creative software solutions - online & offline.
2008 (coming soon)
2009 (coming soon)
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A month in the wilderness
- August 2, 2009, 10:10 am
istockcreative.com upgrade moves on apace
- While we managed a glorious week of high temperatures and sunshine, July has passed us by and unfortunately didn’t raise many opportunities for sun soaked photography here in the heart of rural Hampshire. Fortunately our stock photography service, istockcreative.com, was due a major upgrade and with a backlog of photographs to publish from the last six months, July seemed a good time to put the camera down and get back to coding.
Since our original members stock photography went live two years ago there has been a lot of development in web sites and the code behind them. Most noticeable is the development of libraries, like jQuery, which make it relatively easy to produce some very slick interfaces. As with everything online it one step forward and two back as catering for the non-Javascript visitor or sight impaired visitor mean the code must degrade to still function for these two areas. This is one of the differentiators between a ‘Fred in the Shed’ have a go web developer and an integrated media house. There is no point spending your creative budget on a web site that doesn’t render to all hard won visitors just because it’s not convenient to your web developer.
Anyway, August is upon us and istockcreative.com is now running in its Beta format. There are some major redevelopments still to undertake but two three new major projects kicking off in August mean development will have to take a back seat for a while!
- 'istockcreative.com gives members and visitors the opportunity to buy, sell and print their own works as well as develop their creative skills in our community'
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Stand out from the crowd with creative AV
- April 30, 2009, 1:39 pm
Stand alone digital media presentations
A stand alone Audio/Visual (AV) system has many advantages over a PC based solution, primarily size and cost. A stand alone presentation system allowing the playback of sound, music, static images or streaming video is a far more rugged platform needing no updates, is virtually impervious to dabbling and inquisitive users, needs no human input to start up and can just be switched off when not needed.
Suitable for HDMI and VGA connection (with a selectable of PAL or NTSC formats) i3m today announced a new range of small footprint, stand alone Audio and Audio Visual solutions as a component offer or used in an integrated, hardware based, solution. This new range offers the potential for low cost, stand alone, marketing presentations for exhibition stands, shop windows, estate agents etc. without the risk or cost of using a PC or laptop.
Images and sound may be looped or triggered depending on the requirement and is fully scalable into any existing system, requiring only a 12Volt DC supply. The devices allow outputs to TV and PC monitor solutions as well as i3m’s range of chassis mount displays for industrial use.
Use your own presentations or commission i3m to develop the creative side of the project too!- 'New project or component solutions to your stand alone audio and audio visual presentation requirements compliment i3m's creative offline offer.'
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new look for i3m.co.uk
- March 30, 2009, 12:11 am
- Updated for our new focus on providing online resources, not only to clients but to site visitors, i3m.co.uk is today sporting the first few pages of our new look. Creating a creative feel to the site, while still providing a user friendly and search friendly experience has been our focus and we hope you like it as much as we do!
The next few weeks will see post production tweaking of layout and images, as well as leaning out of code before some major new developments and services are rolled out. These will include the beta forums and vault article indexing system.
- 'creating a creative feel to the site, while still providing a user friendly and search friendly experience has been our focus'
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Rain does not spoil play!
- March 4, 2009, 10:06 pm
- We know, a few minutes this weekend and that was it! The good news is that while the sun isn’t shining there’s plenty of scope for research and that is exactly what we’ve been doing. Checking out some seriously scenic areas of Hampshire, primarily along The South Downs but also including areas of Lovedean, Clanfield, Hambledon, Denmead, East Meon and Langrish. The old Land Rover has never been so busy and as a result we are currently logging locations for landscapes ready to burst into bud. While our latest Infrared project needs plenty of sunlight it also needs some awesome scenery. What we could really do with is some awesome water for reflections. Something that is not always forthcoming around the South Downs Way. Any ideas?
The good news it that, while indoors, the dreary weather has encouraged us to continue developing new areas of the site ready for their immediate launch. The Vault, which offers free articles and tutorials, continues apace and the new forum area is progressing well. Planned articles for The Vault over the coming months include reference short cut documents for CSS, HTML and Photoshop as well as our ’Introduction to Infrared Photography’. Then there’s version 5 of Schneider Electric’s Vijeo Designer to review so maybe, just maybe, it’s better that we have some bad weather and concentrate on the editorial commitments!
- 'All to do and only hours!'
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The Human Machine Interface
- January 12, 2009, 9:15 pm
Is web 2.0 fast becoming a liability to graphic design, web design and machine interface? Have we just had too much? With good graphic design never having been about following the herd the need to reflect your brand and business is fast moving beyond web 2.0 Thanks to it’s over use the white background and sultry reflection, glossy buttons and diagonal stripes are looking all too similar.
While the world of graphic design never stands still the human machine interface (HMI) is a beast somewhat slower to react. Often there are limitations on interface development but this is no excuse. There are still limitations on the web browser interface, certain fonts for text for example. While we are a long way from pre CSS days there are still compromises to be made. In the case of the text example we can use some well placed graphics and our visitor will be amazed. Our web crawlers however, may miss a vital opportunity to ‘read’ the text and hence we may reduce the sites placing in rankings (Search Engine Optimisation is an art in itself!)
So, this year’s rants, tutorials and resources will be aimed at broadening the art of the HMI designer; whether it is web interface, print interface or machine interface.
Not on the i3m RSS feed and mailing list yet? Best sign up now!- 'There are good programmers, there are good engineers and there are good graphic designers but they rarely combine to produce an aesthetic, well designed and intuitive Human Machine Interface. '
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New look for i3m.co.uk
- November 27, 2008, 4:14 pm
- Albeit a difficult year for everyone we are pleased with 2008 and continue to go from strength to strength even in the current climate. December traditionally sees a facelift to the main i3m site as the paces slows a little into the festive season and this year is no different. Today we launched the first page of the new look for i3m 08/09, which reflects our increasing customer requirements for creative led projects. Members are more than welcome to give feedback via the forums and passing visitors can let us know via contact us. Keep an eye on the site as further developments are planned in to the New Year.
- 'While function and cost remain important aspects in projects there is an increasing demand for the interface to be more creative and intuitive.'
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The blog arrives and early too!
- July 3, 2008, 12:35 pm
Welcome to the i3m blog and welcome to i3m. After many requests we have finally committed to put virtual pen to paper and get some of our scribblings, research projects, code and general discoveries written down.
So whether its graphic design, coding, photography or hardware, if we think it needs to be out there then it will be in the blog. Forthcoming articles will be covering projects including MySQL, PHP, Javascript, Solaris 10, Linux and IBM e-Server to name but a few. And that is just the technical elements (Credit to Bas Strugnell at this point, for his patience and commtiment to i3m!).
We also aim to include a few client case studies to give a flavour of some of the work we get up to (an eclectic portfolio, as we describe it). Anyway, we will see how we go.
For the technical readers, the blog is written by us, for us and utilises our code and our in house servers. This means we can tweak and improve as we go. Your suggestions are, as ever, welcome.- 'The blog allows i3m to give something back to the wider programming and Internet community. Without companies and individuals publishing such information, programming, CSS and graphic design cannot develop the next generation.'
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This is the final check article
- June 3, 2008, 10:53 pm
- The final behind the scenes work is nearly complete. The blog and newsfeed will go live for the end of June 2008.
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Unfortunately we have had to temporarily remove the Google advertising, including the site search utility that was in use on the i3m site.
In a year that has been testing for many and when ‘Credit Crunch’ seemed to cover every media story on a daily basis, we would like to thank our growing customer and visitor base for their continued business and interest. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.