Christmas has arrived in the 360innovate office! These lovely Christmas cupcakes were supplied by Frosted and they have got us in the Christmas partying mood! With the Christmas night out tonight, being held in the Italian Kitchen, we are all in a thoroughly festive spirit and already contemplating what we are going to have to eat!
All we need now if some festive tunes to really get the party started…. Does anyone have any recommendations for the 360innovate Christmas playlist?
AOL have announced that they are to ditch their triangle and running man logo with its familiar blue branding in favour of a new “simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever-changing images… one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal.” Along with a changing background (which the company are calling “reveals”) the new logo will see the word AOL go lowercase and become accompanied by a dot; something which AOL CEO Tim Amstrong claims will all make sense when the full brand revamp is revealed on 10th December.
The sneak preview AOL released shows the new logo with several different “reveals” and the feedback across the web so far is…. mixed. One opinion that keeps cropping up is that it’s all a bit mad and perhaps a little slap dash.
The amendments to the logotype- going lower case and adding the dot- don’t do enough to change our perspective of the brand if anything reducing the logotype from the bold symbolic AOL- full caps no dot- could do more damage than good taking away the emphasis of the bold brand name and making a brand name seem like any old word. AOL claim that having the o and the l as lower case is an excellent lead in to the dot. A lot of emphasis upon the dot it seems, it will siginify AOL plus something else such as Aol.Music
And then there is the changing backgrounds. Armstrong tells Paid Content that these changing “reveals” represent all the different things going on at AOL “underneath the surface”. The idea of a changing logo is nice but in practise it does very little to present a strong brand image and the concept is very similar to another highly successful search engine whose logo we often see accompanied by highly popular doodles.
Of course only having a sneak peak at the proposed brand image it is too early to be drawing conclusions, however, at this early stage a lot of people are starting to wonder whether AOL themselves know who they and what they want to be? Hopefully it will all become a little clearer on 10th December.
From the 16th – 20th November it is Get Safe Online week, an annual event aiming to raise awareness of Internet safety issues. 
There are various ways crooks can attack your business online, for example hack into your website, steal your identity or have your computer network infected with viruses.
The Get Safe Online website provides plenty of information for small businesses outlining and providing advice on how they can protect themselves online.
Key points include:
For more information visit the Get Safe Online website.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with the Google Sidewiki it is a tool that can be installed onto your browser and allows you to add information or comments to a web page. These notes can then be viewed by other visitors to that website.
The benefit of Sidewiki is that it is of course another way of sharing knowledge online, passing on comments, thoughts and advice which may be useful to other users of a website. The downside of Sidewiki for businesses is that it does exactly that, allows users to leave comments on their website.
This of course can be beneficial to a business if people are contributing in a positive manner, however, on the occasion a business may encounter negative press or come under criticism for this, that or the other. With the introduction and the growing popularity of Sidewiki businesses could face having negative comments and reviews haunting their website.
Google claim to be ranking each comment within the Sidewiki based on relevance, determined by the writers previous contribution and feedback from other users- users have the ability to mark whether the comment was useful and report abuse. It is doubtful that these safeguards will do anything to protect businesses, or any brand for that matter, from users looking to spread malicious and defamatory claims around the internet. Given the influence user generated content has upon customers decision making it is no surprise that Sidewiki has caused a certain ripple amongst PRs and marketers as no doubt their jobs will become increasingly more difficult if Sidewiki hits off.
MLM CPS Limited is a personal debt management company that provides advice and assistance to individuals and directors of companies who are experiencing financial difficulties.
The main aim of the website redesign was to realign the brands online image and bring it up to date with the current company goals and aspirations. 360innovate designed an information rich website which compliments the company branding and presents a strong image of the company.
The past few months have been busy for 360innovate! Along with some exciting new contracts, which we will tell you about in due course, we have launched several exciting websites.
The People Organisation is a development consultancy specialising in futures thinking, conflict resolution, employee engagement and governance development.
The People Organisation Director Mark Butler said about working with 360innovate:
360innovate provided exactly the right level of support to get the web presence I was looking for – patient, professional and practical.
Shine Youth Music Theatre is a not for profit youth group specialising in music, theatre and dance. 360innovate provided them with a fun and exciting website that provides members of the group and audiences with information on current productions and developed a forum where topics can be discussed.
360innovate provided To Me Love Me with an ecommerce solution enabling them to sell their quality skincare products online.
360innovate are delighted to share the good news that 360 client Piper (Parents in Partnership Eco Representative) has been shortlisted for the 2009 Scottish Green Awards finals.
In fact they have been nominated twice; along with Piper being nominated as Best Green Community Initiative Michael Ferrigan has been nominated as Best Green Campaigner.
This is brilliant news for the project and we at 360innovate wish them all the best for the finals which are to be held on 1st October 2009 at the Glasgow Science Centre.
Piper (Parents in Partnership Eco Representatives) is a community campaign aimed at reducing carbon emissions. The project focuses on 3 main communities; Balerno, Currie and Juniper Green, within each community two schools will be involved. The purpose of the project is to encourage parents and children within schools to take action to reduce carbon emissions.
View the Piper (Parents in Partnership Eco Representative) website at www.piperonline.org.uk
360innovate are pleased to announce that they will be contributing to the Glasgow Twestival by donating a flying lesson to the raffle.
360innovate developer and regular blogger John McCollum has already been involved with the Twestival for many weeks now; up to his neck in code putting together an application for the event.
The Glasgow Twestival is tomorrow 10th September at 7pm and will be hosted at the Living Room on St Vincent Street, you can buy your tickets here. It will be hosted by Clyde 1′s Colin Kelly and has a line up including Any Colour Black, Panda Su, Pooch amongst many other exciting bands and djs.
The flying lesson will be joining a fantastic list of prizes which includes: a gift hamper courtesy ofa Peckham’s, a year’s supply of Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers and signed copy of Beverley Knight’s new album.
The chosen charity for the event is No Strings Attached Scotland, a West of Scotland based registered charity passionate about developing opportunities for children with asthma through music and the arts.
