Archive for the ‘360 Social’ Category

Can we save Abbey Road?

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

If you didn’t already know Abbey Road studios, where the Beatles recorded many of their hits, is up for sale.

Being such an infamous and historical building, studio and shrine to one of the worlds greatest bands it is no surprise that there has been a national outcry.

Listening to Chris Evans talking with National Trust Director-General Dame Fiona Reynolds this morning it was revealed that the National Trust is very much interested in buying Abbey Road and preserving it for future generations to enjoy. But for this to happen, Dame Reynolds told Chris Evans that for any purchase of the studios to happen the National Trust must get the support of the public.

The National Trust website posted:

“We’re asking you to let us know whether you think the studios should be saved. No price has been put on the building in the affluent St John’s Wood district of North London, but there has been speculation that it could be worth between £10 million and £30 million. If there is enough momentum, we may launch a campaign to save the studios.”

So how is the National Trust suggesting we get the ball rolling, social media of course. If it managed to keep X Factor off the Christmas number one spot and influence a chocolate company to bring back the Wispa then surely it must be able to save Abbey Road?!

Whether this is a genuine plea for pubic opinion or in fact the National Trust exploiting Abbey Roads popularity and unfortunate circumstances to kick-start a social media campaign is up to you. In my opinion, of course they are going to buy Abbey Road, why wouldn’t they? They already own and care for both Paul McCartney and John Lennons childhood homes (the latter gifted to the trust by Yoko Ono) done so without having to consult or seek the support of the public.

What the National Trust will gain from this ’save Abbey Road’ campaign is a moment in the spot light and if the campaign goes global, which they are hoping it will, then it will do wonders to increase awareness of the brand around the world. Already a popular tourist attraction and with such early publicity and massive support across the Internet which they wouldn’t have got without the help of social media, the purchase of Abbey Road will be a wise investment that will no doubt pay for itself. So, really, who can blame them for utilising social media to take advantage of this opportunity?

There are already a handful of Facebook groups popping up hoping to contribute to saving Abbey Road but the National Trust have centred their official campaign around their own Facebook page, rightly so, and already hundreds of people have been posting comments of support. Similarly, the National Trust Twitter page has busy tweeting and retweeting trying to spread the word- with the help of a certain Chris Evans. Still in its initial stages of building momentum I predict that this social media campaign has legs that will not only contribute in turning Abbey Road turn into an even greater tourist attraction but will also play an influential role in changing the public perception of the National Trust and introducing it to new markets.

The most’s of 2009

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

What better way to round up 2009 online by telling you what most people have been doing online the most…

Most Downloaded Song

I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas (Shiny Shiny)
*although several other sources including ITunes claim Boom Boom Pow by Black Eye Peas was the most downloaded song…

Most Downloaded Album

Only by the Night by Kings of Leon (Shiny Shiny)

Most Downloaded Movie on ITunes

Twilight (Mashable)

Most Viewed YouTube Video

Susan Boyle on X Factor (NY Daily News)

Most Downloaded US TV Show

Heroes (Guardian)

Most ‘Pirated’ Movie Download

Star Trek  (DMW Media)

Most ‘Pirated’ eBook

Kama Sutra (FreakBits)

Most talked about topic on Twitter

The Iran Election (Twitter)

Most talked about in Facebook status updates

Facebook Applications (Facebook)

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We’ve got the Festive Friday Feeling

Friday, December 11th, 2009

yummy-cupcakes

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?

Winning Through Innovation Event

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Scottish Enterprise held a Winning Through Innovation yesterday at the Odeon Cinema Springfield Quay Glasgow.

Speakers at the event included former global CEO of Burger King Barry Gibbons, Brian Williamson of Tiger Eye and Helen Battersby. The main theme for the event was Developing a Culture of Innovation with each speaker providing an insight into their own experiences of innovation and passing on their own words of wisdom as to how we can all motivate and innovate within our workplaces.

Overall the event was a great success with it almost nearly being a full house. A particular highlight was hearing Helen Battersby provide an indepth look at how she helped the Gleneagles Hotel increase profits from £700K to £5 million through innovation and people development. She provided several excellent examples of how the hotel managed to motivate staff, lower costs and target new markets, one example being to give staff the opportunity to offer and suggest innovative ideas to solve issues within the organisation the best being rewarded with a pay increase.

Each speaker provided the audience with 5 Top Tips related to Winning Through Innovation, here is the best from each;

Barry Gibbons:

In difficult financial times there is a tendancy and temptation to ‘nickle and dime’ your stakeholders (emplyees, suppliers, partners, customers and clients). Don’t.

Brian Williamson:

In meetings rotate the Chair to different team members to get a different perspective.

Helen Battersby:

Grow your people and your business will grow itself.

The Winning Through Innovation event forms part of the Scottish Enterprise Strengthen Your Business campaign designed to help, innovate and inspire Scottish Businesses. A downloadable Innovation Guide is available from the Strengthen Your Business website.

Get Safe Online Week

Monday, November 9th, 2009

From the 16th – 20th November it is Get Safe Online week, an annual event aiming to raise awareness of Internet safety issues. Get safe online logo

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:

  • Monitor your staff online activity through writing a staff internet usage policy
  • Be aware of and train your staff on the risks of phishing, social engineering, e-commerce fraud and identity theft
  • Avoid publishing any sensitive information online and make sure that emails containing sensitive information are deleted immediatley
  • Be aware of the tell tale signs of a fraudulent order, for example large & expensive orders with unusual buying patterns
  • If you have any remote users on your network ensure that the necessary safeguards are in place

For more information visit the Get Safe Online website.

Scottish Green Awards

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Following on from our previous post announcing that 360innovate client Piper (Parents in Partnership Eco Representative) and Piper project consultant Mike Ferrigan have been shortlisted for a Scottish Green Award 360innovate are happy to announce that Mike did in fact scoop the award for Best Green Campaigner.

Well done to Mike!!

A grand day out at the FOWD event, Glasgow (part one)

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Future of Web Design (FOWD), Glasgow – Part one.

Three of the 360 development team were excited to get the opportunity to head off to the FOWD event held yesterday at The Glasgow Film Theatre. The schedule featured an array of highly regarded Web Evangelists and Developers from the names such as Opera, Microsoft and other well know independent web agencies from around the UK.

The morning sessions were delivered by edgeofmyseat.com developer Drew Mclellan, Microsoft developer Mike Tautly and Fuzzy Orange developer Matt Gifford.

Drew Mclellan on – “Making Your Content Discoverable with Microformats”

Drew’s presentation was based around the practical uses and benefits of Microformats, which are perhaps most easily described as a ‘simple set of data formats that help share common meaning and data that goes beyond standard HTML’ – for example: an address or event information.

The presentation was really well structured and provided an interesting, practical insight into the value of how and why microformats should be used in the process of marking up web pages.

You can read more about microformats from microformats.org or visit Drew Mclellan’s blog for musings on a wide range of things Web.

Mike Tautly on – “Silverlight and Expression Blend”

Mike’s presentation was again interesting and one which gave us some background and usage examples with the Microsoft alternative for delivering RIA for the Web. Platform and Browser independent Silverlight is a plugin which builds on the Microsoft .NET framework.

As a designer often looking at how to improve workflow from initial sketches, through prototyping to production artwork; Mike’s outline of Expression Blend provided interesting options to effectively demonstrate ideas to a client using something called a SketchFlow prototype.

It seems Expression Blend is also pretty useful when needing to show interactive page flow and behaviours in prototype format – this can then be built upon to the point of detailed production graphics using Photoshop layered files, with reusable components.

All in all – perhaps one to take a further look at.

For more information on Mike Tautly check out his personal blog

Matt Gifford on – “Getting Started with Adobe Air”

Matt Gifford it seems was drafted in to step in to the breach after a colleague couldn’t make the conference – he did a great job! And along with free Kinder Eggs and T-Shirts Matt gave all us Adobe Air novices an hour long insight in to the possibilities with Air for building and deploying RIA’s.

Some of the most interesting elements of the presentation for me included the integration with web content, applications and data stores (such as mySQL DB’s) in real client situations.

For more information on Matt Gifford check out his blog.

We can’t let the day go past without mentioning…

Friday, June 26th, 2009

…the death of Michael Jackson.

Yes everyone is talking about it and in fact on Twitter it is now considered old news. But in the 360innovate office we are all still in a bit of shock, having all grown up listening to his catchy pop songs it seems a bit weird to think he will no longer exist.

Anyway with my mind made up to write a Michael Jackson related post but still keep it relevant I can’t not mention the role the internet played in the surfacing of this tragic news.

Twitter received an influx in users using the website as it dawned on many people that the circulating rumours were in fact true, so many people were discussing the tragedy and trying to find out what was happening on the micro-blogging site that it crashed and within the hour of the news circulating Michael Jackson related topics dominated the top trends for the website. Just before the site crashed it is reported that “Michael Jackson” appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates and upon the news breaking it was reported by Twist that around 30% of Tweets mentioned the late star.

Similarly on Google the sharp increase of users searching for Michael Jackson caused the search engine giant to fear that it was under attack. The volume of users searching was so high that an error page started appearing telling users

your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application

Thus causing Google to fear that the search engine was under attack.

….

Well its fair to say that whilst he was alive Michael Jackson caused a fair amount of hype both good and bad from his dangling babies antics to his distinctive dance routines, and now as he passes from this world I have to say that I am very pleased that his continuing to ruffle feathers… all be it blue Twitter shaped ones…

360innovate ‘considered distateful to some’

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

360innovate are celebrating a mini victory today as we found out that we are allowed to keep our advertising billboards.

Let us start at the very beginning…

The bright sparks at 360innovate decided that their love and devotion to all things Google should be immortalized. So one bright morning, the 360innovate team created an advertisement proclaiming our love for the search engine.

The ‘Google is God’ roundabout advertisement was born.

After several month of fun and happiness, and on a gloomy morning not so long ago the 360innovate team was told of the horrible news that several complaints had been made about their lovely ‘Google is God’ advertisement to the ASA (Advertising Standards Agency).

Why? The reference to God was considered offensive. Surely not. Google is the worlds number 1 search engine, some would consider it the God of search engines and Google is God is a phrase thrown around all over the internet.

So off popped a nice email from 360innovate to the ASA explaining why we used the phrase ‘Google is God’ and that it was by no means meant to be offensive or blasphemous.

We waited on tender hooks for over a week, and finally found out today that ‘while distasteful to some, the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence’ – we should think so too, it was only meant to be a bit of fun.

So in the end we are allowed to keep our ‘Google is God’ sign. Amen for that. :)

Fancy seeing it for yourself? Refer to the map below

View Larger Map

Some Google is God links:

The Church of Google

Is Google God by Thomas Friedman

Is Google God by Rebecca Myers

Google is not God

Is Google God of Googlism

Banana’s for Fairtrade

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

360innovate will literally be going banana’s for Fairtrade produce on the 6th of March. Fairtrade work towards improving the trading position of farmers, producers and workers in the South.

“Our vision is of a world in which justice and sustainable development are at the heart of trade structures and practices so that everyone, through their work, can maintain a decent and dignified livelihood and develop their full potential.

To achieve this vision, Fairtrade seeks to transform trading structures and practices in favour of the poor and disadvantaged. By facilitating trading partnerships based on equity and transparency, Fairtrade contributes to sustainable development for marginalised producers, workers and their communities. Through demonstration of alternatives to conventional trade and other forms of advocacy, the Fairtrade movement empowers citizens to campaign for an international trade system based on justice and fairness.”

360innovate were amazed to discover the injustice being endured by many producers which is why we are supporting and will continue to support Fairtrade products and its organisation.

We will be hosting our own in-office ‘banana bonanza’ on Friday the 6th March!

Banana Facts:

The banana is the most popular fruit in the world – people spend over £10 billion a year on the fruit globally.

While banana sales and demand soar, prices have plummeted, having a devastating effect on banana producers. In November 1997, bananas cost an average of £1.08 per kg in UK supermarkets. In June 2008 that price was as low as 50p per kg.

The majority of banana plantation workers do not earn enough to live and support their families – some earn less than £1 per day.

Bananas contain tryptophan and vitamin B6, known to help make you feel happy.

Visit the Go Bananas for Fairtrade website

Diary of the Twitter Newbies

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Now Twitter is by no means a new thing, many of the more social media savvy guys in the office are well established Tweeters and of course 360innovate has themselves hooked up with an account (Tweet us at @360innovate).

However, the whole concept of what Twitter is and what is does both on a commercial and personal level is a bit of a mystery to a few of us here in 360. With this in mind two Twitter newbies (@PammyWeaver and @laurajdavis) both employees of 360innovate are going to take the plunge and try to become Twitter geniuses.

We want to understand what Twitter is for, what it achieves and how you can become ‘good’ at it… good meaning having lots of followers! We will utilise all the online resources we can get our greedy hands on and use this blog as a channel to document how successful (or not) they are, so that you too can reap the benefits that Twitter has to offer for yourself and for your business.

First and foremost let us introduce ourselves:

* Update: Since publishing this blog the data below has mysteriously disappeared so I am having to repost with estimated figures.

@laurajdavis

Followers 25

Following 50

Twitter rank 438,356

@Pammyweaver

Followers 33

Following 34

Twitter rank 367,853

Secondly lets here the first tip:

Tip 1#

The first tip comes from Guy Kawasaki, we here he is big news in the online scene… good place to start then! On with the tip, follow all the Social Media Whores (Smores), the general definition (I think) of a smore is someone who practically never leaves their computer, Tweets every 2 mins and participate in every social network site going… sounds a bit like half the 360innovate office! Anyways Guy recommends checking out TwitterCounter.

Time to seek and to, well, follow! Watch this space!

stay tuned to see how we get on!

Three more recruits join the 360innovate team.

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

Aloha to our three newbies; David, Lynne and Pamela who have all joined the company in the past month.

A big hello to the three new additions to the 360innovate team, our once half empty office is fast filling up now and I speak for the entire team when I say the more the merrier.

David Niven has joined the team as a New Business Executive, he has experience working in a wide range of industries from advertising to recruitment, before he made the wise choice to come join us jolly folk at 360innovate.

Lynne Thompson will be putting her extensive experience in telesales to good use as she steps into the sales team as a Lead Generation Executive.

Pamela Weaver will be joining the SEO team as a Graduate Web Designer, and as the name suggests she is a graduate, fresh out of university where she studied Applied Graphic Technology with Multimedia. This is her first full time job and we hope to ease her into the 9-5 working lifestyle with plenty of support… and a continual stream of coffee.

An insight into the 360innovate sales team

Friday, September 26th, 2008

Where would we be without our trusty sales team? Their witty sales chat and smooth one-liners keep us all entertained for hours on end, and lucky for us they keep a constant stream of new clients and work coming our way.

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