I recently finished work on the design & development of a website for Social Bits, a new Irish Social Media & Semantic Web consultancy. The Social Bits team have a huge amount of experience, and have come together to help companies understand how Social Media can bring value to their business. A welcome change from some of the self-styled “social media ninjas” out there. With their experience in Semantic Web research, they’re also well placed to help companies understand how to use the Web of Data as it evolves.

This was one of those enjoyable projects. Not only were the team in Social Bits easy to work with, they knew what they didn’t want, and were very open to hearing options & alternatives on things that would work. A great mix.

One of the joys of this type of work is that you get to know the business & services of the people you work with quite well; semantic web technology is one of those things that I had heard about, but never spent any time trying to understand. Having worked with the Social Bits team, learning more about it has definitely become more of a priority.

Social Bits have a number of events coming up, with one in particular that struck me as being a nice idea: a discounted workshop on Social Media for the Unemployed.

Putting it all together

With these type of posts, I’d normally leave it there, but I’ve recently read some useful posts that have given a bit more depth on how the design came about.  As this was one of the (admittedly uncommon!) cases where the design of the site didn’t change radically from the first set of sketched drawings through to the live version. I though showing how it came about would be nice. Read More »

I recently did some work with Alan from Tribal City Interactive to design & develop a little word-game based around solving anagrams using Twitter – which goes by the name of Twg.ie (Twitter word game).

The idea was for something that was easy to use and let people play using a service that they’re already familiar with. Playing is as simple as following the Twg.ie Twitter account where each day you’ll get an anagram to solve; be the fastest to solve it and you hit the top of the leader-board.  Told you it was easy.

Even though the game targets quite a niche audience, Alan’s idea of a word game like this on top of the Twitter platform seems obvious now. There’s a large enough user base on Twitter to make targeting a narrow niche possible, it’s a text-based interface making it suitable for a word-game, and Twitter’s real-time search makes it possible for players to interact on Twitter & see a near real-time leader-board of others playing the game on the twg.ie site.

You probably won’t be seeing my name on the Twg.ie leaderboard too soon – I discovered when developing it that solving anagrams quickly isn’t a talent I have (even in the 24 hours Twg.ie gives you). If you fancy testing yourself, check out the Twg.ie site.

The website for this year’s Open House Galway event went live yesterday. Running from the 16th-18th of October, Open House Galway gives people a new way to explore the architecture of the city. During the event:

… buildings will be open for a time for special tours given by hundreds of professionals and enthusiasts, who generously volunteer their time. All events are free, and entry is on a first-come basis, with certain events requiring pre-booking. This is your festival and what you think matters.

You can preview the buildings on the site, and make bookings for any that may require it. If you’ve got a young family, there’s also a Children’s event being run in the Galway City Museum to keep them entertained!

I just put the finishing touches on a little web application called TwitEye. It’s a new service that gives you ideas for web applications, new services, or plug-ins based on what people on are asking about on Twitter.

Something I’ve heard quite a bit is how difficult people often find it to come up with ideas for new products and services, and it can be a difficult process. One of the pieces of advice often given in response is to solve a problem that exists. Well, the thinking behind TwitEye was to  make identifying these problems a little bit easier. It’s not going to solve the problem for you, but it might spark an idea for you to run with and develop something new and useful (and I’d love to hear about it if you do!).

TwitEye is built based on the Twitter API; it uses the services that Twitter provides (very kindly) to search for problems people are having, or requests for software & services they asking others about. As I’m told almost daily, figuring out the market is always critical – and if you see something float by on TwitEye, at least you know you have a market of one!

I was watching the stream as I was developing it, and often there are existing solutions to the questions being asked. What you need to figure out is how you can solve the problem more efficiently, more cost effectively, or with more added value than anyone else.

Happy hunting (and, as it’s new, any feedback would be great). Now, go see it in action.