It all seemed plausible enough at the time. The chaps in Metia Labs said: "We really want to explore the uses for accelerometers in mobile phones, maybe look at the use... Read More

Yesterday I got a piece of personally targetted direct mail with a proposition specific to my business. Nothing unusual there. But it was sent to me at my home address. In fact the whole creative angle was trading on how clever the sender was to... Read More

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How complicated is Facebook's privacy policy? Physicist Niels Bohr's famous quote comes to mind: "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it."This infographic from the New York Times (snapshot... Read More

How do your clients and customers make up their minds? There's a growing list of reader-friendly titles that explain how economics, game theory and neuroscience combine to influence the hundreds of decisions that we make every day.Freakanomics probably... Read More

Good post here by Gartner's Richard Fouts on using customer references across the breadth of an organization. It comes complete with this nifty little quote from Richard: "Case in point: now that Metia has supercharged Microsoft’s customer reference... Read More

Last week we met up with Charlie Kindel - @ckindel - one of the Microsoft execs driving the Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7) program. Our interest in WP7 is to use our Silverlight and .Net skills to build mobile experiences and apps for brands.... Read More

Metia has a flourishing SharePoint practice. They focus upon making SharePoint implementations more successful by improving end user experiences (designing better UIs); building bespoke tools and applications to improve the efficiency of collaboration;... Read More

Conversation Manager vs Community Manager by John Bell at Ogilvy. Microsoft: Back in the MIX. Developers, Developers, Developers Reprised by James Governor at Redmonk. B2B Sales Pros Turn to LinkedIn from eMarketeer. The Internet of Things by McKinsey... Read More

The Times and Sunday Times will be available on an iPAD application later this year. Prices still haven't been confirmed for the service, although it seems likely that this will be bundled up with the existing subscription offer of £2 (U.S.$3.00) per... Read More

Having just returned from SXSW and MIX10, where geo-location, social technologies and user experience were all big topics of conversation, I arrived back in London to find Metia Labs has just finished the Near.me project. Near.me uses the Foursquare... Read More

Back in the old days it was all so easy. The copywriter threw some text at the designer, the designer chucked it back in layout. The writer threw it back even harder, and ducked as the pages came back with some pretty tasty top spin. At the end of the... Read More

Now that we're all back from MIX and the inbox has been almost cleared I wanted to say a big thank you to everybody involved especially those that put on The Phizzpop Challenge.Unfortunately we didn't win but to get to the final three of a national competition... Read More

In the first in a series of tech podcasts, Richard Cookson from our AR team talk with David Metcalfe, director of Verdantix, an independent analyst firm specialising in climate change, sustainability and energy issues.    David and Richard... Read More

Today I lucked out. Every session has been great. I sat in on: The Web of Things workshop explained one scenario for building the web of things using internet protocols and standards, and featured seven demos connecting and controlling 'things' of various... Read More

Ok getting it a bit better now. Randomness is part the deal. Yesterday's personal highlights were: Robert Fabricant of Frog Design talking about his notion of Augmented Mindfulness as a tool for engineering better behaviours in healthcare. Resonated... Read More

                    I was invited along to the Dachis Group's Social Business Summit 2010 held in Austin on the eve of SXSW. Jeff Dachis had gathered a great ensemble of speakers - including... Read More

I'm just another badged up newbie at SXSW 2010. So, day one learnings for me were: The keynote sessions were best value. Doug Rushkoff was excellent, thoughtprovoking, just what I was looking for. At the end of the day the pugilistic Cuban vs... Read More

I'm really looking forward to MIX next week with what looks like a great schedule of sessions and as always the chance to meet up with a bunch of great, like minded people. This year should be extra exciting as our office here in Seattle has just been... Read More

There have been some considered and thoughtful posts on the implications of social media recently (and some silliness too). I like these two viewpoints for inspiring intelligent discussion on some of the practical issues arising... Read More

Who let the human in the building? In a slightly mind bending move Linden Labs, who built and run Second Life, acquired the Swedish company behind Avatars United, an online community for avatars, or more precisely, a community for the... Read More

Want to see a whole microsite experience squeezed into a teeny tiny banner ad? The Mass Effect 2 launch campaign is now live at MSN UK Gaming. What's all this about? See the previous post. World's first interactive and expandable banner ad (we reckon)... Read More

Normally I'd shy away from ever claiming a 'world's first' - someone, somewhere must surely have got there first? But in this instance we think we are on solid ground. Working with the team at Mediacom we have been busy putting the finishing touches... Read More

Business Insider carries a great story explaining how easy-peasy blogging platform Tumblr is outperforming its rival Posterous. According to the article it comes down to the simplicity of the Tumblr UX which is even clearer than its rival's pages. Of... Read More

The price of not blogging for three months (blame it on the end of financial year; Christmas; snow on the keyboard, whatever) is to have to sit and delete 52 pages of spam comments. Still some of them are noble attempts at English as a foreign language.... Read More