New Media Writing Prize

Anna's web design skills will be on display at Poole Literary Festival at the end of October where her O2 Tales digital fiction piece has be short listed for the New Media Writing Prize.

O2 Tales was created by Anna using a combination of html and JavaScript with links to Facebook and Twitter using their own APIs. The sound track was created using Audacity and happyworm's jPlayer. The pictures.... well that is of course the very high tech use of some coloured pencils abandoned by her children.

HOTBOOK

The HOTBOOK is an exciting digital literature project for 11 to 14 year olds.

It makes a nice change to be designing a system in a colour scheme other than grey, blue and white which seems to have become a standard of the noughties. What is the future going to look like? The HOTBOOK went through almost as many clothes changes as Doctor Who before the if:book team finally settled on the fantastic outfit it is currently sporting. Take a look at the Bookfutures blog for a preview.

The stick-on buttons were as difficult to manipulate as the cheap alternative to sellotape I still forget not to buy at Christmas, but the result is quirky, especially when they do a spooky disappearing act leaving odd bits of sticky tape behind.

Thanks must go to Queensbridge School in Birmingham for helping me test the system and I look forward to testing it in other schools in the next two weeks. To register interest go to the if:book website.

The Future is Simple

'Simplicity is when someone takes care of the details.'

- from an interesting article posted in Facebook this morning: http://informationarchitects.jp/whats-next-in-web-design/.