Continuing our ongoing relationship with Media Contact we have just launched a brand spanking new site for their suite of media related products and service. The company offers a searchable database application on a subscription and pay as you go model, they organise conferences and training sessions relating to the media, public relatinos and social networking and they also produce a book with all of the contacts in the media in Ireland in good old fashioned paper.

The new site features an umbrella “group” site under which we have broken down the four distinct divisions of the company. The goals of the new site were fourfold:

1. Present the products provided by Media Contact in a clear, engaging interface
2. Incorporate a commonality of design across the divisions
3. Improve the user experience in terms of howthey use the applications and improve the purchasing workflow.
4. Incorporate new functionality into the application to enhance the product offering.

We’re pretty happy with the way it has turned out - comments welcomed! MediaContact.ie.

We’re delighted that two of our sites have been featured in one of our favourite websites, SmashingMagazine.com. TotallyDublin.ie was featured in an October 2009 article “Showcase of Web Design in Ireland” by Lee Munroe and WhoseView.ie was featured in an article in February this year ”Color Theory For Designers” by Cameron Chapman

Celebrations will be taking place today all over the globe to mark Photoshop’s 20th birthday. Photoshop has been, and still is, the staple diet of every designer. Check out the video below of the original Photoshop team (together again for the first time in over 18 years!) Happy Birthday Photoshop!

We are currently looking to hire a web developer to join the team. Working with our designers and software developers you will be responsible for the front end output of our client projects.

We are looking for a motivated self starter with at least 2 years experience in a similar role. An undergraduate or post graduate qualification in internet technologies, multimedia etc. is essential.

Skills used on a daily basis include the following:

• XHTML, CSS, Javascript/Jquery
• JSP/PHP
• mySQL
• XML and Actionscript.

Applications include:

• Photoshop/Fireworks
• Flash, Dreamweaver
• Expression Engine, WordPress
• Netbeans IDE

A solid understanding of WAI/Accessibility and SEO is required and experience of developing cross browser and cross platform consistent websites vital.

Other technologies that would be desirable include a working knowledge of ASP, Grails and the use of a CVS system or Subversion.

Please send your CV and covering letter to tom@lightbox.ie

Here is a link to a bit of media coverage from the Bizstartup.ie website relating to Whoseview.ie.

http://www.bizstartup.ie/news/item/16264-social-review-website/

This is the video created by Mediacontact.ie to support the Content is King conference that I was speaking at the other day.

Unfortunately Joan has announced that he is heading back to Catlunya and as a result a developer/programmer role will become available at the end of January on the Lightbox team.

The successful candidate should be experienced and proficient in the following technologies:

Programming:
Good knowledge of Java EE and PHP
Knowledge of one of the following frameworks: Spring, Grails or Struts.

Database Management:
MySQL, Oracle
Knowledge of Hibernate framework would be desirable.

Servers/System Environment:
Tomcat, Apache, Linux/Unix

Web Technologies:
(X)HTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, AJAX, JavaScript frameworks (jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous)

We are looking for somebody who is an enthusiastic team player who is keen to work on the development of complex web applications for our client projects. In addition to the above it would be a distinct advantage to have experience developing for mobile platforms.

If you think your skills match the details above please send your CV and covering letter by email only to tom@lightbox.ie. No phone calls or letters please.

Salary is negotiable and comensurate on experience.

We do not require the assistance of agencies at this time.

The 2009 Golden Spider Awards were on last night and I am delighted to say we didn’t come home empty handed. Between Lightbox and our clients we were shortlisted in 5 categories and Whoseview.ie managed to win the Best New Indigenous Website Award.

This is a great honour for the team at Lightbox and Whoseview and is just reward for all of the hard work and long hours put in to the project by everybody involved!

Congratulations to all of the other winners on the night - especially our friends in Pix.ie (we designed their logo as it happens) who won the people’s choice prize for Best Social Networking website.

Growing up is Optional - A video produced by our friends in MediaContact.ie for the Content is King conference.

We are delighted to have been shortlisted for the fourth year in a row for the Best Web Design and Development Agency category at the Golden Spider Awards.

Two of our clients are also in the frame for silverware on the night - Whoseview.ie and Mediacontact.ie. Whoseview are up for 3 awards - Best New Indigenous Website, Best Entertainment and Games Related Website and Best Classified Website. Media Contact are shortlisted for the Best Professional Services Website.

These nominations are a testament to the hard work of the whole team here in Lightbox and the efforts they have put in over the last 12 months. Well done guys!

Congratulations also to all of the other nominees - we are looking forward to a great night!

I will be giving a talk as part of the “Content is King” day organised by our friends in Media Contact on November 19th. Thankfully people won’t just have to listen to me all day. There are lots of other interesting speakers that I hope will make the day memorable for all those attending.

My talk will be about “Creating Winning Websites” and will focus on sites that make an impact. What they did, how they did it etc. I am sure there will be some room for some shameless plugging of client projects but mostly I will concentrate on the bigger picture…

I am really looking forward to the event - no doubt nerves will play a part as I am sure Jack will ensure that the room is full to bursting point. If anyone has any helpful nuggets of info that they think should make it into my presentation leave a comment below!

We worked with our content management partners Terminal Four a couple of years ago to design the interface of the National Employment Rights Authority website.

The following website of a business providing employment law advice in Ireland was brought to our attention this morning:

This would seem to me to be quite clearly an act of plagiarism. When I suggested to the site owner that perhaps he had copied the design I was told that the two sites were different and that there was no similarity… and after all you couldn’t copyright page layout and images… I suddenly felt a Magritte moment coming on.

The best bit of all was that the designer/developer in question hadn’t even bothered to change the HTML code. There was code in the page referring to the fact that they were mirroring the NERA website and they left in all of the comments from the Terminal 4 content management system e.g.
<!– End T4 - Page Content Template–>
We are going to take this as a compliment I think but I am not sure that the client will be taking the same view!

There’s a reason that Seth Godin has a gazillion people reading his blog posts every day and why he has sold millions of copies of his books. Simple. He has good ideas and knows how to communicate them.

His latest offering could (and should) torpedo the slew of “social media, buzz monitoring, twitter writing, facebook page managing” consultancies that are popping up all over the place. Brands in Public provides brands with a one stop shop of content pulled in from numerous sources so companies can see (and manage) what is being said about them onlin through one simple interface.

It seems that the site is geared primarily at the bigger brands out there - Coca Cola, Lego, Guinness etc. Why should the smaller companies of the world be precluded from this? This is surely a service that we (and other agencies) should be providing as a matter of course. We are on the case…

The Irish Web Awards are upon us again. We were delighted to have been involved last year as a sponsor for the inaugural awards. What a refreshing experience. We tried to sponsor a category again this year but were told that if we or any of our clients wanted to enter that we would be precluded as a sponsor. This is the way it should be - awards ceremonies take note.

Given that a number of our clients were keen to submit entries (which doesn’t cost a thing…) we decided that sponsorship could wait until another year. In any case our sponsorship budget has been used up with the Digital Media Awards where we have designed and developed the site for this year’s event.

The great thing about the Irish Web Awards is the democracy of it all. There are approximately 85 judges on board - any one can apply to be a judge - and they are each given 25 sites to judge. This means that every single entry is judged a number of times by a wide variety of judges which should mean that you are getting the fairest and most objective view possible. Sponsorship, table purchase, advertising and other financially lucrative activities do not play a part in the decision making process here.

We are delighted to say that 34 of our clients have been included on shortlists in a number of categories and we can only hope now that at least one of them comes home with some glassware! Whoseview and Media Contact are both in the  Best Practice category which is a testament to the efforts of the Lightbox development team - we are firmly on the fence in terms of who we want to see win!

• Whoseview.ie appears in the following categories Best New Web Application/Service, Best Social Media Campaign and Best Practice.
• Media Contact is shortlisted in the Best Practice category
• Newstalk is shortlisted in the Best Radio website category for the second year in a row.
• Totally Dublin is shortlisted in the Best Entertainment Website Category

Well done to all shortlisted websites and looking forward to a great night on October 10th.

The Whoseview.com site has now been up for over a month and the site is flying. Traffic to the site has been very healthy and people are engaging with the site on a daily basis, posting reviews and comments about all of their experiences in Dublin.

During the first month we received a lot of feedback from various sources. We also spent quite a bit of time analysing the traffic to the site to see what users were doing, where they were clicking etc. As a result we have made a number of key changes to the design of the homepage that we think will improve the product and get people more involved.

Please let us know your thoughts!

A thought for Friday

You can’t open your email/browser/feed reader/blog these days without being confronted by someone trying to flog you social media services, social media courses, social media marketing advice etc. Companies are popping up all over the place charging you money to teach you how to  use Facebook or set up a Twitter account.

Let’s be clear. “Social media” isn’t new and it isn’t a fad. Humans are social creatures - and we’ve been on the planet for a while. We like to stay in touch with our friends/family/colleagues/clients/customers etc.  We simply have a different set of tools to communicate with people these days compared to previous generations. What’s new is the immediacy, the geographical reach and the accessibility.

You can talk with your mate in Australia on Skype whilst chatting with your brother in Dublin on Facebook all the while uploading videos to You Tube of  your latest holidays. You can tell 1000s of people about your latest product launch or your coolest special offer simply by typing a few words into Twitter. It’s all there, all instant and all free.

The Internet is the most revolutionary communication tool since Alexander Graham Bell said “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” Of that there is no question. It doesn’t mean though that we have all suddenly become brilliant communicators. It doesn’t mean that just because the tools are there that anybody is listening.

Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare, You Tube etc. have given us the tools to communicate more effectively but if the message is wrong in the first place none of this matters. In fact, given the noise levels on sites such as Twitter and Facebook and the competion for our attention from other media (TV, Radio, Print), the clear presentation of your idea is the most important thing whether it’s written on parchment or in magic flashlights in the snow.

Having been a judge for the Digital Media Awards in 2009 I decided we should take it one step further and provide our services to redesign the Digital Media Awards website. We felt that previous iterations of the Digital Media Awards website didn’t do the event justice and wanted to make things easier for the user whilst sharpening up the interface. The entry system is unfortunately managed on a third party server, that we don’t have control over, so we have only been able to work on the front end design. The key focus was to make it easy for the user to navigate the information and present large amounts of content on the pages without making the user scroll to much - hence the use of drop down panels. The video was incorporated into Silverlight as they got involved in the awards this year.

Here is the end result: www.digitalmedia.ie - comments please!

The Tuesday Push has been good to Whoseview this week and a number of people have written about the site. Today was the turn of Silicon Republic which we hope will get the site viewed by a more mainstream audience. All the comments and opinions that we have been reading are excellent and helping us shape the ongoing development of the site. We are currently in the middle of an “August Push” to get all outstanding functionality built in time for an official launch in September.

We will keep you posted!

I am sure that the irony of this post will not be lost on you since it is clear that we have not been taking our own medicine over the last few months. Our blog/news feed is hopelessly out of date since we launched our new website and the excuse we have been giving is the same as the one we hear from our clients… we have been too busy. We don’t have the resources.

In this day and age this is not a plausible excuse and if you are saying you are too busy to maintain your blog then you might as well be saying you have no time to talk to your clients. You are not interested in hearing what they have to say or how your business might improve through their feedback. Your blog is a vital communication tool that enables you to get your message out there but also enables you to provide your customers with better service. Your blog is a two way street - you aren’t simply talking at your audience but rather opening the door and inviting them in for a conversation. It would be trite of me to suggest that your company blog is the be all and end all of your company’s communication strategy but it is a vital part of the overall picture and needs to be given appropriate attention.

But I told you I’m too busy!!

Nonsense. I have used this excuse for months myself… if you cut out all of those interruptions to answer unnecessary phone calls and reply to non-urgent emails you would quickly find that you had much more time in your day to spend on constructive tasks like writing your blog.

Writing your company blog is a bit like having your cup of coffee in the morning. It becomes a habit and a necessary part of your day. It doesn’t need to take hours to write a post - 20-30 mins for a post is plenty once you know what you want to say. Sometimes it can be hard to come up with a topic for your next blog post but as with any habit once you get started it becomes easier every time. Here’s hoping!

Well it’s been a while coming but we are delighted  to announce the launch of Lightbox Mark 4 today.

We have concentrated on providing more detailed information on the projects we have worked on recently to give clients and prospective clients a better understanding of what we do and how we do it.

As with all our projects we have focused on a clean, professional design that ensures information is clearly presented and easy to navigate - good work Tony! - and all pages adhere to the latest and strictest standards - hats off to Loic!

Let us know your thoughts/feedback - give us some comments below!

Our lead designer Tony O’Donohoe is up for the prestigious IIA Net Visionary Awards again in the Web Designer Excellence category. We’re delighted that Tony has made it to the final for the second year running - here’s hoping he will go all the way this time and bring home the silverware!