In 30 seconds I managed to kiss Kate Silverton, Sarah Falkland and receive – on behalf of the IE team – ‘The Creative City Award 2008/9’ for ‘Best Brand’! Not bad going.

We’re a familiar sight at ‘The Creative City Awards’ – shortlisted 4 times for awards – and now winners!

It was a great night. Certainly the best of the past 4 years – not least due to the excellent work of Aquila, whose video work, graphics and titles all added an additional splash of style to an already glamorous evening. Video due to be uploaded today.

IE were also shortlisted to win the ‘Outstanding Innovation Award’ for our work on ‘Periscope’ – IE’s online studio management system, launched just a few weeks ago at the Plus International Design Festival. Find out more and get yourself a 40 day free trial at the Periscope website.

It’s been great to see Birmingham waking up, over the last 5 or so years, to the importance of its creative sector – an industry that now accounts for nearly 10% of the city’s economy.

Alongside our ever-increasing strength in web and interactive media, branding has always been right at the creative heart of IE’s service offering. To win an award for our own brand is genuinely flattering. It’s one thing to successfully build our client’s brands but so many creatives neglect their own.

A strong IE brand means a more visible business and that means it’s easier to reach our clients and easier to recruit great creatives. Competition is fierce and knowing what we stand for – innovation and excellence – really makes a massive difference.

IE was born and bred in Birmingham. To stand amongst the 400-or-so members of Birmingham’s creative community attending the Creative City Awards 2008/9 and be celebrated as an example of excellence was almost as exciting as kissing Kate!

One of my favourite blogs, ReadWriteWeb, has an interesting commentary on IBM’s latest ‘Next Five in Five’ list- five big things that are going to happen within technology in the next five years. They’re excited about the ‘Talking Web’, already an emerging use of voice technology from boundary pushers like Google. Their Google Mobile App for the iPhone can accurately translate your speech into search queries. While something of a novelty, the potential for exciting new applications is real, and the groundwork is complete.

Voice is a great medium for input when you take into account the speed of transmission; most people can speak faster than they can type, and in terms of accessibility, those with physical impairments can accurately and quickly dictate their intentions. On the flip-side, how does your website cope with multiple languages, accents or even speech impediments? Can you afford to add voice functionality to your application, as well as maintaining standard keyboard and mouse inputs?

To happen in the next five years I think that developers need to do a really solid job of applying the technology, or it’ll enter the already laughable realm of automated phone lines such as ticket booking lines or change of address systems - that’s right TV licensing, I said the number SIX three times and you still didn’t get it!

I think the most fundamental question, one everybody can answer, is this: If the web could talk to you, would you talk back?

“Lorem ipsum” Is something I’ve been interacting with and passing to clients for approval almost everyday of my 10 years as a graphic designer but yet I still don’t know what it means. Surely it means something?

Lorem ipsum is the beginning of a passage commonly used as dummy text or placeholder text by designers to mock-up a page layout, or a web page for a visual presentation.  It’s used to show how the type will look, font, size, layout, before the actual copy is available.

lorem ipsum can also be a useful tool to direct the focus to the look and feel of a visual presentation and away from the textual content, as when presented with a design for a page layout for example the viewer tends to focus on the textual content rather than the overall presentation.

It’s also known as “greeking,” perhaps as a nod to the phrase “it’s all Greek to me.” Its ‘words’ supposedly approximate the frequency with which letters occur in English, and at a glance look pretty real, although I would argue that it feels over punctuated.

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Some time ago I was asked by the directors here at IE to explain what Flex was, how it was different to Flash, and why I had been using it in some of our interactive projects. My initial attempt, off the top of my head, was poor - I quickly discovered that it’s not an easy concept to explain!

I was encouraged, therefore, to see that Adobe have also realised that it is confusing to those who aren’t geeked-up on all things Flash, and relaunced the Flash Platform label at their Max conference last week. The Flash Platform brings together all the different technologies that contribute to Flash-based projects, as shown in this handy diagram.

So having failed to explain it properly the first time, I did then go away and think about it and wrote an explanation of the way I understand it, which I have copied below. I seem to have unwittingly explained some of the other parts of the Flash Platform as well.

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How wonderful to see the TES giving top level exposure to the use of banned technologies in the classroom. And I’m not talking about tasers, CS gas or pepper sprays as implements for controlling undesirable behaviour in the classroom.

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