April 22, 2009

Smart Technology in action

The Independent is the latest publisher to take our innovative Picture Gallery tool. Designed to work with wire services and image feeds, our tool automatically creates Picture Galleries based around keywords. Images are cropped, resized and published on the fly with updates every 15 minutes.

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February 3, 2009

Yet another new domain extension

The .tel domain names will be available from this afternoon. Apparently they will cost $210 for 3 years and then $20 a year after that. Does anyone else think these new domain extensions are just a scam to make money? The only extension that people really value continues to be .com. I would spend my money getting more of those…

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January 26, 2009

The end of newspapers?

“Read all about it: newspapers are done for” - The Sunday Times (Dec ‘08). Apart from the irony of reading this information in a newspaper, it’s worth asking if this is true? With the fragmentation of media, it’s certainly hard to see how the papers will arrest their circulation decline. But they have - for the most part - some very strong brands and they just need to re-invent themselves in the digital world. Of course, they are trying to do this but it will involve a painful transition period and not all of them will survive.

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January 21, 2009

Another Tech Crash?

Is the technology industry headed for a worse downturn than the one that followed the internet crash in 2001? No, back then revenues declined by 6% after rising by 17% the year before. In 2009 most analysts are forecasting modest growth - but growth all the same - of 3%. And this includes all technology spend including hardware - it’s likely that spend on digital services will grow faster.

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September 20, 2008

John D Wood look to WAI for the next generation site

John D Wood have just launched their latest site, www.johndwood.co.uk, which takes a unique and somewhat refreshing approach to estate agent website usability. With over 80% of property enquires starting in the digital realm their approach was to focus on the search, stripping away all the traditional clutter seen on most agents sites - a solution we believe will help the business improve digital customer satisfaction and ultimately enquiries and acquisition through difficult market conditions.

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Real Estate TV goes live

We’ve recently launched a new concept in portals with the Real Estate TV site - www.realestatetv.tv. In a time when every man and his dog appears to be launching or considering a portal concept Real Estate TV have forged ahead with not only a highly innovative solution, utlising the latest Flex technology, but one that has positioned video at the heart of the offering.

In time those agents feeding their properties to the portal will feature on the Real Estate TV channel and could benefit from localised video content featuring on their own site courtesy of Real Estate TV.

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May 21, 2008
“ It’s the mid-1990s for the mobile industry: lots of walled gardens, lots of fragmentation, and lots of promise.
Quote from CNet.com article describing how the mobile industry is going through its ‘AOL in the 1990s’ phase. •
May 15, 2008
Yo everybody, Gene Simmons is in the house. Actually, we’re in Gene Simmons’ house.WAI worked with A&E Television Networks to give fans of their hit show Gene Simmons Family Jewels the chance to get an up-close and personal view of Gene’s life by interacting with a timeline rich with images and video clips.Check it out here to find out more about Gene’s rockin’ family history.

Yo everybody, Gene Simmons is in the house. Actually, we’re in Gene Simmons’ house.

WAI worked with A&E Television Networks to give fans of their hit show Gene Simmons Family Jewels the chance to get an up-close and personal view of Gene’s life by interacting with a timeline rich with images and video clips.

Check it out here to find out more about Gene’s rockin’ family history.

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April 30, 2008
Imagine giving large quantities of your hard-earned cash to some slightly odd strangers to throw around as they please. In the UK, this national pastime has been given the name “politics”.But whether you’re on the left, right, center or somewhere in between - one thing that’s certain is that politics gives us the chance to work on some pretty cool data visualization projects.WAI recently launched this very nifty mapping appliction for The Telegraph as part of its coverage of the UK Local Elections. Users can navigate the map and find a wealth of information on their local governement, from crime statistics to taxation levels. All-in-all a great project that not only looks good, but is also provides a great service to the electorate.

Imagine giving large quantities of your hard-earned cash to some slightly odd strangers to throw around as they please. In the UK, this national pastime has been given the name “politics”.

But whether you’re on the left, right, center or somewhere in between - one thing that’s certain is that politics gives us the chance to work on some pretty cool data visualization projects.

WAI recently launched this very nifty mapping appliction for The Telegraph as part of its coverage of the UK Local Elections. Users can navigate the map and find a wealth of information on their local governement, from crime statistics to taxation levels. All-in-all a great project that not only looks good, but is also provides a great service to the electorate.

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April 24, 2008
Imagine if you went to the grocery store and discovered that Boeing had decided to start making vanilla cupcakes. You might feel compelled to try them, but it would probably come as a shock to your sweet treat snacking sensibilities.Well something very simlar is happening in the interactive space. Intel - the chip manufacturingi giant - recently rolled out a new Mash-up Maker browser plug-in.The plug-in allows users to create their own mash-ups, and also add mash-ups to specific pages that others have built. Right now there’s some interesting mash-ups available for Facebook, CraigsList and Expedia which range from mapping applications to address finders.Exactly why Intel would release such a product is somewat intriguing, but nevertheless this illustrates how the Web 2.0 philosophy continues to march into the mainstream. Users want to digest and interact with content on their terms, removing many of the restrictions that were inherent in the Web browsing experience. We’ll be watching this one with interest.

Imagine if you went to the grocery store and discovered that Boeing had decided to start making vanilla cupcakes. You might feel compelled to try them, but it would probably come as a shock to your sweet treat snacking sensibilities.

Well something very simlar is happening in the interactive space. Intel - the chip manufacturingi giant - recently rolled out a new Mash-up Maker browser plug-in.

The plug-in allows users to create their own mash-ups, and also add mash-ups to specific pages that others have built. Right now there’s some interesting mash-ups available for Facebook, CraigsList and Expedia which range from mapping applications to address finders.

Exactly why Intel would release such a product is somewat intriguing, but nevertheless this illustrates how the Web 2.0 philosophy continues to march into the mainstream. Users want to digest and interact with content on their terms, removing many of the restrictions that were inherent in the Web browsing experience. We’ll be watching this one with interest.

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