The launch of IE8 was introduced by David Hachamovitch. Many of the new developments found in the new browser are based on research findings, one interesting note; 80% of browser navigation is based on going back to a previous location, IE8 provides several pieces of functionality to support this behavior - good UCD design in practice from Microsoft.

With more applications moving to cloud based technology, the browser needs to handle far more complex. It's vital for users to be able to continue working even if one application crashes, this will only disable one tab with IE8 - not crash the entire browser.

New features of the browser include slices, accelerators and visual search. Slices allow users to keep an eye on a particular piece of content whilst viewing pages from other sites in the main window. Oneriot.com experienced an increase in traffic of 18% since introducing slices. Accelerators provide users with instant access to web services from any piece of content on the page - finding the price of a product on eBay whilst on any shop page. More on eBay later!

The IE8 keynote was followed by a really inspirational design case study presented by Deborah Adler, charting the process and development of Target Pharmaceuticals medication packaging. Very interesting, and pretty easy to draw the comparisons between the packaging design process and our own. It's still all about problem solving, building prototypes, talking to users and working collaboratively within multi disciplinary teams. Sound familiar?

Bill Buxton kicked off proceedings by stressing the importance of experience design in these troubled financial times. Restating the importance of working out your ideas on pen and paper before committing time in front of a PC, encouraging greater dialogue between designer and developer, and stating the importance of play within the design process. I could not have agreed more, this was music to my ears!

The focus of the keynote moved over to Silverlight. We saw projects from Netflix video player, NBC Olympic coverage, Bondi Publishing putting the playboy archive online with Deepzoom (but demoing with Rolling Stone magazine -just to be safe). Alongside these were demos of the new version of Expression Blend. Some of the interesting points for us were the Expression Encoder 2 allowing adaptive streaming; Superpreview mode for HTML browser compatibility checking; and a very impressive spot from Jon Harris demoing the new Sketch flow Prototype allowing designer to quickly layout application flows and use these to produce rapid prototypes for testing and client review.

The most impressive spot was the NBC Olympic coverage and the news that an upgraded service will be offered for Vancouver 2010. New features, 720p HD streaming and the ability to pause live streaming and watch in slow-mo.

Overall a very impressive start, Silverlight 3 obviously the big story from Microsoft today.

Well Splendid are at Mix again in Las Vegas talking about all the great work we have been doing with eBay, First Direct and Born For Sports and mixing with other digital types.
The main event starts tomorrow but we couldn't resist showing you a slot machine we found at the Venetian, its eBay themed...

More tomorrow.

Muse's live album 'HAARP' has won the Best Album Artwork prize at the Shockwaves NME Awards tonight (February 25). Designed by Ben Curzon and the team at Splendid, the record, featuring the band's 2007 London Wembley Stadium shows, beat the likes of The Killers and the The Cure in the fan-voted category.

Congratulations to the band and Management from all at Splendid.

Muse's live album 'HAARP' has won the Best Album Artwork prize at the Shockwaves NME Awards tonight (February 25). Designed by Ben Curzon and the team at Splendid, the record, featuring the band's 2007 London Wembley Stadium shows, beat the likes of The Killers and the The Cure in the fan-voted category.

Congratulations to the band and Management from all at Splendid.

The National Express website and booking engine that we worked on with Flow Interactive has won an award at this years HSBC Rail Business Awards. The award was for IT excellence and we had pretty stiff competition from brands such as Heathrow Express and the London Underground.

Well done to all the team involved in this project.

It was the launch of Smarta.com on Wednesday 28th and Splendid were there in forces. We even dragged along our client (and friend) Nick Bell from Quick TV to join in the fun. It was a very well attended event with Smarta founders and business celebs such as Theo Paphitis (Dragons Den), Simon Woodruffe (Yo Sushi) and Sir Richard Needham.

A good evening was had by all involved and its great to see our hard work on designing Smarta go live.

One of Splendid's designers Holly was featured in .Net Magazine this month. The brief was to design a booking system for pretty much anything, so as it was Winter we chose a Snowboard theme and invested Powder Junkies.

The entire design has been influenced by a desktop-type
layout, with users no longer inhibited by a generic type search and filter system consisting of form fields and tick boxes. Instead, users are able to move widgets freely around the map and have results display immediately upon interaction with the different filters. The map itself also responds directly and instantly to the results, gradually honing in on the most suitable resort and displaying the accommodation available there.

Users are immersed within the virtual experience, being able to see where their accommodation is in relation to ski runs, ski lifts, restaurants and so on. Live webcam and geo-tagged photo feeds enhance the feeling of already being there and getting a real-life preview of what it's like before leaving the house.

Potentially, the Powder Junkie application would be built
using Silverlight, as it offers the widest range of flexibility and features, not to mention the ability for the app to seamlessly integrate with existing Windows functions, such as Virtual Earth and online web services. Building the application in Silverlight/WPF opens the door for Powder Junkie to be deployed onto Microsoft Surface technology (as we have our own Surface unit)and offers the potential to take advantage of future Windows 7 touchscreen technologies. Silverlight's ability to plug into third-party APIs such as Flickr, Facebook and
TripAdvisor holds the technology in good stead.

Splendid have been nominated for 'Best Artwork' for 'HAARP' by Muse in this years NME Awards, so well done to all involved. Muse are a long term client of Splendid and we have won awards for their website on a number of occasions, we would love to win more awards.

You can take part in the process by Voting, unfortunately you have to wade through 25 votes in total, but it only takes a minute and will make you feel all warm inside.

Its the long anticipated launch of Smarta.com tomorrow and Splendid will be in full attendance at the party. We have been working Smarta since 2007 so the full site launch has been a long time coming.

A full case study will be added after the launch event.

Barclays has launched it's first "brand concept" bank branch in the UK.

I've just been shown around the store this morning. It's certainly impressive, much more open and friendly whilst still maintaining a safe corporate feeling. We were taken up to Premier banking (on the upper floor obviously) to play on the new surface tables.

I love the fact they have introduced new ways of interacting with digital content. I do feel this is only the beginning for this type of technology. It would be a great way to 'visually' explain complex banking products. With the multi-touch surface technology the customer could collaborate with the consultant to decide on the best product, rather than being 'shown' the best product for them. Much more friendly and inline with the new feel of the branch!