Once known for shrinking things down to miniature size, Apple are clearly thinking BIG with the iPad Pro. Apple’s new iDevice boasts all the great apps we love, whilst closing the gap between tablet and laptop in a way Microsoft just can’t seem to manage. With its Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard, the iPad Pro positions itself somewhere between the iPad Air 2 and a Macbook Air, which kind of makes it, well… a massive iPad. Now this is either a good thing if you’ve always felt the iPad was too damn small, or it puts it very much in the “meh” category.

The lure of the iPad Pro isn’t enough for me to ditch my Air 2, though Gooii’s test device preorder will be in place. For me the holy grail will be an iPad that can run both Mac OS and iOS simultaneously. I want to be able to use Adobe’s Creative Cloud design applications and Word one minute (well no one wants to use Word, just sometimes you have to), then download iOS apps from the App Store the next. Perhaps this is a sign such a device is imminent, or maybe this half way stage means it’ll never happen – which is just as likely considering Apple have stated their Macbook range will never support touch screens. It is however Apple’s prerogative to change their mind, demonstrated by Steve Jobs once mocking devices that used a stylus, which Apple now boasts as revolutionary – albeit one that transforms the iPad into a graphics tablet. What if the iPad Pro could be paired with the Mac to form a dual screen graphics tablet? Now that would be something truly special indeed.

To learn more about the iPad Pro visit the Apple Site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbg2gNXpBDM

Gooii were commissioned by Royal Museums Greenwich to design and build a touchscreen gallery interactive for the National Maritime Museum, allowing visitors to explore the museum’s high definition images.

Technical Info – hold tight!: A PHP Content Management System enables museum staff to gather and repurpose their Solr data into customised themes, which are stored in couchDB. The Solr data is populated via Knowledge Integration‘s CIIM middleware layer, aggregated from the Museum’s Collections management and DAMs systems. The touchscreen UI built with AngularJs utilises the Open Source OpenSeadragon library and enables users to smoothly pan and zoom these HD images. Launching the UI with Chromium in “kiosk mode” ensures a slick full screen UX.

To view the HD Image explorer please pay a visit to the National Maritime Museum.

Previously known for cheap books and poor customer service, Amazon has transformed like a phoenix from the Kindle Fire into one of our most innovative and ambitious technology companies, with customer service at its forefront. It would have been easy to dismiss Amazon’s foray into the tablet market but bold moves like this, as well as swallowing Love Film and spewing it up as Amazon Prime Video are strokes of genius. Prime Video for example started off has a bonus added to their delivery service, but despite the price hike has overtaken Netflix as the streaming service of choice in my household. I’m also keeping a keen eye on Amazon Prime Music, waiting for the right to jump ship from Spotify – after all I’m already paying for it, the content just isn’t there yet.

As an Apple TV owner looking forward to the release of the app store boasting v4.0, it’s with keen interest that I see Amazon’s latest Fire TV box is receiving rave reviews. Key features include 75% more processing power, 4K UHD capabilities, voice control, as well app favs Netflix, BBC iPlayer, YouTube, ITV Player, Demand 5 and BBC Sport – unfortunately Now TV and Spotify are conspicuous by their absence but will hopefully arrive soon. The box also arrives pre-configured to your purchasing Amazon account, a very neat and original idea, designed to make your life easier and get you spending. The only question for many will be “how many devices that do pretty much the same thing (Chromecast, Apple TV, Smart TVs, Games Consoles) do you need in your life”? For me, maybe one or two more.

All-New Amazon Fire TV with 4K Ultra HD

Some great feedback from a recent client…

“We would just like to say a big thank you to you and your team, you have been fantastic in helping us move forward as a school. As we all know the website is now the first port of call for most parents. Our new website will definitley help us attract more pupils.

We are so glad we chose Gooii as our website developer. You have created a professional, attractive and easy to maintain website. Gooii have been fantastic to work with and we look forward to working with you in the future!”

If you’d like to work with us on your website or app, please get in touch at [email protected].

Key Skills: AngularJS and HTML/CSS UI for Web and Mobile Development

We are a talented team of designers and developers based in the heart of Nottingham, UK and are seeking a developer to join our in-house team to build websites, web and mobile apps.

Our core business covers the totally rocking heritage, education and corporate sectors. We develop UI in AngularJS for clients such as JISC, the National Maritime Museum, BBC, Museum of London and University of Cambridge to name but a few.

We have an informal, friendly, open-plan office environment. If we invite you to interview there’s no need for a suit – we care about what you can do, not what you look like…

Want to know more? Download the full job spec here.

NO AGENCIES!! Oh, and did we mention absolutely NO AGENCIES??!! 🙂

Gooii have developed and upgraded the Jisc Journal Archives website to handle the launch and publication of the feminist magazine ‘Spare Rib’ by the British Library. Developed in Angular JS, the user interface presents data from a Collections Information Integration Middleware (CIIM) built by Knowledge Integration and allows users to search, filter and view every issue of Spare Rib online for the first time.

View Spare Rib on the JISC Journal Archives website.

Find out more about the Magazine and the launch on the British Library website. The website and magazine is also featured in The Guardian Women and The Guardian Media as well as on BBC Radio 4.

Hailed as Apple’s “Most personal device yet”, the Apple Watch feels like it’s been a long time coming. Whilst it’s essential Watch owners already have an iPhone or iPad, Apple are keen to give it a meaning beyond the device you already have in your pocket. Apple need to sell in its USP in order to market it beyond the gadget freaks and early adopters (yeah, that’s us) and the machine is working full steam ahead to do so.

A quick display of hands in the Gooii office and it’s clear some of us have mentally had our orders in since before the Apple Watch was even a rumour, whilst others will be waiting for another revision; and that’s the rub, you know Apple are going to release another watch within the next year. This is especially pertinent as it’s more glaring that the summer sun that one killer feature has been held back – the ability to FaceTime. Ever since I was child I dreamed of having a watch that I could see people on, it’s the stuff of sci-fi, it was also a feature missing from the iPad 1 and I can’t help feeling that a subsequent revision will refine and nailing the concept, just as Apple did with the iPad 2.

As well as being Apple’s most personal device it’s possibly their most expensive, with the top of the range model weighing in at a hefty £13,500. The starting price however is a more palatable £299 for the 38mm model and £339 for the 42mm watch.

At Gooii we always strive for the best results possible, whether we’re building a website, designing a corporate identity or coding an app. So it’s always a pleasure when a client writes to say how much they’ve enjoyed working with us.

“It has been a pleasure to work with both you directly and Gooii as a company, and I would not hesitate to recommend Gooii to anyone else. Should we require any further work doing I will be contacting you.”

Shaun Radford, Radius Systems (‘Aeon Locator’ Android App)

Thanks Shaun.

It’s been a very busy start to 2015 and projects we have in development include new websites and apps for businesses, educational establishments and blue chip clients. We also have some large projects in development for the culture and heritage sector, which we’re very excited about.

If you would like to speak to us about your website or app development, please give us a call on 0115 9598044 or email us at [email protected] and one of our creative team will be happy to help with advice on taking your project forward, as well as a free quotation.

Between 1838 and 1840 London publisher John Tallis created a series of 88 pamphlets titled a ‘Tallis’s London Street Views’. These guides illustrated London’s main commercial streets (or parts thereof) and included a street history, advertisements, a local map and, most useful, an elevation street view and business directory. Eighty-seven of these guides are in the Museum of London’s collection.

This website, a NESTA-funded project with the Imperial War Museum, displays the elevation views of 35 of the guides (from the West End) and with the help of users, MoL will create the first searchable business directory of early Victorian London that includes street views.

Key features include: Crowdsourced contributions for street view data, allowing users to define and describe buildings within the business directories; integrated Google map functionality; the ability to search and view the guides; and responsive templates for viewing the site on mobile devices.

To view this exciting new project please visit: crowd.museumoflondon.org.uk/lsv1840