Design and Development Inspiration
Cool Stuff
Create a Wifi hotspot for events
Jun 24th
I’ve been hunting for a way of providing a WiFi network to our Freshers Fayre and came across this video… it actually works too! Our students always moan that there is no WiFi network at the Freshers Fayre for them to connect to so I’ve been busy working out a way of doing this.
It’s so incredibly simple let this guy below explain:
Top 10 fonts of 2009
Jun 17th
So – I’ve just been de-subscribing myself from unnecessary email lists and noticed a message from font fetishists ‘MyFonts.com’.
It referenced the ‘Best Fonts of 2009‘ so I had a look and was impressed. A lot of new fonts I see seem to be re-makes of the classics, but some of these are really useful. I particularly like the decorative flourishes of Champion Script Pro and the Facebook-ish appeal of Geogrotesque.
See the whole list (if you like that sort of thing) or check out their excellent ‘What the Font‘ identification service. And yes – I’m staying subscribed.
How the website will change thanks to your feedback
Jun 11th
Thankyou to everyone who has taken the time to fill out the 2010 Annual Survey as you will see it’s important to complete these surveys as it shapes what we’re doing. I’ve personally gone through every response on this years survey so far and here’s what I’ll be doing to resolve and develop UPSU.net for you. Obviously we can only change the negatives so that’s what’s shown below – but it’s always good to know what we’re doing right too!
Facebook Symbols
Jun 9th
How often have you needed that symbol to enhance a Facebook Status or Post and make it stand out from the rest. I’ve seen Nightclub promoters doing it for a while now but couldn’t be bothered to hunt them all out – today I decided it was time to compile my list – mostly, they are Unicode-encoded special characters.
1 Website: £145,000,000 budget
Jun 8th
Imagine what you could do with £145 million to spend on a website – well that’s the kind of money the BBC are spending on theirs. I’ve just read an article on the BBC blogs talking about the 30% increase in spend on web opportunities for our glorious Beeb – no wonder the website is so cutting edge!
The approved increase is almost 42% below the £52.7m a year the BBC wanted. Regardless, cash-strapped commercial rivals will balk at the ability the BBC has to ratchet upspending in such economic conditions.
BBC Trust Chairman Sir Michael Lyons, in a letter to director general Mark Thompson, concluded that the budget increase did not require a full public value test, concluding that there was a “limited risk of the new investment, which is incremental in existing areas of BBC activity, adding materially to the market impact of BBC Online”.
Lyons said that BBC Online had to focus on “high priority” areas such as news, children’s, knowledge and better search and navigation to “deliver real value to audiences”.
“This is significantly less than BBC management originally asked for,” said the BBC Trust. “The trust considers that investment at this reduced level is appropriate. It believes that ongoing robust evaluation of the BBC’s impact on online markets will be necessary to ensure that public value is created by the investment.”
Unfortunately the UPSU budget is a little smaller with a difference of around £144,999,700 to spend on developing UPSU.net which is why we favour Open Source solutions such as Joomla.
Improving the visitor experience
Jun 8th
One of the major things I’m trying to get my head round this year is how to improve the visitor experience to UPSU.net so there’s lots of surveys and data gathering exercises I’m currently running to get as wider a vision as possible of what people want from there visit to UPSU.net.
Current ongoing Surveys:
1) Annual Survey
2) What would you change about UPSU.net
3) Staff and Sabbatical requirements
Joomla via iPhone
Jun 7th
I’m currently looking at ways of improving our website and the functionality it offers for both staff and students.
The latest functionality is the ability to update the website via your iPhone. Our marketing team all use Apples’ iPhone and all it takes is a download of a free application.
J Admin Mobile! Lite (JAM!) allows you to manage many of the core features of your Joomla site remotely. Developed primarily for the J Admin Mobile! iPhone application, it’s a free GPL plugin meant to be used, and extended, by any application developer that would like to use it!
Download it through the iTunes Store: http://itunes.apple.com/app/joomla-admin-mobile/id310881831?mt=8
Ambient advertising – post covers
Apr 25th
Out shopping at Morrisons in Cowplain today I noticed these triangular foamboard covers (similar to estate agent boards) advertising ‘Avatar’. I like the innovation of using an otherwise ‘dumb’ object to hold a message.
No idea where to source them, but they look like they should be fairly inexpensive and would suit a campaign that required high-intensity advertising around the campus.
A quick Google found Colour-Grapics, worth a phone call if we go there.
Love/Hate Party
Apr 10th
Just seen some adverts for Marmite.
marmitenewsnetwork.com
A whole campaign ripping off the idea of an election. I’m not where this is going but this is pretty brilliant.
UPSU issues new style business cards
Mar 8th
Front of UPSU business card
Personalised rear
Business card for Sabbatical Officers
UPSU has just released a new batch of business cards, inspired by ‘Web 2.0′ styling.
The cards are cut with rounded corners and have a gradient overlay, echoing the appearance of iPhone apps. The style was chosen as UPSU has made a commitment to reach more students by using a variety of web and social media channels.
The 6 student officers received different business cards earlier in the year. The design, showing their face, was chosen to strengthen the link that students have with their officers in a more conversational and friendly way.