Enjoy!

Facebook gaming is declining.  Oh no it isn’t!  Oh yes it is!

The internet needs you….

George Hurrell, Digital Designer

“As internet citizens, we all have a responsibility to make the internet a better place. By taking these measures, we are doing our bit.”

I came across this article and it made me chuckle as well as breathe a sigh of relief, as I realised it wasn’t only me that was tired of going through the pain of designing beautiful websites that would just get butchered by the archaic IE 6/7. These browsers are so old scientists are finding traces of them in distant galaxies.

I appreciate many people still use these browsers but we need to find a way to bring everyone up to speed to enjoy all the benefits that new web technologies of the web can bring. Enter the Australians, not renowned for their subtlety, who could be onto something. An Australian company (Kogan) has introduced the world’s first tax on Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 browser. The charge is 6.8%-0.1% for each month since the IE7 launch. The CEO told the BBC it was to try and recover some of the costs involved in ‘rendering the website in an antique browser’!! Brilliant. However,  I think you would have to be very secure in your business model to tax people for using the wrong browser.

And the best bit is that customers visiting the website using the Microsoft browser are met with a message saying,

“It appears you or your system administrator has been in a coma for over 5 years and you are still using IE7. To help make the internet a better place, you will be charged a 6.8% tax on your purchase from Kogan.com. This is necessary due to the amount of time required to make web pages appear correctly in IE7.”

What makes a good banner ad?

Ally Manock, Head of Digital Strategy, Planning & Insight

We were debating what makes a good banner ad in the digital team this week, just as a note from Respond dropped in my inbox. They claim to “solve the problem of ‘banner blindness with targeted call to action buttons in prime locations across premium sites.”. It interested me enough to look into them a little further…

They basically think that buttons are the way forward, not tired old banner ads. Personally, I still think there is room for beautiful interactive immersive creative ads (let’s not forget that online advertising isn’t just about direct response), but there’s no disputing that the standard banner click-through rates are tumbling. Banner blindness does exist and advertisers are having to be increasingly clever to get around this.

So, buttons. We’re used to clicking on them, they don’t potentially annoy as much as a banner, they don’t ‘feel’ like an ad… it might just work. We’ll see.

Apple-branded fashion

Jonathan Price, Senior Account Manager

I read this article on Mashable this week about ‘The Apple Collection’.

I never realised that Apple had once made its own clothing range.  A stupid fad in my opinion, still seen up and down the halls of many a conference… but never to this extent.

To think that the same organisation that conceived the iPod and Macbook also released a range of clothing now seems ridiculous. Particularly when you see the lady sporting the complete Apple tracksuit and the ‘must-have’ Apple belt.

Despite my distain for corporate branded clothing I do confess to owning a Coca-Cola bum bag (circa 1994, I hasten to add). It made me think what the modern equivalent might be. The Google maxi dress?  The Facebook hoodie?  The Pinterest beanie?

Our four hardy riders will brave the unpredictable British summer and ride through the night, up country, to arrive at the Hospice on the afternoon of 14th June. Starting at the famous ‘Look Mum No Hands’ cycling cafe on Old Street, our Brass cyclists aim to complete the challenge inside 24 hours!

You can show your support and sponsor our cyclists to help raise £1000 for our friends at Sue Ryder’s Wheatfields Hospice. The money raised will help the Hospice continue to deliver its invaluable and much-needed care for people with life-limiting illnesses, their families and loved ones.

Social Brands 100

Sally Barr, Online PR & Social Media Manager

On Tuesday the top 100 social brands ranking was published. There was a launch event. There was wine. And there was a load of the top social brands and agencies in a room.

Innocent topped the ranks to scoop the number one position, well done Innocent. Two of our clients were included in the top 100 as well.

The panel discussion at the event was very interesting. There was talk of customer service being delivered only through social media and whether you should prioritise talking to followers who have the biggest followings, amongst other subjects.

Brands were ranked by a number of factors, but a few of these were based on how much you interacted with your fans. With many customer service channels being shortlisted, this measurement would have been in their favour as a social customer service channel is more likely to respond to every fan interaction.

What I found most interesting was that the ranking also measured how active brands are on YouTube and Foursquare. It was mentioned by one of the panel that YouTube and Foursquare are not being used enough by brands as part of their social strategy. While this is a valid point, it suggests that the more channels a brand has presence on, the better. When developing social strategies we know that this is not necessarily true. From an agency point of view we need to recommend the most effective channels that will deliver the best return, and a broad-brush approach is not always the best option.

The event stirred various debates around interesting topics and was a great opportunity to see how very different brands tackle social media.

Privacy please

Creative students from a mix of universities and courses compete to win the attentions of Creative Directors and designers from, among others, Elmwood, Home, Made by Pi and Numiko as well as from here at Brass. The award celebrates creativity and inventiveness. With no categories, competing entries come from graphic designers, games designers, illustrators, animators, textile designers, architects and artists. Combined with a casual approach to the evening and a sprinkle of entertainment from social enterprises (Invizible Circle and Future Arts, who provided dancers, rappers and musicians), it makes for a lively event.

Well done to the winners, Stephanie Ogilsby, James Lashmar and Polly Williams and to everyone who took part in what was an exceptional year for quality graduate work. The degree shows take place over the next few weeks, so I thoroughly recommend you get out there and take a look.

See you next year!

Self-publishing games

Andrew Brown, Creative Director

On-demand publishers like Lulu are helping to revolutionise the world of book publishing, allowing us mere mortals to publish everything from coffee table photo books to children’s picture books or even our own novels. It’s the magical combination of advances in digital printing technology and access to these services through the internet that makes this possible. But this marriage of manufacturing and home publishing is only in its infancy.  With the prices of 3D printing falling faster than the value of Facebook shares there are whole worlds of home manufacturing opening up.

One company taking advantage of this is Game Salute. At a time when casual games companies like Rovio and Zynga are falling over themselves to cash the latest million dollar cheque, Game Salute has got its sights on revolutionising the usually pedestrian world of table top board games. The trick? To use the latest technology, combined with expertise, to provide tools and services that allow businesses, publishers and individuals to realise their own board game creations.

Games Salute is on track to release approximately 500 products in 2012, turning the $2billion industry on its head. Ironically enough some of the best ways its services are being used is in the translation of mobile games into board games. Expect iOS favourites like Rune Raiders to be available with little plastic pieces, dice and fold away board in stores soon!

Mind over Virtual matter

UEFA to engage with fans through digital

Back to basics

Paul Mallett, Managing Partner

This week saw Vint Cerf inducted into the Internet Society’s Hall of Fame. No great surprises, but I think, really timely.

The technology news agenda is becoming increasingly dominated by patent squabbles and the consumer version of the internet by Apple’s proprietary walled garden.

None of this was ever meant to be.

What always appealed to me (and the rest of the world) about the internet was its freedom, its lack of walls, its built in democracy. It enabled anyone, anywhere, to have a voice, a point of view. It enabled anyone to be a star, a revolutionary, a diplomat, a journalist. And it did this by being free and open.

Vint Cerf was one of the chief protagonists of this viewpoint. He and his colleagues were born from US counterculture and, funded by the military and the space race, invented a new age, equal in importance to the industrial revolution and the ability to replicate words through printing.

And they always said it should be open and free. As Vint himself said:

“We said we’re not going to patent it, we’re not going to control it. We’re going to release it to the world as soon as it’s available, which we did.”

This spirit lives on in the Open Source world of Linux and Android, but is being continually eroded by the closed systems of Apple and the patent squabbles of the tech giants.

Me, I prefer the world of Vint – the Godfather of Cerfing (I’ll get my coat)

Happy birthday ZX Spectrum

Andrew Brown, Creative Director

The ZX Spectrum was the most important home computer ever made. After two years of prodding the touch-insensitive keys of the black and white, low res 1k ZX81, the Spectrum exploded into our homes with seven colours, one channel of sound, 16k of memory and a high resolution 256×192 pixel screen.  It. Was. Awesome.

It’s often cited that the importance of these Sinclair machines was that they taught a whole generation to code. By sitting for hours inputting line after line from magazines we learned BASIC and grew up with a grounding in the principals of computer logic.  But what really distinguished the Spectrum from its nuts and bolts predecessor wasn’t the code we created ourselves. With the Spectrum we had our first taste of APPS. And APPS have tended to be the killer reason every other home computer innovation has survived or failed ever since.

Ask people to talk about ZX81 games and they might cite 3D Monster Maze and maybe a couple of others. Ask people about Spectrum games and you’ll be lucky to get away as aficionados wax lyrical about Jet-Pac, Ant Attack, Manic Miner and countless other games which were bought on cassette tapes and loaded by audio into the machine.The App(lication) was born, came of age and grew up fast on the Spectrum.  Small companies like the critically acclaimed “Ultimate” (from Twycross in Leicestershire) made small fortunes and grew into big companies. Ultimate later became Rare which in turn became part of Microsoft Studios and currently release games such as Kinect Sports.

There are always small tweaks you can be making for ongoing optimisation, and keeping up with Google’s search quality changelog is a job in itself. It made 50 amends in the last month alone. Did you know about all of them?

This post looks beyond the ongoing optimisation and looks at five aspects of SEO you should consider implementing next.

1. Rich snippets
Rich snippets are pieces of information that are displayed below your search listing which offer users and search engines a better understanding of the content that will appear on your page.

Implementing rich snippets is a must. Google now supports an array of common uses for rich snippets such as business locations, reviews, product information, authorship and recipes. One of the best places to start for rich snippet is Schema.org

Ultimately, rich snippets will increase your natural CTR and, in a competitive market where each listing on the first page of search results offers the user some kind of benefit, rich snippets can help you stand out in the crowd.

2. Mobile content
Smartphone Googlebot-Mobile has been in action from December last year and was introduced to improve search quality on smartphones. Crawling the web, it learns which web pages and content are designed specifically for mobile and no doubt favours them in search listings to improve search quality on smartphone devices.

You may have successfully delivered your SEO campaign on desktop, but mobile results can be very different and it’s important to capitalise on this growing market by making sure your content is mobile-friendly.

3. Broaden your horizon
Other than purchase intent keywords (users looking to purchase immediately or close to purchase) there could be other opportunities further up the purchasing funnel where you have the chance to influence a potential purchaser.

e.g. An e-commerce store selling guitars could target search terms around ‘how to play the guitar’ or even terms as generic as ‘music lessons’.

4. Natural search attribution
Other than direct response, what role does natural search play in your customer’s journey and how can you optimise it by delivering the best suited content? Being able to understand the full customer journey, and the channels they use to purchase, is key for the last point to actually work.

Using the same example, you would probably see traffic for ‘music lessons’ have an awful conversion rate to sale, but measuring how it impacts the overall conversion rate and uplift in sales could demonstrate how valuable this traffic is.

5. Social search
Beyond the number of shares, likes, tweets and +1’s, as technology develops social search will undoubtedly become about the sentiment and context in which a brand is mentioned and, potentially even more importantly, by whom. It is likely that a search engine would place a higher level of authority on a more influential social profile.

This is mainly theory, but I would back it up with the fact that Google is investing time into better indexing of social profiles on over 200 social networks and that it is already able to determine the most relevant profile based on a search query. Given that this is generally more interesting than link building, I hope it happens!

Welcome to this week’s juiciest digital stories, hand-picked for you by the beady-eyed Brasscals, including Tupac lives (or does he), spies and video games, digital v analogue, the first interactive car configurator on YouTube and Instacanvas galleries. Read on and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments bit as always!

The World (of Warcraft) is Not Enough

Andrew Brown, Creative Director

So the US Government has awarded a £110,000 contract to San Francisco-based Obscure Technologies to develop technologies that will allow them to capture date from players communicating on games consoles over voice or instant messaging. They fear terrorists and paedophile rings may be using these channels to communicate.

Encryption of secret communications has a long and fascinating military history, from substitution ciphers used to protect commercially sensitive information on Mesopotamian tablets three and a half thousand years ago, to the famous Enigma code of World War II.  It’s interesting to imagine secret agents tramping around the Eastern Kingdoms in World of Warcraft, trading unusual items stuffed with coded information with other agents across the world:

Thisur: The… spotted cuckoo is flying backwards?

Elándil: It’s a cold day for pontooning.

Pundits are unsure why the US Government believes terrorists might be using these in-game communication channels rather than just the instant messaging services that come as standard on consoles like the XBox, but I’d like to believe it’s because that’s what US spies themselves are using. But which games would spies favour? Call of Duty seems like a safe bet for both secret agents and terrorist cells alike.

Tupac lives! (As a hologram)

James Wheatley, Technical and Scoping Director

I’m not usually one for regrets but I have had a few. The biggest one was that I was unconscious in my tent during James Brown’s set at Glastonbury 2004. It was my maiden voyage to the festival and the general euphoria led me to underestimate my need for sleep. This critical misjudgement meant I completely missed the gig. My initial disappointment was further compounded when the hardest working man in show business died a couple of years later, along with my chance to see him live.

Or so I thought, until I saw this week’s news that despite his murder in 1996, legendary rapper Tupac Shakur made an on-stage appearance with Dr Dre and Snoop Dog at the Coachella festival.  Dying has never really been a problem for Tupac; a string of posthumous releases and a massive online conspiracy theory, ‘Tupac Alive’, has insured his continuing success.

This latest feat was actually achieved through an old technology; it’s based on a 19th century effect called Pepper’s Ghost and was originally created by reflecting an image of glass. The technology has been used before by the Gorillaz and other artists, but Tupac’s impromptu appearance at the festival blew a few minds.

This has prompted a flood of speculation that we will all be going to see our favourite deceased artists in the not too distant future. This will certainly provide some novelty amusement, though personally I think only Tupac and Elvis can really pull this kind of thing off as they didn’t really die in the first place…

Check out the video below. Be warned, the lyrics are NSFW!

Digital or Analogue. Quality or convenience?

George Hurrell, Digital Designer

The format/media that is used to distribute music to the masses has changed massively over the past 20 years. From vinyl to cassette to CD, to minidisc to MP3, to streams such as Spotify and Last FM. The ease, price and convenience that has come about from the rise of MP3s, and now services such as Spotify, mean we can access music where ever and whenever we like, but at what cost? Quality? Even 320kbps mp3s and lossless fomats such as AAC are only a quarter of the quality of something like a CD or vinyl.

2011 saw a 55% rise in sales of vinyl, which seems quite strange considering the current financial climate. Generally you will pay around £6 for two tracks on vinyl compared to 69p for an MP3 bought online. So what is it about vinyl that people are coming back to? Just a retro fad, the warm rich sound, the 12” artwork? For a vinyl junkie such as myself it’s so much more fun to receive a 12” pressed heavyweight vinyl with full colour artwork, than to watch a progress bar as your MP3 downloads.

This all brings me onto this fantastic music video I found which prompted me to throw up the discussion: quality or convenience? Watching this reminds me of listening to a track on Soundcloud where you watch the ‘sound wave’ as you listen to the track/mix. Each piece of vinyl (960 in total) has been pressed, hand labelled, numbered and polished and each one represents that particular frequency in the track.

Such a simple idea and really well executed.

Check out the video here:  Benga – I will never change.

First interactive car configurator on YouTube

Ben Brearley, Senior Account Manager

Breaking the mould of traditional car manufactures, Toyota US has launched the first interactive car configurator on YouTube to promote its Prius C model, aimed at the new generation of tech-savvy first time car buyers. The interactive configurator is like a Flash website, but embedded within the YouTube video interface, which is something I’ve not experienced before. Through a blend of clickable components you can customise your car and choose to watch the background video of the change being made or skip to the next component. Very slick! Gone are the boring drop-down menus of the majority of manufacturer websites.

As well as the innovative configurator there are useful, fun videos that deliver messages about the vehicle’s technical specification from some American comedians. A personal favourite line in the tech talk section: “young adults use the internet to perform their most important tasks from managing bank accounts, to watching cats play musical instruments!”. There are also humorous tutorials on financial planning for purchasing a car, how a dealership works and an MPG calculator. All of these elements have been wrapped up within ‘The Game of Life’ board game setting with the strap line ‘The game of life is full of challenges. Be a winner with the all new Prius C’.

It will be interesting to see how more brands use the YouTube channel to deliver interactive content in the future and if this type of configurator gets adopted by other car manufactures.

All that’s left now is to decide if I want the optional ‘Moon roof’!

Instacanvas

Ally Manock, Head of Digital Strategy, Planning and Insight

Lovers of Instagram will be happy to know that Instacanv.as is now offering to turn your photo filtered efforts into art. The website has been inviting Instagrammers to open up their own ‘gallery’. The catch is that to get your gallery open, you have to ask people to request that it opens. In a last minute attempt yesterday to get more visibility, they asked people to post a photo of themselves and at least five friends holding an “I love Instagram” sign.

This was my entry. Fingers crossed!