It’s not uncommon to be on conference calls these days. What with the economy making business trips for short meetings a thing of the past, and new technologies with video conferencing making talking to one another not in person more like you’re face to face, we have come to a time when conference calls have become an important, if not crucial, part of any organization or company, especially whilst conducting business globally.

Have you ever been on a conference call where someone was snoring? I have. Have you ever been on a call where someone’s kids were screaming in the background? I have. Have you ever been on a call where the other person’s accent was very difficult to understand, you couldn’t hear them properly, and there was so much background noise both on their line and in your office that you couldn’t concentrate? I have. And I don’t think I’m the only one.

It seems that even though, or perhaps because, conference calls are getting more and more common, people don’t take them as seriously as they should. In a “normal” meeting, do these things happen as often? When you’re face to face with someone, do you really speak like that?

Here are some simple tips to make sure you don’t push people’s buttons when you’re on the line (or how to be professional about conference calling): Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe has announced that they stopped Flash Player development on mobiles. I’ve been hearing so much noise around this that I think it needs some explanation.

Adobe has stopped Flash Player on mobiles. That’s all. Nothing more. It means that Flash Player won’t be updated for mobile plateforms but let’s face it: Nobody developed Flash Websites for mobiles…

On the contrary, Adobe bought phoneGap last month and clearly turned its strategy to focus on mobile apps (phoneGap AND Air) rather than Flash-based websites for mobiles.

However, this doesn’t mean that they have killed Flash for desktops!  Flash is going to turn into a “shockwave like” technology, more dedicated to 3D than to simple animations.

Mobile development is split in two different parts: Apps and Web.

• Applications are built either with native or hybrid technologies. Applications are very popular because they are fast, can be used offline. Pure HTML5 for example isn’t robust enough to handle the work for the time being.
• Web on mobile is built with HTML/javascript.  Again, HTML5 is the future but just can’t handle as many features as Flash or apps for the moment.

So what kind of technology choices do we have for mobile?

Firstly, we have agnostic technologies. By “agnostic”, I mean one source code for several mobile OS. Adobe Air is one of these technologies (just like SUP, Unity, etc), and a good one if you know how to work with it. And… Adobe Air is just a container for Flash/Flex!

Secondly there are hybrid apps, which are typically developed using HTML5/JQuery, with native extensions provided, for example, by Adobe’s phoneGap. Hybrid apps have been recommended by Forrester over native developments (see next point).

Thirdly we have native apps, which in my opinion kill the ability to make applications that work across devices and therefore are not great for the consumer.  It could be justified on rare occasions, for example when you need to use a feature that exists on the hardware, like NFC.

So Flash is dead on mobiles (and TVs), but long live Flash for mobile apps.

PS: You want to use your Flex/Flash talents to develop mobile? Hey, you know what? Adobe has an app for that!

If you don’t know what video mapping is, or haven’t experienced it live at events such as the Mapping Festival in Geneva or the Fête des lumières in Lyon, then I hope this post will help you to discover this art form through some impressive video examples.

Video mapping, sometimes called projection mapping, is a technique that artists use to project light, sound, and videos on everyday objects, forms, or even large monuments. A creation of a video projection on a 3D surface, the technique challenges the belief that a screen must be flat and rectangular.

Here is a demonstration of video mapping by Envision. A very successful play on perspectives and dimensions, this video shows an abstract luminous animation :

Read the rest of this entry »

Many moons ago when I was lost in one of the many twists and turns in my BBC “career” my father asked if there wasn’t someone in HR that I could speak to. I am sorry to say that I laughed out loud. Yes there were some notable exceptions but most of my experience of HR departments had been of people who saw themselves as maintainers of order rather than enablers of staff. People who made up rules and made sure I stuck to them, rather than people who had my long term career interests at heart.

Likewise communications departments seem to see themselves more as “managing” communication on behalf of senior management than enabling communication within their organisations. And of course when it to comes to IT they have sadly been the ones who have picked up on the motivations of the other two and come to represent control of risk rather than enabling the business. Of course I have made some sweeping generalisations in the last two paragraphs but I don’t believe I am dreadfully wide of the mark in describing many, if not most, organisations.

The sad thing is of course that it doesn’t have to be this way. As I said before I have known some very notable exceptions and good people have always found ways to go against the tide and do the right things. But for many, processing stuff, conforming to norms and doing what is expected of them is the most that they can aspire to, and of course having turned these corporate functions into commodities they are now being offshored or outsourced in their droves.

So why should people in these organisational functions be excited about the social web? Because people are starting to do it for themselves. Increasingly staff are using web-based tools to perform some of the functions that have ostensibly been the responsibility of these departments. They are writing CV’s and finding jobs for themselves, even within the existing organisations, using LinkedIn; they are using social sites like Facebook or blogs to communicate with each other; and they are increasingly using flexible tools such as Google Documents and calendar to provide basic platforms for working together. They are showing imagination, energy and a willingness to do what it takes to get their jobs done. These are the qualities that organisations keep telling us they want their staff to have.

This energy should be seen as something that can be tapped into and enhanced. Use these people as models of how to get things done, learn from them and encourage others to copy them. If necessary bring some of the tools in-house or work out how to make them easily accessible and secure but be prepared to see this change in behaviours as an opportunity and not as a threat. HR, Comms and IT professionals who manage to do this will add real value to their business and the people who work in them. They will be transformed from gate keepers to enablers and they will be more likely to have their jobs in three years time!

About the Author

Previously a Director of Knowledge Management at the BBC, Euan now helps people and organisations to better understand and manage social media, networking and today’s web. For more information contact blue-infinity

If you like TV series that are full of drama and suspense, you’ll love “10”, a  swiss TV series based on the poker world, that is currently running on Sunday evenings on TSR1 until the end of December and on the site itself.

We were mandated to create the website of the series and were able to use the latest technologies available : HTML5 + Flash (yes Steve we can mix them) + Facebook APIs + Streaming videos (1 week before TSR diffusion) using a LAMP OpenSource stack.

The website works on multiple devices and is optimized for iphone, ipads and most of the new smartphones on the market.

It’s based on social interactions and if you like the site and the show, don’t hesitate to give a hand and promote the website on facebook, twitter, or send it to your friend etc…

You can even win DVDs of the complete show if you take a picture of your best POKER FACE and upload it on facebook.

http://www.10-la-serie.ch

Smart phones are becoming ever more prevalent in today’s mobile phone market and the development of m-commerce is increasing rapidly, along with the popularity of these phones. Internet banking, location mapping and the purchasing of luxury goods are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what m-commerce is able to provide to its users. In the following article, Fabrice Perrin explains what trends can be expected, and what possibilities can be anticipated, in the fast-advancing world of m-commerce.

Please click here to view this article (in French).

When it comes to emails and corporate electronic communication there is often a huge gap of understanding between  Marketing and IT, regardless the size of the organisation.

This is the beginning of a talk I presented a while ago about the difficulties to understand the challenges of email communication and about one of our solutions which we developped in-house.

Everybody knows how to use Email, from first graders to grand parents (if not great grand parents!). Therefore, sending out an HTML newsletter shouldn’t be that hard, should it? The answer is yes and no. Given the right tools and a well-thought strategy, mass mailings are indeed quite easy to manage. However, if the “add to CC” solution is chosen, many unpleasant surprises linger around the corner, of which “badly formatted emails” might not be the worst one.

From simple email to corporate Communication

Parker’s Car Pricing Guide was a Top Ten Grossing App – and Top Twenty Paid App – in the UK App Store. It was also featured by Apple on iTunes – giving the App a very healthy sales boost!

We believe that a healthy portion of this success was due to the simple, polished, fun design of the App. I hope that others can benefit or take inspiration from the process that we followed, which is detailed below.

1. Application Definition Statement

The Application Definition Statement is the most valuable part of the App design process. It is a single sentence that describes what the App will do, who it is for, and what will differentiate it from its competitors. Its role is to keep a focus on why somebody would use your App.

“Parker’s makes it simple for the average car buyer to choose the best deal, wherever they are”

2. Concept

Once we had created our ADS we spent some time thinking through our basic concept. Apple categorises iPhone Apps into three distinct types, of which we chose to place Parker’s in the third:

1. Immersive
2. Productivity
3. Utility

Parker’s primary usage scenario is in a high pressure situation – allowing the car buyer to respond to a pushy second hand car salesman – so the App needed to enable fast access to a complicated database of information (price by manufacturer, model, year plate, mileage and options).

Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe Flash has been a common target of criticism  for about 10 years now. When it was DHTML’s time, we heard “Flash is dead!”. Then came Ajax, again amid cries of “Flash is dead!”. Now we have HTML5 and guess what? “Flash is dead!”.

So why do some  people have such a pessimistic views on Flash when the technology is very much alive?

In my opinion, it’s always interesting to look at an argument from both sides. Critics argue that

“Flash is a commercial product, it’s not a standard”.

Ok. Right. So what? The “standard” idea is at best optimistic, at worst completely hypocritical. Since the creation of the www, every company does freestyle with W3C specifications. I have never, ever, ever seen a web project without compatibility problems between IE, Mozilla etc. If we all followed standards as they were written, we can forget about videos and motion design and say bye bye to YouTube,  small online games  and the most visually exciting websites this last decade. I didn’t go into this business because I like data, I’ve gone into this business because I love to share and live nice moments.

“You need a plugin to see flash content”.

Right. You need a plugin for Java, you need a plugin for pdf, you need a plugin for SVG, you need a plugin for Quicktime and for everything but HTML and Javascript. Can you do the same things with HTML and Javascript? No. That’s why you need a plugin that takes all of 20 seconds to install, what a pain…

“Flash is not accessible”.

Since 2003, Adobe has put a lot of effort into improving accessibility and they’ve pretty much succeeded. My preferred answer to this argument is: “Ok, HTML development can provide accessibility but when is the last time you cared about that in your projects?” Most of the time: never. It’s not a technical problem, it’s a people problem. You wanna make your web projects accessible? So just do it! Whatever your technology is, it’s just not a major concern in 80% of cases, let’s face it. Flash can do the job as well as any other technology now, especially for video accessibility.

Aside from these three major arguments, it’d take hours for me to write down all the things I’ve heard or read on this subject over the years. If you want to hear more, check with your favorite search engine, you’ll have fun, it’s an endless story…

Before we go any further, have a quick look at what Steve thinks of Flash here : http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

So now, since the success of the iPhone and Steve Jobs’ very audible attacks on Flash, the critics are out yet again, hailing the end of Flash technology. I’ll admit that I’m not as smart as Steve, but I will try to answer his comments, point by point.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently lucky enough to attend some sessions at the Lift Conference 2010 in Geneva, which took place on May 5-7, and focused on the theme of ‘connected people’.  The conference provided insight and discussion on a connected world, and centered on issues such as social media, web 2.0 innovations and the future of technology in enterprise.

On the Thursday, Matthias Lüfkens of the World Economic Forum presented during lunch on how the WEF interacts with its stakeholders through social media. He explained that whilst the technology can be exploited for the benefit of an organization, there is the risk that if not implemented correctly, a social media marketing strategy can easily backfire.

Transparency and accountability

It doesn’t take much searching on Google to find numerous examples of companies who have tried to take advantage of social media in their marketing strategies, but have then failed dramatically. Some very prominent organizations have recently suffered as a result of poor marketing strategy when it comes to online communication, and whilst damage limitation is important in PR disasters such as theirs, prevention is always better than the cure.

Positive engagement with social media was the main focus of Matthias’ session at the lunch. His presentation suggested that whilst it is important for a company to be transparent and honest when interacting with its stakeholders, there is a fine balance between this transparency and the need for privacy. For example, it would not be advisable to disclose trade secrets on a Facebook profile, or tweet views on problems related to internal processes. Therefore, a level of transparency needs to be decided upon at an early stage in the marketing strategy, to allow for guidelines to be produced for representatives of the organization.

Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you were in deep winter hibernation in February, it’s difficult to have missed out on the 2010 Winter Olympics that were just concluded in Vancouver, Canada. Despite the 15 disciplines and their 76 events, and me being a Swede, ice hockey is arguably the main feature of each Winter Olympics with the top 12 teams in the world fighting it out for gold medal glory. Even more so if you ask a Canadian; whether you asked one before or after they won gold in a historical match against the USA.

Ice hockey is considered one the fastest and most physical sports in the world. It can be rough at times – more so in the NHL than in Europe – but always incredibly exhilarating, exciting, beautiful and skilful to watch. Almost like a figure skater in how they skate on the ice, but with a stick, puck, some padding and considerably cooler outfits. If you’re not big into sports, I highly recommend watching a live game at least once, even if just for the experience and atmosphere. I had the opportunity to go to Vancouver and experience ice hockey at its peak and was quite honestly overwhelmed at the level of hockey and passion there is for the sport in the country where hockey was practically invented.

Although not as well-known as its football equivalent, FIFA, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) is the world governing body for ice hockey. Back in 2004, the IIHF went through a major facelift of its corporate identity and logo and had selected blue-infinity to undergo the surgery. The result was a much more modern, authoritative, dynamic, recognisable and adaptable identity that won the globally renowned Rebrand Award in 2007.

We have since done some great marketing and design work for the IIHF such as creating their 100th anniversary logo and several World Championships logos, various stationery items, merchandising etc. For the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics – where the lIIHF are responsible for organising the ice hockey event – we were given the task of designing elements for their official hospitality venue, named the ‘IIHF Lounge’. The Lounge allowed VIP’s to grab a bite to eat and drink whilst watching the hockey games on one of several HD TV’s, as well mingling with hockey legends (including Wayne Gretzky and the 22 members of the Triple Gold Club), IIHF representatives, business partners, etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Campbell

This is the question  a lot of marketing directors are asking themselves these days. Twitter allows to “blog” short messages (less than 140 characters), to let people know what you are doing, at the moment you are doing it. There are loads of reasons to love Twitter, but a company should carefully evaluate its objectives before facing this brave new world.

Here are 4 cases when you should NOT use Twitter to promote your company:

1. If you want to use Twitter like an RSS feed. The tweet itself has to say something. It cannot just be a teaser.
2. If you are not able to answer to incoming tweets. If you want to start a monologue without any dialogue, your clients interest will shorten as fast as the credit crunch.
3. If you need your legal department to validate every tweet. Twitter is the kingdom of the snap, of the ephemeral…
4. If you think that having thousands of “followers” is the goal. What is really important is the quality of the relationship you can create with your clients. If the noise you generate is not manageable, it will not be usable, and it will just result in a loss of time.

Read the whole article on Social Media appeared in “market” (french)

This week-end I lost my banking card somewhere in town. Monday morning I got an email from a stranger through facebook.

I first thought it was some annoying friend request from someone I had never met in real life. I was about to delete this message, when I realized that it was about my banking card. This guy found me on facebook and sent me an email to tell me that he had found my banking card at the supermarket and that I could recover it at the cash register!!

Thank you Facebook to reveal that there are still some honest people on this planet

Luxury brands invest more and more in their web presence and are shifting their marketing strategy. 10 years ago, the focus was on showcasing products, without really engaging in a dialogue with the consumers. Today, the luxury industry is placing the customers in the center of their e-marketing projects. Some are even selling online. This is a risky business: counterfeight products are looming around the corner, the brand is in danger of losing its high-end image, and last, but not least, the existing sales channels might get disrupted.

While e-commerce might not (yet!) be for everyone in the luxury business, using the web to build or maintain relationships is a definite trend: more then any other media, the web offers direct ways of communicating with the customers and makes it possible to forster long term relationships with existing and new customers, who might not be the standard “boutique clientèle”.

View article in market January 2009 Luxe à portée de clique (french), based on an interview with Fabrice Perrin.

Social networking tools are here to stay, and grow. According to Forrester Research, enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will grow strongly over the next five years, reaching $4.6 billion globally by 2013, with social networking, mashups, and RSS capturing the greatest share.

Forrester Research Forecast on enterprise 2.0 spending

What makes these new tools so attractive to the corporate world? Is everybody starting to get sucked into the virtual world, building avatars, blogging, twitting and exposing themselves in one form or another? The truth is probably much more pragmatic.

Functional Specs in a wiki

Take an exemple from the software development world: functional specifications. You could write a heavy duty word document of a couple of 100 pages, insert screen captures made in visio to illustrate the screens and process flows, send out new version update alerts so that everybody is kept on the same page (so to speak)

…or: you use a wiki. Cross-references are made easily, and components are only explained once. Different people can collaborate together on the specifications at the same time, since it’s just one page and not the whole document that gets locked. Issues can be discussed and resolved in the context of the screen or schema. The whole structure can evolve over time and everybody can be sure to be looking at the latest version. It also helps tremendiously when you have a team that works remotely. Having experienced both worlds, there is no doubt for me that the wiki rules!

b-i has recently one two more awards at the 13th WebAward event. We would like to thank the teams who have worked so hard on these sites and thank our clients for giving us the opportunity to help promote their excellent brands.

Vacheron Constantin: Outstanding Website award

Lombard Odier: Standard of Excellence award

Some words about the WebAwards: “The Web Marketing Association is the producer of the WebAward Competition. Now in its 13th year, the WebAwards is the premier annual website award competition that names the best Web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all website development. But more than just an award program that Internet marketing experts use to increase website visibility, the WebAwards provides a benchmark by which all Website development can be judged. More than a decade’s worth of judging scores defines what Internet marketing professionals should strive for in their website marketing and design efforts. These historical results are now used to provide a point of reference and feedback to website marketing professionals who enter.”

How would you feel about the ideal workplace:

Where the information structures itself automatically.

Where the information produced by the employees is referenced, commented on and shared across different working groups with similar interests….Where know-how and experience is shared in a secure way.

Where the employees are valued and autonomous, while enjoying their work more.

In the world of Enterprise 1.0 (as on the web 1.0), only finished things are published.

In the world of Enterprise 2.0, the user is not isolated anymore: he or she can share information with a couple of clicks. The author can ask others to participate, review and enhance the content and follow the evoluation of infomration. Unfinished work is published, but also quickly modified and corrected.

In the world of Enterprise 1.0, the intranet will allow you to find the telephone number and email of a colleague.

In the world of Enterprise 2.0, the main contacts of a users are in one spot, accessible from any location. New contacts are also suggested to the employees: “This new colleague has done the same studies as you have, and he has the same interests. You may want to contact him.” Personal information is updated by the users themselves and they have a vested interest in them.

There is a trend that enterprises are migrating towards these forms of collaboration. It won’t be quick, because the cultural change is important: employees expose a lot more of themselves in an enterprise 2.0 setting. However, the time saved, productivity gain and increase in quality of the work are so important that this model will impose itself sooner or later in the corporate world.

Read this article about Enterprise 2.0 (French) by Fabrice Perrin.

Referencing and positioning – here is often confusion about the two terms. Referencing means to tell the search engine that your site exists, while positioning is about placing your site as high as possible for relevant search queries.

Very few sites escape the vigilence of search engines, most are therefore referenced. It is quite often the case though that the positioning of a site is disastreous, which is often due to structural problems with the site itself. blue-infinity recently audited a site with perfect design but with a technical architecture that was badly done: only the homepage had been referenced by Google. A Google search on product names of the client didn’t even bring up the client’s site, but a counterfeight one!

To enhance your positioning on search results, you need to do the following:

• carefully choose your page titles
• add a description of your page in the META tag “description”
• use search-engine friendly URLs (instead of www.company.com/php?id=23 display www.company.com/products.html)
• maintain a consistent navigation
• use descriptive links (not: click here!)
• structure the content of your pages with valid HTML tags
• promote your site and have others link to it.

Read more about SEO strategies in this White Paper on SEO (French)