Another tool in the box

We're expanding our tool set and from next week D-Media will be able to speed up it's development of desktop AIR applications and web-based Flex applications with the arrival of the new Adobe FlashBuilder 4. The ability to interface with and create apps for social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter will be enhanced too, and what with Apple's recent decision to support iPhone authoring straight from Flash CS5, next year could prove to be very interesting.


Posted by Paul Skinner

On yer bike, pedal-oh’s

1. Green conscious eco warriors and anti-oil activists?
2. A bunch of guys and girls who want posh bikes on the cheap?

Actually we’re a bit of both, but mainly one of the above (surely it’s the first one?).

As the Idealogy team make the most of the company’s new Cyclescheme association – allowing tax deductable cycle purchase for getting to work – expect to see Soutans on Specializeds, Chops on Cubes and Crouches on Konas real soon! We’re even thinking of trading Daz’s company car for a tandem so we can pick our clients up from the train station in style! Of course, it’ll be stabilizers to start with for Baby David, but he’ll get there too!

You can also expect a cycling mission some time in the future, as we look to raise some dollar for ‘charidy mate’. It’ll happen real soon; all we need to do is get our bikes, get fit, plan a route, pick a cause, sort some sponsorship, pack the Mars bars (again we’re open to sponsorship here) and hit the road. Phew… tiring just to think about it, better get the kettle on and have a biscuit.

Posted by Nick Hart

iDespair* - A cautionary tale of online ordering with one of the world’s biggest e-commerce systems

The story has a simple, and some might say touching, beginning. A fathers pride at his daughter’s successful bid to go to University and his fear that she might walk off with the home computer, leaving her parents adrift in a seemingly empty world of cyber chat.

So, the task was to procure her a laptop with all of the software she would need for the next 4 years. What could be simpler? And where would the best Student deals emerge? I had to look no further than Apple – and here was my opportunity to migrate another family member into the Mac world, another nail in the coffin of PC Gates. I jumped at the chance – order a laptop for a new student and get a FREE iTouch. That would mean a net saving of over £150 on the price of the, lets be honest here, more expensive but perfectly suited MacBook. I felt the moral justification swelling in my bank balance.

Ah! The online Apple Store. What temptation. What a dangerous place to send a middle-aged man without proper assistance. I browsed and I shopped and then I shopped some more, and before I knew it I had a shopping list as long as my….well, it was quite long! So I stared at my credit card, a bead of sweat trickling from my hair line, and then, there it was – the Apple Credit Finance link – a gleaming phone number that would take away all of my problems, at a better APR than VISA…happy days!

I dialled and got through almost immediately to my guy Gerry, talking to me from sunny Austin, Texas, US, and telling me all about his pending holiday to see his folks in Idaho (wherever that is!). And that was the moment that life, as I knew it ended! Apple, ably supported by Gerry, Catrina, Lloyd and a cast of thousands at Barclays Credit Finance, successfully managed to destroy my perception of Apple over an 8-week period.

Lets cut to the chase here – I have recently cancelled my order in a rather robust and loud conversation with the unwitting Apple Europe employee, when he asked me to re-make my order and finance agreement for the 4th time, 2 days after my third delivery date had expired. But here is a brief summation: -

• I placed an order for over £1800 worth of stuff at the start of July, and because of a conflict in some of my address information (the billing address was different to the shipping address) I had to make 2 orders and go through 2 finance agreement questionnaires on the first day. Finance denied because of this conflict
• 2nd Order finally approved when I changed the shipping address to match the billing address
• 2nd Order cancelled on shipping day when Apple discovered that I live on an Island
• 3rd Order placed and new finance agreement completed and mainland shipping address re-reinstated
• 3rd Order then modified on line by Apple to state that shipping would be agreed at Shipping date
• 3rd Order cancelled by Apple 2 days after due shipping date because we hadn’t agreed a shipping address, which, if it was to the Isle of Wight, would also be cancelled because the VAT rate was different on the Isle of Wight (?)
• Apple dude phones me to remake 4th order and …well you know the rest.

So, what did I do? I walked 150 yards to the Apple Store in West Quay where a very helpful Store Manager listened to my tale and promptly sold me almost all of the stuff I wanted with a generous 15% discount. Why didn’t I do this before – good question? The truth is, the online offers got me in and encouraged me to make further purchases before the e-commerce kicked in and we all hit a wall.

So what’s the moral here? Well, if a business that boasts billions in online revenues based on 59p here and £7.99 there can’t join up the dots on £1800 orders then effectively they are the Computer world equivalent of Poundland. And I shouldn’t be so lazy when the real solution is so close. Just get off your ….!

* All reproduction rights to iDespair will go to the Steven Barnes Foundation for the impoverished supporters of Nooneshandonthetiller.com the forum for disillusioned Southampton FC supporters

Simon Johnson as IT director would like to distance himself from these comments as he is an avid Apple fanboy :o)

Posted by Simon Dover

The Great North Run

Plaster sales and expletives have spiked in Royston since staff from Safeline X-ray started training for the Great North Run.

The team of ten will be running the 13.1 miles from Newcastle to Gateshead on 19 September, and have already raised more than ￡1000 for the charity SCOPE.

To donate some dosh to this worthy cause go to: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=X-ray&isTeam=true

We wish Daniela and the rest of the Safeline X-ray team the best of luck.



Posted by Paul Wright

Simon elopes!

Simon Johnson, our digital media director, left for his holiday on 5th August. It was summer. It was expected. We carried on working. Then, on the Friday, we got a text from him saying he'd eloped. We stopped working, tied cans to his chair and messed up his desk. We may have been denied a stag night, but we like to think we made up for it.

So, congratulations to Simon and his lovely wife Mel on their marriage in St Austell, Cornwall. We've seen the photos (Mel's best friend and family happened to be camping nearby so they acted as official photographers) and we're looking forward to their party in a month's time when we can celebrate in style.

Posted by Idealogy

It's Simple....no, really!

What do you get if you combine a top-rated TV programme with the UK's number one over-the-counter skincare brand? The Simple Wellbeing Challenge.

It all started last year on ITV's Tonight show, when teenagers agreed to rid themselves of all make-up, fake tan, fashion and gadgetry for a social study by Emma Kenny, GMTV's resident psychologist. The marketing team at Simple saw the programme, called Make My Kids Happy, loved it and knew it was a perfect fit for the Simple brand. They nabbed Emma and came up with the idea of using the massive Simple database – carefully developed over the past few years by many, many on-line campaigns created by our team at Idealogy – to target teenagers in schools across the country and challenge them to see if removing lippy, binning the mobile and taking up volunteer work would lift their spirits. And then they handed the brief over to us.

We say us, we actually mean Simon Johnson, Idealogy's digital media director. He and Shelley managed the project, creating a new promotions page on the www.simple.co.uk site with downloadable leaflets and flyers, an area for teens to take the Rosenberg test (the measuring tool for the experiment) as well, of course, ways for users to share the information with others, such as via Facebook. It looks clean and simple (and Simple) thanks to Shelley's superior design skills and the talent of our web developers.

So, job accomplished, and in a very fine and dandy way too. Now we're just waiting for the Simple team to take inspiration from Top Gear. It will happen. We're just waiting for the call.


Posted by Simon Johnson

Dan, Dan, the Otis Redding Man

Finding a Photographer who really ‘gets’ the intimate nature of Wedding Days and understands that these never-to-be-repeated moments are precious, is very rare indeed. Too many try to be ‘the show’. Others seem to have no empathy with the day, herding guests around without ever really getting the ‘money shot’. And even more, who double or triple book the days, rushing around, leaving bemused couples breathing in fumes and dust from departing tyre tracks. Where’s the value in that?

But Dan Akerman is different - he gets it! He knows that this is ‘their day’.  To stay in the background but still step up. To reflect their hopes, their fears and their journey. And his work showed us just that. It was so very different…

So when he asked Idealogy to sort out his Wind and Kite (web site), http://www.daphotographyuk.com we all jumped at the chance to help – after all, he was one of us, talking our language, however hard to understand that was.

So, we wrote the story and the copy, his brother Darryl (Idealogy’s Design Director) designed the look and Simon Johnson, Paul Skinner and Richard Sprinks developed and built the platform. And it all tells a compelling story – painting a picture of a guy with a different slant but a creative bent. A guy who, when your Bricks and Mortar (daughter) wants to get Cash and Carried (married), he’s more than just a pointing and clicking Whistle and Flute (suit).

So, if you want a memorable Otis Redding, Dan’s the man who won’t give you Lionel Blairs (work it out for yourself!).

Get it? Good!


Posted by Idealogy