Inspired by the simplity of implementing a menu of options that completes the sentence ‘I need to…’, we worked in partnership with our client to introduce this simple and intuitive tool to their intranet architecture as part of their wider internal communications strategy.
Read on…

Eager to get things moving quickly, it’s always tempting to dive into a new web project head first. After all, you’ve conceived the idea for your site and probably know the project better than anyone else. But we advocate a more disciplined approach which ensures you build a site that delivers against its objectives and will save you time and money in the long run. Check out our SlideShare presentation on information architecture. Read on…

HTML5 is a new set of web development standards being rolled out by browser vendors, and taken up by web designers and developers. In fact, HTML5 comprises some improvements to XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

No-one owns HTML5, rather World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) bears the cross to modulate and disseminate the values. Several organisations are championing the new standards very publicly, encouraging customers and followers to embrace the new opportunities the technologies present. Read on…

We’re proud of our own work but we also pay attention when we see examples of other people’s work in a similar space. This deck is a series of screen grabs from an advocacy campaign that launched recently in the UK.

The campaign is designed to promote word-of-mouth around a new beer product to hit the market: Home Draught. It’s an ideal product for WOM marketing – by its very nature it’s a social product, something you are likely to see at parties and share with friends.

With the Google Chrome OS coming out later this year, “working in the cloud” is becoming a serious option for many private users looking to manage documents, images, and everything else from any computer with internet access.

While this may be an option for the private user, what about the big-money spenders – the businesses? Can cloud computing, like Google Docs, make real time collaboration on documents effortless not only within your own organisation, but also with clients and customers? What about governance, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, security? Can Google as the more cost-efficient service beat the services SharePoint offers?

As often within the IT industry, the answer is not simply black or white, but rather depends on where you stand. Read on…

We've learned from our work with SharePoint for various medical devices clients that creating "pretty" functionality means thinking quite a long way past "Out of the box" and applying some "outside of the box" approaches. Content Formula have developed several good looking and interactive applications using a combination of Flash, JQuery and HTML/CSS. None of these required any SharePoint development, instead using standard SharePoint features and some creativity from our developers! Because of this, they cost our clients a lot less to develop than if we'd used the in-house development team.

This is just a little taste of the sort of things you can create with some good SharePoint knowledge, lateral thinking and just a dash of wizardry. Read on...

Given our experience with word-of-mouth (WOM) campaigns, we’re always interested to see what other brands are doing. This presentation shows the anatomy of Clairol’s ‘Nice And Easy’ WOM campaign, which can be found at www.confidencetoshine.com.

No, not that Flash.

Flash receives a fair amount of criticism these days. Steve Jobs and Apple would have you believe that it’s game over for the adaptable web veteran, but Adobe are sticking to their guns. Who’s right?

No Flash on the iPhone or iPad

Flash is notable by its absence on Apple’s popular mobile devices the iPhone and the iPad. Many thought this was a strange omission initially (myself included). Apple recently posted a statement was posted on their website explaining their position. Read on…

Most organisations have woken up to the social media phenomena by now, although there’s still some confusion and debate around which platforms to use, and how to maximise participation and effectiveness of these feeds. Here’s some food for thought for those of you starting out, or considering embarking on a little ‘social media spring cleaning’.

What can social media do for me?
There are plenty of benefits to using social media:
- it can build closer relationships and increase engagement with your customers and stakeholders
- it can help you to gain further insight into what makes your customers tick
- it can get your customers talking to you and to each other
- should you need to give or receive information quickly, you have a receptive communication channel ready to go. Read on…

Is your site missing out on potential eyeballs, just because they’re accessing it using a mobile device? Native interface elements that feel familiar to handheld device users can easily be implemented by combining two standards-compliant techniques and directing your visitors to a specially formatted version of your site or blog.

As long as 10 years ago, web standards champions the W3C afforded the web designer a way to optimise their layouts for handheld devices, however the methodology was little known and was implemented even less-so.

The advent of touch screen devices has changed the way users interact with the mobile web, and manufacturers have, to varied degrees, enhanced their built-in browsers to meet the new requirements.

I highly recommend you get around to doing this for your site or blog. We’re not just pandering to Apple device users here – the UI controls will cascade gracefully to other brand devices, whether they incorporate a touch-screen or not. Using a variety of design and coding techniques you can catch that huge cluster of mobile web users and keep them returning. Read on…