Risks and Awards – Website Shortlisted for 2012 Corporate Engagement Awards
The shortlist for the 2012 Corporate Engagement Awards has been announced, with coveted nominations grabbed by BT, Coca-Cola, FedEx, and E2BN for the Gooii designed ‘Risks and Rewards’ website.
The Awards, now in their second year, are Europe’s leading celebration of corporate partnership, corporate sponsorship, and corporate philanthropy. Communicate has long spotlighted best practice and excellence in engagement, and is delighted to bring you these awards.
Categories in the 2012 Awards include divisions for art-, charity- and sports-centred sponsorship activities, the Best community involvement in a sponsorship activity, and Best communication of corporate sponsorship activity, among many others.
Best corporate sponsorship to help align an organisation with brand values
* ING sponsorship of Risks and Rewards initiative
British Gas sponsorship of the British Gas Energy Trust
Best community involvement in a sponsorship activity
Barclays Cycle Hire
* ING sponsorship of Risks and Rewards initiative
Volunteer It Yourself – partnership between Wickes, A4e, Pimlico Plumbers, London Youth and vinspired (The Co Sponsorship Agency)
Leap Into Your TV – New Motion Control Device
Anyone who’s used Microsoft’s Kinect will attest not only to its innovation but its potential beyond Xbox gaming. Kinect does have its limitations though, it works best when standing, there’s a small but noticeable lag, you need a relatively large amount of space to use it and there’s definite room for improvement when it comes to precision. Add to that Kinect’s bulk and cost and it won’t be long before someone else steps forward to innovate the innovation. In fact, Leap Motion are about to do exactly that.
“Say goodbye to your mouse and keyboard” is a bold claim, especially as Kinect hasn’t prised controllers out of gamer’s hands. Leap claim their new device is “more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.” These are impressive aspirations that appear to be backed up by the product’s excellent trailer.
Leap is no slouch in the looks department either, borrowing its stylings from the Mac Mini, Leap is tiny and retailing at only $69.99 its price is relatively tiny too. With a system that promises to “fundamentally transform the way people interact with computers” its true success will be measured on the support it receives from developers and software houses. Due for release in February 2013, Leap is proving very a tempting proposition indeed.
For more information visit live.leapmotion.com
Gooii Athletics Games – Just Like London 2012
Inspired by the Olympics we’ve dug out the great Flash games we made for UK Athletics and have been trying to beat our old high-scores. How well will you do?
Click here to play the UK Athletics Games
(It’s really old so Flash is required)
The Baring Archive ‘ING Risks and Rewards’ Website
Risks and Rewards is a brand new website which aims to raise pupils’ understanding of the financial world and help teachers tackle the education of financial capability and economic wellbeing.
At its heart is an interactive game where students have an opportunity to travel through time and try their hand at investment. There is also a detailed history of Barings, from its establishment as a merchant bank in 1762, through to its insolvency and acquisition by ING in 1995 and much more.
Launched on 15th May 2012 at ING Commercial Bank in London, the site was developed by Gooii for E2BN, The Baring Archive and ING. All content has been designed to work with iPad and makes use of HTML5 features and MP4 video to provide interactivity.
See the site at: www.risksandrewards.org.uk
iPhones To Be Used For Ticket Scanning
In the US, Amtrak train conductors will soon be using iPhones to scan passenger’s tickets, with passengers being able to print their tickets at home or present them on their smart phones. It’s impressive to see the amount of companies using these as part of their new business models, as iPhone and Android devices become established as a necessity in our daily lives. It’s only a matter of time before companies like Ryan Air introduce a similar system over here in the UK, making travel even easier and more convenient for everyone.
For more on this story visit the New York Times website.
Imperial War Musuem iPhone and Android Apps Featured In The Guardian
The iPhone and Android apps Gooii are developing for the Imperial War Museum’s Social Interpretation project, have been featured in The Guardian. To read the full article visit:The Guardian Culture Professionals Blog
IWM ‘Social Interpretation’ iPhone and Android App Announcement
We are proud to announce Gooii are developing an exciting new iPhone and Android app, for the Imperial War Museum’s ‘Social Interpretation’ project.
The app, programmed natively for each device, starts with a QR code scanned from within the museum space. Once an object is scanned, information about that artifact is loaded into the handset, which the visitor can then comment on, collect and share via the IWM website, Twitter and Facebook.
For a more technical run down on the development process so far, please visit the IWM blog.
Tweeting from the Birdbox….
Surely the most obvious match since chicken and chips, the SEGfL Birdbox project is now on Twitter! School Birdbox updates will automatically be published to Twitter, live throughout the nesting season.
Click here to follow the feed now and catch up with all the lastest from this great project, or visit the Birdbox website at birdbox.segfl.org.uk
The New iPad – Time To Upgrade?
So we didn’t get an iPad 3 afterall, Apple you tease. The “new iPad” suggests more of a 0.5 update much like the iPhone 4S, with the iPad 3 still to come. As usual it’s a brilliant piece of hardware but is it worth upgrading if you already own an iPad? I’m going to approach this question as a user, rather than as an iOS app designer. Personally I think if you own an iPad 1, upgrading to the new iPad could be a very tempting proposition, boasting a much faster processor, a delicious HD screen and more RAM means you’re going to notice the difference between your heavy first gen tablet and new the sleeker model. For iPad 2 owners however the differences are less obvious. The new iPad’s casing looks identical to the iPad 2, the improved camera will be welcomed by FaceTimers but with only Apple’s apps currently benefitting from the new screen, it could take a while for developers to take advantage of the extra pixels.
So what effect does the new iPad have on developers? Well it gives us an opportunity for our graphics to look even crisper and more beautiful, on a screen that boasts more pixels than your average HDTV. The flip side is, creating an additional set of graphics will take the toll to four versions for cross iOS platform development (iPhone SD, iPhone Retina, iPad Sd and iPad Retina), which means more design and programming time will be required. The additional graphics also mean increased file sizes. Apps will take up more space on the iPad, add to that the RAM restrictions imposed by the iPad 1, may mean the new iPad is held back by its older sibling’s limitations. The obvious way around this will be to release HD or Retina versions for owners to choose between, which may or may not carry a slightly higher price tag to cover the additional development costs.
The new iPad’s tagline is ‘Resoultionary’. Yes it’s a bit cheesy but I like it. It sounds like they’ve employed Tim Vine to create advertising slogans for Apple, but that made-up word is also a little slice of genius. It describes perfectly the noticible defifference between the new iPad and every other tablet on the market. It’s all about the screen baby.
UPDATE: As the reviews come in and more information is revealed, it seems the new iPad’s front facing camera is the same spec as the iPad 2’s. The back camera has received a notable ugrade however, to 5 megapixels with the ability to shoot 1080p video.
The Superman Homepage iPhone, Android, Kindle and Blackberry App
Since 1994, The SUPERMAN HOMEPAGE has been the first website that fans of the Man of Steel have looked toward when it comes to exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes reports, previews, reviews, and just about anything you’d ever need to know about the world’s first and greatest superhero. The Superman Homepage is the number one ranked superman fan site in the world and is now available as a fantastic iPhone and iPod Touch app.
Designed and programmed entirely in-house for the Apple iPhone, the app features dynamically loaded news pulled direct from the main website, as well YouTube videos, audio podcasts and the ability to share items to Twitter and Facebook.
To download the app from iTunes or the Apple App Store please click here.
UPDATE: The Superman Homepage App is currently being featured by Apple in the iTunes News ‘What’s Hot’ section.
Download the Android app from Google Play.
Download the Kindle Fire app from Amazon.
SUPERMAN and all related elements are the property of DC Comics TM @2023