webqem blog

Creative nerds of the internet have been abuzz for the last few days after the release of The Wilderness Downtown. It’s a half video clip, half HTML5 experiment for Arcade Fire’s song, We Used To Wait (link to bad YouTube bootleg)

It’s gotten an interesting response. Mostly, people that have bought into the hype of HTML5 love it and tout it as another reason why Flash is dying. However, others aren’t as impressed.

I for one, think it’s pretty great, but I don’t think it has anything to do with HTML5 or the lack of flash

It’s just the right amount of “interactive”
Halfway through the piece it asks you to write a letter to your younger self, and the interface is fun and playful and most importantly totally intuitive. This small amount of emotion and playful engagement keeps you hooked and helps you remember the experience

The use of multiple windows
This is an old trick, but still a great one. Since early JavaScript we’ve been able to do this, but the way it’s used here is pitch perfect. This is mostly because the overall experience is passive and you’re just watching. There’s a good reason why we can’t use this in ads, but I think its underused enough that its still memorable for most people when they see it in this kind of movie watching context.

The art direction is great
Not “change the world” great, or even D&AD award winning great, but defiantly “highlighted in a good portfolio” great. The grading on the video combines well with the sketchy style of the illustration. The small amount of 3d is tastefully handled if a little low resolution. Even the slight treatment to the Google maps and street-view images is great.

It makes me think of home
I ran it using my actual childhood home address, and the gimmick totally worked on my. I became that runner. I imagined myself going for a run near my old home and flashing back to my childhood. This may not be as effective for you as it was for me, and I suspect mileage may vary based on how long you lived in one home or how good the Google coverage is in that area.

The song is great
As with all music video clips, the star is the song and this is a damn great song. In fact, I love the album. You should go get it. Go on. I’ll wait.

It’s effective
I’ve been listening to the album all day, and recommending it to people. I even wrote a blog post about it.

Yes, a lot of this could have been done with flash, possibly even better. But as a creative its not the technology that impresses me, it’s the idea. Something we need to remind ourselves of continuously as the HTML5/Flash war continues.

Congratulations to one of our top clients, Luxottica, on the launch of their new concept store OPSM Eye hub this week in Hawthorn Melbourne.

This retail concept takes  optical retailing to the next level. The full story is on their Youtube channel

webqem launched the new LUMIX Life: Focus on Australia website two weeks ago and submissions are already up over 1200 photos with 2 ½ months to go!

The purpose of the competition is to enter photos that have been taken with a LUMIX camera across Australia in the hopes that your photo will be selected to be in a book entitled Focus on Australia alongside other professional Australia photographers. There is also the chance to win one of three LUMIX GF-1 cameras

So pick up your LUMIX and start snapping some shots for your chance to win!

Fantastic 16 min video from TED earlier in 2009 here.

Working in the internet space means sometimes new ideas, technologies, paradigms creep upon us bit by bit and, while we ‘get it’, sometimes it can be helpful to step right back and put things in context.

This talk certainly does that, placing SM within the context of the history of human communication and punching home its significance…

http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

We’re all just a little bit chuffed with our new part-time office dog ‘Chanel’! Her proud Dad Pat tells us she’s an Australian Silky Terrier. All we know is she’s a 9 week old ball of cutesy fur. :-)

Pat and Chanel

We build great websites. Even in our spare time.

Dog’s Life magazine in Australia reviewed several online dog community sites in the January/February issue, and gave a glowing review of one particular site.

“… mydogspace.com.au is definitely one of the best dog sites we’ve seen online …” said the article.

MyDogSpace was created at home by webqem employee Chris Raynor, with the first two members her dogs Spike and Harry, and now has over 800 dog members. Based on a PHP community site software package with several extra modifications and customisations, it offers free dog blogs, picture uploads, forum, polls, quizzes, groups, classifieds, articles and games. Video and music are available for upgraded members.

If you thought it was hard to create a web page that looks consistent across the various browsers out there wait until you try creating an HTML email. In order to create an email that is going to work across the various email clients out there, both desktop based clients and web based email, you’re essentially forced to write HTML as if it was still the 90s – tables for layout, spacer images and minimal CSS. Even then you’re not going to get it looking perfect in every client due to many quirks and inconsistencies in the email client’s HTML/CSS support.

With this situation in mind the Email Standards Project has been launched by a group of people involved in the web industry. The project aims to educate web designers and developers about the importance of web standards for email, and to liaise with email client developers to provide assistance and feedback on standards support within their clients. The aim is to improve standards support within email clients, similar to the goals of the Web Standards Project for browsers.

HTML emails aren’t going away, so anything that can be done to make the experience more consistent for readers will benefit the businesses using email marketing, and make it easier for the web designers and developers to create great looking content.

Check out the Email Standards Project site for more information, and help spread the good word!

We have been working with iPrime (the digital arm of regional network Prime Television) over the past year to produce the “world’s first” town-specific, video-based social networking site. canberra.iprime.com.au is based on the premise of “Right here, right now” and provides local users with a one stop shop for all content relevant to Canberra.

iPrime were keen to move away from the traditional portal approach and as such we recommended using the latest technologies including Adobe Flex and Adobe Flash. This allowed us to build a rich, engaging site that users can navigate through seamlessly.

At webqem we have a number of regular cycle commuters, so it was only fitting that we would participate in the National Ride to Work Day. Our new office has all the facilities needed to encourage cycling to work, including a bike rack, lockers and a shower.

On the day, there were five participants (it would have been six if not for an injury), and we rode in to the office in Neutral Bay from Balmoral, Brookvale, Cremorne, Mosman, and Pyrmont.

The webqem bike rack, one bike short of being full.

Unfortunately we were one bike short of filling up the webqem bike rack in the foyer, however since five of the team are regular cycle commuters it’s not the first time the bike rack has seen five bikes on it – so I am expecting it will be full one of these days!

Peter Ryce, Adobe’s Connect product evangelist or “connectionist”, is well known as the presenter of various demonstrations for the Adobe Connect product range. We recently discovered that Peter had done a video interview with well known blogger Robert Scoble on Connect.

Entitled “Demo of Adobe Connect” it runs for almost half an hour. It’s a worthwhile view as Scoble’s interview with Peter Ryce is thorough, giving an excellent insight into the product.