World of EOS...

OK, this may be a bit off blog... but I am a Canon man myself.
If you are too, and perhaps just starting out - check out this site World of EOS.

If you want some inspiration on filming in Full HD with the new 5D (II) or 7D, check out Philip Bloom's website.


P.S. Just for Marc... Nikon sux! :-)

What a twisted Semantic Web we weave...

"I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize."
– Tim Berners-Lee, 1999

Sounds very futuristic... but what does it all mean?

Semantic Web is all about editors having the ability to publish content in a format that has more meaning and structure to the machines rendering and searching the data. These "machine" readable descriptions will enable human like sorting, linking and prioritising of content by computers.

So for example, content like: $2.99 is a price of this item number 458869 that is a DVD and in the catalogue XYZ. Rather than straight HTML code meaning display this text "$2.99", next to this text "458869" and link to "XYZ". Further, as W3C's example shows, you could be viewing a calendar that shows photos you took on certain days even bank transactions on that date. So it's also about information being linked and viewed across multiple data bases.

So will this so called Web 3.0 really materialise? Some feel that a semantic web will create the need for two sets of published documents, one for humans and one for machines. "They" also say that there are issues of security and accuracy.

I fear though that we can all get ready to cringe as marketing peeps discover this latest web term!

Further reading at W3C

Google Products in BETA

If you are a fan of buying online, and most of us are... then you will be pleased to see Google has added a new service called "Google Products". This search tracks down items for sale online and lists them with ratings, shipping and reviews. Stores that support Google's checkout system are highlighted with an icon and filter - of course! Search includes advanced sorting and a shopping cart.

Check it out here: Google Products

Nifty Ad Archive

Ever wanted to track down "that ad"?
You know the one... with that soccer player...
It had this cool animation... think it was for Nike?

Check out Coloribus

Googles boys have been busy...

Fast Flip: http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/
Very Nice!!

Tool Tip City!

For the jQuery fans out there... here are some qTip examples:
http://craigsworks.com/projects/qtip/demos/

Got the blues?

If you are struggling to find that perfect colour palette for your design concept, check out this (not so new) online colour tool from Adobe called Kuler.

There is also a tool (still in BETA) called "Pulse", which includes all the data on the downloaded colour themes. Interesting to see colour popularity!

There is also some great links on the site to colour theory and analytics websites, like "In The Mood".

jQuery is your friend...

Many designers may feel that jQuery is eating into long held territory of Flash. But more than likely, this is the chance to create slick user interfaces that may not have previously been possible due to negative publicity for Flash and other plug-ins. Regardless, you should get up to speed on some of the latest techniques and Smashing Magazine has posted 45 great examples. Knock yourself out!

(Thanks Doug!)

What is your latitude?

Google has recently released Latitude... not highly accurate, but interesting nonetheless!

Open Video Player Initiative!

Related to my last post, if you are keen on online players streaming video and open standards, check out the Open Video Player Initiative.

It's not all You Tube you know!

You could be forgiven for thinking Tube was the only platform for delivering video content online. However, there are alternative services out there. Services with better security, such as Akamai as used by the Whitehouse Presidential addresses.

Vimeo looks like a great little service too! If you have your own web server and don't mind paying for data, you can always encode your own videos in Flash and playback (with a buffer) online, or set them up for streaming using Flash Media Server.

"Marketing with video media can produce response rates of up to 60%, compared to 0.1% for print media". Not sure how they worked that out exactly, but it's obvious there would be a big difference in impact.

I like this statement: According to Nielsen/NetRatings, more than 72 percent of Internet users do more than just surf the Web, and popular Internet activities include watching video clips.

Really? OMG... that is amazing! :-)

Here is a list of some other video related services...

http://www.ustream.tv/
http://www.mogulus.com/
http://live.yahoo.com/
http://www.blogtv.com/
http://www.kyte.tv/
http://www.stickam.com/
http://operator11.com/
http://www.livevideo.com/
http://yaika.com/
http://www.veodia.com/
http://www.streamavideo.com/
http://www.selfcast.com/

Knock yourself out!

Interesting websites # 42

Interested in interactive multimedia projections and other cool stuff? Check out Making Things website!

Goodbye MJ

A very sad day for fans of his music all around the world...

Office is dead...

Everything you know about emailing, chat, editing and sharing documents, photos, even asking your friends to the movies... is about to change: Google Wave
If you have a spare hour, sit back and be amazed.

Ad Words can add big costs if you are not careful...

For those of us who have used Google Ad Words, it can tend to be a bit of a mixed bag in terms of results. However, if you really look into the detail of the options available, you can save yourself a lot of head scratching and unwanted cost.

Content...
You may have seen ads appearing in other blogs... this is so these sites can make money from Google when people click on ads loading in their website. This is called "Content" in Google's Ad Words content management control panel. You have the option of listing your ad in these websites as well as in Google and partner search results.

One the big things to be aware of, is the automatic placements of your ad under "Network" tab. If you allow Google to automatically select the websites your ad will appear in based on your keywords, it can be very broad, and not the exact audience you may be after.

A test of a campaign I recently ran for my own business resulted in 180 odd websites recommendations for one particular keyword in Sydney, that had nothing really to do with the audience I was aiming at.

So manual or automatic... it is up to you, but remember to go into the automatic results and review the suggested websites. You can manually adjust this list at any time.

Need help with SEM? Contact us!

Looking for inspiration?

Thanks to the many bloggers out there exposing the work of countless designers and coders, you can now get a good dose of inspiration to save you from a mundane Monday, solve a technical problem or get the latest tech and design news...

Here is a list of some of my favourite sites, in no particular order:

The FWA
Abduzeedo
Smashing Magazine
Web Design File
Ants Magazine
FaveUp
Best Web Gallery
Design Flavr
Speckboy
Webdesign Inspiration
Design Is Kinky

For random snippets of design related goodness visit The Cool Hunter. If you really have a lot of time up your sleeve, get lost in time with Mood Stream.

Cool free fonts for designers!

Thanks to Ants Magazine, here is a list of 50 free fonts to download. Warning, these are for designers... :-)

Want an alternative to Google Analytics?

Check out Piwik! http://piwik.org/
See a comparison for these tools at Clazh.com

(Thanks to Weblenium for the Piwik tip!)

Are you complying with Anti Spam laws?

According to the Australian Government, Department of Broadband Communications and Digital Economy, the "The Spam Act 2003 prohibits the sending of spam, which is identified as a commercial electronic message sent without the consent of the addressee via email, short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS) or instant messaging. The requirements under the Spam Act apply to all commercial electronic messages, including both bulk and individual messages."

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has enforcement responsibility for the Spam Act. However, there is more to this law than just not sending without consent.

The three main things to remember are:

1. Consent - make sure you have consent to contact the recipient and can prove you have obtained it.
2. Identify - include accurate information to identify yourself or your organisation as the authorised sender of the message
3. Unsubscribe - make sure your messages have a functional unsubscribe facility, so that recipients can unsubscribe (also known as "Opt Out") at any time.

If you are broadcasting or engaging a 3rd party to do this for you, make sure you are familiar with all the Spam Act requirements.

Some organisations are exempt, such as charities, educational institutions and the government of course!

Read more on the Spam Act and Code of Practice here

IE8 out now...

IE8 is out of BETA and being pushed on the Microsoft website.

So does your website display OK in IE8? It's time to find out! You may need to throw a META tag into your website so it renders as IE7 until you fix any issues... "X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" Personally, I prefer Firefox.

View the tour of Microsoft IE8

You Tube down the tube?

It seems not even Google can escape the impact of bandwidth costs. Despite revenue going up 20% over last year and being responsible for 41% of all domestic video streams, the costs to serve all this data is a whopping $711 million dollars per year!!! And you thought your hosting was expensive.

What will this mean? More paid content on You Tube, that's what! Lots of family friendly videos from ABC and Disney...

Read full article here.

Friday Cool Stuff - Chrome Experiments

Make your browser talk... :-)
See more chromeexperiments here!

New Google search query display

Has anyone else noticed the latest Google search extra? As you start typing in a search query it drops down a list of popular (censored) search queries, with the search results to the right. Check it out!