Congratulation are in order once again... A jolly good effort to the band (Matt, Dom & Chris) and to the management (Anthony, Alex, Sam and Charlotte). The site was voted ahead of other nominated sites YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Green Day's website www.greenday.com "Wining the award was particularly gratifying in light of the strength of the competition. We're really proud of this piece of work, it's a leader in the music industry and a great example of creativity, design and web best practices" Dan Morris A big thanks to the band and the management for giving Splendid the opportunity to work on the latest Muse website, and to the Splendid team for their dedication and hard work. http://Muse.mu http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8534134.stm http://www.nme.com/news/muse/49918

The BBC held an event yesterday for the top 30 agencies on their preferred supplier list, and Splendid were invited along. It was formatted like a speed dating event and was a refreshing approach to understanding how to engage with the BBC. We also saw a sneak preview of the new design for bbc.co.uk but that's a secret...

We have been working with our friends at Project Genie and Microsoft on a great initiative to get schools acting on the environment. PROJECT GENIE is the first programme in the World to put children in charge. It educates and empowers them to produce rapid, meaningful and sustained reductions in energy use- saving money for school and home, whilst also saving the Planet. Project Genie is an independent, non-religious not-for-profit organisation. It was founded by Hugh Montgomery- a medical professor, and award-winning children's author, who presented the televised Royal Institution Christmas lectures in 2007. It has since been developed by independent scientists, authors, artists, designers, technologists and teachers. It was great to be involved with the team if only for a small section of the project. Splendid were responsible for the development of the site and we used Microsoft Windows Azure to host the site.

Splendid will be at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the largest show of it's kind in the world. Its used by manufactures to launch new products and we will be there with a large retailer showcasing a new digital product that has been keeping us busy, we will also be catching up with our multi-touch partners and checking the latest massive multi-touch screens. If you want to meet the team at CES please contact us and we will set a time up.

uch design and development partner. After a competitive pitch we were chosen on our experience of designing and developing multi-touch applications for leading brands such as first direct, leading retailers, Lloyds, Mindshare and a leading UK based motor sport brand. "We chose Splendid to be one of our partners for a number of reasons. Their skill and credibility, proven approach, attention to design and detail, but above all else their people, which continues to be held in the highest regard by their customers and partners such as Microsoft. The innovation they bring to the existing solutions BT Engage IT deliver, through products such as Microsoft Surface and Multi-Touch technology, means we can continue to drive even more business value from IT." Adam Collins, Capability Development Manager, BT Engage IT BT Engage IT provides businesses with access to one of the most comprehensive IT services portfolios in the market. Additionally, as part of the BT Group, we are able to offer a truly integrated suite of IT services to assist in the advice, design, deployment and support of IT requirements to meet clients' business needs. " working with BT engage IT makes sense for Splendid on a number of levels, we share the same desire for excellence in what we do and at the heart of what we both do is effective use of IT infrastructure. Our interest in IT comes from using this platform to create compelling user experiences that drive business value, BT Engage IT solutions backed up with their scale, reach and 24 hour support allow us to continue to innovate in a difficult marketplace" Paul Bishop, Managing Director, Splendid

The Splendid team went to see our fave band Muse the other week, and as usual it was quite a show!

You probably haven't heard of ISU so a little explanation, ISU is Microsoft's largest global internal training event and is attended by about 900 senior Microsoft folks. Splendid were asked to provide a showcase and presentation on user experience design and highlight our work with leading brands using Microsoft technology such as Surface, Silverlight, WPF, .Net Framework, SketchFlow and Windows 7. To find out more why not give us a call.

The Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is the definitive event focused on the technical strategy of the Microsoft developer platform and Splendid will be attending as Microsoft Strategic Surface Partners. So if you want to meet up and find out about our award winning user centered design work, our Surface and Windows 7 multi-touch give us a shout. We would love to meet you.

For the second year running Splendid has been ranked in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA 2009 rankings, which recognizes the 500 fastest-growing technology companies across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) based on percentage revenue growth over a five year period. This regognises are continued growth and expansion of our technical offering to include a dedicated multi-touch team and new CTO, Brennon Williams.

Last week Microsoft launched Windows 7, the much anticipated replacement to Vista. What we like about Windows 7 (along with the usual energy saving and environmental improvements) is the multi-touch capabilities. Out of the box Windows 7 is multi-touch capable, it all depends on the device you are using. This feature is called Windows Touch. We have been using Windows 7 multi-touch laptops and screens in the office for a while now and have a number of large projects underway that take advantage of this great new feature. This all builds on our work as Microsoft Strategic Surface partners and our work with Surface over the last 2 years with clients such as first direct, Mindshare, Microsoft and leading retailers and brands (that we can't mention as yet...). To talk to our experience multi-touch team, arrange a demo of Windows 7 multi-touch capabilities or view our Surface work please get in touch.

We have been working with one of the worlds coolest brands Agent Provocateur to create a new online user experience over the last 6 months and the site is now live... a full case study will be added soon but we couldn't resist adding a sneak preview for our Splendid friends. Enjoy!

Last Friday, a few of us from splendid were lucky enough to go down to Brighton to attend dconstruct 09, a user experience conference that attracts experts in the field from all corners fo the globe. This year Splendid was privileged enough to Sponsor and be asked to go down to demonstrate Microsoft Surface. Against the backdrop of a sunny day in one of England's nicest seaside towns, the day was extremely successful.
With August de los Reyes (Principal Director of User Experience for Microsoft Surface) as one of the Keynotes there was a lot of interest surrounding the surface. The two tables created a quite a storm, at times feeling overwhelmed with the barage of questions and requests about the tables. By the end of the afternoon the dConstruct attendees were more than impressed with Microsoft's latest offering.
The main attraction however was naturally the talented and vibrant speakers that the team at clear left was able to assemble yet again.
Personal highlights was Adam Greenfields discussion on network urbanism, his idea of ubiqutouse computing and the ability to turn common convention around and repurpouse it. Instead of seeing everyday things as an object, looking at them as a holders of information and working out ways to access and use that information, being able to turn ourselves from consumer to constituent. A very exciting thought.
Robin Hunecki and August talking about finding the juicy parts in everything from game design to product design, ultimatly enhancing experience, also Russel Davies talking about materialising data on the web into the physical world the day was extremely entertaining and informative.
I strongly recommend you look up and research all of the speakers that presented.
Adam Greenfield
Brian Fling
Russell Davies
Mike Migurski
Ben Cerveny
Nathan Shedroff
Chris Noessel
Robin Hunicke
August de los Reyes

It seems they work...it's not a Splendid project but one of our designers has created this great entry for the E4 sting Competition. We love it and think you should vote on it!

We have been helping Hermione Way with a redesign of her blog, we have know her for a while now so we though getting involved in her blog would be fun. So we are now sponsors. Its also a great source of news and opinion. Check it out

Splendid has produced award winning digital work for Muse since 2003 and it's our pleasure to announce the launch of their brand new site at muse.mu. We've worked hard to optimise the new site to create a truly immersive experience. Added features include Google integration to allow user to find out about up and coming gigs and a past tour archive including a fan gallery. Once signed up you can also link up with other fans, view their profiles, see their location and find out what gigs they've been to. We've also integrated with the muse MuseWiki and Forum so users can contribute to the discography and tour journal. Working closely with the band's management Splendid have designed a site to showcase Muse's work and surface content related to users' requests. The site provide a rich multimedia experience in a beautiful visual wrapper and also provides a deeper functional experience whereby users can shop using a persistent basket, relate with peers through the site and browse though archive content as well as current news and upcoming gig information. Muse are one of our longest standing clients and we take pride in having consistently provided them a web presence which is head and shoulders above the competition.

After 6 months hard graft the new 3AM website is live, its the place to go for all the your celebrity news, gossip and general merriment. A full case study will be added soon but we could help giving you a sneak peak. We also like the quote from Richard Wallace, the Daily Mirror's editor, "3am.co.uk is innovative, clever, funny and brilliantly designed. "We believe it will grow to become a must-bookmark for highly engaged audiences wanting the very best in celebrity news and comment. And we believe the commercial opportunities in having such an audience are very exciting." Cant argue with that!

We are rather excited to announce we have been appointed as Surface Strategic Partners, this is the top level of partnership and reflects our ongoing commitment and innovation in the world of gesture based interfaces. So to talk Surface, Windows 7, Interactive Walls or look at the projects we are doing for major banks, retailers and brands then get in content.

We are excited to announce our sponsorship of the 2009 dConstruct event in Brighton, we enjoyed the 2008 event so much we thought we would get more involved. We are also providing Microsoft Surface units and multi-touch applications for the event. dConstruct is the affordable one-day web conference, combined with two days of masterclass workshops. dConstruct 2009 brings together the industry's leading thinkers to explore the challenges of designing for tomorrow. Mail us if you fancy meeting at the event.

Splendid have developed a Surface application for the UK's leading trade fashion event at Earls Court in London. The application will highlight some of the many fashion brands on show and give visitors a chance to interact with content.

Aston Martin has been crowned coolest brand in the world for the third year running, beating Apples iPhone into second place. Thousands of brands were shortlisted to 1,100 and then voted on by 2,500 people so a great achievement and recognition of a truly great brand.

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) provides a forum to learn about the latest Microsoft products, programs, strategies, and cutting-edge technologies. More than any other Microsoft event, it prepares Microsoft partners to take advantage of new business opportunities, new business development strategies, and innovative solutions. Splendid have been asked to present in a session with other creative agencies and to talk about our user centered design process and how technical agencies can take advantage of our skills to create better digital products, our new CTO Brennon Williams is there and taking charge!

We are well known for our award winning User Experience Design and innovative solutions and as part of a strategy to strengthen our offering we've appointed Brennon Williams as our CTO & Technical Evangelist. We have been looking to boost our senior technical team for some time but have struggled to find great technologists who are also keen proponents of great user experience (which as you know is dear to our heart). Brennon has over 15 years experience working as a consultant software developer around the world and has an extremely wide skill set as a hybrid designer/developer. A rare breed. He's well known for his community involvement with Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation Platform (WPF) and has long been designing and developing for Natural User Interfaces (NUI) as well as multi-touch, multi-gesture devices such as Microsoft Surface. As well as being a published author (Expression Blend Unleashed 2008), Brennon is an active Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) and generally considered to be one of the world's leading authorities on the implementation of designer/developer collaboration with Expression Blend and Visual Studio, for XAML based technologies. We'll be asking a lot of Brennon but his primary objectives will be to keep us at the forefront of technical innovation while adding rigour and best industry practices to our technical process. Brennon will also be focusing on reinforcing our relationship with key partners such as Microsoft so we are very pleased to have him on board. "Business in general is only just starting to take advantage of the highly connected digital world we all live in. I'm not talking about business creating some new web 2.0 presence or launching a new product or service, I am talking firmly about the pathways between all forms of digital delivery; web, cellular telephony, multi-touch/multi-gesture computing, desktop and mobile synced experiences such as automotive solutions. Splendid has worked hard to become one of the leading European digital innovations agencies for all these delivery mechanisms. Moving forward Splendid will continue to grow in existing core offerings and importantly, will continue to make investments in next generation technology, the high connectivity solution and the technical resources required to implement it." Brennon Williams

In their first outing at Le Mans the Aston Martin Lola was placed 4th, the first of the petrol cars after the Peugeots and the Audi Diesel cars. This is a great result as the current regulations heavily favour the diesel powered cars. So well done from the team at Splendid to Aston Martin and Prodrive, we enjoyed cheering you on the heat of Le Mans (and have the sun burn to prove it).

Jonathan Gabbai, Innovations Manager, Internet Marketing, at eBay discusses how he and the team at eBay decided to create a solution that would provide information on customers' eBay activity through a sidebar displayed within the Internet Explorer 8 browser utilizing Silverlight. Read the Microsoft Case study by clicking this link: Read Our long-standing partnership with Microsoft and our extensive experience designing and developing with Silverlight enabled us to explore the graphical richness Silverlight provided to deliver a enhanced solution for eBay.

Watch Jonathan Gabbai, Innovations Manager, Internet Marketing, at eBay talk to Microsoft about the exciting new eBay features designed specifically for Internet Explorer 8. Watch the video interview by clicking this link: watch In the second part of the interview, around the 7 minute mark, Jonathan talks about the new IE8 eBay Silverlight Sidebar, currently released as an alpha at http://glaxstar.com/ebay. Splendid worked closely with eBay to create a seamless end to end user experience, helping eBay expose the key UI elements by utilising some of the great features of Silverlight.

Our friends at Aston Martin are competing in the 77th running of the classic 24 hour endurance race at Le Mans. This year they are competing against Audi (winner for the last 5 years) and Peugeot in the top class with the rather amazing looking Lola Aston Martin. The Splendid team will be joining the Aston Martin team at Le Mans for some traditional beverages (beer) and showing our support in this classic race.

Our intrepid team were at the AOP awards last night with our friends at The Mirror (thanks for the invite Paul) for an evening of awards and celebration. The Mirror won an award for Commercial Partnerships with VAC Media. Splendid work was also shortlisted for an award with smarta.com, we didn't win but nice to be recognised.

Splendid have been asked by Microsoft in Germany to be the User Experience partner at an event titled, Customer Experience of The Future aimed at the Automotive industry and held at the MTC in Munich. We were there to talk about Silverlight, Surface and other technologies such as Deepzoom and how they can be used in an Automotive environment. The event looked at in-car systems, online and in-deal experiences and was attended by VW, Mini, Audi and BMW.

We were interviewed by Tiscali at the Grand Designs Live event by Tiscali all about our Microsoft Surface application for first direct. Our work for first direct using Microsoft Surface went live this weekend at Grand Designs Live, this will be Europe's first mass market access to Microsoft's interactive 'Surface' technology. Our brief was to create a Surface application to promote how first direct's off-set mortgage product has the flexibility to enable homeowners to bring their own Grand Design ideas to life. Part of the brief was to develop fun and interactive content to inspire the public to create their own grand designs and a simple way for visitors to work out how much an offset mortgage can save them. The Microsoft Surface technology enables first direct's product to be promoted in an innovative setting, allowing users to interact directly with the material and personalise the experience to match their own circumstances. Details such as salary and mortgage variables can be updated live, instantly showing the impressive savings that are afforded by the mortgage product.

Digital innovations agency, Splendid, and online bank, first direct gave Microsoft Surface the biggest public outing to date at Grand Designs Live yesterday. Thousands of members of the general public, as well as the presenter Kevin McCloud were given the opportunity to interact with Splendid is one of the only UK companies currently devising applications for Microsoft Surface. The agency's brief was to create a Surface application to promote how first direct's off-set mortgage product has the flexibility to enable homeowners to bring their own Grand Design ideas to life. Part of the brief was to develop fun and interactive content to inspire the public to create their own grand designs and a simple way for visitors to work out how much an offset mortgage can save them. The Microsoft Surface technology enabled first direct's product to be promoted in an innovative setting, allowing users to interact directly with the material and personalise the experience to match their own circumstances. Details such as salary and mortgage variables were updated live, instantly showing the impressive savings that are afforded by the mortgage product. The underlying application is created with Microsoft's new WPF platform running on the .Net 3.5 Framework with SP1. Specifically the visual asset authoring and UX work was brought together with Microsoft Expression Blend and Visual Studio. Paul Bishop, Managing Director of Splendid said: 'Microsoft Surface is all about providing an enhanced User Experience through a natural and intuitive user interface. Splendid specialise in combining new technologies with great user experience so it made sense that we are the partner of choice to engage in this ground breaking Surface project. Grand Designs Live was a popular event and given the economic climate, demonstrations to the public showing how an offset mortgage could save you money went down very well!' Lisa Wood at first direct added: 'Often consumers get overwhelmed by mortgage information and confused by all the different options. Microsoft Surface with Splendid's help offered the public a user friendly, fun and incredibly engaging way to find out how our product could save them money.' Splendid worked with Made By Pi, first direct's brand agency, on the look and feel of the application and story. The Edinburgh based marketing agency, worked on the messaging for the event which also influenced the application.