cr3000 Blog

Time for a redesign

calum — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:57:09 +0000

Over the past two years cr3000.com has been growing with further and more varied content. This has led to an ever-greater demand to its better organisation and find-ability on the site. I’ve therefore decided to start afresh with a newly structured and named website which will be launched next year. This will feature a more contemporary layout with Twitter feeds, Smartphone mini-site and greater accessibility of user feedback. In the mean time cr3000.com will continue as normal.

London Open House

calum — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:14:45 +0000

In London over the past weekend there have been hundreds of buildings and spaces open which aren’t normally accessible to the public. London Open House takes place every year and 2009 was my first. Some of the most popular locations such as the Bank of England had lengthy queues for guided tours. I decided to stay away from the crowds and head for some of the quieter but more insightful locations. I visited an Islington architect’s combined office/residential development and had architectural tours of Talkback Thames in Westminster and Peter Jones department store in Kensington & Chelsea.

Mobile: Hero

calum — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:00:48 +0000

I’ve now had my HTC Hero phone for one month and in one word I’m going to say it’s Fantastic! Sitting on the Tube a row of passengers with their glossy black iPhones are interrupted… by me with my white, Teflon coated Hero. Around half of webpages visited containing Flash content load fully; most that work are AS2 scripted. Performance is good and navigation of apps is in my opinion seamless. There’s a growing range of apps now available on Android Market. Layar is an Augmented Reality app where live video images via the camera are tagged with relevant data including from Wiki and Twitter.

New Content: Croatia Guide

calum — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:32:06 +0000

Following my summer break in Croatia; I’ve put together an interactive guide to Central Dalmatia. To develop the interactive map I used Flash +ActionScript 3 for some of the click events. Some of the mouse-overs may require some further tweaking but all map items function including the video. Take a look at Split on the Adriatic.

Facebook Names

calum — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:36:22 +0000

The latest offering from the guys at Facebook are own name URLs to link directly to your profile as in many other social networking sites. So how do you get your account setup to have this personalised touch? Simply go to http://www.facebook.com/Username and choose what’s still available or enter your own. Your profile must have been live on Facebook pre May 31, 2009. Virtually all popular names have been snapped up either today or during the private press launch some time earlier. It seems President Obama was a beneficiary of this early preview and has secured both facebook.com/obama and facebook.com/barackobama. Mine’s facebook.com/calumryan.

Internet World 2009

calum — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:49:47 +0000

Today I was at Internet World 2009 in Earls Court, London. The floor was packed with predominately small to medium sized companies providing web based solutions, SEO and CMS products. During my time there I managed to get into a couple of the extremely packed seminars on SEO including a presentation by Martin Wake of Sticky Content who provided an insightful introduction to search engine focused writing.

Flex 3

calum — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:40:02 +0000

I recently downloaded Flex Builder 3 (the trial not an Adobe pirate copy like my student colleagues, hm..hm.. do) ahead of getting the full thing which I found at here. My first Flex application was building a desktop RSS feed displayer. There’s quite a few tutorials currently out on doing this type of application and I’d say it’s a pretty good route for getting into developing and understanding XML centred scripting.

Street View

calum — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 10:35:48 +0000

In the past month I’ve been preoccupied not only by masses of coursework in the run-up to Easter but by the recent launch of Google Maps’ Street View in the UK. I’ve travelled hundreds of miles throughout the country in the past week or two and not lost a gram nor used a fuel station. In Street View I’ve viewed my first home (above) and even spotted a person I know.

Kumo’d it?

calum — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:50:48 +0000

There’s a new search engine in the pipeline from Microsoft which could be their long waited catch up on Google. How many of us have used Live Search in the past month or even year? If this is its replacement then I personally can’t see it taking lead over Google.

Technology for Marketing

calum — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:53:57 +0000

I made a flying visit to this year’s Technology for Marketing & Advertising exhibition in Earls Court, London. Pretty much all of the seminars were packed and there was a slight air of confidence in the industry. In the current climate it seems companies are more enthusiastic than ever for making e-marketing a priority with greater focus on web analytics and acquiring effective content management solutions.