Spinning the Web

“Ah, Facebook…”

This is the usual response I get when conducting social media training sessions with PR teams and I mention the world’s number one social network. Unfortunately that all-too-familiar ‘I know about Facebook’ grin is usually just a symptom of one of the most prevalent myths in PR today: that using Facebook every day means you know how to use it on behalf of a brand.

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Okay – so this (via CNet/Crave) is pretty incredible. An augmented reality windscreen that can help you drive in difficult conditions. Cool? We thought so. Essentially the system picks out road markings and signs, and highlights them using a phosphor coating on the windscreen.

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HBO's Hung debuts in New Zealand

Well endowed men and women have been the focus of ad campaigns since, well, forever – but rarely are billboards more provocative than this.

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The delicious icon is made up of the four key colours of HTML.

Delicious, or del.icio.us as it used to be known before it was revamped when it was bought by Yahoo! in 2005, is a social bookmarking site. Now, there will probably be 10% of you nodding your head saying, “yes, I know that already thanks,” But the vast majority are still getting to grips with social bookmarking (certainly compared with the numbers embracing social networks). The fact is that not only are social bookmarking and folksonomy tools the most useful things you’ll ever use during a day’s browsing, they also have a wealth of opportunities for brands looking to tap into the communications potential of the web. Read the full story

Will your website work on the new Apple tablet?

So, it’s just one week before we finally get to see the Apple iTablet/iBook/iPad/iPallette/iSlate/iDontcarewhatitscalled (probably) at their event on the 27th. Exciting stuff. But unless I’m missing something then there has been surprisingly little mentioned about how the rise of tablet computing (it isn’t just Apple developing a tablet computer) might affect the way we build web resources.

For instance, the iPhone doesn’t work with Flash and according to most people in the know about these things, nor will the tablet. Why? Primarily because it dissolves battery at an alarming rate (as highlighted to me by the Guardian’s tech editor Charles Arthur on Twitter today). It’s also quite buggy. I should say now that I’m not actually the Manifest London web nerd guru – that title goes to Mike Francis, but for me it seems the rise of tablet computing (and indeed the mobile internet) could therefore have a big impact for a lot of content-heavy websites.

We noted in our 2010 predictions that Javascript frameworks such as jQuery and Mootools will increasingly rival Flash (and software in general) in terms of creating dynamic page content – but as more and more people access the web via smartphones or tablets, surely we will also become less motivated to use Flash? How much of your website content uses Flash? Have you considered what your site looks like on an iPhone, or how it will look using a tablet computer? I don’t think Flash will disappear anytime soon, but there will certainly be an impact for sites that rely too heavily on Flash content.

Other growing considerations will include content dimensions – the iPhone has very specific dimensions (which will likely be shared by the forthcoming tablet) which could cause a headache for those using other proportions. Apple’s proprietary software will all use iFrame for video rendering and content that doesn’t use this will have compatibility issues (however slight). As an aside, very few video cameras render video in iFrame, meaning quick editing on iPhoto is more difficult and precious battery will be used converting the files in the editing process.

Anyway – all of this is pie-in-the-sky until the 27th so we’ll just have to sit tight and wait and see. But if what I think is true, then we’ll see a rush from brands to create websites that perform to their optimum on a tablet. For those that don’t have the budget to create a dedicated app or an alternate mobile site, it could prove a headache.