Video Player goes live next week so keep any eye out for it at MSN UK and, of course, make sure you tune in to MSN on the big day. /group/steve-ellis/2011/04/making-the-royal-wedding-a-more-social-event-for-msn/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/04/making-the-royal-wedding-a-more-social-event-for-msn/ Thu, 21 Apr 2011 11:57:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/03/the-daily-telegraph-features-rough-guide-to-the-world/#number-of-comments The Daily Telegraph has featured the Rough Guide to the World site in its coverage of the release to the web of Microsoft's IE9 browser, take a look here. This was a project we completed for the Rough Guide team at the end of last year. The site is full of HTML5 wonderfulness, and uses many of the strengths found in IE9 to create a great web experience, and it also has a social aspect using the Flickr API. /group/steve-ellis/2011/03/the-daily-telegraph-features-rough-guide-to-the-world/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/03/the-daily-telegraph-features-rough-guide-to-the-world/ Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:01:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2011/03/now-i-remember-that-39-s-the-difference-between-journalism-and-twitter/#number-of-comments Nice piece here from Seth Weintraub at Fortune. He's taken the time to do some fact checking on the datapoints used in Steve Jobs' keynote for the iPad2 launch yesterday. Seems not all the facts used actually match up with reality. I'm not offering an opinion on iPad2's doubtless all round wonderfulness, or Steve Jobs' brilliant presentation capability. I doubt his ethical approach to fact selection was much different to any other CEO in the showtime spotlight of a big launch. And I'm not making a point about Apple, so please don't clog up comments with polemic views, either for or against. My point is that the piece reminded me why - despite being in an age when social media claims to be all powerful, toppling dictatorships here and there - we still need good, old fashioned journalistic qualities. Namely to be questioning, opinionated, perhaps a little bit paranoid, and most importantly to spend time checking out the details. None of which were attributes much in evidence in the fire hose of social media commentary surrounding the iPad2 launch. Most of which was as uncritical as an audience of pre-teens at a Justin Bieber concert. If that sounds like a complaint, well its just that it wasn't very illuminating. And while I'm here, there must be something Twitter can do about the multiple duplication of RTs, surely? /group/steve-ellis/2011/03/now-i-remember-that-39-s-the-difference-between-journalism-and-twitter/ /group/steve-ellis/2011/03/now-i-remember-that-39-s-the-difference-between-journalism-and-twitter/ Fri, 04 Mar 2011 08:34:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2010/12/beach-break-live-silverlight-4-photosynth-spotify-and-thousands-of-students/#number-of-comments This week we have had a team over at the Beach Break Live student festival in Wales. Our role was to build and sustain a virtual experience that gave a flavour for the live events happening at the festival. Live streaming wasn't an option, so instead we created a site that used Microsoft Silverlight 4 to mash Photosynth images and Spotify playlists related to what's on around the different festival stages. Aside from a few local bandwidth issues caused by thousands of students simultaneously nudging, poking and checking-in with each other, everything worked just great. Take a look below or check out the site to get the full Photosynth experience.       /group/steve-ellis/2010/12/beach-break-live-silverlight-4-photosynth-spotify-and-thousands-of-students/ /group/steve-ellis/2010/12/beach-break-live-silverlight-4-photosynth-spotify-and-thousands-of-students/ Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:49:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2010/07/can-you-spot-the-eight-iconic-world-cup-moments-in-our-video/#number-of-comments Here's something to occupy the barren hours before kick off. The creative team tell me there are a magnificent eight moments of iconic World Cup history recreated in the video we knocked up for our Mobile Keepy Uppy game. Can you find them? BTW - we passed 10,000 downloads at the weekend. /group/steve-ellis/2010/07/can-you-spot-the-eight-iconic-world-cup-moments-in-our-video/ /group/steve-ellis/2010/07/can-you-spot-the-eight-iconic-world-cup-moments-in-our-video/ Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:01:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2010/07/world-cup-fever-the-final-score/#number-of-comments Not everything goes to plan. My World Cup journey ended in a bar in Washington DC, rather than Johannesburg. While neither England or the USA exactly set the competition alight. Metia came away with more than a few extra fans. Metia's Mobile Keepy Uppy game has now been downloaded over 25,000 times and continues to get over 1,500 downloads each day. The Youtube video has been viewed over 7,500 times. The World Cup Pivot has had over 15,000 people use the site to interactively interrogate the player stats. Football fever aside, each of these projects was conducted as a Proof of Concept (PoC), designed to explore aspects of mobility, social, and data analytics respectively. Aside from the obvious output, each PoC generated learnings about the different technologies, channels and social outreach techniques employed. All of which will now get fed back into our client's projects. If any of this stuff interests you, or you are curious about how it can be applied to real campaigns and projects, get in touch and we'll share the inside track. /group/steve-ellis/2010/07/world-cup-fever-the-final-score/ /group/steve-ellis/2010/07/world-cup-fever-the-final-score/ Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:53:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2010/07/one-for-statto-try-our-world-cup-pivot-for-player-stats/#number-of-comments The development team in Metia Seattle has been exploring uses for Pivot, a software application from Microsoft Live Labs that let's users interact with large volumes of data. To bring Pivot to life, the team tipped in all the player stats for all the teams in the World Cup to create World Cup Pivot. Filter the different criteria through the lefthand column options. Change the view with the top line nav bar. Pivot is made to be simple to shuffle through large volumes of data, trying out different permutations and options to sift for meaning, so have a play here. We are already building Pivot into a number of external web sites and services for clients who want to give users the ability to get interactive with data. Bearing in mind the way Infographics seem to have taken a grip on the web, it'll be interesting to see Pivot's progress. My World Cup Pivot insight: Lionel Messi, 30 shots, 0 goals. He might as well be English.     /group/steve-ellis/2010/07/one-for-statto-try-our-world-cup-pivot-for-player-stats/ /group/steve-ellis/2010/07/one-for-statto-try-our-world-cup-pivot-for-player-stats/ Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:48:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2010/06/nifty-latest-score-from-mobile-keepy-uppy-world-cup-6000-downloads-2000-video-views/#number-of-comments As England switches off from work and switches on the telly for tonight's match, here's a latest score from World Cup Keepy Uppy. In just one week the 'patently silly football juggling game for mobile phone users' aka Mobile Keepy Uppy has been downloaded an astounding 6,330 times (that's 5,201 times from our site and 1,129 times from Freeware PocketPC). Which is one download every 90 seconds since it went live. Don't you wish that was Emile Heskey's goals to seconds on the pitch ratio? And the dodgy video has been viewed 2,200 times on YouTube. /group/steve-ellis/2010/06/nifty-latest-score-from-mobile-keepy-uppy-world-cup-6000-downloads-2000-video-views/ /group/steve-ellis/2010/06/nifty-latest-score-from-mobile-keepy-uppy-world-cup-6000-downloads-2000-video-views/ Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:18:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2010/06/mobile-keepy-uppy-latest-score-four-star-review-and-800-downloads/#number-of-comments Quick update on our Mobile Keepy Uppy game. Seems there are a few people out there with time on their hands. The game is featured here on the Freeware Pocket PC site, and elsewhere on Mobile TopSoft amongst others. On the Freeware site it has over 800 downloads so far, gets four stars out of five in reviews and has some great feedback. A few people comment it doesn't work on their phone - which is a shame all round, we agree, but we were pretty upfront about the limited number of phones, HTC mostly, which can run the game. Here are our favourite comments so far: "excellent game...good graphics and sound effects...great response to g sensor" "Nice little app for killing time. My kids will love it. I like how you can see the shadow of the ball as it's coming down. Good job" /group/steve-ellis/2010/06/mobile-keepy-uppy-latest-score-four-star-review-and-800-downloads/ /group/steve-ellis/2010/06/mobile-keepy-uppy-latest-score-four-star-review-and-800-downloads/ Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:23:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2010/06/guess-who-wins-the-mobile-keepy-uppy-world-cup/#number-of-comments It all seemed plausible enough at the time. The chaps in Metia Labs said: "We really want to explore the uses for accelerometers in mobile phones, maybe look at the use of physics engines too. Perhaps some kind of a game would be a good vehicle to see how we could use different physical senses to shape a mobile experience." A week later and this noble intent morphed into a virtual version of football's Keepy Uppy played on mobile phones.  Pretty soon after that and we are having the Mobile Keepy Uppy World Cup in our London office. It is all explained here and you can download the game too. For the record, however improbable it sounds, England won. /group/steve-ellis/2010/06/guess-who-wins-the-mobile-keepy-uppy-world-cup/ /group/steve-ellis/2010/06/guess-who-wins-the-mobile-keepy-uppy-world-cup/ Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:51:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2010/01/ever-seen-a-microsite-full-of-interactivity-amp-video-inside-a-55k-banner-ad/#number-of-comments Want to see a whole microsite experience squeezed into a teeny tiny banner ad? The Mass Effect 2 launch campaign is now live at MSN UK Gaming. What's all this about? See the previous post. World's first interactive and expandable banner ad (we reckon) Mel Carson at Microsoft Advertising has posted on the banner here. Correction: I'm told after opimisation the banner is only a tidy 41k /group/steve-ellis/2010/01/ever-seen-a-microsite-full-of-interactivity-amp-video-inside-a-55k-banner-ad/ /group/steve-ellis/2010/01/ever-seen-a-microsite-full-of-interactivity-amp-video-inside-a-55k-banner-ad/ Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:41:00 +0100 Steve Ellis /group/steve-ellis/2010/01/world-39-s-first-interactive-and-expandable-silverlight-banner-ad-we-reckon/#number-of-comments Normally I'd shy away from ever claiming a 'world's first' - someone, somewhere must surely have got there first? But in this instance we think we are on solid ground. Working with the team at Mediacom we have been busy putting the finishing touches to a digital advertising campaign to launch Electronic Arts' next big title: Mass Effect 2. The campaign launches next week. The brief was screaming out for the use of special effects to create a compelling in-game style of experience. Microsoft's Silverlight was perfect for the task. Deep Zoom and Smooth Streaming offered our creative team angles for creating a game experience effectively within the digital banner (that's a static image taken from the banner experience above - and another below. I'll post a link when the campaign is live next week). Everyone including the client loved the concepts and creative solution. Just one small problem. When we came to discuss the opportunity with Microsoft Advertising, none of the usual suspect ad serving companies were capable of serving expandable and truly interactive Silverlight banners. Undaunted we spoke with Ad Dynamo, the South African HQed ad serving marketplace. Ad Dynamo were up for it. Together we have spent a couple of months planning and building the world's first genuinely interactive Silverlight ad serving capability as a collaboration with Ad Dynamo, ourselves and the folk at Microsoft Advertising. So when the Mass Effect 2 campaign launches on MSN next week, it'll feature the world's first ad served expandable Silverlight banner. The campaign is getting broad exposure on the MSN homepage, amongst other locations, so it'll be seen by millions of visitors. Our Silverlight team - and the client - are all excited by the creative experience achieved. But being a restless bunch, they have already moved on to explore what other creative effects are now possible to deliver within digital advertising formats that can be enabled by Silverlight ad serving. And, obviously, Microsoft is pleased to open up the world opportunity offered by Silverlight's capabilities to advertisers and creative teams. I suspect it is an area many creative agencies aren't currently equipped to explore. If creative agencies want to know more about the project, or need some help in using Silverlight to create rich experiences, get in touch. Update: the Microsoft Silverlight product team have posted on this project here. Thanks chaps. /group/steve-ellis/2010/01/world-39-s-first-interactive-and-expandable-silverlight-banner-ad-we-reckon/ /group/steve-ellis/2010/01/world-39-s-first-interactive-and-expandable-silverlight-banner-ad-we-reckon/ Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:30:00 +0100