The North East’s first ever charity web-build event has transformed the websites of six local charities, helping them to reach out to the digital generation.

The Webdurance event, organised by local entrepreneurs, brothers Paul and David King, saw talented individuals come together to rebuild the websites of the chosen charities over just 24 hours.

On 15 July, 40 volunteer web developers worked through the night to improve the sites of The Children’s Foundation, Whoops Child Safety Project, Tynemouth Blind Society, Azure Charitable Enterprises, Key Enterprises, Children North East and Meadow Well Connected.

Colette Hume, a Sunderland University volunteer said the atmosphere at the event was great.

“People are swapping ideas and know how. There is a real buzz about the event and it’s going really well“, she said.

Promoting the region

The unique idea came about when Paul and David, co-directors of internet software company 1DayLater.com, decided to utilise their business know-how to help struggling charities.

“Charities are, for the most part, managed by very passionate and exceptional people who are usually non-technical,” Paul said.

“By providing each charity with advice and mentoring on how to maintain their new and improved websites after the event, we hope to extend the lifespan of these charities and their activities.”

Due to this year’s success, 1DayLater.com is planning to make Webdurance an annual occurrence, aiming to promote the North East and the business potential and technical talent in the region.

Bernie Callaghan, CEO of Sunderland Software City – one of the event sponsors – said the company was delighted to be involved in supporting Webdurance.

“Our aim is to develop the software industry throughout the North East region,” he said.

“The fact that this initiative not only involved local developers and designers but was also conceived and managed by local software entrepreneurs, demonstrates the talent, creativity and drive that abound in the North East.”

We are seeking to recruit a talented and experienced .NET Developer for our fast growing software development Client based on the outskirts of Newcastle. They are looking for a .NET developer who will come in and significantly contribute to the company’s success.

For this role, you must be a self-starter, who loves a challenge, is driven to succeed and is perhaps most importantly a team player.

You will be responsible for the maintenance and development of our Client’s online technology using .NET and SQL 2005.

You will be proactive, with excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to work unsupervised.

You will have a proven track record of technical support and development skills with exceptional technical capabilities.

You will have:

A degree in a relevant discipline
At least 2 years commercial development experience (preferably in .NET web application development)
A thorough working knowledge of development in a web based environment, with experience of implementing design frameworks within user interface applications
Excellent relational database skills with experience of designing and implementing scalable database architectures
Preferably Microsoft qualified
Exposure to .NET 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5 and SQL Server 2005 an advantage

In Return:

Our Client offers an excellent remuneration and benefits package in order to attract exceptional talent. This includes an attractive salary, contributory pension scheme and 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays).

Who we are:
Sharpe Recruitment is a North East based consultancy, dedicated to placing professionals in rewarding jobs throughout the North of England across a variety of disciplines including Digital Media, Creative Advertising, Sales & Marketing, PR, IT and Business Operations.

If you are interested in the advertised position please apply by contacting Sharpe Recruitment.

Based in Newcastle upon Tyne, our creative agency client are now looking for a bright, enthusiastic and ambitious Computing Science (or similar) graduate with a passion for technology and interactive development.
As Junior Web Developer, you will support the web development team in the implementation of interactive projects. From mobile application to Flash development, database design to server-side scripting; you will be involved in projects that encompass a wide variety of disciplines, platforms and techniques.

Required Skillset:

Any modern language, such as C++, Java or C#
Object Oriented Programming techniques
MySQL or SQL Server
Ideally you will have experience of:
Server-Side Scripting (PHP, ASP, etc)
Native JavaScript & industry standard frameworks (Mootools, JQuery, etc)
XHTML/CSS
XML
Wordpress
Flash / Actionscript

This is an excellent opportunity for someone who wants work in a lively but professional environment.

If you’re interested in the advertised position please apply by contacting Altitude Recruitment.

Altitude Recruitment specialises in Creative Jobs, Marketing Jobs, PR Jobs, Digital Media Jobs and IT Jobs in the North, if you would like more information or to find out how to register please call us on  0845 4509745.

Due to the high volume of candidates responding to our adverts we are not always able to provide feedback on your application. If you hear nothing from us in 5 days please assume you have been unsuccessful on this occasion. Your details will be kept on file and you may be contacted about other opportunities.

Our Newcastle based client are looking for a Motion Graphic/Interactive Designer to join their team.  The ideal candidate will be a strong technician and be used to working in a busy studio with experience in the following:

PhotoShop
Illustrator
After Effects
Cineam 4D
3D Modelling
Animation

This is an excellent opportunity to join a vibrant and exciting team working on international and national brands.

If you’re interested in the advertised position please apply by contacting Altitude Recruitment.

Altitude Recruitment specialises in Creative Jobs, Marketing Jobs, PR Jobs, Digital Media Jobs and IT Jobs in the North, if you would like more information or to find out how to register please call us on  0845 4509745.

Due to the high volume of candidates responding to our adverts we are not always able to provide feedback on your application. If you hear nothing from us in 5 days please assume you have been unsuccessful on this occasion. Your details will be kept on file and you may be contacted about other opportunities.

This one day Web usability testing training course provides delegates with practical examples, comprehensive notes, guidelines and sources of reference.

On successful completion of this course, participants will:

Know how usability testing works
Know which testing methodology to use and why
Assess yourself to see if your suitable for being a test moderator
Learn some of the best practice tips for moderating sessions
Develop a usability test plan on a sample project
Study checklists for testing preparation for before, during and after the test
Have guidance on setting up your own usability lab
Conduct five minute quick turnaround usability tests
Understand about report writing and recommendations

Organiser
Spotless Interactive

Contact:
020 7168 7526

Website:
http://www.spotlessinteractive.com/

via Web usability testing training | Chinwag – the UK’s leading community media company for the new media industry.

There are an estimated 100 million blogs online, including thousands of corporate blogs, all aiming to create an open, two-way communication channel between brands and their customers or partners. Behind the rhetoric though, most corporate blogs struggle to be heard. Why is this? What’s the secret of successful corporate blogging? And how do professional bloggers do it?

Join Luke Brynley-Jones and Murray Newlands, for an intensive half-day master-class on corporate blogging. Luke and Murray will explain how to attract readers, gain coverage and reap the benefits from your corporate blog.

Topics covered include:

* Who Blogs Wins: Why Blogging Matters
* The Top 10 Techniques of Highly Effective Bloggers
* SEO for Blogging: Optimisation & Link-Building
* Blogger Outreach (in 5 Easy Steps)
* Brand & Reputation Management

Refreshments will be provided throughout the afternoon and there will be networking drinks at the end of the day.

Speakers include: Jack Hubbard, Rob Shepherd, Murray Newlands and Luke Brynley-Jones

Organiser
Influence People

Contact:
+447971406371

Website:
http://InfluencePeople.com

via Corporate Blogging Masterclass | Chinwag – the UK’s leading community media company for the new media industry.

How to sell your multi platform content – a one day interactive workshop for TV and Digital Media Professionals

Can you make money from your multi platform content?

We are offering a limited opportunity for TV and digital media professionals to participate in a 1 day intensive, interactive workshop which will show you different ways to exploit your content.

It used to be a challenge working in one industry but navigating through the opportunities that are available across different platforms and countries can be overwhelming and knowing how to uncover the possibilities of your content can be a challenge. Whether you are a company or freelancer this workshop is for you.

How to sell your multi-platform content is run by a media lawyer and professionals covering everything from building a vision for your project, understanding the different types of IP, as well as, looking at ways that current content is maximising their revenue. In the afternoon you will work together to build your strategy for your project.

Workshop size will be kept small to maximise the input you can receive on your project. We have a limited number so if you are interested please emailmel@media-sauce.org For more information on workshop, to apply for a bursary go to http://www.media-sauce.org/how-to-sell-your-multi-platfor/

Bursary for TV and digital media freelancers available from Skillset

“I was blown away by the How to sell your multi-platform content’ workshop. My eyes were opened to the wealth of opportunities for monetizing video content on all platforms and I came away feeling exhilarated and incredibly inspired. Even better, thanks to the workshop, I developed a clear multi-platform strategy to take my film and TV production company forward and I’m pleased to say that it’s working! “
Toni Harman, Producer / Director, Alto Films

Organiser
Media-Sauce
http://www.media-sauce.org

via How to sell your multi platform content – a one day interactive workshop for TV and Digital Media Professionals | Chinwag – the UK’s leading community media company for the new media industry.

The third in our series of 10 future focused sessions will discuss the impact that 3D will have on Games, Film andTelevision as it begins to infiltrate our everyday lives.

Free to attend, the event will explore the world of 3D in two distinct ways. Firstly, industry experts will share their experience, predictions and plans to transform their industries, your business and our everyday lives.

Secondly, attendees will be able to interact with hands-on tech demos including 3D gaming, filming set ups and more…

Speakers:

* Mick Hocking – Sony
* Jim Spencer – Line producer Street Dance 3D
* Alex Stolz – UK Film Council
* Brian Lenz – BSkyB

Register to attend

For more information: visionarysessions@visionandmedia.co.uk

Speaker Information:

Mick Hocking – Senior Group Studio Director for Liverpool, Evolution and BigBig studios – part of the Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios group.

Mick has been largely responsible for the creation and development of some of the leading PlayStation racing brands; notably the officially licensed World Rally Championship (WRC) series of games for the PS2 and latterly the multi platinum selling MotorStorm franchise for PS3. Mick also heads up the Global 3D Gaming Group working to secure Sony’s place at the forefront of 3D entertainment.

Mick was a founding member of Evolution Studios, holding the positions of Director of Development and ultimately Managing Director. During this time he oversaw the operational running of the studio and worked in both publisher and licensor relations, helping to create and drive over 4million sales of the WRC series. Mick was instrumental in the formation of BigBig studios in 2000 which went onto develop the ground breaking PSP launch title – Pursuit Force and most recently the critically acclaimed MotorStorm: Arctic Edge.

During his career, Mick has won awards for the creation and development of key artificial intelligence based gaming systems (WARGEN) for PC flight simulations – EF2000, F22-ADF and Total Air War. WARGEN went on to be licensed by the Royal Air force as a training aid and instruction tool.

Brian Lenz – Director of Product Design and TV Product Development – BSkyB

Brian Lenz is responsible for overseeing the development of Sky’s product roadmap and the design of new products and services. As well as looking at emerging technologies such as high definition and video-on-demand, Brian has been leading Sky’s experimentation in 3D TV, which has seen the company take an early position of leadership in 3D production and broadcasting. Prior to working at Sky, Brian worked in strategic planning, product strategy and product development at Virgin Media. He previously worked in strategy consulting and he has an MBA from the London Business School.

Jim Spencer – Managing Director – Paradise FX Europe

Before entering in to 3D Jim was a line producer in film and television. Over the past ten years he has filmed in more than twenty countries and his credits include STREETDANCE 3D and MONSTERS for Vertigo Films and TORMENTED for BBC Films/Forward Films/Slingshot.

His television credits include the BBC’s ROME & VENICE series, as well as the EMMY & BAFTA winning HIROSHIMA. He also produced Channel 4’s new talent strand COMING UP – a series of seven original films made by some of the most exciting filmmaking talent in the UK.

Alex Stolz – Senior Executive Distribution and Exhibition – UK Film Council

Alex currently manages the UK Film Council’s P&A Fund, which backs 20+ films a year for wider distribution, as well as the newly-launched Digital Innovation in Distribution Fund. In addition, he works across all of the distribution and exhibition strategies at the UKFC including the world-first Digital Screen Network and the successful consumer website Findanyfilm.com, which has received over 6m visits since its launch in February 2009.

Alex’s background is cinema programming and he was responsible for the content strategies at some of the UK’s most successful independent screens whilst at City Screen. He produced the groundbreaking digital cinema event The Summer of British Film in partnership with the BBC and holds an MA in Film and Television from the BFI.

Register to attend

via Vision+Media Events calendar.

“We haven’t really used it in any of our projects yet because the browser support simply isn’t wide enough yet (usually down to Internet Explorer)”, he said.

“One of the frustrations of web development is that we usually end up standardising on yesterday’s technology in order to ensure a wide potential userbase and that we aren’t cutting off a large share of possible site visitors to a clients site through compatibility.”

According to Gary, the new version of HTML5 is, from a technical stand point, “just more of the same” in comparison to its predecessors.

“It doesn’t require any new skillsets and doesn’t make any huge conceptual leaps. Most of what it provides are standardised solutions to problems that web developers and designers have been working around for a long time.

Some of the new features:

Descriptive tags to contribute to the ‘rise of the semantic web’
“An important step in serving content to multiple form factors (desktop, mobile etc), but also aid SEO by letting us use a consistent and standardised vocabulary to tell Google & Co which areas of a page are important and warrant indexing.”

Multimedia support (at least in theory)
“The introduction of Audio & Video tags mean that we now have a plugin-free method of including a/v content in web pages. There are still a number of drawbacks to HTML5 video, notably the lack on consensus regarding video codecs.”

Offline storage
“Not widely supported yet, but offline storage allows data to be stored offline so that it can be retrieved even if the user has no internet connection. Google makes good use of this to allow you to store all your gmail emails offline with a compatible browser and is also starting to use it in their Google Docs suite of apps.”

Canvas tag
“The canvas tag gives us a 2D drawing surface that we can draw to at runtime using javascript. This, along with the video tag, are the reasons why so many people are touting it as a flash killer.”

HTML5 vs. Flash

Gary also lists some of the pros & cons of HTML5 and Flash, while noting that the release of Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 will inevitably change things again.

Pro for HTML5

1) It’s an open standard that isn’t reliant on a single vendor (Adobe) to bless any new platforms with a plugin before it’s usable.
2) As a developer who uses javascript every day, I don’t have to learn and keep up to date with yet another language (ActionScript 3) in order to product rich interactive content.
3) It’s free to use, whereas Adobe’s Flash creation apps cost a lot (it is possible to create flash without paying Adobe, most of the stuff I do is done without the help of Adobe’s apps, but you loose a number of the benefits of using Flash that make it a good platform for non-developers).
4) A big plus for OSX users is that it doesn’t use Adobe’s notoriously bad Flash plugin for Mac. The reasons why its so bad is down to yet another competition between Adobe & Apple, but whatever the reason, Flash on OSX is horrible.
5) It works on Apple mobile devices.

Cons for HTML5

1) Current implementations are generally slower than Flash when producing the same results.
2) Flash currently has a richer set of drawing tools available to developers.
3) A very personal one, but I find ActionScript3 a much better language to develop large scale apps in when compared to Javascript.
4) This is a obvious one, and only really an issue because of its immaturity, but when compared to Flash, the number of re-usable third party libraries for HTML5/Javascript is very small.  Actionscript 3 has a number of mature libraries and frameworks.
5) Again, down to immaturity, but when compared to Flash’s 99.7% availability on the desktop (and a growing footprint on mobile platforms, Apple excluded) HTML5 is just too small a target to develop for right now.

Feature article

The latest development in the HTML5 vs. Flash debate was YouTube rewriting its mobile site entirely in HTML5 – after criticising it in their official blog. This was happy news for iPhone and iPad users, but the rest of us are confused. Who’s in the right and what’s the future of these web technologies? Read more…

Is HTML5 ready to take over multimedia content on the web?

The debate is starting to get confusing. It’s like schoolyard bickering all over again. Apple doesn’t like Adobe, Google doesn’t like Apple, Adobe and Google are buddying up, YouTube is stuck in the middle. And Steve Jobs rants at everyone.

The latest development in the HTML5 vs. Flash debate was YouTube rewriting its mobile site entirely in HTML5 – after criticising it in their official blog. This was happy news for iPhone and iPad users, but the rest of us are confused. Who’s in the right and what’s the future of these web technologies?

We asked web solutions consultant George Munroe to explain. First, the most important question: Is Steve Jobs wrong?

“Steve Jobs is seldom wrong! But this is not really a personal crusade. Steve is reiterating what a lot of people have felt and expressed over recent years. Flash may have it’s place, but it’s not conveying information in a networked environment.”

Key differences

Training people to make effective use of websites, George is an enthusiastic advocate for HTML5. Its strengths lie in its ability to compliment a well structured and coherent internet. In terms of building websites, George advises against Flash.

“Flash is a multimedia production system; HTML5 is a web authoring language”, he explains.

“Flash can produce impressive multimedia effects on screen to impress (or perhaps entertain) the viewer; HTML5 can produce well structured web documents that can communicate well structured content and associated metadata to the viewer and software agents. ”

Towards a better structured web

George’s advice is to use each technology for what they’re best at. When it comes to web pages, HTML5 is the best discipline, he says. It might not yet produce as exciting graphical output as Flash can, but according to George, it’s actually not falling too short.

“Used with CSS3 it’s possible to achieve simple but effective and impressive multimedia effects on screen without sacrificing any of the underlying well-specified content structure,” George explains.

Compared to its predecessors HTML5 is a leap towards more thoroughly indexed web.

“Most importantly, HTML5 brings consolidation of a markup standard. HTML5 is truer and more precise than preceding versions in identifying the structural elements of a web page; style and presentation-related parts have been removed and are implemented using CSS (as it should always have been).”

So what were the arguments again?

With their demos of Flash constantly crashing, Adobe seems to have lost ground in the debate. Apple in turn seems to be sticking to its Flash-is-”buggy”-and-redundant argument.

Google’s answer to this came recently in the official YouTube blog; Flash might be in the beginning of its end, but HTML5 is still far from being ready to take over online videos.

“Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it”, John Harding, a YouTube software engineer, said after long set of techy arguments.

So at the moment it looks like everyone will just have to get along in the schoolyard. Sticking to what they’re best at. Fat chance of that happening!

Case study

Gary Robson from North East digital company Industrial Strength, outlined some of the possibilities and difficulties of using HTML5 from a web developer’s point of view. Read more…

HTML5 in practice