…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.

Come and drink booze and eat BBQ niceness!

Here’s some piccies from the move so far…

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)

BBC design recruits training (Creative thinking in Pervasive Media)

This is us looking gormless

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,

Google Code (for hosted fonts)
- http://code.google.com/webfonts

Embedded Fonts (for creating fonts)
- http://www.fontsquirrel.com/

Restricted Fonts (for expensive fonts)
- http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/

Onwards!

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.

Our previous Media Sandbox commission

Happy Packages Dick Penny

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.

Below is video 01 from our new Geek Club series, charting the Den’s trials, tribulations, banter and revelations. Think Blue Peter, without the bog roll tubes. Or HP Labs, but with less money and more sellotape.

Adam says :

“It makes use of the OSC protocol (likely eventual successor to MIDI), which is normally used to transmit musical and audio control data over UDP. The iPhone app, TouchOSC, is designed to be used as an OSC controller and also supports transmission of accelerometer data, indicating the orientation of the phone. The UDP packets are received by a Java flosc server, running on the PC, which retransmits the OSC data over Flash-friendly TCP. On receipt of a packet, Flash assigns the received orientation values to the rotationX and -Y properties of a cube made with the Flash10 3D API.”

Word on the street is that we’ve moved studio. An official (and thoroughly imaginative) announcement will follow forthwith. Isn’t it a shame that ‘real’ work gets in the way of devising these witty and clever ways to let you know we now stare at different coloured walls when Firefox crashes? Soon your inboxes will sing to the sound of Thought Den’s latest self-indulgent, digital distraction. Curious? You should be…

The project was no small undertaking,
- concept
- branding
- design
- a Squarespace site-build
- social media page branding (Youtube/Twitter)
- working on Good Friday =)

The process
Here’s some sneaky shots of the Thought Den process which produced the sexy results

Who is Florrie?
If you’d like to know who Florrie is, (she will be gracing our radio airwaves and tv sets very soon!). She’s a singer, songwriter and rather importantly a drummer!

Check it all out!
Site – http://www.florrie.com/
Twitter – http://twitter.com/florriemusic
Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/user/florriemusic

Like what we did?
If you’d like to talk about Thought Den’s full branding & online services, please mail ben@thoughtden.co.uk for more details

Flash AS3 day

The day will see us all coding our own games, but we all have to do it in AS3. Painful? No, because we’ll all be in the same room, we’ve all coded in AS2 before, we’ll have the internet and most importantly we can share as we go. A bit like crowd-sourcing from clever individuals.

Thought Den provide.

breakfast, coffees & lunch
prize for the best game at the end of the day!

You provide.

computer with Flash installed
a game idea
openness to help your fellow man

Mail me, dan at thoughtden dot co dot uk for an invite.

—— DETAILS ——-
The plan.
Code a game in AS3.

Prize for best game.
A book! yup. “The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses: A Book of Lenses” (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Game-Design-lenses-Lenses/dp/0123694965/)

Who’s it for?
AS2 coders / coders, looking to start coding games in AS3

The place.
Pervasive Media Studio
Leadworks,
Anchor Square,
Harbourside
Bristol
BS1 5DB
some details are here – http://www.pmstudio.co.uk/open-studio-friday

The time.
Thursday 8th April. 8 till 5.30.

Places.
Mail dan@thoughtden.co.uk

We look forward to hearing from you!

Download

Thought Den – Flash Programmer

Thought Den – Studio Marketeer

Note
No agencies

Text versions

———-
Flash programmer

WAGE
£300 per week

DESCRIPTION
We build addictive games. That’s why we’re chosen to work with agencies on their big clients like Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, BBC and leading British Universities.

Our Flash Programmer role will involve intensive Actionscript programming to develop gameplay, but will also involve building connections to databases and loading XML files. You will be supported by the creative and technical team in terms of visual assets and complex technical solutions.

See some of our examples
The JD Set – http://www.thejdset.co.uk/
Fire Kills – http://campaigns.direct.gov.uk/firekills/game.html
Virtual Tour – http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/virtualtour/

You need to have a good understanding of Flash and Actionscript, or at the very least, a strong desire to learn.

TASKS
- ideas generation
- rapid prototyping
- programming
- testing
- deployment of game

DURATION
8 week trial

——–
GETTING IN CONTACT
Please send to dan@thoughtden.co.uk
- a Cv, some links to your work (student, graduate, own time)
- a zip file of 1 Flash project, code+fla. (no more than 5MB!)

SCRABBLE IT TOGETHER BY
April 6th

THEN
If we like the cut of your jib, we’ll find a time to chat from the April 7th

——–
Studio Marketeer

WAGE
£250 per week + commission

DESCRIPTION
Thought Den are going places. We’ve been working with agencies on their big clients like Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, BBC and leading British Universities for 5 years.

Now we need someone to start shouting about it.

Ultimately this role is responsible for raising the profile of the company and generating new business leads. Thought Den design, build, collaborate and educate. We need someone to take responsibility for separating and defining our range of services, develop the appropriate sales strategies for each and then execute the strategy.

The successful candidate should have a good understanding of the digital industry, including trade magazines, blogs and other appropriate channels. But of most importance is the creative spark and enthusiasm that will help communicate Thought Den’s passion for delivery rewarding digital experiences. Financial rewards for doing well.

TASKS
- writing blogs / articles / tweets
- researching target clients
- cold-calling new clients
- placing articles in the appropriate channels
- brainstorming and creative thinking

DURATION
8 week trial

——–
GETTING IN CONTACT
Please send to dan@thoughtden.co.uk
- a Cv, some links to your work (student, graduate, own-time)
- a mini-blog post to sell “iPods to your Nan”
- 200 words max.
- 1 hand-drawn image. A drawing, pen/pencil/pasta choose a medium
- delivered in a blog/word doc/plain text doc + attachment

SCRABBLE IT TOGETHER BY
April 6th

THEN
If we like the cut of your jib, we’ll find a time to chat from the 7th April

So it’s been a few week’s since our man Rhys headed out on some adventures to Nepal and he just sent us a email. “All’s good over here, in Nepal at the moment, gonna do a few days trekking up in the mountains tommorow. For how long depends on how long my fitness will last I think!”

He even sent us a picture!

Thought Den written in the beach

Btw. in the next few days, keep your eyes open for something Thought Den’s been working on for Kerve Creative & Southern Comfort, it’s called Facebite. And we’re a little bit proud, as always.

Facebite vampire