This week we’ve been experimenting with some page flip software. We’ve started with an excellent plugin from www.flashpageflip.com and have been working on integrating it with a CMS. The way the plugin works is it creates a flash file from a list of images of SWF files from an XML list. So we have set a new content type in Drupal where you can upload images or SWF files and a template file in the CMS creates the XML list. A Drupal view then in conjunction with the plugin creates the scrolling page flip publication.

That’s just the start though. Admittedly uses for this kind of web element are limited and despite being visually pretty cool are not that 100% effective for delivering content, but it does have some uses. For a start the pages don’t have to be static, they can include video and sound, which can bring to life any printed article.

But what I have been playing with this evening is creating the page content itself on the fly. Instead of creating each page in the publication from an image or SWF file the contents of each page can be created from database content. A dynamically created SWF file for EACH page can load HTML content in from a database. This was each flippable page could potentially be a database controlled page with website formatting. Agreed, this does not give you the best design/layout control, but if we combine that with some predesigned templates and Bob’s your uncle.

Next step is to create a fully database driven flippable publication, with a print ready and web ready version so you can switch between formats for the same content and then integrate sharing options for publishing on blogs and third party sites. After that I think I’m done on this for now.

Here’s my development example http://www.fromadhere.com/mag/121/issue although be warned since this is my development page it could change, break or be removed.

Thee last month or so has been dominated by Mobile Comparison websites here at Adhere, with multiple website designs for the various www.mobilesplease.co.uk sites and so forth. A rather left of field version has now just been done for Pick Me Up magazine, including an A4 advert for the inside. So here it is.

We’re currently working on a rebrand, website and software application for ICC, Inter Car Cleaning. This includes a piece of offline/online software that can be used to book and log car wash and valet services across multiple locations. The bookings are entered into a machine on location which then syncs up to a central system on a regular schedule. We’re planning on using a standard CMS system built in PHP for the online central version but are currently toying with the idea of using an Adobe Air application for the local machines.

We’ve only touched on Adobe Air apps before so some of it is new territory but it should not be too complicated. The key is in what data needs to be shared and whether there is a risk of duplicate entries into a database from the multiple locations. The unique ID would need to be suffixed by a location idea to avoid this duplication. Ideally we’d like to build this as a touch screen app, or even with an iphone/mobile device interface but time and budget will define at what stage that is integrated.

For the central CMS we’ve got a Drupal 6 installation running on some pretty standard modules including Views, CCK and Profile. Custom content types define the bookings and locations, plus taxonomy defines the wash/valet types and user accounts take care of the staff. Reporting is done via a selection of highly customised views and CCK fields.

It’s early days in the project but we’re keen to get this up and tested asap. Below is an initial concept for the user facing website, this is basically just a promotional tool designed to inform the end user about the company, it’s services and locations. Nice car.

Yesterday www.iamsenshi.com went live to the world. We’ve been working with the folks at Senshi for some time while they developed their product range which is now available to buy online. A design your own tshirt application is just around the corner, very soon.

We’ve just added a new shortened client list to our main website.

In the last couple of years we have worked with plenty of start-ups, individuals, education and research groups as well as some more recognisable names. This includes creating music and video editing for a London 2012 Paralympic DVD with Media Dog, ecommerce store for Carphone Warehouse’s in car accessories website, flash animations and banners for Michelin and Onkyo and mobile phone comparison interface design for Money Supermarket and Sainsburys.

Some of my favourite projects have been the less well known names in our client list. For example the website for Beautiful Brides and their designer wedding dresses plus Saint Nicolas Place in Kings Norton - a winner of BBC 2’s restoration programme. We also enjoyed the filming, editing and music production for the many Creative Republic event videos and Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter Farmers Market - 24 Carrots.

We’re very lucky to work on such varied things for many different people.

Continuing the mobile comparison theme from previous weeks we’ve been working this week on interface designs for the Sainsbury’s website’s Mobile Phone Deal comparison section. Here’s just a couple of the designs we’re working on now:

At Adhere we continue to work closely with our partners to deliver a wide range of services across all media. One of which is MediaDog who we have worked closely with, and shared offices with, for several years now. With their video expertise and our web expertise we’re ideally suited to working together on web video projects and we have done for clients such as the London 2012 Paralympic Committee, Birmingham City Council, Creative Republic and Michelin. Media Dog have always unofficially made their equipment available to hire, with and without operators, but as of the new year have finally made it official. So we’ve created for them, shown below, a simple rate card that shows the hire prices of all their main equipment. So if you need, or know someone who needs, filming and/or editing equipment, you know where to come±

You may need to know this…

If its not on our list, we probably know someone who’s got what you want, so give us a call for some advice.

The prices shown above are our daily rates, excluding VAT, delivery and collection. Our weekly rate is 4x our daily rate. For longer term or volume hires please contact us for a competitive quote.
Prices are correct as of 1st January 2010.

We can deliver and collect hire equipment for you, but you need to let us know when you book your hire, this service is chargeable according to your distance from us. The Hire Return date on the paperwork is the day we expect to have the equipment back.
We can also supply technicians to rig the equipment and get it working for you; we’ll even operate it for you if you want. Please ask for a quote when you get in touch.

Our hire radio microphones are not supplied with fresh batteries. As a rule of thumb each radio microphone will use one set of batteries per performance or every 2-3 hours use.

Our Lanterns and cables come supplied with stands and16amp plugs and sockets with jumpers to take them to domestic 13amp sockets. Lanterns do not come supplied with Gels or spare lamps, but are available on request.

And finally you are responsible for ensuring that equipment you hire from us is insured against loss or accidental damage whilst it is in your possession from the moment it leaves our premises.

www.media-dog.com

I’ve just started working on the touch screen interactive site map for Fazeley Studios. There’s a web version underway at: www.fazeleypeople.co.uk

Just click the icons in the different studios for information about the occupants.

// put here the term ID you’re interested in
$desired_term = 59;

if ( arg(0) == ‘node’ and is_numeric(arg(1)) and arg(2) == FALSE ) {
// Yes, we’re viewing a node in view mode.

$node = node_load(arg(1)); // cached
// If the term does not exist we’re done
if (is_array($node->taxonomy)) {
foreach ($node->taxonomy as $term) {
if ($term->tid == $desired_term) {
return TRUE;
}
}
}
}
return FALSE;
?>

Ready to be launched this coming week is our new ecommerce website for Carphone Warehouse’s Car Accessories site ‘Connect My Car’. The old site was built on a now outdated Drupal 5 with OS Commerce. We had the options to upgrade to Drupal 6 with Ubercart or Magento, and between us we opted for using Magento for this release. It’s an interesting system to work with, quite different to the more intuitive structure of Drupal, but nicely polished finish on the features it has.

The site catalogue focuses on car accessories such as bluetooth and handsfree kits, mp3 car kits and so forth with the added advantage of offering installation either in a Carphone Warehouse branch or to the customers’ address. This is part of a phased release with some more features coming in a few weeks. I’ve quite enjoyed working with Magento, although it can be quite frustrating at times. This is because it has a large file structure, with application XML files controlling layout items that are told to load into separate HTML templates, found in a backend app folder and a separate frontend skin folder. This means when developing you are jumping between folders that are several levels apart, rather than working on files in one place with can be quite fiddly. That said it does start to make sense the more you use it, but the main thing I think it lacks is a good block manager in the admin interface for positioning and controlling blocks such as banners. This is done in the XML templates in the code unless you purchase add on plugins. The extension manager is good though, you simply need to configure it then from the Magento online connect website you copy a ‘key’ (which is basically a URL) into your admin panel and the manager does the rest, downloads and installs. This does make installing modules quite easy. Eko has developed his own custom module for the payment part of this site. Since Carphone have their own in house methods they do not use a payment provider but an encrypted PGP email system for capturing orders, so this has been written as a new module to work with the Magento checkout process. Next task is to design a good banner system and integration of our interactive scene system that is built on Drupal 6.

The final integration on this site was with Affiliates for All, an open source affiliate banner package that allows you to provide banners to affiliates and then tracks click throughs and purchases in order to pay commission to your affiliates. Easy to install and easy to setup although the interface is rather ugly looking. All in all it’s a good system out of the box in my opinion, with a good backend user interface and easy to use admin panels, but could do with a few more generations in order to make it easier for developers. But who likes things easy? Where’s the challenge in that?

This year we are pleased to be featured in British Design 2010 in the Design for New Media Category. Here’s some pics of the book:

It was hard to know what to put in it really, so much on screen stuff loses it’s impact when limited to the 2 dimensions of static print, unlike designs that are designed specifically with print in mind (it can be an entirely different beast), but even so it’s nice once in a while to have something non-digital to swing about.

We featured some of our website designs for Michelin, Think Vehicles, Saint Nicolas Place, Packitin, Sterling Timber Frame Homes and Beautiful Brides

We’ve just written a simple stop motion application for a 3 week video shoot we’re doing with Media Dog. The idea is to film the build of an exhibition stand for the Boat Show over a 3 week period in stop motion so we have connected Media Dog’s Z1 High definition camera to a small Mac Mini and written a simple application for Mac OS X to take a frame every 2 minutes and save the file as a quicktime movie file, appending each frame on the end of the same file. The resulting MOV file then gets uploaded to a web server via an automated FTP script every 10 minutes so we can check on progress. There is even another simple applescript to restart the process in case of power failure. Might need a bit of tweaking but should do the job nicely. At the moment it’s filming a few days activity in the office. Nice work by Chris on this one.

This idea might be worth expanding on, I’d quite like to do a stop motion of the Fazeley reception over a month period, see what comes and goes.

We’re about to embark on the redesign and rebuild of the www.connectmycar.com website ready for the new year, but in the meantime on the existing site we’ve just created the page for the Protector From MiX Telematics…

This existing site was built a couple of years ago on Drupal 5 using the e-commerce modules and a custom suite of modules written by us to integrate the site into external systems for online fitting booking and parts lookup. A couple of years down the line and it’s time for a rebuild and update. We will be migrating the system to the open source platform ‘Magento’ with a selection of integrated modules to provide affiliate tracking and white label features. We start on this next week and plan for a launch in the new year.

New design for Skinkiss Tights Packaging by Adhere:

www.skinkiss.com

This month we’ve been working closely with www.mobilesplease.co.uk and their providing of mobile comparison for MoneySuperMarket. Still a work in progress since and the comparison software is being tailored by the JustSayPlease team, but it should be ready for the MoneySuperMarket website very, very soon.

Do comparison websites risk becoming the next ‘list page’ sites? You know the kind of sites I’m talking about, they appear in your google search results promising the content you’re looking for only to reveal once you arrive just a long list of links to related sites, sometimes your link, or content, is hidden pages and pages down and you scream, press back and vow not to visit there again. There is no doubt that comparison sites are a worthwhile addition to the web, offering a quick and easy way of comparing deals from hundreds of other sites. There are the market leaders, the one with that Russian sounding puppet, the opera singer and so forth so how long before you can compare ‘anything’? Effectively? Quite a while.

I like comparison sites. A lot of work has gone into making the interfaces user friendly and quick to navigate. The key for me is being able to find a deal and apply or buy it in around 3 clicks. Impatient I know but if I find myself 10s of screens in and still no nearer a checkout I tend to begin to wander. Nothing annoys me more than the sites that offer instant quotes online, for things like conservatories or windows only for you to spend ages browsing and entering details to then be presented with a screen saying 10 suppliers in my area will be in touch via the phone. No. No. No. That’s not dynamic or intelligent. Some things you just cannot find ball park prices for, which is why not everything can be compared right now. But the things you can compare - mobiles, insurance, credit etc… can be compared very effectively.

www.moneysupermarket.com

We recently created this simple CMS website to be managed by the Letisha and Charlene Education Awards. Built on Drupal CMS with a simple theme enabling the Committee to update all the site content themselves. Support by Birmingham Mail and the Birmingham Community Foundation.

“The Awards were set up by the Letisha and Charlene Education Awards Committee. The partnership brings together a range of disciplines from all sectors and all have played an active role.

The presence of both families on the Steering Group provides inspiration and leadership. Marcia Shakespeare and Beverley Thomas, the mothers of Letisha and Charlene, have been a driving force in the establishment and development of the award scheme.

The Birmingham Mail has been a vital supporter of the scheme since its inception. Their Head of News is a popular Chair for the Group and brings important private sector experience and vital publicity and marketing expertise to promote the scheme.

Aston Pride New Deal for Communities has contributed both staffing and financial resources. Their Education Theme Manager sits on the Committee and co-ordinates fundraising activities.

Aston Manor School, where both girls attended, are key supporters and a source of advice on educational matters. Their pupils are a key attraction at many of our events, entertaining audiences with their choir and steel band.

Birmingham Community Foundation administers the Award Scheme on behalf of the Committee. They manage the distribution of funds to awardees as well as the Committee’s finance and administrative systems.”

http://www.letishaandcharlene.com

New CMS site in development by Adhere. A simple company site for Coventry and Warwickshire based courier company. Awaiting content from copywriter Karl Quinney now in order to get the site live. This Drupal based website includes:

- MySQL database
- Administration theme and administration drop down menu
- Google analytics
- Contact Form
- WYSIWYG editor
- Image and file uploads
- PHP Front End Templates 
- Drop down menus
- Latest news blocks
- Random testimonial/quote blocks

Hopefully the content will be supplied soon so the site can go live. 

I’ve been a bit slow to put this post up, sorry Eko. The Adhere team are very happy to announce our new member - Eko - who joined our development team a couple of weeks ago. Eko is mainly on the team as a PHP developer and has spent the last couple of weeks writing bespoke Drupal Modules for a recruitment site we’ve been working on with one of our partners. He also had the luck to join us just before the Fazeley Studios Halloween party (see picture) and unfortunately the only picture I have so far is this one from the party so this will have to do.

Glad to have you on board Eko and keep up the good work!