Blog posts tagged “web” ¶

In the realms of new media, there’s a whole load of digital sectors which may take your fancy, whether it be web design, programming, gaming or social media, there are plenty of opportunities to make the most of the current surge toward online and digital innovation.

• Ideas Tap are a creative network and funding body for emerging talent. They also provide information on jobs and opportunities in the creative industry.

• Skillset provide resources for interactive media and gaming, such as training, courses and funding opportunities.

For an industry which is heavily online, with a reputation for sitting behind a laptop, there are a surprising number of offline meetup groups, ranging from casual drinks to user groups with a focused agenda. Here some of the groups and organisations around the West Midlands;

• Multipack is a community of web developers and designers from across the West Midlands who meet every second Saturday of the month

• Digital Playground run fortnightly pub socials in Digbeth for those involved in the digital creative industries in Birmingham.

• Paradise Circus is a space for discussion amongst Birmingham Bloggers, who also hold monthly meetups at various pubs around the city.

• Tech Wednesday is a monthly tech meetup for like minded digital geeks in the Birmingham area.

• Flashmidlands is a Flash Platform User Group, focusing on the advancing techniques and features of Flash, Flex, AIR, and FMS platforms, as well as their supporting technologies.

• Birmingham Perl Mongers provide help and advice to Perl programmers from Birmingham, the Black Country and the West Midlands, and also hold tech meetings.

• Black Country Open Source Society promotes the benefits of Free Open Source Software and support its use in small business.

• fizzPOP is a hackspace for people with a wide range of skills and interests, bound by a common interest in tinkering with stuff to make something new.

• Game Central is the regional games network for the West Midlands, providing news on events.

• Hacks/ Hackers brings together journalists and hackers to help each find inspiration and think in new directions, bringing together potential collaborators for projects and new ventures.

• Midlands Macintosh User Group is a non-profit user group run for and by Apple fanatics in the West Midlands. They meet monthly with refreshments, a presentation and raffle.

• PHPWM meetings are free to attend, and open to anyone - but they're probably only of real interest to PHP programmer.

• Python West Midlands hold meetings for tutorials, group programming and social events.

• West Midlands Ruby User Group a new social/learning group for people in/around the West Midlands who are interested in everything Ruby and/or Rails.

• Birmingham Interation Design Association believes that the human condition is increasingly challenged by poor experiences, and so intends to improve this by advancing the discipline of Interaction Design.

• Birmingham Linux User Group hold monthly meetings, usually on the third Thursday of the month.

• Coventry Linux User Group meet twice a month for a technical and social meet up.

• Redditch and Bromsgrove Linux Users Group alternate thier monthly meetings between Redditch and Bromsgrove.

• Warwick University GNU/ Linux User Group is a special interest group within the University of Warwick Computing Society.

• Birmingham Bloggers is a space used to talk about web and social media things, plus they hold monthly bloggers meets

• Birmingham Social Media Cafe is a place for people interested in social media to gather, get acquainted, chat, plot, scheme, and share, which meets on the last Friday of the month.

There are also plenty of Social Media Cafe's further afield, if you can help build this list, please let us know of your local meet-up;

• Black Country Social Media Cafe 
• Coventry and Warwick Social Media Cafe
• Solihul Social Media Cafe - Lets be Social
• Lichfield Social Media Cafe
• Derbyshire Social Media Cafe
• Oxford Social Media Cafe
• London Social Media Cafe - The Tuttle Club
• Manchester Social Media Cafe
• Bristol Social Media Cafe
• Cardiff Social Media Cafe

For those who are not as familiar with the uses of social media, but want to get on board with online resources, or have an idea but want to know where to start implementing it, aside from the above, you may want to

• Social Media Surgery pops up at various locations around the West Midlands, as well as further afield, offering advice to community groups, charities and local active citizens.

• Hello Digital consists of digital media events in the Midlands enabling participants to explore the modern world and open doors to new possibilities.

• Digital Brum also provides listings of upcoming events which are relevant to the digital sectors in Birmingham.

Next week we'll be offering some resources for getting into the music and sound based industries.

(Image by fdecomite)

Subtle but we noticed that Google changed its logo today. We were certainly not the first to notice but we did find a nice piece that describes the differences

For the last couple of weeks we have been using every spare bit of time to put together our new web site. The site is built on the delight that is Wordpress and includes the odd sprinkle of jquery to add a few interactive touches. The new site was sparked from a desire to more effectively display our portfolio of work, including recent projects Maybird Shopping Park, CABE and Willow Brook Centre.

We have also secured a move to new studio space. The new space is still in Digbeth at Fazeley Studios, it is quite a lot larger allowing for comfortable growth as well as giving us room to swing a cat or two. We will be fully moved in and up and running on the 1st December.

We are also pleased to announce that we have been shortlisted for a ‘creative city award’… outstanding business development. We will find out the results at the awards ceremony on the 29th November.

We are extremely pleased to announce our involvement in a new project. Walkit.com is a fantastic concept and a web site that already has a huge following. We will be working closely with the walkit.com team to develop their current web site with a new style and the addition of many exciting new features.

We are due for beta launch by the end of November.

Ubiquity a project to bring a Quicksilver style interface to Firefox.

Once you've got it installed try heading over to our contact page, highlighting our address and typing Map in Ubiquity.

While i'm on the subject of Wordpress... here is one of our latest sites, built with the help of our friend WP...

Ankerside Shopping Centre (Tamworth) needed a web upgrade. The new site offers them full content management, including the ability to easily add content to the 'what's on' section. The site also features an interactive store guide.

www.ankerside.co.uk

We have just uploaded a new web site for St George’s School in Edgbaston. It was a great pleasure to work with the school and both parties are very pleased with the final result. The site runs a full content management system and has brought the school into the digital age with the likes of RSS feeds and an online calendar that allows the school staff to input and organise all events within the school calendar.

We are looking forward to seeing how the site is received and developing the site in the future with possible additions such as the implementation of more social/community features.

Visit the site at www.sgse.co.uk

Thanks to Stef Lewandowski, who is on the School’s Council of Trustees and Marketing Group, for preparing a clear and comprehensive brief as well as helping us to communicate the more technical elements of the web site to the staff and board members.

The Birmingham School of Architecture are celebrating their 100 year anniversary this year, and needed a logo and a web site.

For the logo we worked with the head of department and tutors. They wanted something that would represent the school's various locations over the past years and for the future. The school began at Margaret street, then moved to Gosta Green, to Perry Barr, back to Gosta Green, and then will move down to Eastside in the next few years. Hence the curve, which references the points of the geographical locations. This logo will be used to represent the school after the centenary has passed.

The web site's main function is to advertise the centenary ball and allow students and alumni to purchase tickets. Once registered the alumni are given the opportunity to add a profile and search for other alumni and view their profiles (a sort of 'friends reunited' come 'facebook', only a tad simpler!). This web site will be reviewed after the ball and developed to use as the school's main web site.
www.bsa-alumni.org.uk (won't be able to view many pages without being a registered student or alumni of the school i'm afraid)

check this out
(ps get the sound on!)

The working draft of the HTML 5 standard was released a few days ago. HTML 4, the current standard, hasn't really been reworked in 10 years - a long time in the relatively short lifespan of the modern web.

Much has changed since the early dot-com days of December 1997 when HTML 4 was published, as developers, designers and users have unlocked the web's potential. Web sites have moved from being a collection of static pages to media-rich communities leveraging participation.

HTML 5 is designed to reflect this, with APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics, embedding and controlling multimedia, managing client-side data storage and editing parts of documents. Turning to more bread-and-butter stuff, HTML 5 will also make it easier to represent familiar page elements. A full list of changes can be found here.

"Ajax and related innovations have propelled demands for a new standard that allows people to create web applications that interoperate across desktop and mobile," the group said.

A drawing API? It will be interesting to see sites that use no graphics at all, just typography and browser-rendered graphics. Speedy. Though would this be regarded as presentational markup? - something we've been told to separate from our content? Either way, I don't think we need to start making flashcards for the array of new tags just yet.

Read more here: Reg Developer