Design and Development Inspiration
Social Media
Twitter and Facebook
Jun 21st
As you know we’ve got our own Twitter and Facebook accounts and we know we struggle to keep them up-to-date so today I’ve spent the day linking together RSS feeds from our site into Twitter which intern feeds off to Facebook.
So the following feeds will be populating our social networks with different feeds.
- News Feed items will be prefixed with News: and pull information from http://twitterfeed.com/feeds/696285/detail
- Event listing items will be prefixed with Events: and pull information from http://twitterfeed.com/feeds/1524243/detail
- Document uploaded items will be prefixed with Docs: and pull information from http://twitterfeed.com/feeds/1524247/detail
- FAQ items will be prefixed with FAQs: and pull information from http://twitterfeed.com/feeds/1524253/detail
- Staff blog items will be prefixed with Staff Blog: and pull information from http://twitterfeed.com/feeds/1524278/detail
- Marketing blog items will be prefixed with Marketing Blog: and pull information from http://twitterfeed.com/feeds/1524278/detail
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!
Higher Education Blogs
Jun 11th
Thanks to Michael Nolan on HE Comms here’s a useful list of Blogs from Higher Education Web Teams in the UK.
Bath Web Services – http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/webservices/
City Uni Web Team – http://www.city.ac.uk/web/blog/
Imperial Web Team – http://www2.imperial.ac.uk/blog/webforum/
Scottish Uni Web Team’s – http://scottishwebfolk.wordpress.com/
St Andrews Web Team – http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/webteam/
Southampton Web Team – http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/webteam/
Bedfordshire Web Team – http://bedsmarketing.blogspot.com/
UCL Web Team – http://www.ucl.ac.uk/web-services-blog/
Birmingham City Web Team – http://mcd-web.blogspot.com/
And worth a visit is: http://collegewebeditor.com/blog/index.php/higher-ed-bloggers/
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.
BP – buying back reputation
Jun 9th
BP has purchased sponsored links that appear at the top of Google and Yahoo’s search results for terms like “oil spill” in its attempts to improve its public image in the wake of its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
This is largely in response to a spoof Twitter account set up to mock BP’s efforts, and a half-million strong Facebook group encouraging users to ‘Boycott BP‘.
Companies & organisations can buy sponsored links (which are clearly labelled) so that their interpretation of events is the first that members of the public see when they use a particular search term.
Full story at Mashable.
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.
Human bumper stickers
Mar 1st
Hyundai 'five year warranty' window sticker got me thinking about human applications
I must make a note of this before Monday mayhem takes over.
This morning I was driving in behind a Hyundai driver who had a sticker in his back window stating “I’m covered by the Five Year Warranty”.
Nothing special in itself, but I caught myself thinking “Hm, that’s quite a long time, their quality control must be good to offer that, actually I’ve never considered a Hyundai, that does seems to quite a well-made car…” etc etc.
Clearly, the sticker had triggered the intentioned thought-process – and it had only cost the Hyundai marketeers a few pence. This made me think about how we ‘finish off’ our offerings – do we actually put a ‘bumper sticker’ anywhere when we’re done?
In the same way that builders install a forecourt sign to say ‘another satisfied customer’, could we not add something to our customers / publications to enable some ‘trickle’ advertising? I’ll think more about this once Monday is over.
Adding all friends to an event on Facebook
Feb 6th
javascript:elms=document.getElementById(‘friends’).getElementsByTagName(‘li’);for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === ‘object’){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}
Go to your event/group/page, click invite people and then paste this snippet in the URL field of your browser.
Left-click the mouse in the URL field and hit Enter. Your invitations will not be sent yet, but all your friends will be selected. Click the “Invite” or “Send” button on the Facebook page to finally send the invites.