Here at Simpleweb HQ, we provide our team with healthy sandwiches and soups (courtesy of GeekFeeder) every day, as well as loads of fresh fruit for snacking.

So why do we do it?

They love it

Delicious sandwiches and soups delivered straight to their desks makes the Simpleweb team very happy. And being happy motivates them.

A study by a group of Warwick based economists found that happier workers were 12% more productive while unhappy workers were 10% less productive.

“We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity,” the team of economists said. “Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings, while negative emotions have the opposite effect.”

It’s healthy

We care about our team and we want them to be healthy.

Unhealthy diets are likely to leave us feeling sluggish and having difficulty concentrating says the British Heart Foundation. Healthy lunches help to keep the Simpleweb team alert and productive.

It’s convenient

Providing lunch gives our team more time to enjoy their lunch break.

Taking sufficient lunch breaks is widely recognised as being beneficial for both workers and employers. In a 2012 article for the BBC, former Wall Street trader Frank Partnoy said

“ If we burrow into work, and don’t come up for air during the day, we will have a hard time thinking strategically or putting our daily tasks into broader context.”

Healthy lunches delivered to their desks means the Simpleweb team have more time to relax, refresh and play more games of pool before they get back to rolling out some awesome products.

Smiles all ‘round.

Several weeks ago I signed up for the Leap Developer programme with the aim to use the device for research and development, after a few weeks of anticipation it finally arrived and I quickly plugged it in eager to try the demos included with the SDK. The software was quick and easy to get up and running and just seemed to work out of the box.

As we went through each demo more people crowded around wanting to give it a go. The technology is certainly interesting enough to grab peoples attention but I couldn’t help asking myself if this was purely a gimmick in which the novelty would quickly wear off or if it truly was the future of computing.

The Minority Report Effect

The film Minority Report came out in 2002, following the up and coming popularity of sci-fi films like The Matrix. These films took advantage of technology being sufficient enough to realise the future in a way that they could demonstrate on film and have one believe that the technology could be real or possible in the near future.

I remember going to the cinema and watching what was probably the most notable scene in the film as Tom Cruise puts on some gloves to interact with a giant curved glass screen. This was at a time where the most popular phone was a Nokia 3510 and nobody had even heard of polyphonic ringtones let alone the iPhone. Touch screens were far from mainstream and our perception for how one interacts with a computer was far more limited than it is today.

This scene sparked the imagination of many researchers who have relentlessly tried to emulate this form of interaction most notably Microsoft first with the surface demonstrated at TED in 2006 and again in 2010 with the Kinect. The popularity of the Kinect has made it easy and affordable for developers like myself to experiment with this technology.

Use cases

The Leap Motion no doubt has useful implications particularly in the medical field, once such example allowing surgeons to perform complex interactions with a computer without having to physically touch a surface. I question however in general purpose if the usefulness of the device on a desktop environment has already been fulfilled by mobile and tablet devices that support mulit-touch that are becoming ever more popular.

Looking at the video released by Leap demonstrating the technology I see little in their examples that can’t be achieved by a touch surface and in a few examples I believe that a touch surface would give you more control and precision.

Technology

The technology behind leap, although fantastic, has very finite limitations that I quickly ran into once I started developing with the unit. The calibration tool that comes with the SDK places points on your screen, you then take a pencil and point to the dot with it. I have a pretty standard computer, a 24″ iMac, and the sensors field of vision was not able to detect about 35% of the screen, meaning I wasn’t able to calibrate the device to my desktop computer.

I proceeded to move over to my MacBook Pro with the hope I could calibrate it to that, however due to the small amount of space above the keyboard and the start of the visible screen I was unable to capture objects on the bottom left and right of the screen. I was already a bit skeptic about its consumer potential, this paired with my own gripes up until a few days ago led me to believe that the technology was not quite ready and had put me off developing any further.

On 27th February I got an email from Leap announcing SDK version 0.7.4 which introduced a gesture library. The mechanics of gestures mean that absolute relation to the screen isn’t important on the basis that your application does not require such precision. I will soon be experimenting with the gestures and hope to open source my own demos in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out on the Simpleweb Blog and the new Labs page for more news.

There’s some useful advice in the post and we recommend you take a look, especially if you have kids.

But there’s one point we’d like to reiterate here…

Did you know that every photo taken with a GPS enabled camera (a smart phone, for example) is ‘stamped’ with the location and time the photo was taken? When you upload these photos to a website, the information can easily be extracted to see when and where it was taken.

This is part of the exif (exchangeable image file format) data which is stored within the photo.

Want to know what data is stored in your photos? Try this online photo EXIF metadata reader to find out.

If you want to learn more, here’s a short talk by Nate Beck about how he managed to locate a number of celebrities from the exif data in the photos they had shared on Twitter.

World IA Day brings together experts in the field of Information Architecture, User Experience and Built Environment Architecture.

Speakers will include President of the Information Architecture Institute, Andrea Resmini; leading User Experience Practitioner, Leisa Reichelt; UX Manager, Margaret Hanley and Architect, Martyn Dade-Robertson.

At 3pm there will be an open panel discussion featuring our very own Graham Hopkins. Why not come and say hi?!

The panel will discuss both the challenges and opportunities that present themselves as we move to a more distributed digital landscape.

We hope to see you there!

Kylie joined as Office Manager back in November, taking care of admin and generally making sure the office runs smoothly.

Then Dr Paul M. (yep, he has a PhD in Computer Modelling) joined us in December part time and will be full time as of February. Paul founded web development company World Without Walls in 2001 and is now helping us to deliver products.

Then came developer, Tom C. Tom’s expertise include PHP, HTML and CSS and he’s already proving to be a valuable member of our team of developers.

And finally, our newest addition is project manager Graham. Graham used to work at Futurelab where he explored the use of future technology in education. At Simpleweb, he’s ensuring that UX is embedded into all aspects of the products we deliver. Graham will be on the panel at World IA Day in Bristol on February 9th if you want to say hi!

Let the good times roll.

W2 Global Data Solutions, founded by Warren Russell in 2011, is already a leading provider of data, software and services to access in depth information about people and organisations. W2 has strategic partnerships with Dow Jones and Intelligent ID to ensure that clients have access to structured intelligence from around the world.

Warren told us “during a restructuring process for W2 Global Data Solutions we met with Mark, Tom and their colleagues at Simpleweb and selected to enter into a strategic partnership with them, in essence outsourcing our entire IT support and development function to the Bristol based team. Since September 2012 they have worked tirelessly to streamline IT processes and enhance our company and solution with great effect and we are now able to compete at higher levels than we anticipated so soon after launch.

“With a pragmatic yet imaginative approach they are helping us revolutionise how we operate technologically and we are looking forward to an exciting, challenging and rewarding 2013.”

Simpleweb’s Tom said “We are pleased to have invested in W2 and will be providing ongoing technical direction and support to grow the company into a world leading solution provider of identity checking and AML solutions. Working closely with security specialists and hosting partners to deliver a robust and secure product, we are confident that W2 will go from strength to strength in the new year. Technology plays a key role in the delivery of the W2 services and we will be investing heavily to ensure W2 remain at the cutting edge of this growing market.”

1. Bardowl

Who are they?

Bardowl, based in Bath, have created an app that allows you to stream unlimited audiobooks to your phone for a monthly subscription of £9.99.

Image: bardowl.com

Why we love them

Bardowl, hailed as “Spotify for Audiobooks”, streams audiobooks instead of downloading them to your device, although local cacheing means that you can store up to 3 hours of audio to your iPhone for listening offline.

Users of Bardowl can extract 30 seconds of audio from the book they are listening to and share the quote to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

2. 3Desk

Who are they?

Bristol based 3Desk is a platform for freelancer recruitment.

Image: 3desk.com

Why we love them

Unlike most similar recruitment platforms, 3Desk encourage ‘in person’ freelancers, although they do carry postings for remote workers. 3Desk filter applications before sending them to employers and score them, making it easier to sift through applications. Recruitment agencies aren’t allowed to post opportunities on the site, so freelancers and employers can communicate directly without those pesky agents getting in the way.

Employers are encouraged to provide feedback on all applications. If they don’t, 3Desk inform applicants when the job is closed so they aren’t left waiting to hear if they got the job.

3. Coull

Who are they?

Coull is a self service video advertising platform based in Bristol which allows advertisers to add clickable calls to action into their videos. Videos are then connected with suitable publishers to ensure content reaches relevant audiences.

Image: coull.com

Why we love them

Coull places video adverts with high quality targeted publishers to get great click through and conversion rates. It’s been used by tons of big name advertisers including 02, Weight Watchers, William Hill, Tesco and LEGO and has access to publishers like the Telegraph, Imagine Publishing and Future Publishing.

Irfon from Coull also gave one of the best pieces of start up advice ever at a startup event in Bristol – “Nobody gives a fuck about your start up except you”…

4. StoreNextDoor

Who are they?

StoreNextDoor connects people with extra storage space (badgers) with people who are looking for somewhere to store their stuff (squirrels).

Image: storenextdoor.com

Why we love them

Based in Bath, StoreNextDoor is a great community based alternative to corporate self storage units. They’ve thought of everything from personal profiles with links to social accounts to personal liability and contents insurance as standard.

A great idea that brings communities together and saves them money at the same time.

5. Hybrid Cluster

Who are they?

Swindon based HybridCluster is a high density cloud platform for service providers. HybridLogic lets web hosts and users of cloud infrastructure set up high-availability hosting across multiple data centers, live-migrate between them, auto-scale LAMP apps up to dedicated machines, and provides an ‘undo’ button for accidental or malicious changes to files, databases and mailboxes.

Image: hybrid-cluster.com

Why we love them

HybridCluster was set up by ex-Simplewebber, Luke Marsden following practical problems faced in his web hosting company. They demonstrate that hard work, dedication and focus pay off.

What are your favourite startups? Why not tell us on Twitter?

At an event this year I was asked “what is Simpleweb’s biggest asset and USP?”. The first part of the question was easier than the second. Our biggest asset is our team. Simpleweb’s team is diverse, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. What more you could want? The biggest “thank you” for 2012 goes to them, the Simpleweb team, your are awesome.

The “USP” was a little harder to answer, essentially tying into my first response; the team. It’s our team that makes Simpleweb unique and the way that we strive to deliver a product to a client. We deliver as though the product is our own, whether to enterprise or a self funded start up.

In 2012 we have taken equity in several companies including W2, CloudManaged, and Survey Wizard. We hope to announce lots of exciting news in the new year from these companies…

Lastly, not only are we helping other companies with their products, in 2013 we aim to be powering a lot of communities with our own product; Rusic. Rusic has enabled Simpleweb to create a lot of community based solutions for clients very efficiently this year, next year this is going to go stellar….

Thanks to everybody that has been involved with Simpleweb in 2012. 2013 is looking good already. Until then here’s a few stats to peruse while sipping on your mulled wine.

This soon escalated to include a prize (of a Fitbit One) and mentions of giving away Mark away too (don’t worry we thought better of that though). About 18 months ago we launched Rusic which among other things has been the perfect platform for this kind of social contest for our clients. Since this was just for a little fun if we were going to do this we needed a platform that we could put this together in minutes rather than hours but retain our branding and do everything we needed it to.

I started work at mid-day first spinning up a local site and scraping images and styling from our main site and within 30 minuets I had the core design marked up and ready to be imported into Rusic. Using the liquid syntax in Rusic I quickly wired up my logic and links and finally gave the form inputs meaningful names. And that was it! Done! Hey-presto! This is normally the point you start wiring up the backend architecture, let alone the reporting, hosting ect… not for me! All in all this took me up to about 45 minutes, I spent the remaining 15 minutes adding a confirmation page, setting up the social copy and promoting the give away.

Admittedly this is a far way from the biggest or most feature filled social campaign we’ve hosted on Rusic but it was great to see first hand how painless and quickly you can build a high quality project like this with Rusic. If you want to take a look at what Rusic can do for you or your business head over to http://rusic.com

Have a very merry christmas and a happy new year… if you’d like to answer our question head here you have until Monday 24th December.

Cheers

SimpleWeb HQ

We’ve had such a great year at Simpleweb, and to top it off we’d like to give away a prize. All you have to do is answer a very simple question. The closest suggestion to the correct answer will win.

The question is:

HOW MANY GIT COMMITS HAVE SIMPLEWEB MADE IN 2012 ACROSS THEIR TOP 6 REPOSITORIES?

All details for the competition, including the entry form can be found here.

Make sure to follow @SimplewebHQ for more!

(Image—fitbit.com)