The site is the brain-child of Maura Donohoe, who’s got lot’s of experience in the area – she’s been a teacher for over 20 years, and running a school-book shop for over 6….so she’s going to be able to help anyone that runs into any school-book related problems.

They wanted the site to be a little different to the school-book sites that are out there at the moment. Be sure to keep an eye on the easyschoolbooks blog; they’ve also got a home on Facebook & Twitter, so check them out & say hello.

Irish Hackerspaces Week

Is being run by 091Labs from August 15th – 22nd. They’ve got lots of events on every day (I’m hoping to make the Ruby workshop) – you can find out more on the 091Labs site, and see the full listing of events on their Events & Workshops page.

BlogTalk 2010

This looks like a really interesting conference; they’ve got some very big names coming on the 26 & 27th of August. Here’s a sample of who’s lined up:

• Dan Gillmor (director, Knight Center): Activist consumers and responsible media creators in a networked age
• Stowe Boyd (social tools authority): Social media blur: blogs, networks are turning into real-time streams
• Don Thibeau (director, OpenID): Open identity for open government
• Charles Dowd, Sonia Flynn (Facebook): The Facebook Platform
• Ade Oshineye (Google): Social networks versus conversational networks
• Blaine Cook (BT, ex-Twitter lead developer): Webfinger: using your email for portable identity on the Web
• Fergus Hurley (founder/CEO, Clixtr): From Galway to Silicon Valley: Building a consumer Internet startup
• Ted Vickey (former director of the White House athletic center): Social media and LinkedIn for business
• Werner Breitfuss (Hypios) – The impact of social media on expert finding strategies
• Laurent Walter Goix (Telecom Italia) – Context-aware mobile social web
• Declan Elliott (091 Labs) – Open community labs, creative spaces and DoOcracy
• Darragh Doyle (boards.ie) – boards.ie: who are we, what do we do, and where are we going?

There are 1 day and two-day tickets available – I’ve got my eye on the Thursday sessions. Find out more on the BlogTalk site.

IgniteTheWest

IgniteTheWest is coming to 091Labs on the 10th of September, so it’ll be a nice warm-up for anyone that’s coming to Galway for the weekend (Bizcamp Galway is on the next day).

I wasn’t familiar with the Ignite setup – the background to it is:

Fast-paced, fun, thought-provoking, social, local, global—Ignite is all of these and more. It’s a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea—and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd. Run by local volunteers who are connected through the global Ignite network, Ignite is a force for raising the collective IQ and building connections in each city. And, via streaming and archived videos of local talks, local Ignites share all that knowledge and passion with the world

They have a registration page for people that want to sign up for talks.

Bizcamp Galway

There are still tickets available for Bizcamp on Saturday September 11th. They’ve been going surprisingly fast, so if you’re interested, get your name down. There are also still slots available for people to sign up to speak.

Enjoy!

I’ve been to those run in Dublin and Limerick in the past, and they’ve been a worthwhile trip. It can be a great place to meet mix of like-minded people – from those who have been through the mill of setting up their own businesses, to those who are thinking about taking the first jump.

The idea behind BizCamp is that it’s a user-generated conference – that means that there are no expensive invited speakers, it’s a free conference, and it’s up to those attending to share what they know with the audience (not sales pitches). You can sign up for a talk on the Speaker Registration page (it’s as easy as entering your name, email, and a title & short description of your talk).

If you’re not sure about giving a talk, you can still register to attend over on the Bizcamp Galway site. This  is also one of those times when letting people you know that it’s coming would be great – there’s a lot of empty registration forms to fill, but they won’t be empty for long.

See you there.

This was one of those enjoyable projects. Not only were the team in Social Bits easy to work with, they knew what they didn’t want, and were very open to hearing options & alternatives on things that would work. A great mix.

One of the joys of this type of work is that you get to know the business & services of the people you work with quite well; semantic web technology is one of those things that I had heard about, but never spent any time trying to understand. Having worked with the Social Bits team, learning more about it has definitely become more of a priority.

Social Bits have a number of events coming up, with one in particular that struck me as being a nice idea: a discounted workshop on Social Media for the Unemployed.

Putting it all together

With these type of posts, I’d normally leave it there, but I’ve recently read some useful posts that have given a bit more depth on how the design came about.  As this was one of the (admittedly uncommon!) cases where the design of the site didn’t change radically from the first set of sketched drawings through to the live version. I though showing how it came about would be nice.

On paper

After talking with the team about what was needed, I spent some time coming up with some layouts on paper, and trying to figure out how to get the messages across. For the homepage, there were two that seemed to work well (the one that’s closest to the end result is below). And no. Drawing isn’t my strong point.

To Balsamiq

When I had a few different directions that I wanted to try out on paper, it was off to Balsamiq. Balsamiq is a tool for quickly creating mock-ups of interfaces. It’s really simple to use and is excellent is what it does; if you do front-end web work and haven’t checked it out, you really should.

So, I grabbed a 12 column 960.gs grid for Balsamiq and off I went. After I had played around with the layouts I had in mind, it came down to two that had some slight differences, but they were both headed in the very similar directions; the main difference was in the amount of information being presented.

After having a chat with the Social Bits folks, we ended up with a layout that was mix of the two versions. Once that was decided, I went to work on developing a look for the site.

Looking good

As this was a re-design, there was a logo already. So using that as the starting point for the look of the site made sense. From there, it was about coming up with a look that put across the message we wanted in as clear a way as possible. So we ended up with:

Not just skin deep

We had some of the copy worked out early on, so at this stage it was all about pulling it all together and polishing it up. This was done while I got my hands dirty coding up the custom WordPress theme for the site & blog.

Fin

And the end result is live at socialbits.net. Go. See.

Spotify Playlists

One of the nice features is the ability to create and share playlists – it’s a great way of discovering new music. However, Spotify don’t (as far as I know) give subscribers a place to share their playlists. I’ve started using a Twitter search to find playlists, and it’s working great – because so many people tweet their playlists you’re never stuck for some good music to listen to. It’s how I’ve been starting my work day for the last couple of weeks: open spotify, search on Twitter for a new playlist to kick things off , start work…

Discovering Playlists via Twitter

To make the whole thing easier, I’ve done a little Twitter search app to look for Spotify listings (you can find it at spoteye.ambientage.com. If you check that out, you’ll get 100 playlists that people have shared through Twitter to keep you entertained. It’s storing playlists for about 10 minutes, so there is usually a good turnover of new music.

More features….maybe

This was a short project that solved one small problem for me (finding playlists), so there is some room for improvement. At the moment it’s displaying only the first 100 play-lists found.  I have a version running that loads more automatically from a database. It also collects the hash  tags people use to describe their playlists too – they could be published to give a way of narrowing down the playlists.

Building Small

Building this was a one day project that was part experimentation, but mainly just solving a small problem for myself.

Taking on small projects like that are a great way of learning things that may not come up in a paid project. In a way it goes against the fundamental idea of business (creating a product or service with a business model capable of generating revenue), but sometimes value can come in other ways. The experience of creating something new can sometimes be just as valuable. I’ve done a few small Twitter search applications, and the access Twitter give to huge amounts of real-time, user-generated content can lead to really useful things (this may or may-not be be one of them!).

I also want to credit longUrlPlease for providing a great service that expands the many shortened urls found on Twitter. Without it I would have been wary of publishing lots of shortened links without any way for the user to see where they went. I came across longUrlPlease when reviewing the applicants for Outvesting (I didn’t give them any of my points, but I wish I had now. Sorry guys!).

As always, any feedback & ideas for improvement would be great – leave a comment here or through the app’s form, or get me on Twitter @davkell

The idea was for something that was easy to use and let people play using a service that they’re already familiar with. Playing is as simple as following the Twg.ie Twitter account where each day you’ll get an anagram to solve; be the fastest to solve it and you hit the top of the leader-board.  Told you it was easy.

Even though the game targets quite a niche audience, Alan’s idea of a word game like this on top of the Twitter platform seems obvious now. There’s a large enough user base on Twitter to make targeting a narrow niche possible, it’s a text-based interface making it suitable for a word-game, and Twitter’s real-time search makes it possible for players to interact on Twitter & see a near real-time leader-board of others playing the game on the twg.ie site.

You probably won’t be seeing my name on the Twg.ie leaderboard too soon – I discovered when developing it that solving anagrams quickly isn’t a talent I have (even in the 24 hours Twg.ie gives you). If you fancy testing yourself, check out the Twg.ie site.

Golden Egg wanted a way to replace their old family of sites which were originally designed as static brochures for each of their magazines.  As a producer of high-quality content, these static sites weren’t doing them justice, and weren’t giving readers a reason to return to the site. Instead, they wanted a site that was clean & easy to use, that put the magazines’ articles & readers to the fore, and was easy to update with new content daily.

In addition to the sections they’ve traditionally done in their magazines (like Beauty, Style, People & Parties, Food & Wine and What’s On), Golden Egg have started to embrace the web by getting more interactive with their readers by using features like a blog by their Deputy Editor, a monthly newsletter, and some other new features that will be making an appearance over the next few weeks!

There’s a separate design for the Fashion Innovation Awards section of the site – the finalists for each of the award categories were announced last week, and tickets for the Awards ceremony in March also just went on sale – more details are available on the site.

If you’re interested in keeping up with what’s going on, need some style in your life, or fancy a read of some of their features, check out the new Golden Egg site!

This is a one-year programme providing entrepreneurs with business skills, networks, facilities and supports necessary to navigate and execute the business start-up process….The MWEP provides participants with business acumen, office desk space, mentoring, networking, facilities, and supports necessary to help them in establishing and running their own businesses. Participants should have a business idea with growth and export potential.

There’s some more information on the programme brochure [pdf] (including profiles of two recent companies that came through it two years ago – eMedia and Active Mind).

Ambient Age has been one of the participants in the 2009 programme which is coming to an end in the next couple of months, and if you have an idea for a business, the MWEP is a good way of helping you to get it off the ground.

… buildings will be open for a time for special tours given by hundreds of professionals and enthusiasts, who generously volunteer their time. All events are free, and entry is on a first-come basis, with certain events requiring pre-booking. This is your festival and what you think matters.

You can preview the buildings on the site, and make bookings for any that may require it. If you’ve got a young family, there’s also a Children’s event being run in the Galway City Museum to keep them entertained!

It’s a simple & effective idea – users take a simple (eh, little) quiz every week. Get the 3 questions correct, and win a nice prize. Sign-up to the mailing list, and if you’re name comes out of the hat…win a prize.

For businesses, if you sponsor a quiz you’re getting access to the student market in a way that gets them engaged with your website.

There’s also a Littlequiz blog, packed full of money saving tips & tricks to help poor students through the college year. So, what are you waiting for? Go. Now. Win things.