.oO Tailwind

By Warren Hutchinson

Hot on the heels of my posting about Multimap being honored at the Webby Awards in the Service category comes some great news that a new feature-set has been implmented.

Those that have watched closely would have been expecting this due to the recent acquisition of Multimap by Microsoft.

But ah-ha, it’s not all MS integration stuff.

First up, Improved mapping functionality with Microsoft’s ‘Birds-Eye View’. While I wasn’t a great fan of Microsoft’s mapping solution, I did quite like the idea of the Birds-Eye view, a 3/4 isometric view from above.

It definitely taps into that ‘thing’ that makes looking at maps quite addictive and for me is a nice step ahead of Google Earth in terms of flying about. GE is slightly limited (unless you use the 3D buildings) at providing a decent non-distorted angled view.

Also note the Wikipedia view, overlaying information from Wikipedia that has a geospatial reference.

I find this sort of view really useful when it comes to looking at directions to a place that I have never visited. Mostly as a way on envisioning the route before I drive it. Overhead view is useful for orientation and proximity purposes, but it doesn’t really look like the real thing. Only the other day I sat down with my father to ‘fly’ him through some directions on GE.

I’d like to see Bird-Eye View fly-thoughs added to Multimap Directions at some time. I think Map24 has some sort of solution for this. Yes you can switch on Birds-Eye when in View Map mode of the Directions service. But it’s not a prime feature.

I should quickly add that Multimap’s Birds-Eye Vie isn’t available for all locations, just “major cities”. Although my town is covered and I live out in the proverbial ’sticks’.

In this new release they have also improved the directions functionality with better, more coherent step representation for journeys. When I played with it yesterday, the map view wasn’t quite working as the site was obviously rolling out across the servers. But it looks promising indeed.

And lastly, exacerbating the blur between location based services and directory services, Multimap now has Business Listings. The Multimap communications said:

Now you can use our maps to find businesses in your area - or your destination. We’ve got details of everyone from accountants to woodworkers in the UK, US, Canada, France and Italy - with other countries coming soon.

For those ardent lovers and web 1.0 stalwarts, the old site has finally gone. but don’t fret. If interactive maps really aren’t your thing or you are on dial-up or have an old system then you’ll be happy with the introduction of ‘Basic Site’ functionality. Essentially a rasterised map offering with some new features, but optimised for more basic delivery.

I like the way Multimap have retained this as important. When we at LBi first engaged with them, Sean (Founder), Eric (CTO) and Jeff (CEO) were all fairly adamant from the get-go that ALL users were important.

Anyway, there you go. Have a play and switch your favourite mapping service over to Multimap.

BTW - I do have integrity and this isn’t a shameless plug for LBi work. I firmly think that this is the better browser based mapping solution out there at the moment.

Nearly 2 years ago here at LBi, we started working with Multimap to redesign their public .com web property.

It was time for their loved, but ageing raster-map offering to be dragged inline with, then new and innovative, Google’s ’slippy’ Maps.

With a raft of new features including drag, zoom, pan, hybrid view,all stuff we take for granted now, we set about defining a sharpened mapping proposition that worked for both Multimap users and advertisers.

It was a brilliant project, great fun, hard work and really quite challenging. The guys at Multimap (which sold to Microsoft in December last year) were all smart cookies and pleasure to work with. Personally I see it as one of the triumphs of the team I work in here at LBi. Not only was it great solution, it was a great learning experience and those two things make for great projects. Certainly satisfactory ones.

Stephen Barber was, and still is, ace on this project. Will Bloor was his usual unremitting creative self, Peter Jupp smashed the design and Mike McIntyre and Gavin Edwards aced some complex interaction and James Norton provided some wonderful interface development. It was also a pleasure to see Lorenzo in action, which doesn’t happen nearly enough for some of us here at LBi.

Well, enough spouting from me. Multimap.com has just been named as an Honoree in the Service category at this years Webby awards.

This is no mean feat as only the best 15% of submissions attain the accolade and this from a pot of nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 US states and over 60 countries.

Multimap is now owned by Microsoft, so expect to start using it a lot more as it integrates into all their properties. Exciting stuff indeed.

The guys I worked with on this project were:

• Stephen Barber
• Will Bloor
• Peter Jupp
• Mike Mcintyre
• Dave Dunlop
• Lorenzo Wood
• Darren Gerry
• Gavin Edwards
• Phil WHitehouse
• James Norton
• Marcus Alexander
• Suzanne Chapman
• Claire Freund

I know that I never ever read those emails you get from the websites you subscribe to. Mostly because a) there are too many and b) they are often useless.

Who does?

Anyway, I’m not exactly sure when this feature appeared, probably ages ago, but Flickr now allows you to see the activity on your pictures above and beyond how many ‘comments’, ‘favourites’ and ‘views’ you have had.

Here’s a screen grab from mine today:

I think seeing this kind of information makes a site particularly addictive, it certainly works on blogs. I know because WordPress offer a similar deal for free and they’ve done it for a long time. It keeps me going back every day to see how my blog is performing.

I must say, that my activity on Flickr has increased a lot since I started getting feedback from other users. It’s rewarding you see, it feels like you’re getting something back for your efforts. I feel the same about blogging. Many read but few engage, add comments or send email.

It makes writing a blog quite a lonely thing.

However on Flickr, I’m now submitting photos to groups more and more and getting a lot more interest in my images. I’ve used it a while but it’s only now I’m really using beyond a tool for backing up and sharing with family.

Now that I have a stats package I can monitor interest in more detail and I think I’ll now add Flickr to my ‘must visit every day’ website list.

These kind of metrics are valuable to individuals who put effort into a site. From a site owner point of view the level of engagement of an individual user is measured by their content, activity and good citizenship within the network> In return this is often rewarded. However from a user point of view, you rarely get feedback so it’s very rewarding to be able to see level of engagement on your content too.

Nice move Flickr. Thanks.

A new aspect of the London 2012 web offering came online this morning and it’s a feature that is about inspiring participation in the brand.

Given that the Games is about being the best you can be, about being Olympic, the ‘Join In’ feature of the new site is about setting yourself a challenge for the future.

I think it taps into the spirit of the Games ina really nice way and starts a journey that London will go through over the next 5 years. Despite the criticism levelled at the identity, this is where the participation in London’s Games begins.

There’s a whole lot more to go on over time, so keep checking in.

So, challenge yourself and join in.

First seen by Barbd, Ex.plode.us allows you to search social spaces for people’s profiles and it draws them together.

You can run a search for Warren Hutchinson and Snowbadger (My alterego) and get different results.

This make it easier for people to ‘dig up’ the real me. Eeek.

I worry about advertising here.

I wonder what this does for the privacy, professional / social persona debate I mentioned in an earlier post.?

Here’s a list of me and my friends… It’s interesting that Snowbadger has more friends than Warren hutchinson.

Hmmm.

WiiTube

Originally uploaded by Snowbadger.

There’s a growing list of websites that have been designed specifically with the Wii Opera browser in mind including Google Reader, WiiTube and Mapwii.

Go to Mashable for the full list.

Now, in my mind this can only go so far due to the context of the input device, but it certainly poses some interesting questions for designers and for the gaming SNS services. Chiefly the difference between ’sit-forward’ and ’sit-back’ browsing.

Sit-forward browsing is the traditional one-to-one experience controlled by a single person using a keyboard and mouse. Sit-back is a different interaction paradigm due to a couple of factors:

1. more people participate in the experience, which means that
2. the experience is under pressure to be entertaining, whilst
3. the ‘driver’ is using a game-pad or remote control as an input mechanism.

These are a completely different set of design challenges to be overcome and will not be met by traditional means so I’m interested in seeing how this develops.

I’m sure we’ll see a high penetration of Wiis given the stock so this will be an interesting area to consider for certain types of projects. I can think of one we won yesterday that might benefit from this type of integration.

From: Mashable

I was just re-downloading Shozu to my phone so that I can send images directly to Flickr, video to You Tube and other stuff to my blog on WordPress when I was presented with the following madness:

Shozu Using Captcha

Originally uploaded by Snowbadger.

Captcha is not the most accessible of form validation, bot-destroying nonsense in any form, but this use of hieroglyphics astounded me. I have the feeling that anyone with dyslexia would be sent into a tailspin. It certainly made me think.

The best solution I ever heard of was the use of a field that users wouldn’t see and bots would, bots would fill it in and thus render the form submission invalid – I can’t remember where I saw this though.

Have you seen the new AOL homepage? It look svery similar to the Yahoo! one.

One wonders how they can get away with this sort of thing. i mean there are design patterns and there is 100% rip-off. It even looks as if the grids are pixel perfect.

Wow.

I saw this post charting the growth of Twitter. Will it stay? Will it go? I don’t know, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

The same post also has link to an interesting article on why Twitter isn’t so good.

More stuff to read.

Blogged with Flock

I read a blog posting called What Must Starbucks Do that seems to have generated a lot of interest.

It’s basically about how Howard Schultz has issued a challenge to his team to reinvigorate the chain. He feels that its losing its soul, its uniqueness even.

Here’s and excerpt from the posting:

March 2 | Howard Schultz’s battle cry email deriding decisions the company has made in order to grow is making the rounds. If you haven’t read it, you can read it here.

He’s concerned Starbucks is in danger of losing its soul, its uniqueness—its remarkability. Howard says the romance and theater of coffee have disappeared from Starbucks stores because Baristas now use push-button machines to make espresso drinks. That stores no longer smell like coffee and that every store looks cookie-cutter.

I read this, and then I find myself in the Starbucks near to my office looking at a tangible example of their demise:

Look closely and you’ll see a new machine. It’s not a manually operated one. It’s push button!

The art of coffee making is indeed dead.

The Barista now places a cup underneath the spout and presses a button.

I mean it was pretty puch button before, but for some reason the semantics of this coffee ‘thing’ reach tipping point.

It really is a glorified vending machine.

I shall now be boycotting this particular branch of Starbucks and any one I see that has these operational efficiencies in place.

LOVE MY COFFEE!!!! It just cost me £3!!!