Glitch & Drone composed a piece for Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science. During a great day, visitors to the museum’s “About Time” day of events could tinker with the composition using an iPad, recomposing the piece on the fly.

Read more about how we did it on the Glitch & Drone blog

With Christmas just around the corner, my wife and I produced a cute video Christmas message for Estates Today’s client Vicinitee. Based on my wife’s concept, and Vicinitee’s core strength of software for commercial property, we created a festive gingerbread cityscape.

The video plays to the idea that Vicinitee create amazing software from raw ingredients.

Lots of baking, decorating and one cat-related disaster we should draw a veil over later, the finished product is really very sweet:

There were loads of different skills involved in this:

• Concept work
• Sketching
• Baking
• Setup & lighting
• Filming (a Nikon D90 DSLR)
• Video editing (iMovie)
• Bespoke music (Logic Express)

Update: The message is now live

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Update 26.10.11. They’re getting there!

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Nokia is on the ropes. With their Symbian OS basically discontinued and no announced Windows Phone 7 phones, why would you buy a Nokia Smartphone? If I was a shareholder (and I’m not), I would not be happy to see Nokia’s homepage. It’s dated, and most importantly, there’s no mention of the new products they need to take back their place as the world’s leading phone-maker.

Indeed, it looks like Samsung, and soon Apple may overtake them.

So with that in mind, and with the proviso that this is completely made up, I’ve redone the Nokia homepage to show what I, as a theoretical shareholder would like to be seeing.

This amounts to little more than:

- A shipping date for a Windows Phone 7 phone (the mythical “Waltz”). This should be soon (July 1 in my example – it’s mid-June as I write this).

- A simplified product line; a single Win Pho 7 phone and more basic devices

- Some acknowledgement that Nokia needs a new website

- A courting of developers

And so, without further ado, the design (click for a big version):

Metropolis (http://www.metroinfo.co.uk) are a UK leads generation bureau delivering high quality intelligence on company relocation and construction opportunities. To deliver extra value to their subscriber base we at Estates Today have developed a London-centric iPhone App for their unique service.

The App elegantly delivers the Metropolis stories to the subscriber base while preserving the filters used in the web application. We added a simple favourites system and push notification to make the most of the mobile environment. We think their subscriber base will love it!

Design-wise, we’ve kept the design in the Metropolis flat colours, rather than going for the native iOS style, which enhances the client’s identity and keeps the look simple and elegantly utilitarian.

Subscribers to Metropolis can expect to be able to take advantage of this exciting new offering in the very near future!

Next week sees the property world’s great and good gather for their annual event in Cannes. MIPIM can be an overwhelming experience, so we at Estates Today have created the MIPIM Aggregator, which tracks various Twitter feeds, blog posts and also allows you to find you way around Cannes after the inevitable late night drinkies.

New for 2011 is the mobile version, based on JQuery Mobile, which seems pretty robust for what is an alpha release. JQuery Mobile allows your web pages to behave more like a native app, but has the advantage that it works across iOS, Android and the posher Blackberries too. There’s a great intro to JQuery Mobile over at Elated.com written by Matt Doyle which saved me loads of time.

You can see the MIPIM Aggregator at: http://www.estatestoday.co.uk/MIPIM/

An interesting point. We spent ages looking for a decent sniffer to allow a seamless experience between desktop and mobile, and in the end went for this hosted solution from HandsetDetection.com. Seems to work brilliantly so far.

Over on Elated, I’ve set out my stall for a next-generation digital design tool which I imagine could one day replace Photoshop. I spend a fair bit of time moaning about Photoshop as regards its use as a design tool, and it seemed important and fair to suggest an alternative approach, and be more constructive.

So, if the idea of a design tool with multi-page layouts, stylesheets and wireframing appeals to you, head on over to Elated.com and read the article. Then make a noise so that a developer hears about it!

This week sees the launch of a new bespoke music composition and sound design service from myself and Scott Billings, aka The Wonderland Project. The idea is to tie together all we know about design and branding from our perspectives as a designer and design writer, with our combined passion for music.

From the site:

“Sound affects us. It is instinctive and emotional, yet cerebral and intellectual. Sound influences how people feel about the other things they are experiencing.

We help organisations and brands to harness this power of sound, creating bespoke material composed to suit context, content and audience.”

Read more about our new music composition service, Glitch and Drone at the site.

Freebird

Originally uploaded by simonmeek

The gulls, the composition, the diners. Sometimes you just get lucky.

In a rare moment of productivity, The Wonderland Project have released an actual record. Well, I say record, because that’s the concept my befuddled aged mind can deal with. A long player, certainly. It’s called “Tomato Soup & Ghosts”, and it’s out now.

And in the spirit of helping with the national debt, we’re giving it away for free on the site!

Download “Tomato Soup & Ghosts” now.

It’s an interesting release from our point of view, underlining what we always felt about the first record – that we’re songwriters first and foremost. Indeed, this new record is almost entirely devoid of the synths, beats and twiddling of “The History of Science”. Instead, it’s mostly acoustic guitar and singing. Almost a folk record without all that tedious vocal flicking and cider.

I always thought that we made folk music anyway to be honest, in the sense that it’s music about folk.

A few thoughts on being a “proper” band.

This lp is not like the first, except that it was made by the same two people. One of those people (not me, obviously) was asking on Twitter this week whether we could be classed as a proper band, since we never actually play on stage. I suggested back that we could, because recording is no less valid than playing live. Essentially, I was getting at the fact that it’s our own preconditioning that makes us feel like we have to play live to be a “proper” band.

On reflection though, I realised that the clue’s in the name. We are The Wonderland Project. It’s a project, more than a band, and one which is for us more than it’s for other people to boot. That means that in turn we can play by our own rules and do whatever we like. We create our own validity.

With that in mind, you’ll likely see a third record at some point in the future; one which will probably be different again. Current discussions revolve around composition more than songwriting, and whether we can get the British Council to sponsor a jaunt abroad to do a lovely A/V show and drink wine.

We shall see.

Hot on the heels of version 1 comes the new Glasnost for iPhone, the enigmatically-named version 2.0. This is really a massive shift in how the mobile Glasnost21 experience works. Where v1 was a toe-in-the-water release, dealing only with Contact Management, the new version adds full Project and Image Management too.

You can add tasks, view documents, check your image galleries and generally work seamlessly when out and about. We’re giving it the marketing push of “Glasnost21 Reinvented”, and it really does feel like that. Take it for a spin today!

The Glasnost21 iPhone pages

Get it on iTunes