The dust is settling and the bikes are on the wall. Finally all the boxes are un-packed, the desks have been scraped together and the recycling bins have been swallowing 50 cans to the dozen…
…so it must be time for the moving-in party!
Thursday 29th, 5:30 until late
14 Backfields Lane, Bristol, BS2 8QW
All Thought Den peeps are invited! Email party-invite@thoughtden.co.uk and then after a rigours process of elimination, we’ll put you on the doormens’ list.
Multimedia huh? Almost as vague as ‘pervasive media’ given it can describe anything from animated gifs to stereoscopic projections. Definitions aside, Thought Den were honoured to be invited to help the region’s A-level and GCSE media teachers swot up on how businesses are exploiting the power of digital.
Bristol already has a thriving media scene and educational institutions in the area are constantly innovating in the way they nurture upcoming talent – something we’re happy to support. A new Multimedia Diploma is being launched in the region and we aimed to get the creative juices flowing, mixing exercises, group brainstorms, front-line experience and observations of the market at large.
The good people at Learning Partnership South West and Vital, part of the Open University, commissioned a 3 hour workshop, part of which involved an in-depth look at some of our own multimedia solutions in three key areas – Government, Consumer and SMEs. Thought Den have worked closely with eDemocracy and online consultation specialists Delib for almost 5 years now and projects such as Fire Kills and Delib’s very own Your Freedom site for our new coalition Government were useful case studies.
Voucher Cloud was given as an example in the Consumer category, and Thought Den’s jewel in the crown Parashoot (risk assessment tool for the TV industry, like Base Camp but with animations) exemplified the highs and lows of developing unique intellectual property for small businesses.
Following a busy Friday and Sunday in preparation, the session kicked off at the Pervasive Media Studiowrapping for lunch at 1:00. It was a great session and we’re putting a video edit together as we focus on landing more work in this area. Please get in touch if you’d like us to run a similar workshop for you. Brows these videos for examples of what we’ve already done.
Bournemouth Industry Day (50 students, 8 hours, bridging the gap between industry and education)
With HTML5 & CSS3 constantly peeping round the corner (iPad sites, HTML5 article) we need to prep ourselves to deliver client’s rich websites to the highest standards. There’s a lot of changes going on and during the transitional period we’re updating our CSS font-techniques at Thought Den.
The industry
The font industry is apparently in a bit of turmoil for both designers and producers. The Font-designers are trying to hold onto their previous/old/out-dated/”wake-up and get with the times” print-based payment model. While the web-based font factories are trying to break it the business open into a mass/does it make profit/lowering standards/can it make money iTunes micro-payment model.
Then, the producers (us in the Den!) are trying to deliver our clients (you!) (or “you!” soon, after you’ve contacted us) a sexy web-package that will work across the most browsers and by using a technique that will last longer than a flash-in-the-pan 5 minutes.
What did we find?
There are currently many articles to help guide and inform the decision, namely from the popular web standards site, a list apart. This article in particular, “Web Fonts at the crossing” has helped round up the current full technical details,
- HTML5 & CSS aren’t fully supported everywhere yet
- IE6 to IE8 can only support a particular type of font extension
- Firefox, Chrome & Safari are pushing the boundaries
- IE9, it sounds like Miccy-soft have made an Internet Explorer browser half decent!
Thought Den will… (client round-up)
… be using the new tools/bold technology for making sure your site and its fonts are viewable across as many browsers as possible so it’s readable on many devices as possible.
Thought Den will… (techie round-up)
… be using the @font-family tag with,
You know when you’re moving to a new house. There’s always that list of new bits you need to go buy, scrounge or ‘borrow’. Things like Cabinets, Poncy Coffee table, Cupboards and there’s no doubt that you’ll be missing all your table-spoons. Well our list after the recent secret move of the Den could do with one thing adding it’s list. A Sandbox.
Not a normal grainy one with endless castles and pit potential. But more like one of the Media Sandboxes that the Pervasive Media Studio has just released.
The Pervasive Media Studio
To fill you in, a Media Sandbox is a funded challenge open to any technologists. It’s aim is purely at allowing people/companies/artists to come up with a idea to tackle a problem, create a new service or create an experience.
A 2009 Media Sandbox commission
The first is B-Open Sandbox (http://www.mediasandbox.co.uk/awards/), and invites ideas on utilising the wealth of data-feeds out there and turning them into useful apps, sites or experiences. So for example and app which helps people decide which city to move to according to a government air-quality feed.
The second is Pervasive Experiences Sandbox (http://www.mediasandbox.co.uk/awards/) and invites ideas on creating ground-breaking pervasive which should pull together mobile, wireless & sensor technologies to create meaningful experiences.
Thought Den, being a company who are constantly playing with, researching and creating new technologies for clients, commissions and fun (just check out our latest Geek club). Will definitely be putting ideas & concepts into the mix.
Then hopefully we’ll have a new Sandbox to play with in the Den.
Alcohol. Education. Pet care. Not the typical digital menage-a-trois, but Thought Den don’t do route one (unless we have our serious hat on and our client has their serious face on) Believe it or not these three seemingly unrelated industries have become important strings to our viral bow. Over the last few years we’ve produced a tonne of games for the big boys, mostly through Team Rubber, but we’ve struggled to persuade Kerve’s client Southern Comfort to join the party. Our Pet Factor videos for the National Office of Animal Health went down well but we’ve still not done a game for them. And then the penny dropped. Games are unrivalled for in-depth brand engagement when you get the hard bits right – playability, entertainment, messaging. See the success of the Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek ARGs. So along came two great briefs from Kerve resulting in 6 stonking, time-frazzling, finger-jiggling, play-monsters.
Whet your whistle with some southern Comfort Swamp Drifting (don’t drink and drift…) in this game in support of Southern Comfort’s sponsorship of the True Blood TV series on FX. Once you’ve collected HM Heron’s precious cargo from the ‘gator infested Bayou (linky-link to Swamp Drifter), pop into New Orleans for a bit of Vamp-dodging. This second game for the True Blood series of digital treats takes inspiration from Jewel Thief, a skanky, pixel-tastic, PC-based game of childhood yore. Collect the gems. Don’t get caught. Here’s the link – Vampire Chase.
Cute-animal alert! Ask yourself this – should rabbits eat broccoli? Not according to the law of Cybervores! This little digi-toy combines a cracking little suite of mini-games for kiddie-winks, crafted over almost 6 weeks of game-testing and development at the Den.
It’s a bit like tamagotchi, but we got rid if the boring click-to-cuddle / click-to-feed and focused on gameplay / gameplay with classics like as Catch, Hide and Seek, Sports Day and Pairs. Have a quick play, they’re all under 2 minute interactions, and let us know what you think. And damn, the illustrations are good.
Many thanks to all the good people who have contributed – our main man on the visual side Mr Ben Webb; all the cool dudes at Communicator in London; Dom, Ben and Dave at Kerve for joyous XML wrangling and file uploading.
Thought Den have worked closely with eDemocracy and online consultation specialists 
Voucher Cloud was given as an example in the Consumer category, and Thought Den’s jewel in the crown Parashoot (risk assessment tool for the TV industry, like Base Camp but with animations) exemplified the highs and lows of developing unique intellectual property for small businesses.
