Blog - Web design Leeds, Big Red Circle we do web design and web applications

The BigRedCircle has been out expanding the size of its circle, filling it with information about the future. Attending The Future of Web Apps Conference in London hosted by those lovely people over at Carsonified.

When the internet is exploding with blogs, tweets and photos of the conference I was left thinking what could I possibly add to the plethora of FOWA web apps based knowledge.

So, racking my brain for that unique angle that nobody else will think of. I had a moment of clarity. For your blogging pleasure I will give you my top 3 speakers of the conference. This will be a totally biased David McGeorge certified opinion ©. (No cashback or refunds available)

As Pat Sharp once said “Lets hit the charts!”

Down 2 places to number #3 is Kevin Rose with his talk on the future of news

An interesting insight into the way that Digg works and some pretty in-depth explanations of Digg’s new recommendation engine. This guy actually knows what he is talking about, he isn’t just the geek chic Diggnation star that we all know.

Staying put at number #2 is Blaine Cook & Joe Stump with Languages Don’t Scale

Blaine is the ex chief architect at twitter and Joe is the lead architect at Digg. This was an uber geekfeast marathon, each sentence more geekey than the last. Not sure what this says about me but I loved it. These two knew their subject and gave great presentations.

Holding on to that top spot is Francisco Tomalsky with his talk about Building Desktop Caliber Web Apps with Objective-J and Cappuccino. #1

You know when you hear someone who is genuinely enthused by what they do it makes everything seem so much better. If I didn’t know better I would say Fransisco jumps out of bed every day with a massive smile on his face because he is off to work at 280 North. My favourite talk of the conference.

I would also like to give honourable mention to Ben Hun from i can haz cheeze burger for his excellent talk on How to take your community to the next level.

And… one final big massive thanks to the guy on the AbilityNet stand who withstood my uncomfortable and overly extended barrage of accessibility questions. Unfortunatly I never got his card.

FOWA London 2008 – survived it and was inspired by it.

Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God! I stood back as I laid my eyes on for the first time what seemed to be…

An awesome looking web app! Yes its true, the long awaited (long awaited to a short queue of people) ppppost.com is now live and free for anyone to have a go. Frankenstein references aside, it has been a difficult day or two. I did actually launch it yesterday, but was then forced to withdraw it within ten minutes later. That was not good for the nerves. All of those original problem have been fixed and now its ready for public consumption. Let hope we haven’t created a monster, and it won’t destroy us either.

I need you

Now its up and functional, but by no means completed. We want you to have a play with it and tell us what you think. Test it out see how you enjoy the experience. Do you like the colours? Would you change how it works? You can suggest networks for use to add. All ideas, comments and criticisms are welcome. Comment away.

Is that it then! are you done?

No we are not finished, we just had the idea of getting it in front of the public’s all seeing eye as fast as we could. We want to get peoples opinions because we are not the only people using it and we don’t want to force our ideas on everyone without them letting us know if its good or not.

We are looking into more API’s and different social networks to add to ppppost, seeing what are the most useful and used networks around. We are looking at Plurk so this could be popping up soon.

We are refining the backend almost everyday and making it that little bit more efficient. The user experience is very important too and we are tweeking that as we go, nobody want a super app that nobody can use or an app that nobody enjoys using.

What are you waiting for PPPPOST.COM

And now it has a name… doesn’t it make you feel better about it now that you know it has a name.

Previously we decided to create a web app in 5 days which was code-named ‘Project SmallGreenTriangle’. Now it has its own name, its called ppppost. The name possibly gives a little more away about what the app will do. The graphic above is a representation of the style of the site. What do you think?

After a fairly chaotic week of client requests, website emergencies and iChat silly face games we finally got some time to work on ppppost.

We will launch ppppost as soon as it is functional (which wont be long, I promise!). This way we can get you, yes you, the user to give us feedback. In turn we will change, update, alter and add things from your suggestions. Everyone’s a winner.

It has been named. It has a proper URL. All that is left for us to do is get the thing live.

…and hope that Carsonifed’s new matt project is not the same :)

Over this last week here at BigRedCircle we have taken a slight step back from our usual web design work and are embarking on a little inter office project. We spend most of our time making websites for clients, which is great but to keep everyone from slipping into the day to day monotony spiral we decided to mix it up and create something for ourselves (and the rest of the internet).

We came up with an idea, lets call it “Project SmallGreenTriangle”. It had to be quick and it had to be useful. We all use twitter, pownce, facebook etc (a little too much somtimes) and without giving too much away we are making something that will help you out with all of your many social networks. It will be a web app and it will be free!

We started on Monday, it was going to be a “Web App in 5 Days!” and the post you are reading now should be a “Hey check out the new BigRedCircle web app” but in fact the sum total of hours spent on “Project SmallGreenTriangle” is a massive 13.5.

Unfortunately more pressing client work has had to take over and slightly stifled the progress of “Project SmallGreenTriangle”, we are still in the felt tipping and Pritt Sticking phase.

Our aim is to get the project up and live for people to see, mess with and test as soon as it is functional. This way we can mould its development and direction to the people who are using it based on comments and suggestions we get. Power to the people.

Keep one eye on the Circle and check back soon.