Head hits Riga!
Friday 12th December 2008Team bonding went into overdrive last weekend at Head, as we all missed our usual Friday tipple for an expedition to the depth’s of Eastern Europa. With our hangover’s at the ready, we hit the hotel spa, got our hot mud bath on and prepared ourselves for a latvic medieval joyride of drink, food, AK 47’s and a little bit of sightseeing.
Many thanks goes out to the the indigenous Baltic people of Latvia for being such beautiful hosts and last but defiantly not least a big congratulations goes out to the marksmen of the weekend, Will who won a little medal of honor for keeping his gun barrel on target all weekend!
Some of the least explicit photos we managed to capture are over at our – Flickr page
Until next time Latvia, Visu labu!
Withers’ Website Has a Big Night
Tuesday 6th May 2008
Congratulations go to Withers who won the ‘most improved website’ accolade at the Intendance ‘Fast 50′ Website Awards.
The Fast Fifty is renowned throughout the legal sector as the benchmark survey of law firm website excellence. The survey subjects the websites of Britain’s 50 most successful law firms to rigorous scrutiny in four categories – Content, Design, Usability and Marketing.
The award, presented by Cherie Booth QC no less, was in recognition of Withers’ rise from 49th to 13th place in the Intendance’s 2008 Report rankings.
Our redesign was also shortlisted in the category of usability as a result of its clear and easy navigation. Hooray!
We are currently negotiating a deal to show off the award in our Percy Street offices every other weekend and during half term.
Future of Mobile
Friday 16th November 2007
Andy and I went to the Future of Mobile conference at the BFI Imax on Wednesday. We missed the first half of the day, but we made up for it by furiously taking notes and photographing every presentation slide we could. This is what we remember:
Charles McCathieNevile from Opera pointed out “screens are growing, my hands aren’t”. So whilst the Apple iPhone is bringing us a web experience not too far removed from what we see on our desktop, the experience will never really be the same. The key point though, illustrated by Simon Rockman from Sony Ericsson, is that the experience doesn’t need to be the same.
When we are using a mobile web device, we are using it for a different reason to when we are using our desktops. It might be finding local hotels or checking the football scores; whatever it is, we will want to interact differently.
A further point from Rockman is that many people have more than one mobile device, he counted four for himself. One question from the audience was, how will the future of mobile associate all those devices with one person. Rockman’s answer was, “it won’t”. The four devices he owns represent different people. His work phone is Simon at work, his personal phone is Simon at the weekend, his GPS is Simon driving, and so on. Each one of those people want different information presented in different ways and for this reason, fragmentation is good. Not only for the consumer, but for manufacturers and carriers, because of the psychological billing advantage (one monthly bill at £300 is harder to swallow for consumers than three bills at £75) and the higher demand for hardware.
The key point to take away from all of this is that people operate in different modes in different environments and want to consume information in different ways. So the mobile web needs to be contextual. This seems to be something Brian Fling has picked up on. His company, Blue Flavor have released an app called Leaflets.
Leaflets is an app for the iPhone which takes full advantage of Safari’s support for CSS3. Leaflets allows iPhone users to read popular sites such as Newsvine quickly by grabbing the RSS feed and formatting it to look like the original site. This means no waiting for images to download, which is painful for anyone using Edge.
So why would anyone choose Leaflets when the iPhone has a full Safari browser built in to it, where they can view the original site almost how they would at home or at the office? My guess is because although it looks right in Safari, it isn’t the right way of consuming the information – the information isn’t contextual.
Head does Movember
Wednesday 7th November 2007
This is a warning to all Head clients for the month of Movember (yes we said Movember) for it is the Moustache growing month. A number of us at Head are growing and keeping Moustaches for the month of Movember and collecting sponsorship to do so, all in aid of Men’s Prostate Cancer Research.
So, client of Head, this is fair warning that you may be presented with a Moustached gentleman at our next meeting but it is all for a worthy cause. On that note, if you want to sponsor our team (The Tacheticles) click here!
Stu gets promoted
Thursday 23rd August 2007
Stu had been awarded the top janitorial position at Head after beating some stiff competition.
“Sanitation engineering and custodial ventures have always fascinated me since I was 28.
Changing the loo role, shimming up a crumbling wall, beating a rat unconscious with my fists – it’s all part of the job now. A paying job.”
A jubilant Stu celebrated by putting the rubbish out and cleaning the bin.
Well done.