Take Google Street View with its panoramic navigation, integrate the standard orthographic maps, add other interactive location specific data, such as shop names, building/house numbers or landmarks and smoothly animate in and out to a side-on navigation system for rapidly whizzing around the streets – that’s Microsoft’s new Street Slide, I think it’s pretty impressive.

Get more info here… http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/street_slide/index.html

If only I could have it on my iPhone

Louis x

Yesterday we came runners up in the Crain’s Best Places to Work 2010 but—perhaps more importantly—we won the best dressed table award with a beautiful desert island-themed display.

I didn’t go to the awards lunch, but judging from everyone’s rosy, alcohol-tinged demeanours afterwards, those who did had a great time.

—Ben

A very special guest will be at the big chips tonight to officially launch this year’s Byte Night in aid of Action for children.  They are calling for the good people of the Digital and IT world to join them for an organized sleep out to raise money and awareness to prevent young people from sleeping rough on our streets.

Code did this last year, it was fascinating and extremely rewarding (and actually quite a lot of fun although I’m not sure we are meant to say that).

Please convince those around you to sign up and be there for THE sleeping rough event of the year, we will be doing it again, and would really like to share the experience with other folks from the industry.

We are really happy to answer any questions about what it was here on the phone if you need convincing, but here is a quick description of the what last year was like, if you want to see more photos you can here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/codecomputerlove/sets/72157622513956310/

Basically we turned up on the night with sleeping bags and lots of warm clothes. They fed and looked after us with quizzes a bar and a few talks from the youngsters that they have and are helping to stay off the streets. At 12 they kicked everyone outside with a survival bag and an umbrella.

Everyone found a spot and set up their little make shift camps (no sleeping mats or tentage allowed I’m afraid). There was a quiet corner for those that just want to get their heads down, the whole area was cordoned off by some friendly security guards who kept their eyes on us. Most of the Code lot stayed up chatting, drinking and generally prating around until the early hours when people starting to slope off to try and get some sleep (some where better at this than others – Mark Sharp) At six Action for children lay on some breakfast and everyone sloped off home back to their nice warm houses.

Obviously the commitment to this event isn’t just about sleeping rough it is also about raising money. We did this on an individual level an as a company, doing stuff like; cooking for everyone, jumble sales, selling donuts, baking you name it. They say on the website that the target is for £500 per person. This is just a target and as a total group 12 of us raised about £5300. I spoke to Action for children about the £500 target which on the face of it sounds a bit scary, they said it was just a target and wouldn’t want it putting people off getting involved. I think you should be committing to at least £200 per person if you are going to sign up though so that they can cover the costs of the event and raise enough money to make it worth while.

So far we have spoken to the guys at CTI and BJL who have said they would be keen, come on and join in, its just one little night in the cold…

If you are interested then more info on how to sign up here.

There’s a lot of confusion and polarised opinion about what impact the iPad will have on digital marketing.

With a passion for everything digital, we couldn’t wait to get their hands on the iPad to see what all the hype was about and to personally evaluate how it will shape digital strategies for their clients in the future.

And having played around with it during its inaugural week in the UK (all in the name of research of course); here’s what us straight talking digital marketing experts at Code think about the iPad.

Read the rest of this page »

For most brands, how they interact and maintain relationships with consumers is high on the list of priorities for improvement. Offline relationships with consumers have always been hard to maintain. Luckily the internet now provides a faster, more open way to start and develop relationships with consumers.

Content is King. The creation and distribution of content for big brands encourages consumers to engage more with the brand and increases awareness online.

Content can exists in many forms, however using the correct type of content to strengthen and grow brands is key:

Journalist/professionally written pieces — these are particularly good for drawing people into dialogue with your brand and offer a significant value for your consumers. It needs to be driven by audience needs and wants and with a creative input is very effective for driving traffic through SEO.

Conversations — these are happening now. You can influence them, start them, respond to them or just be aware of them. These happen via social media (SM) or your own community sites. They could be shared experience, pictures, video or just chatter. Becoming a trusted contributor to these conversations can change the way a consumer perceives a brand and will assist in brand awareness. You just need to know what people are saying and where.

Social currency (apps, widgets, games, viral content) — in essence things that your consumers value, that entertain them or that make their life a bit easier and that they want to share with their networks through SM. These types of content can grow the visibility of a brand online when delivered successfully. The success is dependent on the creation of a captivating idea and extended distribution.

The first step to sourcing and creating this kind of great content is listening to your market. Through the use of monitoring tools, such as Radian6, it is possible to obtain an in-depth understanding of what is being said about your brand, your competitors and what’s hot that you have authority and permission to tap into.

Once you understand this you can create a rolling content strategy to help you start conversations, know where to have them and what content will push the right buttons.

As things evolve so quickly online, constant evaluation and monitoring is required. Monitor changes in perception as well more obvious metrics like traffic, downloads and of course attributable sales. Amend what isn’t working and clean up. Irrelevant and out of date content is as bad as none at all.

Pushing content online encourages brand exposure and growth. With the right idea and intense monitoring, content can become one of the main factors to maintaining loyalty with your online consumers.

—Tim