Next time we will consider choosing another client arrangement. FCK got defeated by Man united. Any ideas of arrangements with a guarantee for happy ending?

By The President

This is somewhat old news, yet it is still relevant. Three of us went to the second European Information Architecture Summit in Berlin a few weeks ago. It’s a small conference and the quality of the presentations varied quite a lot, but the summit provided interesting insights on current trends in the fuzzy field of IA.

The sitemap as a deliverable, for example, is finally dying and in the future you will probably notice more websites, which looks and works much more like traditional applications. As information architects this means we are going to spend much more time doing interaction design and creating models for metadata, taxonomies and the like. The summit was keynoted by Peter Morville. He (and co-author Louis Rosenfeld) wrote what many consider to be the IA-bible and they originally coined the term information architecture. He made a great talk on ambient findability and information architecture beyond websites. Go here to see his presentation (.ppt).

And by the way, Peter Risborg had his first days at work during our trip to Berlin, so off course we did not miss the opportunity to have some… teambuilding activities during the nights . That is our duty, afterall.

We believe in strategy. We believe in methods. We believe in the blue oceans. We also do believe that blue is rather nice.

By the real fan of a man called Undvig

Denmark is a nation of newspaper readers, and we certainly read a lot compared to other European countries. There is a great variety of newspapers and a long, proud tradition of independent journalism. Lately the Danes have been enriched by three free morning papers. Two of them suddenly popped up to give the long awaited Icelandic version some serious competition.

The truly disappointing thing is that the publishers have failed to embrace the huge innovative potentials at hand. The list of new progressive media concepts world-wide is long and the emphasis is generally on user involvement, flexibility and cross media solutions. Korean OhMyNews is an excellent example of citizen journalism being both very competitive and also showing great integrity and high journalistic quality. Several (especially american) printed and digital news media use both photos, video and articles from their users. Their credibility is not necessarily compromised ““ actually it seems that a lot of readers prefer to receive the information straight from the source.

Every online trend points towards more focus on social aspects, involving the users (readers) and providing them with dynamic, individually adjusted content.

In that perspective it is disappointing to watch the two largest Danish newspaper publishing houses release such unambitious and almost identical newspapers. This could have been a golden opportunity to experiment with technology, services and concepts. The only paper that is just vaguely interested in developing the media is Nyhedsavisen who also spend more than just a couple of days on developing the design. The integrated blogs and comment features won’t impeach Bush, but it’s a start though. Also they are the only ones really claiming to have an ambitious journalistic profile.

It could all have been so exciting, but instead the paperboys now go on a daily trip to the beach to burn the pile of papers we don’t really want.

Ever lost your mobile, or just got a new one, and have to re-establish all the contacts. Well time has changed, and with the free web service from ZYB, you can store all your contacts online, and sync them to your mobile whenever you feel like it.

Simpel, fast and free.

By Rying 

Most of us love Apple. They are creating some of the most innovative products, have an avid fanbase, some might call them zealots and their products just feel right. However, their quality control and customer care are just not acceptable. When you pay for an Apple product you typically pay around 3000 Dkr (500$) more than what you pay for an comparable product from another manufacturer. When you pay that much more, you want things to be perfect. You want the Apple experience. You want better designed experience than when you buy Dell, Microsoft or Creative products. That’s what you pay for. Lately, I’m beginning to doubt that this is the case.

First, Apple had problems with the much anticipated MacBook Pro. It got hot. I mean, really seriously hot. Temperature readings in the Macbook Pro machines read around 90-100 degree celcious. We returned the ones we bought at work. A 100 degrees in your lap is not a laptop. Macbook Pro temperature database. On top of that, there was the whine issue, supposedly from the fans.

Then there was the whole battery issue. Exploding batteries and such nastyness. But ok, Apple wasn’t the only company affected by that.

On the regular Macbooks, the heating problem surfaced again, along with some other nice problems: discoloration and random restarts.

Recently we ordered 11 brand spanking new 23″ Apple Cinema displays. In Denmark, these screens are 10000 Dkr a piece. Thats 110K right there. Thats around 16.5K$ for you guys not from Denmark. All the screens were faulty. Every. Single. One. There were no pixel errors, however some kind of error existed where residue of dialog boxes would remain on the screen. I know this sounds weird, but think of it as an effect similar to ghosting, exept this would just stay on the screen. Really really weird. The Cinema displays were returned and we got some replacements. The junior salesman could only exchange 5 at a time. My initial response to that was: “Huh, we just spend a considerable amount of money on you?” And now you want us to exchange 5 at a time. Thats stupid. Anyway, the replacements screens, all ten, were faulty. Apple acknowledged the problem and stopped shipping the Cinema Displays in the 23″ variant, we returned all the screens and continued working on our LaCie screens. Around the same time, our development team got 24″ Dell displays. These are working flawlessly and are 2500Dkr cheaper. The design might not be on the same level – but you got supirior customer care, and a working product. Recently the Danish HiFi store HiFi-Klubben dropped Apple as a retailer (In Danish), stating that Apple and HiFi-Klubben had different point of views regarding battery issues, and other faults HiFi-Klubben considered warranty issues. HiFi-Klubben states that other vendors have the same problems with Apple, but are coping with the problems since being an iPod retailer brings a lot of hype to the store. The iPod is used to bring in the customers.

The default answer to anyone that want to buy an Apple product is to wait for at least revision 2 or 3 of the product – by that time the errors are ironed out and you have a great product.

Apple fanboys and fangirls still flock around Apple products and defend them with zeal – but I can’t help thinking that Apple really should up their QA and be more attentive in their customer care. Otherwise they will lose customers in the long run due to a badly designed customer care experience and inferior quality.

How do you tell about your business, and in a way, so that people understand you? Posten, the Swedish mail service has just launched a very nice showroom. By combining 3D, animation and voice (in swedish) they manage to tell a rather complex story, in a fun and simpel way. See it for yourself at www.posten.se/showroom

By Rying

If you don”™t already know TED, do drop by at www.ted.com. Here you will find the latest ideas within technology, entertainment, design and business presented by some of the world”™s most fascinating people. Click on TEDTalks and download the podcasts episodes to your ipod. They are all about 20 minutes long – perfect for commuting to work. I recommend Hans Rosling, Sir Ken Robinson and Nicholas Negroponte.

By Rying 

For many of us, 1.65 is a heck of a lot of money. In Danish crowns, $ 1.65 billion is nearly 10.000.000.000 dkr. (Big number, right?) You could also compare the price to the costs of the Great Belt Bridge, the largest construction project in Danish history. You could build another for the cost of 2 YouTube deals!

So how come Google, famously known as the King of the Internet, wants to spend this kind of money for a website making it possible to post your own videos? Lets try with some answers: Because YouTube is the hottest web 2.0 site for the time being? Probably not. Because Google wants you to be able to laugh harder watching this clip? Probably not.

The answer is more likely that YouTube is giving Google a big advantage in selling ads (their main revenue-driver). Google is biggest in online text ads. Number one rival, Yahoo is biggest in online banner ads. However the next revenue-driving factor in online advertising is predicted too be ““ Video ads. So Google just bought the future in online advertising now holding 50 % of the market for online videos. (Besides Google can already now start showing text ads to the 40 million daily visitors at YouTube.

So. Congratulation Google, what at bargain!

(A note about the price of the YouTube deal. Google shares gained 2% the day the deal was announced. This gain equals the value of YouTube.)

By Rudolf

Well not yet, but if you do a search on the web, you will find tons of images of what a new ipod phone could look like. Imagine that your brand is so strong and interesting, that people outside your company spend hundreds of hours, designing, discussing and blogging it. That is the case for Apple. Ever since the first ipod the web has been overflowing with news and hype about their products. So today”™s lesson ““ dear readers: How can your product or brand become the Apple of your industry.

See fake ipod phones at appleiphone
By Rying