Digital UK Design Blog
CableDrop is a must buy product for every gadget freak! These clever little cable holders can be stuck on any surface, the side of your iMac, the side of your desk, anywhere where you want to casually grasp those loose digital camera wires or your iPod earphones. They look great and come in a variety of colours.
Do glasses have the power to alter peoples perceptions of you? Well this clever Belgium advertisement campaign certainly seems to. Superman would have never got away with his alter ego without his trusty glasses would he? Ironically I used to work in a butchers, then I wore glasses and started colouring in, now I’m a designer, is this because of the glasses or because of my creative talent, who knows?
Final thought, if I get laser eye treatment will I lose my creativity?
Spam is everywhere, in our emails, in our blog comments and worst of all in our sandwiches. Recently a new form of spam has started to emerge on Twitter that could spoil the service and drive people away. It’s what’s best described as a RT SPAM or Retweet Spam.
Simply put, and not to go off the point too much, a retweet or RT is simply an action from a twitter user where they repeat another users Tweet with the initials RT before it. An example of this is shown in the image below where I RT another users tweet.
Typically people RT another users tweets because they give it value and they want to share it with their followers. These RT’s can be something funny or informative but most of the time they contain links, links to other websites. This RT culture has really started to catch on in the blogosphere where bloggers and content writers have started to use this as a powerful tool to drive traffic to their websites. If a tweet with a link in it to their website is picked up and retweeted by a few people, and a few of their followers retweet it, you can before you know it have hundreds of users spreading your link around twitter which could in turn drive major traffic to your website. This jewel however hasn’t passed the spammers eyes!
A recent example of Twitter spammers in action was when the ever popular social media guide website Mashable posted a tweet to one of their recent posts. I found the post when I spotted a Twitter Trend called ‘Twollars’ at the bottom of the list.
When clicked upon I noticed all the RT’s were referring to a Mashable post on Twollars (which turns out to be like Twitter currency… go figure :s ). Nothing strange here, surely it’s just a great post alot of people want to share? Maybe, but why are all the RT’s from users with identical Avatars and similar usernames? See below…
Ignoring the who’s and the why’s, this in our eyes is an example of Twitter Spam, bogus twitter accounts setup in there drones to clutter Twitter with Spam. These accounts will probably attempt to gain trust with Twitter by retweeting well trusted websites (like Mashable) then when the time is right, launch a retweet attack for one of their websites. This could also be, in this particular case, an SEO company positioning themselves to serve their paying clients to through traffic their way? It’s all just opinion but their is logic.
The rapid growth Twitters popularity has seen it shoot up the rankings and take a healthy bite of the social media pie. One popular social media website it has overtaken is Digg. As of January this year, Hitwise reported Twitters weekly share of visits overtook that of Diggs.
Now because of Twitters growing audience, Digg has tweaked an important feature on their website to lure over Twitter users.
Digg has been updated with several new features and modifications. One that has caught my eye is the update to the ’share’ feature. Before Digg users could share a story with their Digg friends, now however you can’t (at least not like before), instead you can either post to Facebook, post to Twitter or share by email, shown below…
In summary, the current issue with Digg is that it’s controlled by a group of powerusers with a close knit group of friends that, at a drop of a hat, vote up that users story, gets it ranking highly on the website and typically getting it top of the results. These powerusers partly rely on the old share feature to quickly and easily share the article with their Digg friends. Now that this has been removed, could we start to see their dominance fade? If they can’t spam/control Digg then they’re going to look at other channels to do this. Digg are pointing them in Twitter and Facebook direction.
My point here is simple, could a simple little change to Digg generate more spam on Twitter and Facebook. If Digg powerusers spammed Twitter like we’ve illustrated above would Digg become an asset to bloggers again? Is Digg’s intention to push their dominant users in Twitter and Facebooks direction?
It’s seems to us like there is a lot of thought and strategy that’s been put behind such a seemingly little tweak to a feature. Our concern is that by making Digg a place viable for bloggers to go again, Twitter and Facebook could be easy targets for spammers and these so called powerusers.
According to Hitwise, here are the top websites and search engines ranked by visits ending 23/05/2009. These stats are based on the UK internet users only, not worldwide.
The following report shows websites for the industry ‘All Categories’, ranked by Visits for the week ending 23/05/2009.
The following report shows search engines for the industry ‘All Categories’, ranked by Volume of Searches for the 4 weeks ending 23/05/2009.
The following report shows websites for the industry ‘Computers and Internet – Search Engines’, ranked by Visits for the week ending 23/05/2009.
The following report shows websites for the industry ‘Computers and Internet – Social Networking and Forums’, ranked by Visits for the week ending 23/05/2009.
The following report shows websites for the industry ‘Entertainment’, ranked by Visits for the week ending 23/05/2009.
In this striking picture, a formation can clearly be seen in the shape of what looks like Britain and Ireland drifting over the English countryside. This picture was taken by Jessica Wild and featured on www.dailymail.co.uk.
The striking image was captured by a 16-year-old schoolgirl on a sunny afternoon as she tested out a new camera.
Jessica Wild was walking home with her school friends last Thursday when she was spotted the likeness in the skies above Droitwich around 5pm.
Hovering for little more than a minute before the union of the British isles broke up, she only had time to take a couple of shots.
She said: ‘I had to do a double take when I saw it, I thought that looks amazing.
‘It was just like a little map of Britain in the sky, with England, Scotland, Wales and even a bit at the side which looked like Ireland.
‘I couldn’t believe it and my friends really love the picture, I guess you could say I was on cloud nine when I got it.
‘My mum and dad had just bought me a new camera and I thought this was a great way to try it out because it’s quite hard to take pictures of the sky because of all the light.’
The budding photographer from Worcester, who is currently studying for her GCSEs at Droitwich Spa High School, Droitwich, always keeps her camera close by after being given the £500 present by her parents Julia, 49, and Paul, 51.
Her first shots have already impressed her family.
Her mother Julia, 49, said: ‘When I saw the photo I couldn’t believe it, I think it looks uncanny, it’s that good.
‘We are really proud of Jessica and her photography and we really think she has a great talent for it.’
Her father Paul, 51, who runs an engineering firm in Worcester, added: ‘With all the bad news about the recession at the moment in Britain perhaps this a sign something up high is still thinking about us all.’
News from www.dailymail.co.uk
Mark Bowley wrote an interesting post on PSDTuts about the basics of Typography. I think it’s a great read and I think you should take 20 minutes out of your day to read it.
Included in the post are summaries of the following typographical terms:
The article has a few illustrations that clearly explain the jargon used to explain certain typographical elements, such as the anatomy of type shown below.
Full credit and copyright of images to PSDTuts, read full article here: Read more
German football boot manufacturers Adidas launched the Adidas F50. This football boot includes the new concept of allowing players to ‘tune’ their football boots to any weather, pitch and personal style. The football boots have three interchangeable sections – the upper, the chassis and the studs. To launch the ground breaking boots a typically theatrical TV and poster campaign was launched to support it. It’s a few years old now but impressive non the less, especially this artwork.
Ever been impressed by ‘that guy’ with the shiny chrome business card holder? Ever been shocked by how much they cost? Well check out this collection of business card cases, all at shockingly low wholesale prices. Buy one for yourself or a pallet load to sell on Ebay, either way it’s cheaper than a bog standard case from the high street that could take £20 out of your sky rocket.
It’s my little (well she’s hardly little anymore) girl’s 6th birthday on the 1st June and I’m wading through ideas on what to get her for her birthday. The Dialogue went something like this…
Daddy: So it’s your big birthday next week, your a big 6! Want to tell me what you want as a present?
Katy: Nothing Daddy, just you and a box full of kisses.
Daddy: Oh baby! That’s so sweet. So a box full of kisses and what else?
Katy: A box full of hugs AND kisses daddy.
Daddy: hahaha Katy, you can have that anytime. I was meaning what kind of present do you want, you know from a shop?
Katy: Nothing Daddy.
Daddy: Right! Are you sure? Absolutely nothing at all? No big presents covered in wrapping paper?
Katy: No thank you Daddy, can I go play now?
Daddy: Sure sweetie, you go play.
When I was a kid I had manners and never asked for anything. When I opened my presents I always said thank you and cleared the wrapping paper into the bin liner. I used to prey for certain things, like Micro Machines, Nun-chucka play sets, He-Man Figures but never asked. Has Katy picked up the same habits as I had as a kid? I wonder because I really want to treat her this year because previous years have been really tight and she has been doing amazingly well at school. Question is what?
Katy loves books and reads to me all the time. I think she has now read more books than I have. She also likes being outside on her bike, gardening, getting muddy, doing practical jokes. She isn’t into things like Hanna Montana or …. ‘other stuff’, that other kids seem to be into. She also like drawing and making things. She does the best cat drawing, I love it… all 100 of them
Well I need ideas. I completely stumped. What do you give a girl for her birthday who says she doesn’t want anything?
The concept-only Sand+Time Watch is a digital timekeeper with a little stone age twist. In ordinary mode, it works like a conventional watch displaying hours at the top and minutes on the bottom. But in screensaver mode, the watch turns into a sand clock and you can watch “sand” drop from the top screen to the bottom. The rate of fall is set at a default of one minute but can be changed by the user.
If only this was for sale!
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