It's all about the music, man…

One of the best things about working in the creative industry is the generally more relaxed nature of the offices; jeans & t-shirts instead of shirt & tie and getting to listen to music pretty much all day long!

A couple of days ago a link went around the 'net showing how to create a nice wee visualisation of your listening habits based on your Last.fm profile (here's our Last.fm profile page) which straight away just about all of us did!

It seems that we listen to quite a wide variety of music although the big winners are Boards of Canada, Blur and Belle & Sebastian.

By Colin Frame
Published: 21 August 2008
4 Comments

The family gets feline

This weekend Muffin and Cheeky joined my household, and are settling in nicely - and taking all the best seats on the sofa as this pic shows (yes, I clearly chose them to match my furnishings).

By Kate Wooding
Published: 21 August 2008
1 Comment

Brands poor at Search Engine Optimisation

New research reported in today's Revolution shows that the majority of brand advertisers do not have an effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy, negatively impacting on their natural search listings. Essentially, their sites are not search engine friendly, meaning that they rank lower on search engine listings.

Search engine optimisation covers a range of things - from some technical stuff about how your site is built (e.g. sites built entirely in Flash severely restrict Google's ability to 'read' them), how the URLs of pages are set up, to the content and copy on your site, and how your headings show. All tictoc's sites are built with SEO in mind - we covered a bit about SEO in our most recent seminar, and we'll probably cover it again in future events.

By Kate Wooding
Published: 20 August 2008
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Silver lining for etailers

New research shows that the current economic situation may have a silver lining for etailers - although 64% of respondents said that the economic climate would force them to reduce their overall spending, 56% said that they would continue to shop online as much as they are already, while some will even spend more.

The report, by E-consultancy, also looks at the importance of price, user-reviews and recommendations for consumers when online shopping.

Responses show that price comparison sites are becoming more important - the report suggests that retailers should be submitting their product feeds to price comparison engines to take advantage of this - and that user-reviews are also of growing importance, particularly to the younger market (72% of the 25-34 age group said they would be more likely to read online reviews, the figure for over 55s was 53%).

Matthew Tod, one of the authors of the report, commented "We can see from this report that silver surfers are not into social media or comparison engines and are intending to spend more as the downturn does not touch them. But on the other hand a whole group of more financially pressed people now use social media to make decisions and then comparison engines to find the best deal. Complexity rules and simple strategies will fail if online retailers don't understand this."

By Kate Wooding
Published: 15 August 2008
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Trouble at tictoc

There was trouble at tictoc this week when Andrew challenged the "you can't hit a man wearing glasses" rule.

p.s. No developers were harmed in the making of this photograph.

By Fiona Dorman
Published: 8 August 2008
2 Comments

Are rising prices driving online shopping?

Realised we hadn't mentioned anything about credit crunches or rising fuel prices on the blog (well it's summer, we've got better things to think about like flying ant days and playground games), so thought I would remedy this with a positive little story about how rising prices might actually be driving online sales. Online sales have been rising steadily since forever, and it must be difficult to separate the many factors that contribute to this, but it seems that some clever people think that we might be using online shopping to avoid travel costs (like fuel), or to avoid overspending on shopping trips. Read the full article at e-consultancy here - it also links to a great article by Lorraine Paterson about how to improve eCommerce sites from a usability point of view.

By Kate Wooding
Published: 25 July 2008
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Happy Flant Day!

It is Flying Ant Day here in Glasgow - fly, ants, fly! I can assure you this is a real phenomenon, Wikipedia even has an entry about it, so it must be true!

By Kate Wooding
Published: 24 July 2008
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Heads Down, Thumbs Up

Fiona reminded us all of the joys of school games - it did in fact come from Paul playing "chappie" on the girls last week which I knew as "ring-a-bell-skoosh" i.e. knock the door, Fi runs to answer it while Paul hotfoots it back upstairs giggling like a wee boy!!

One that we all seem to remember well is Heads Down Thumbs up (see pic - that's what Fiona's doing!) where you all put your heads down and your thumbs up and had to guess who had put your thumbs down!!

The other one I remember is British Bulldogs - outlawed across the land for its danger level!

Anyone got any others??

By Melanie Russell
Published: 22 July 2008
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The rise and rise of mobile sites

There's an article in this week's NMA about how 60% of consumers think it's important to be able to access the internet from their mobile, and 65% of those who are planning to buy a phone in the next year will be looking for a good mobile internet experience. Surely the iPhone and Twitter are partly responsible for this rise?? There are a couple of things this means for the digital industry - firstly we'll all need to make sure that the sites we build are easily 'readable' on mobiles and secondly more brands are demanding mobile-specific sites - sites built specifically for mobile access. Will it be restricted to certain sectors? The NMA article suggests that banks, sport, travel, social networking, local amenities/guides and ticket purchasing would all benefit - and having mobile access to Wikipedia would settle a few pub arguments - and make pub quizzes a cinch!

By Kate Wooding
Published: 19 June 2008
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Olden days

Colin's parents found a picture of Newton Terrace in the good ole days. It was in a book, possibly an old book - sorry I can't be more specific. Anyway, it shows the other end of Newton Terrace (home of tictoc's Glasgow office) which used to belong to Henry Samuel & Sons, furriers. Cue much excitement about Newton Terrace being the birthplace of the high street chain of jewellers (furs and diamonds are both luxury goods after all), but a little research on Wikipedia showed us this was unlikely. Ho hum.

By Kate Wooding
Published: 9 May 2008
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Search and online dating

Perusing SEO-Chicks for the first time today, found this very clever way of explaining to people like me the finer points of keyword matching. Suddenly it all makes sense!

By Kate Wooding
Published: 2 May 2008
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It's a boy

Although it only feels like 5 minutes since Mel went on Maternity Leave we are delighted to announce that we have a new member of the tictoc family, a baby boy!

Mel, baby and dad are happy and well.

p.s. Name to be confirmed.

By Fiona Dorman
Published: 10 April 2008
3 Comments

Google search controversy

So, if you're interested in Search (like us) then you might have heard the furore about Google's new 'Search within site' functionality - which means that users can search for a product/content within a particular site (like The Sun or John Lewis) from within the Google page, rather than going to the site's home page and using the site's own search engine. At the moment Google has only applied this to a small number of sites.

The controversy is based around two things - firstly, the home pages of the sites that have the new 'Search in site' function will get less traffic as users go directly inside the site, and this could mean that the sites lose out on ad revenue from their home pages. Secondly, some users have pointed out that the results from the 'within site' search could actually take users away from the original site, which would mean you wouldn't want to have a 'search within site' box applied to your site from Google. Here's a couple of articles that explain it fully:

Article in the New York Times

SEOSmarty blog about the issue

By Fiona Dorman
Published: 28 March 2008
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If the hat fits

I have always knitted but without any real focus. I have inflicted (mainly) scarves on friends, family and myself over the years. So I was excited to hear about a Save the Children appeal which wooly hats you knit and send are given out to mothers and babies in developing countries. Donations of matinee jackets or blankets etc. would also be more than welcome.

Wooly hats are part of my repertoire (well, just hats and scarves really) so even with my limited skills a difference can be made.

Click here for appeal info
Click here for your knit kit

By Fiona Dorman
Published: 26 March 2008
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Have a smashing Easter!

tictoc are celebrating Easter with the traditional Easter chick pinata! The ceremonial bashing will take place later this afternoon to kick start the holiday weekend.

We'd like to wish all our friends and clients a very Happy Easter!

By Fiona Dorman
Published: 20 March 2008
1 Comment

Birthday Present Roulette

There has been a recent spate of birthdays at tictoc towers with Drew, David and Tom all celebrating getting another year older! The quality of birthday presents received has however varied enormously.

Tom was deighted with the robot that his boy's had made for him, Drew's bookshelves were stocked up with what sounds like a very interesting collection of books and David......well David's star present was a Pot Noodle (complete with bow)!

This started us thinking about best and worst presents we'd ever received. Whilst some of us couldn't remember what Santa had brought us this year let alone create a present Top 10, others were happy to share:

Mel
For my 16th birthday (I think) just when you're at that really annoying teenager stage when everything in life is "so unfair" my main birthday present was an Encyclopedia!! Imagine my excitement!!! Those totally impractical, cheap rubbish stiletto shoes and bat wing sleeve jacket would have to wait for another year! My most traumatic present issue has to be when I was around 4 or 5 and wanted a real silver cross bouncy pram like the lady next door had (mine would have been child sized obviously!), came downstairs and what did I get? a wee plastic buggy with orange and pink flowers that wouldn't last the week never mind the year!! gutted to this day!!

Alan
Aedan was born just after my birthday so he was my best, aaawww.

Paul
Best present. My first skateboard when I was 11. Got a skateboard for my birthday and christmas every year after that and still am. Don't think i've ever had anything i considered bad. In my book anything that's free is good.

Kerry
Best present has to be my Dyson that was initially bought as a joke but turned out to be a surprise hit - love it! Presents that year also included Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' now that in my opinion is a rubbish present and after gathering dust for the past few years I'm sure it will soon be looking for a new home via the local charity shop.

By Kerry Reid
Published: 14 March 2008
1 Comment

a light snack

It's been noticed recently that Andy (aka Andrew No3. or designer Andy) only seems to bring miniaturised food to work. I'm pretty sure it's not some kind of new fashionable diet like Atkins or that one where you only eat apples as he was completely unaware of it until i pointed it out.

The miniature food Andy consumes in a day hasn't alway been the healthiest, mainly consisting of fun size chocolate and mini cartons of artificially flavoured drinks. However, he's recently made an attempt to turn his diet round so is now eating more fruit. It was therefor no surprise when i saw him nibbling away at this tiny grape. I promise you there is no photoshop trickery in this picture.

By Paul Mowat
Published: 13 March 2008
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Design and the Elastic Mind

MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, have created a neat experimental interface for one of their current exhibitions, Design and the Elastic Mind. The exhibition "focuses on designers' ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores" and seeks to highlight successful examples."

By Cameron Yule
Published: 7 March 2008
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