In the small hours of the night, a quiet street in Abbottabad, Lahore, Pakistan. Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant tweets a complaint about a helicopter over his building. Moments later an explosion. After a few more concerned tweets Sohaib comes to realise he just live tweeted the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.

Before ink was printed, ticker tapes updated and Presidential announcements made, a blogger broke the biggest story on Earth.

Blogging has an unsavoury taste. The word itself sounds like something that should be whispered in hushed tones under grimy toilet doors or found in rambling magazines next to articles on spelunking.

Though still relevant today, the etymology of the word seems archaic and plastic. Something dusty that belongs at the back of the shelf with Gideon bibles and Seattle fanzines of the early 90’s.

The idea that anyone can essentially be a “published” author is still a bone of contention for more traditional journalists and writers. The blog was seen as the death of honest writing. No longer were facts a pre-requisite for publication but a preference, the opinion was king and the fastest writer ruled. Like rival politicians speaking at a rally, facts and figures can fray and falter under the sharp knife of a cutting barb, old-boy charm or the mere mention of 9/11.

However, the mistake often made is in thinking that an online audience is a captive one.

It’s the same mistake that so many businesses make with their approach to social-media. Putting a “follow us on Twitter” icon on your homepage, without any plans to follow through with a considered strategy is as socially awkward as turning up to a houseparty that no one else has come to.

Yet still we blog. And through the torrents or words and witticisms, the gigabytes of rants and rallies, it’s the good writers that reign supreme. It is survival of the fittest on a binary level. Only the strongest survive and only the best are allowed to write again.

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James Bond went back to basics when the writers found that they couldn’t write technology and gadgets fast enough. As soon as they had come up with a good idea and gotten it to screen, it already existed or something more impressive was available. The rate of technical advancement on film is never more prevalent than when it involves The Internet.

The Internet on film is a tumultuous thing. The greatest (and arguably most hilarious) example of this is the 1995 Sandra Bullock cluster-fuck that is “The Net”. Even the name is engineered with an ominous po-faced dread.

Of course, this is a film that came out when nobody really understood what the internet really was. Parents were manipulated by the media into believing that chat-rooms were paedophilic grooming grounds ready to steal and pillage your children. The histrionics leading to a palpable sense of panic leading parents to believe that even if you weren’t a child, the paedophiles would somehow lull you into a childlike state of consciousness, and then take advantage of you!

This was a time when an association with The Internet was held with the same vexed reverence usually reserved for the creepy kid in class, pressing his doughy face against the fogged glass of the girls’ changing room.

It’s no wonder that the fear zeitgeist of The Internet was soon exploited by Hollywood in The Net, instantly misunderstanding the appeal of online and making a cack-handed cyber thriller that revolved around the central conceit that information on the internet can be changed.

And, just like the once wonderful laptop that is now gathering dust in the loft, The Net was looking creaky and tired within months of release. No one in the world, let alone Hollywood had predicted the technological revolution that The Internet would go through, and soon enough even the term “the net” was a bi-gone thing, banished to the darkest recesses of the basement along with terms like “The information super highway”.

It’s not all doom and gloom however, from amongst the Johnny Neumonics and The Nets came one of the gems of the 90’s. A film so perfectly cool it still stands up today.

Hackers.

Released in the same year as The Net, Hackers had a heartbreakingly cool cast of young actors from Johnny Lee Miller to a feisty teenage nobody called Angelina Jolie. The story revolves around Dade Murphy, a child hacking prodigy banned from using a computer or ATM till his 18^th birthday. Now living in New York, Dade makes friends with the local hackers and sets about a classic good vs. bad romp through cyber space, high school and house parties.

One of the master strokes of Hackers and one that would be mimicked in The Matrix four years later, was to re-invent what “hacking” or simply browsing the internet looked like. This side-step decision meant it never aged because it was never real. Excluding the few instances of hardware discussions or clunky laptops, Hackers embodies the dream of what hacking could be. The reality of hacking is relatively dull and tedious, however, through the lens of the director Iain Softley we’re treated to servers that look like tower blocks, Da Vinci Vitruvian inspired computer viruses and ridiculous hacking nicknames.

Hackers approach to understanding the audience and the appeal in a subject meant the end result was a perfectly conceived and ultimately fun movie, relishing in the teenage sense of rebellion and anarchic jubilation that the planet, could indeed be hacked!

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The Rate of Development

The rate of technological advancement today is an amazing thing. As a society we have become so used to phones becoming faster, thinner and lighter that we forget how incredible they are. We don’t just speculate on the invention of faster WiFi speeds, but know they are inevitable; we just have to wait for them.

If Ford cars were developed at the same rate as the home PC, the average family car would travel at the speed of light.

As a gangly child comprised mainly of Haribo and knees I would watch programmes like Tomorrow’s World, where invention and technology were presented as speculation and guess work. Robots for the home and amazing products that were shown to us were in reality expensive prototypes that probably didn’t even work.

I specifically remember being told that video telephones would be commonplace by 1995, leading me to spend three years impatiently waiting, pressing my face against the windows of Dixons waiting their guaranteed arrival. It’s 2011 and Apple are still plugging away trying to make video calling stick. One of the impressive things about the rate of advancement today is that tech is being created before our eyes and on the marketplace before we can even believe it’s possible.

Smarter than Sci-Fi

There is nothing more satisfying for a species than not just beating science fiction, but improving on it and advancing beyond that of the greatest fiction writers.

Minority Report is a great example of this. In the film we see Tom Cruise standing before an enormous screen; rotating, zooming and moving images and videos around using special gloves. Last year’s X-Box Kinnect delivered this same level of functionality but without the need for silly gloves. Not even the minds of sci-fi Hollywood could conceive of cameras able to read your body, pick out what phalanges make up your hands and the actions that those hands are giving.

In the same film we see Tom Cruise walking through a mall as adverts and promotions pop out at him. Granted, this was presented with seemingly impossible floaty 3D graphics; but the concept of optimised promotions being presented to you in the real world is a reality that isn’t in the far distant future. It’s here and now and ready to download. It’s the unbelievable and unbelievably cool world of Augmented Reality.

Reality 2.0

Augmented reality, a term so awesome you want to slip it into every sentence for just sounding so damn Space Age. Essentially, it’s the term used for viewing a live indirect view of the world through a computer device. The possibilities of augmented reality (yep, I used it again) are mind expandingly exciting with only the limitations of the imagination to stop us.

There are loads of Smartphone Apps coming out that utilise AR (I’ve now turned it into a buzzy abbreviation). Most are a little clunky but some are truly breathtaking, highlighting a world where reality is improved with helpful information and clever devices.

The Word Lens App uses the high def camera of the iPhone4 with clever Optical Character Recognition to translate languages in situ. Not only are you being provided with the correct translation but it changes the font and text on the sign so it looks like a sign in English. Genius!

Street maps and navigational AR Apps mean you can see your route laid out before your very eyes with directions and information overlaid onto the street you’re walking down.

There are apps to guide you to where you parked your car, avoiding crime hot spots, where bunkers are on a golf course and one great app that details fire escape routes and plans in the event of an office fire.

Changing the High street

In terms of E-commerce AR can literally change the face of the high street. Holding a camera up to your favourite high street store could provide you with live special offers and promotional codes exclusive to your location. ‘Deals of the day’ and live promotions would improve the High Street shopping experience, increasing footfall and revenue. Window displays and signage could be optimised based  on your shopping history. Currently store windows display a wide variety of choices and promotions, so that they cover as broad a spectrum as possible. Displays now have the potential to change, showing me a huge range of products based on my shopping history.

The next stage could be to take that AR high street experience into the store. Holding your Smartphone up to a certain product could provide you with live product information, accurate pricing and promotions. Information about the fabric and how it was ethically-sourced can be provided in real time. Cross-promotional selling could tell you which clothes go well together, possible accessories or “get the full look” special offers.

With the next generation of Smartphones featuring chips for wireless cash transactions, your entire shopping experience could take place on your Smartphone. Swiping your phone at the checkout is an efficient way to pay and could even factor in promotional codes picked up from the AV outside

This is the reality now, and coming. Tomorrow’s World is so yesterday.

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Human beings are visual creatures. This in itself is far from revolutionary as a statement. From Mad Men advertising through to intuitive app design it’s the instant sale for any product or website. We’ll drop from a website like sparked out fruit flies from a strip light if we simply dislike a layout, we may not realise we’ve done it, but we’re gone and onto the next site before even thinking about why we left. It just didn’t “feel right”. We instantly judge a multi-million dollar website with the same instant gut reaction we judge an ugly blind date back lit by poor disco lighting.

This is why we have usability seminars, UX designers that eat up your development budget with wireframes and homepage strategy. However, one of the smallest but most important buttons on your website is often the most overlooked. The Call-to-Action button, the “Buy Now” and “Find out More”. I could write reams on the size and wording of this, the psychological differences in the wording of Buy or Order. However, I want to specifically focus on colour.

In your business, the colour of the call to action button can often be dictated by a Machiavellian graphic designer intent on their “vision” being realised, board (and bored) directors who simply like the colour Puce or like most people, just doing what Amazon do.

Colour is the important aspect of the Call to Action button, it “speaks” to us and creates a reaction on a level beyond reason that has everything to do with the animal inside us and nothing to do with Good Housekeeping or what the coolest Shoreditch agency tells us.

It’s simple colour theory made modern and the same rules apply. Rules dictated by Johannes Itten in the Bauhaus still apply to this day.

Red is danger, if your buttons are red you are alerting your users to a problem. Stop, wait, don’t proceed. Far from the perfect response you want to invoke in impulse buy decisions.

Yellow draws friendly attention, on the light scale it’s hitting your eyes first. But can look anaemic on a white background.

Blue is calm and considerate, but too soft and you placate your user, you’re not stopping them in their tracks, but making them think. Johannes said that blue was the colour of faith and hope, and creates a contemplative reaction inside us. Do I want this Glee box set? Should I be watching re-runs of American teenagers singing pop hits on a Friday night instead of going down to the pub with my friends? Do I have any friends left after I started watching Glee so damn much?

Green. Easy on the eyes, positive and the official colour of GO! Natural and earth friendly but not inspiring in the way you want to make a 27 year old man buy a Glee box set. Green is the colour of testimonials, to sell insurance and point to help and support.

Pink, a mixture of Red that stops and Blue that makes you think. A reaction colour-cocktail in our brains that makes us aggressively THINK, and no self respecting person wants to think that hard about whether to buy a USB dongle shaped like a dog that humps the side of your laptop.

Orange combines the passion of red but with the cheerful nature of yellow. This in turn potentially creates the perfect colour for your call to action.

No surprise then, it’s what Amazon use.

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It’s conference season again and Minerva IT are trailing through the avenues of cubicles from the latest digital marketers to the revolutionaries claiming salvation in social media strategies.

Yet again, social media seems the hot topic of the year with more and more businesses being lured into the realms of Twitter and Facebook as the saving grace of their business.

But like Colin Firth’s stuttering King facing a stadium of people, when you have an audience of millions, all talking at once, what do you say to get their attention?

The reality of social media after the hype and the buzz fade really seems to be a story of the customer service experience. Traditionally a company knew that customer experience meant a call centre. Like the brave Spartans at Thermopylae, a few brave telephone customer services operatives could hold off wave after wave of calls by only allowing the single avenue of a phone number on a website.

The realm of the social world breaks down these barriers and means companies have to move from siege mentality to open combat, no longer waiting for a call to come in with a problem but going out and finding the issue. Prowling Twitter for people talking about your company and meeting them halfway, turning their bad day positive by getting in touch with a solution to their ripped t-shirt or damaged ring binder.

The role of the customer service agent is now to belay expectations by proactively fixing the customer’s problems before they get in touch with you.

The more avenues of communication a company opens, means the more they can meet their customers and create a conversation. The brand takes upon itself the role of the individual with its own sense of humour and morals and introduces itself to its customers. The more avenues of conversation the more issues can be resolved and the more “friends” made.

So what is normal behaviour for a business and what should they be doing online? The overall consensus seems to be 75% customer service, 15% marketing and 10% conversation.

Engage, resolve and then make friends for life.

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Unbelievable collaborative street art project, represneting the entire history, evolution and destruction of the world!

It’s a little long but well worth watching to the end, the ideas, patience and skill here are incredible!

BIG BANG BIG BOOM

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How many SEO experts does it take to change a light bulb, lightbulb, light, bulb, lamp, lighting, switch, sex…

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After months of design and development, Minerva are close to launching the brand new website for Dragons’ Den star Theo Paphitis.

We thought we’d pull back the curtain to Minerva’s design stages to explain the evolution of the new website.

The first stage of design

Stage 1 – Look and Feel

There’s no point spending weeks on coding before even previewing the site to the client. Stage one established the ideas we’d like to introduce alongside the overall look and feel of the site.

Using an initally dark pallete with strong images and clear signposting we create a new user experience to the site, allowing simple navigation and bold images.

We also introduce a top navigation bar and web standard footer navigation.

The second stage of design - homepage

Stage 2 – Homepage

For stage two we looked into imporving the homepage.

Additional content and cross selling for Theo’s book improves SEO and gives the user an idea of what to expect from the website.

The website ratio is also brought into a more standardised format to account for screen ratios and mobile devices.

Final Stage of design

Stage 3 – Final Stage

The final stage polishes the graphics and brings in the additional content provided by Theo’s PR and Marketing team.

The content boxes are rounded to soften the page and links appear in a bight contrasting colour. Navigation spans across the top of the page giving clear inidication of current page and further information.

A slideshow has also been added that opens in an animated lightbox. We also include links to Theo’s facebook and twitter pages to increase the viral and social networking side of the site.

Next Stage…

Over the next few months we will also be looking to enchance the social media interacitivty of the site with a homepage based Twitter feed and also a categorised news feed.

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Happy Birthday to Dave our head of technical development, founder, manager, CEO and trouble maker!

Another year older and a little bit wiser, a little like yoda but not so green.

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We’re excited to be working with Metlwater News to intorduce a new newsfeed live and updating directly onto Theo Pahitis.com. This will automatically update the website with breaking news on Theo, his investments, business news and other bits and pieces that are relevant!

Exciting! Hopefully get this up and going as quickly as possible!

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