SDXcreative

Congratulations to Stephen Dyson!

PushON are now looking to fill the Senior SEO position.

Who will be the next winner for December for sharing the #PushONDOA page? To be in with a chance of winning £50 for sharing and £500 for the successful capture, check out the vacancies page to see the latest additions - http://www.pushon.co.uk/wanted/

Good Luck and get Retweeting!

The post We Have Another Winner! £50 Amazon Voucher Giveaway – #PushONDOA appeared first on PushON Ltd.

It was a nice little surprise to have Bubbles the Melbourne clown come round to our office. He delivered us part of a city wide pass the parcel in which we received a Martini Mug. Cheers guys. *Brews up and fights over the new mug*

On top of this, I believe they are having a party tomorrow, no doubt there will be jelly and ice cream. Happy Birthday Melbourne!

The post Melbourne are ten appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The internet of things that no longer exist – Dr Chris Speed

So, the internet of things: Stuff that’s on the internet. Or as Future Everything says:

The ‘internet of things’, refers to the technical and cultural shift as society moves to a 24/7 form of computing in which every device is ‘always on’, and every device is connected in some way to the internet. However, many versions of this notion rely upon one significant premise: that the thing remains in existence.

Chris has been experimenting with gathering stories related to objects.

He gathered stories from people dropping off donations at a charity shop in Manchester and attached the story of the item to an RFID tag attached to the object, so people could hear this in the shop.

These ‘things’ become more than just ‘things’ as they’re laden with memories. Is this a new way of consuming and thinking about objects?

Ghost bikes are bikes painted white and left in the site of where someone died from a cycling accident. The ‘ghosts’ are physical reminders for us. And are full of memories and emotion.

May day riots. A war memorial was vandalised. There was outrage, as this is a ‘ghost’ and you can’t play with it, it’s sacred. But the act of the vandalism meant that it got brought back into public consciousness.

Is this how the internet is going to go? Full of dead objects connected with memories? Will the internet space these dead things occupy become sacred?

Iconomical. Data and Infographics – Elizabeth Turner

Users tend to be quite passive but love to click on things, so interactivity is the best way to engage. DON’T MAKE static Infographics. Use timelines, maps etc. Also think about if they need to be suitable for print and how they need to be presented.

Tools created need to be about exploring stuff we don’t yet know. By asking relevant questions about stuff we already do know. We have to be careful about editorial bias. This can occur even when we’re choosing the metrics by which to measure things.

Iconomical are currently working on projects with governments to help them really understand where money is becing spent. They’re also looking in to using the data to create projections for the future and mapping back in the past, looking at trends.

“We need to be more concerned with the actual analysis of the data.”

Open transport

Featuring David Hytch, Richard Russell, Jonathan Raper, Tom Steinberg. Moderator Dr. Thomas Birtchnell

David Hytch – Information Systems Director for Transport for Greater Manchester

Greater Manchester Transport facts: 14,000 bus stops, 200 train stations 2,000 bus routes, 40 bus operators, 6 train operators. They’re currently developing open data sets for Manchester Transport which can be used in an exciting way.

But, as always, there is a limited budget and different people want different facts in different ways. Can this be crowd-sourced or developed innovatively?

They’re happy to release real time data… but there are implications. If it’s updated every 15 minutes, they can turn on the tap, but it needs to be managed, or you’ll be flooded.

Richard Russell has been working at Google UK for the past four years

Google likes the user data. And in the correct format so it can interact with as much stuff as possible. You also need to develop a relationship with the right people so it’s distributed and updated. Also is it sustainable, can you get a licence to use the data and make money from it.

GTFS Community is a free format for data to be used by developers. It means agencies produce in GTFS, developers can interact and make stuff with it and this can then be passed to users.

See: google.com/transitpartners

Jonathan Raper is CEO of the location-based services startup Placr Ltd.

Rules:

• Public money going IN must = access. Give us the raw data so that developers can do good shizzle. Network Rail are a private body with a public task and WONT give out data. Boooo. Highways agency are brill at giving out data.
• Free – We can only do excellent things with this info if the cost base is LOW. Don’t make licencing complicated.
• Travel line are expensive. TFL give away a lot of real time tube data for free. Good for them.
• Equal access to data – Data GM document data well
• Release data in the format it is already held in. Dammit man. It took iBus 2 years to get off the ground because they had to faff around with data.

Tom Steinberg is the founder and director of mySociety

Usually think transport data is about journey planning. It’s useful in other ways:

• Mapumental Helps you find where to live based on a sensible commute using transport info.
• Fix My Transport helps communities get together and campaign for improvements in their community.

Linked data/ data stories

Chris Taggart – Originally a magazine journalist then later publisher (and occasional geek)

Looking at data carefully can influence good journalism and bring up interesting stories.

Martin Belam is Lead User Experience & Information Architect at Guardian News & Media

There’s plenty of varied data available. From published data to trails users leave as they use the internet. Wiki leaks showed that American soldiers are good at adding meta data to information. Data is softer than it looks. Mainstream media and politicians often uses this in the way they want. How?

Small sample sizes, using an area of peak and failing to show error margins

Now we can produce tools for people to find data for themselves. 15,000 data sets collected by The Guardian for use. They’re making it accessible so that people can explore it, but without making it like The Matrix.

Linked data would make things great.

David Higgerson – Head of multimedia for Trinity Mirror Regionals

Audiences are increasingly asking to see sources of data. Open data is not a threat to journalism, despite what’s said. Journalists aim to find information that’s interesting to the user. Another warning against infographics from David. Don’t get caught in the trap, simplicity can give it strengths.

Paul Bradshaw is visiting professor in online journalism at City University London

Newspapers are FAST. Good journalism needs time. Don’t get distracted by the tools. Good journalists need to:

Compile, Clean, Connect when they get data.

Panel chat

It’s a skill to spot dodgy data and use it as a story

You need to know the consequences of releasing data

Robots, editors, strangers & friends

Meg Pickard is the Head of Digital Engagement for Guardian News & Media

Dan Catt is a programmer The Guardian (and likes kittens)

Word of mouth and trust is important and many people use this as a filter. I’ll either ask the newspaper or I’ll ask my friend Anna.

Transmediated Discovery is the act of being involved in a social space. Social Syndication.

When you’re looking for new stuff, you might branch out to BOTS. Some bots are quite clever and can filter meta data. Google news helps you find out whats important by recommends, relevancy, time etc… the robots are applying an extra layer of sense, although they can sometimes be evil and not notice when they’ve made a mistake until its too late.

Strangers can sometimes be better for us than friends if they have the same interests as us.

Hump of irrelevance is interesting. Trending topics are often not always relevant.

Robots can be useful if they’re set up well. It’s a good idea to use them to measure stuff. To understand a city you have to be in it, then to analyse it you need to step out of it. Same with data.

Dan and Meg built Guardian Zeitgeist to see what was popular on the site. It’s front end is pretty, but the back end is prettier (graphs, mmm) and helps them to see rhythms in the use of the content and what’s really going on and how it’s all linked together.

The post FutureEverything Liveblogging 2011 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

We’ve set up The Feed because the web industry is in a constant state of beta. Always evolving and changing. So every second Monday at The Castle, we’ll be debating issues in the tech/ web/ digital/ design industries. No holds barred, we aim to find out what industry experts really think.

Personally, I’m hoping for things to get a little feisty. Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know that I like a good fight civilised debate. I’m just lucky that Simon, our MD, feels the same way. In fact, I suspect that’s one of the reasons he hired me.

When I asked him what his reasons were behind wanting to start The Feed, he said:

“Being polite doesn’t necessarily get to the nub of things. In a time when the digital sector is polluted by self professed ninjas, rock stars and gurus, we thought it would be fun to put on an event built on vigorous argument in front of an enquiring audience. That’s The Feed. It will be a bit rude.”

I see it as a chance to say what we really want to say, without skirting around the issue. Hecklers are encouraged.

This month we’re discussing new technology. Has it all just gone too far? With:

Simon Wharton, MD of award winning digital marketing agency PushON
Mark Cadwaladr, Digital Technology manager for PZ Cussons
John Delacruz, Award Leader of BA Advertising and Brand Management at Staffs Uni
Tom Cheesewright, technology consultant and commentator, and co-founder of marketing software company CANDDi

If you want to attend book your ticket here. Hurry, there’s not many. If you can’t attend but want to hear about future events, fill out our contact form. If you’re a journalist and want to cover the event, or think you’d make a good panellist email me: thefeed@pushon.co.uk

The post THE FEED. Implementing Technology: It’s all gone too far appeared first on PushON Ltd.

We were appointed to work on the project in October 2010 partnering with The Savvy Partnership and have spent that time developing a holistic digital marketing strategy.

The first launch is a hub website which will act as a ‘shop window’ for the different divisions of AVC Group. They include Digital Media, IT, Two-way Broadband, Renewable Energy, Electrical Recycling, Facilities Services, Defence & Security and Trade Counters.

With this site live, we now have further online assets in production including a number of product specific micro-sites as well as standalone websites for the group’s Energy, Electrical Recycling and Digital Media divisions.

Further division specific websites are also planned for later in the year as part of the group’s online strategy which also includes an integrated online marketing campaign incorporating organic search, PPC, social media and digital PR.

The post We've launched the AVC group website appeared first on PushON Ltd.

But it’s so much more than just workspace. The Sharp Project is based in a refurbished Sharp Electronics warehouse. It’s a not-for-profit initiative, led by urban regeneration company New East Manchester on behalf of site owners Manchester City Council. The MASSIVE building offers 200,000 sq ft of workspace, sound stages, and social interactive space open 24/7. The builders are flat out at the moment and are working on getting the building hooked up to fast connectivity starting at 1GB and 6MW of power. Still in the final stages of conversion it’s already home to over 40 companies including Tiger Aspect, Lime, MoCapOne and Barefoot VFX.

Yeah, it’s a walk away from town, but any moment now, the Metrolink station will be open that sits right next to The Sharp Project and takes you straight to town in minutes.

That descripton of it really doesn’t do it justice, so visual effects studio Mi and web agency The Boot room have ressurected the viral homeless robot AHD168 to show you around his new place of work, The Sharp Project.

The Sharp Project on Twitter
The Sharp Project on Facebook

The post The Sharp Project appeared first on PushON Ltd.

So it was lovely to get an email from How Do saying that we’ve been nominated for best SEO & PPC agency in the How Do awards. Exciting news! We’ll find out who’s won on the 26th May. Fingers crossed.

The post PushON are shortlisted for the How Do awards appeared first on PushON Ltd.

First up is Charity Twitter Festival, Twestival. Happening at NoHo on the 24th March. It’s an evening event with various bits of entertainment, all in aid of The Wood Street Mission. Get your tickets soon, I reckon it’ll be sold out in days. Keep up to date with the happenings by following @Manctwester

Next up is SASCon, Search Analytics and Social Conference on the 19th and 20th May in The Hive, Manchester. Just a reminder that tickets are now on sale.

Also, just a hint.. you might want to put 11th April in your calendar. Just Saying.

And finally, everyone who’s going to SXSW: Have fun!

As usual:

For a full calendar of events, look on our design and digital events calendar

If you want your event added, contact Rebecca on info@pushon.co.uk

The post Events Next Week appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Next week, and I do know I say this every week, is stacked.

Tuesday – I lecture on The University of Salford’s Design Futures course. My students have been running a project where they’re asking the design and digital community to review their work through their website, This is FML Live. Have a look at their work, let them know what you think then come and visit them at The Castle Hotel from 6:30.

Wednesday – Digital Pathways 2011 is on, talking about broadcasting, telecoms, digital networks, infrastructure and ICT and is aimed at a broad range of ICT / technology companies and SMEs from 5:30 at The Bridgewater Hall.

Thursday - Alf Rehn: Dangerous Ideas is on at The Cornerhouse from 6:30.

Friday – Is both Manchester Young Creatives and the birthdays of Sophie Bradshaw and Jake Ivill. Dunno why I did that, they’re not technically industry events, and I’m not doing birthday shout outs every week. What do you think this is dammit?! This is a serious events blog.

As usual:

For a full calendar of events, look on our design and digital events calendar

If you want your event added, contact Rebecca on info@pushon.co.uk

The post Events Next Week appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The Next Generation of Ranking Signals – We discussed a great post on SEOmoz exploring the The Next Generation of Ranking Signals. This delves into the future of ranking signals, exploring different ways that search engines could rank results to avoid obvious gaming of results, such that was made all too clear by Google’s recent penalties on J.C.Penny. In summary there are 3 ways that could be used for future ranking signals, these are:

• Brand Signals – Using associations from the brand to avoid a situation like with J.C.Penny where they are dominating rankings for items that they may not even be selling.
• Entity Associations – Search embracing the metaweb more by associating obvious terms such as ‘governator’, ‘Kindergarten Cop’ and ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger’ to produce cleaner organic results.
• Human Quality Raters – Search changing from the algorithmic + crowd model into something more integrated and advanced. This is very much a nod towards the Wikipedia model. With Facebook Connect spreading at a rate of knots a huge amount of user data is becoming available. A way to utilise this effectively could make a real impact on search and also allow us to see accurate, richer universal search results.

When Are Penalties Lifted? - Matt Cutts stepped up to the plate and answered a question that many SEO’s have been wanting answering in light of the penalties given to J.C.Penny. The video is well worth a watch and explores the difference between algorithmic and manual actions that Google take and how to resubmit your site should your site be penalized.

Google Spamming SERPs again? – A interesting article cropped up exploring Google spamming search results again, using Google News as the example and reminding us all to pull our socks up and keep an eye on our robots.txt files.

Humans.txt – While we’re on the subject of robots.txt files an interesting new movement has began for adding humans.txt files to your sites. Don’t know what a human.txt file is? Well, in short it’s a file that operates much like a robots.txt but is targeted at us humans, documenting who built the site and how the site was built; providing us geeks with the information that we sometimes want to know. A good example can be seen here.

SEO’s Vs. Domainers FIGHT! – People are starting to discuss whether Google Chrome are going to scrap the address bar and, if they do, will Microsoft (Internet Explorer) follow? Will Google Chrome to Scrap the address bar? Really? What do you think?

Is Google Changing our Title Tags? -

This image was created using this cool ransom note generator.
An interesting post showing that in some instances Google is reserving the right to change title tags.

Finally, the grammar police are in town so please let me apologize for the typos in Mark and Kieron’s previous posts. We will continue with our weekly ‘Round-up’ next week.

Have you seen any news that’s interested you this week? Get in touch and let us know, we’re always open to learning and sharing new things…

The post SEO Weekly Round-up from PushON appeared first on PushON Ltd.