At Gyroscope we are always open to taking on interns for short term placements. We are a young company and all of us understand the difficulty young people have in breaking into media jobs.
I don't feel overly comfortable with advertising on my blog, but our website had some technical difficulties over the weekend, and it is consequently difficult to upload new content. Besides, I genuinely think that the internships are a great scheme, and have no problem just writing about them.
If you are after an intership opportunity there is not much better than going for a small company like Gyroscope, because you get to feel like one of the team. Many interns bring their own skills to the company, and several have found jobs here following such a placement. Bobby, who is the other programmer here, was once an intern, though it is hard to believe it when you see the depth and extent of his skills. The internship gave him the chance to show us his talents, and us the chance to find out about him.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, an internship placement has recently become available, so anyone interested should not hesitate to get in touch. We are in the midst of finishing a big project, so have lots of work needing doing, lots of chance to gain valuable experience.
To get an idea of the kind of life an intern might lead, a current intern has embarked on a video diary project. Bear in mind, however, that Gyroscope cannot take responsibility for these films, and that the opinions expressed in them are the author's own.
The first one is here:
Monday, 29 September 2008
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Design and Technology
Another week at work, another blog. The project I am working on has reached a tricky stage and I can only spare a few minutes to write my blog. What I am doing, in layman's terms, is attempting a deep sythesis between image and code, part of a program that I am developing in tandem with my young protégé, Bobby. Bobby is handling the functional aspects of the development, leaving me with the tricky task of dealing with deep graphics.
The art of combining graphical elements with programmed content has a long history in web and software design. But the extent to which these two elements are brought together differs. Early web pages, for instance, had a plain background, a simple format, and used complex graphics only within pictures displayed in separate frames. Nowadays, the challenge is to have design deeply interpenetrate the user interface, to the extent that the user is not even necessarily aware of it.
Just as certain ratios are more pleasing to the eye, the timing and distribution of motion graphics is full of ratios that can be planned out in advance by a designer. Indeed, much of the unconscious structure of the experience of using an interface can be manipulated to great effect.
But to achieve these things, I need to be able to translate quite 2D physical designs into entirely hidden structures of programmed elements. The challenge is not so much the coding itself, but the translation between the world of design and that of this particular techology.
Our in-house designer at Gyroscope, Sheldon, is a very gifted artist. And I can chat to him about the development of designs fine. But to explain how the designs might be preserved in a purely structural realm is difficult. It is not so much his problem with understanding but a jarring of two quite different ways of thinking. And it is all the more difficult because I can never be sure I have "got it" at all. All we can do is wait for the final product and see whether what its effect is! I am looking forward to that moment because things are hotting up here!
Back to work - more later - D
The art of combining graphical elements with programmed content has a long history in web and software design. But the extent to which these two elements are brought together differs. Early web pages, for instance, had a plain background, a simple format, and used complex graphics only within pictures displayed in separate frames. Nowadays, the challenge is to have design deeply interpenetrate the user interface, to the extent that the user is not even necessarily aware of it.
Just as certain ratios are more pleasing to the eye, the timing and distribution of motion graphics is full of ratios that can be planned out in advance by a designer. Indeed, much of the unconscious structure of the experience of using an interface can be manipulated to great effect.
But to achieve these things, I need to be able to translate quite 2D physical designs into entirely hidden structures of programmed elements. The challenge is not so much the coding itself, but the translation between the world of design and that of this particular techology.
Our in-house designer at Gyroscope, Sheldon, is a very gifted artist. And I can chat to him about the development of designs fine. But to explain how the designs might be preserved in a purely structural realm is difficult. It is not so much his problem with understanding but a jarring of two quite different ways of thinking. And it is all the more difficult because I can never be sure I have "got it" at all. All we can do is wait for the final product and see whether what its effect is! I am looking forward to that moment because things are hotting up here!
Back to work - more later - D
Friday, 19 September 2008
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
Looking over this... this is a pretty serious blog post. I sometimes get absorbed in what I am doing and lack the context that might lighten it up. Anyhow, its Friday, and I think writing my blog is a way to clear my mind up ahead of the fun of the weekend... At last!
Type "subliminal messages" into Google and it is easy to get stuck in YouTube videos locating the word "sex" everywhere and anywhere in a sequence of adverts, the origins and date of which are dubious to say the least. Researching this area is difficult because of the large number of conspiracy theorists who like to imagine that corporations are secretly controlling the minds of the masses.
The debate nevertheless resurfaces periodically, as more believable messages are found. Whether these are the outcome of chance, or whether they are spliced into adverts because their producers believe that they should capitalise on any chance that they would work, must vary. But some are hard to miss. Now is an opportune time to be on the lookout, in the run up to the US presidential election.
The use of such messages were discovered in an early advert for Bush:
And already there are accusations that similar techniques may be employed on behalf of the McCain campaign:
Maybe that is just Fox News...
The most famous study of subliminal messaging was produced by James Vicary in 1957, who claimed his flashes of text during a film had boosted popcort sales. He later admitted that he had lied. Yet still, in 2007, marketing expert turned hypnotist Jim Brackin made a new version of Vicary's experiment, which was played at MARKA, an international branding conference with supposedly positive results.
Obviously, the dividing line between subliminal messages and general production techniques is very much blurred. That mood is subtly created by music is foundational to all film and TV production, and often the music is not explicitly to be noticed, being just background atmosphere. But this hardly counts as subliminal. An article in the Independent gives an insight into the continuing scientific interest of things that are subconsciously experienced. We need not be talking of anything so obvious as hidden textual statements here. We can only pay attention to a certain amount of our surroundings at any one time, but this does not mean that the rest of our environment does not have an effect.
I work in program and website development, and here, as in any media role, it is important to be sensitive to the background feel of what you produce. I work closely with a designer who comes up with graphics that reflect the mood that we are going for in our product. Often enough these are not to be foregrounded, and are style points that are very subtle. But are we endulging in "subliminal messages"?
Well, they aren't exactly messages. But they certainly do have an effect. Perhaps their impact is restricted to short term emotional states. Yet the chance that they could have greater effect does sometimes worry me. It seems that working in media requires a certain amount of responsibility, at least until the depth of our work is properly understood.
Type "subliminal messages" into Google and it is easy to get stuck in YouTube videos locating the word "sex" everywhere and anywhere in a sequence of adverts, the origins and date of which are dubious to say the least. Researching this area is difficult because of the large number of conspiracy theorists who like to imagine that corporations are secretly controlling the minds of the masses.
The debate nevertheless resurfaces periodically, as more believable messages are found. Whether these are the outcome of chance, or whether they are spliced into adverts because their producers believe that they should capitalise on any chance that they would work, must vary. But some are hard to miss. Now is an opportune time to be on the lookout, in the run up to the US presidential election.
The use of such messages were discovered in an early advert for Bush:
And already there are accusations that similar techniques may be employed on behalf of the McCain campaign:
Maybe that is just Fox News...
The most famous study of subliminal messaging was produced by James Vicary in 1957, who claimed his flashes of text during a film had boosted popcort sales. He later admitted that he had lied. Yet still, in 2007, marketing expert turned hypnotist Jim Brackin made a new version of Vicary's experiment, which was played at MARKA, an international branding conference with supposedly positive results.
Obviously, the dividing line between subliminal messages and general production techniques is very much blurred. That mood is subtly created by music is foundational to all film and TV production, and often the music is not explicitly to be noticed, being just background atmosphere. But this hardly counts as subliminal. An article in the Independent gives an insight into the continuing scientific interest of things that are subconsciously experienced. We need not be talking of anything so obvious as hidden textual statements here. We can only pay attention to a certain amount of our surroundings at any one time, but this does not mean that the rest of our environment does not have an effect.
I work in program and website development, and here, as in any media role, it is important to be sensitive to the background feel of what you produce. I work closely with a designer who comes up with graphics that reflect the mood that we are going for in our product. Often enough these are not to be foregrounded, and are style points that are very subtle. But are we endulging in "subliminal messages"?
Well, they aren't exactly messages. But they certainly do have an effect. Perhaps their impact is restricted to short term emotional states. Yet the chance that they could have greater effect does sometimes worry me. It seems that working in media requires a certain amount of responsibility, at least until the depth of our work is properly understood.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Know Thine Customer
Part of my job is to research new methods of online interactivity, and I have recently been looking further into this area. I am trying to come up with streamlined systems that might produce a high degree of interactivity with the user when embedded in online content.
Targetted marketing is no new idea. That any product should be tailored to the market it is designed for is an obvious fact. But it was only in the 20th century that large scale market research became the vogue. Since the pioneering work of characters such as Herta Herzog, any kind of consumer article tries to second gues the perceptions of what it guesses are its audience and tries to satisfy them as well as possible.
The area of interest these days is the way in which websites that we visit can tell a large amount about the visitor simply by analysing their online movements. Amazon.com, for instance, has progressively improved its systems for giving customers recommendations. This has been a bit of a headache for them, but through improving their data-crunching skills, analysing what each user buys, looks at, searches for, it comes out with a recommendation that is supposed to be very closely tailored to its customers.
Yet amazon has barely scratched the surface of what is possible, and ehre we get into territory that is easily scandalous. Websites automatically save all manner of information about the user, and this can easily look like a form of espionage. Several big marketing, web analytics, and content management companies are investigating the possibility of bringing the user targeted content that is dynamically linked with their own behaviour. As they dance around the web, the web dances with them. So far Amazon, though proud of its achievements, has been treading on its users' toes.
For instance, were my website to be a bookshop, if a visitor arrives having come from a gardening website, I might display a range of popular gardening books prominently on the page. However, if the user is surfing using firefox and linux, I might guess that they would be more technologically-minded and less amenable to being baby-sat, and display the site in a more directory-like way. If the user is using windows and internet explorer, however, the opposite is a good guess. Furthermore, from the kind of network or connection that the access is routed through we might guess about whether the user is at work or not - perhaps displaying a less playful scheme to those whose colleagues/bosses might be peering over the shoulder. Location, too, has long been exploited by advert companies, but can do much more than simply suggesting local businesses. Much can be guessed about tastes from the location, and much more can be guessed from the synthesis of location, software, patterns of use, IP address all combined.
With scandal after scandal rolling over our tv screens/RSS feeds about government losses of private data, it might be surmised that the British public are neurotic about information, and any form of data collection is therefore suspicious. But if we come to terms with the fact that this information is collected anyway, we might enter an age of interactive surfing willingly, appreciating the intelligence of websites. How we respond to electronically generated content, and what psychological mechanisms are thereby triggered, is an issue that is really interesting to follow, and a battleground for the marketeers of the future.
I find these things a bit of a headache to work with, and many of the firms researching these things hold their cards close to their chest. Its fascinating though. I feel like I am involved in cutting edge stuff, even though our company is really quite small.
Otherwise, life is good here in Hoxton.
Targetted marketing is no new idea. That any product should be tailored to the market it is designed for is an obvious fact. But it was only in the 20th century that large scale market research became the vogue. Since the pioneering work of characters such as Herta Herzog, any kind of consumer article tries to second gues the perceptions of what it guesses are its audience and tries to satisfy them as well as possible.
The area of interest these days is the way in which websites that we visit can tell a large amount about the visitor simply by analysing their online movements. Amazon.com, for instance, has progressively improved its systems for giving customers recommendations. This has been a bit of a headache for them, but through improving their data-crunching skills, analysing what each user buys, looks at, searches for, it comes out with a recommendation that is supposed to be very closely tailored to its customers.
Yet amazon has barely scratched the surface of what is possible, and ehre we get into territory that is easily scandalous. Websites automatically save all manner of information about the user, and this can easily look like a form of espionage. Several big marketing, web analytics, and content management companies are investigating the possibility of bringing the user targeted content that is dynamically linked with their own behaviour. As they dance around the web, the web dances with them. So far Amazon, though proud of its achievements, has been treading on its users' toes.
For instance, were my website to be a bookshop, if a visitor arrives having come from a gardening website, I might display a range of popular gardening books prominently on the page. However, if the user is surfing using firefox and linux, I might guess that they would be more technologically-minded and less amenable to being baby-sat, and display the site in a more directory-like way. If the user is using windows and internet explorer, however, the opposite is a good guess. Furthermore, from the kind of network or connection that the access is routed through we might guess about whether the user is at work or not - perhaps displaying a less playful scheme to those whose colleagues/bosses might be peering over the shoulder. Location, too, has long been exploited by advert companies, but can do much more than simply suggesting local businesses. Much can be guessed about tastes from the location, and much more can be guessed from the synthesis of location, software, patterns of use, IP address all combined.
With scandal after scandal rolling over our tv screens/RSS feeds about government losses of private data, it might be surmised that the British public are neurotic about information, and any form of data collection is therefore suspicious. But if we come to terms with the fact that this information is collected anyway, we might enter an age of interactive surfing willingly, appreciating the intelligence of websites. How we respond to electronically generated content, and what psychological mechanisms are thereby triggered, is an issue that is really interesting to follow, and a battleground for the marketeers of the future.
I find these things a bit of a headache to work with, and many of the firms researching these things hold their cards close to their chest. Its fascinating though. I feel like I am involved in cutting edge stuff, even though our company is really quite small.
Otherwise, life is good here in Hoxton.
Friday, 12 September 2008
Hello!
Welcome to my new blog!
The old one wasn't cutting the mustard, so I had to upgrade. Sadly the archive didn't travel, but check back soon for updates.
The old one wasn't cutting the mustard, so I had to upgrade. Sadly the archive didn't travel, but check back soon for updates.
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