At Digerati Studio we love user centred design. Before drawing anything, we focus on the user and how they will use the website, product etc. Therefore, we need to pay close attention to detail as every user journey needs to be taken into account.

I saw a great example of this from Google today. On Google Maps there are huge potential of possible journeys. One that I thought would not be technically possible to create proved me wrong…….!

See instruction 23!

Adobe have unleashed their latest software suite - CS3. There is a huge range of updated software from the Adobe family and the recently acquired Macromedia family. Adobe have now also combined thier design software with their web development software.

We in the office are pleased to hear of the new release as our boys who have Intel based Macs will be able to run Adobe products natively on their machines!

www.zoom.in.com have a great article about the best new features of Photoshop CS3!

Read their article here

Even though I am one of the designers in our company, I do try to understand and keep up to date with the latest web technology to ensure I have a good understanding and relationship with our developers. This morning I read about this new web 2.0 service called Meebo, which is quite cool and so I wanted to share this with you. Basically it is a service allowing you to group all of your different messaging accounts and use them in a widget which you can create and customize on the Meebo site. The other very cool thing it allows you to do is it generates the html code, which you can easily copy into your own site, and so integrate your messaging account into any website.

check it out: Meebo

I just saw this great video that charts the evolution of the Web and discusses Web 2.0 and the current status of the Internet.

Techcrunch have a great article about the small group of bloggers who met up with Bill Gates to quiz him on the future of DRM. The bit I loved was how he talks about the look on Mr Gates’ face when he enters the room to see all the elite bloggers working on a mac!

Other bloggers involved were Steve Rubel, Molly Holzschlag, Ryan Stewart, Niall Kennedy and Liz Gannes.

Following Stuart’s blog on Apple’s excellent ad campaigning and good customer services, I found something online at www.technorati.com

If this is still up, there is an advert for the Microsoft Zune player, Microsoft’s big contender to Apple’s ipod. However, there seems to be a problem as it doesn’t link anywhere. In fact, worse still there appears to be typo linking to “ttp”. Oops!

If you are you reading this and affiliated with Microsoft in any way, please feel free to contact us here at Digerati Studio Limited for any technical support you may need.

At Digerati Studio Limited we value very highly User Centred Design. The design of a website, web application, mobile phone etc. should be centred around the user so that they can access what they want, and should they be new, it should be very clear to understand and use.

With this in mind, we ensure that we adopt the best technology to suit each individual project. However, not everybody has the same values as us. For example, www.msdewey.com is a new search engine made entirely in Flash. Flash is an excellent technology to incorporate specialist animation, video and audio. However, there are some things that get in the way when exploring a flash site.

In this example, the initial flaw is the loading time! When a user wants to search for something, they want instant information, they do not want to wait 30 seconds for the page to load before they submit their keywords for searching!

Secondly, once a search has been submitted, the user wants instant results in a layout that means they can instantly find what they are looking for, not watch a video sequence and then have a small window that only contains 3 results at any one time!

Finally, this site fails the WC3 outlines for accessibility, as non of the content in flash is accessible to screen readers!

Hopefully, this site is not pushing to be acknowledged as a serious search engine. But it is a great tool to help outline the errors in design that highlight why User Centred Design is so important!

Well……..The rumours quickly turned into reality as Google announced their $1.65bn takeover of You Tube Video Sharing Network. This is a big step and gamble for Google who are quickly becoming the Microsoft of the Internet. It will be interesting to see how Google implement the You Tube features into their Google brand - if they do indeed do this. Does this mean the end of Google video, or rather the start of something very exciting! One of the key reasons behind the takeover was the implementation of Google ads and the overhaul of the search engine within the videos.

This deal has also prompted many people to talk about a resurgence of the dotcom boom. There have been a number of high profile takeover of internet companies, such as myspace, skype and now you tube.

We haven’t, as yet, heard anything from the people at Google, but will be sure to inform you when the proceedings take place!

I recently got an email update from Business Link (government funded SME advice service) containing an article about Web 2.0. It is great to see them offering some good advice about Web 2.0 and a nice little description.

I just read this interesting article about a survey into the future of the Internet.

A very interesting subject. Have a read and see what you think.