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Case Study: Encyclopaedia Britannica – Social Gaming

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Liz Murray

Encyclopaedia Britannica are continuously updating their website to encourage interaction with their users. We developed “Jogs Travels” as a flash game to help children aged 4 – 7 understand World Geography whilst having fun.

The game is narrated by “Jog” who talks to and helps the child throughout the game. By use of drag and drop tools, the child is able to find out how much they know about World Geography by placing continents, mountains, oceans and more to the correct area on the map. As the child does this the map colours in and comes to life, creating a fun and vibrant experience for the child. Links are provided back to Encyclopaedia Britannica’s content, so the child can learn more about the areas of interest as they wish to.

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Case Study: Craenen Website and Web Ordering System

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Liz Murray

We were pleased to design and build a sophisticated new website for Craenen Bvba, a leading European distributor of travel maps and guides. The site has a standard set of public-facing company web pages, but at its core is a full web ordering system for their business customers.

The web ordering system allows book sellers to order stock online, upload orders that were created offline, and track the progress of previous orders. The site synchronises with existing corporate systems, keeping the website information up-to-date. A bespoke admin system allows the company to control user permissions and manage the fulfilment of orders.

This international site is currently available in three languages. We built it around a content management tool, allowing the client to quickly update their own page content.

Before building the site, we needed to carefully understand the needs of this specialist distribution business. Functional requirements were documented and agreed, followed by the design of a clean, modern user interface. For this project, it was agreed that the client would keep responsibility for writing page content.

Craenen were eager to unveil the site to their key customers, so that they could start benefitting from the online ordering system.

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Apple announce iBooks 2 includes iBooks Textbooks, iBooks Author and iTunes U

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Liz Murray

Apple made a much anticipated announcement about their digital book offering yesterday. The launch of iBooks 2, involving three new key components: Textbooks, iBooks Author and  iTunes U.

The iBook Textbooks promise to be dynamic, engaging and truly interactive. McGraw-Hill and Pearson are already on board and have textbooks ready for this platform.

iBooks textbooks from Apple

iBooks Author is a free tool which will allow anyone to use various ‘drag and drop’ tools to create iBook Textbooks on a Mac platform. If this works it could quickly change the game for smaller learning institutions developing their own courses, and put pressure on the larger academic publishers not ready for this shift.

The iTunes U app gives iOS users access to the world’s largest catalog of free educational content from top universities including Cambridge, Duke, Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, and starting today any K-12 school district can offer full courses through the iTunes U app. The all-new iTunes U app lets teachers create and manage courses including essential components such as lectures, assignments, books, quizzes and syllabuses and offer them to millions of iOS users around the world.

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Case Study: New Holland Publishers – Digital Strategy, Website Development + Social Media Implementation

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Liz Murray

New Holland Publishers were looking for help with their whole digital strategy. A catalogue website already existed, but it was clunky, not aesthetically pleasing and difficult to update. They were looking to move to an eCommerce website and additionally launch a social media strategy alongside that to increase online sales and general brand exposure.

We built a completely new website for them with the aims of being user and search engine friendly and easy to update. Alongside the website development project we compiled a strategy review of their current business to assess the work required to launch their social media activities. By understanding their publishing schedule we were able to prioritise development of social media activities.

As a non fiction publisher the range of titles published was vast, and this therefore made it key that we focus on specific areas first. After much analysis, we launched a presence on Facebook and Twitter for their range of London Guides and we launched a separate presence on Facebook and Twitter for their vast range of Food and Drink titles. These gave us great niche areas to develop audiences within. Alongside the key network developments we also worked on a content marketing strategy to build these audiences for them. One area we specifically worked on was online PR, we built up great contacts online within these niche area, so much so that within several months over half of their online traffic was generated from external networks.

We are now undertaking a project to obtain digital rights for all their titles so that they can move forward with an eBook conversion process quickly.

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Amazon has released the publishing tools required to create KF8 format ebooks.

Posted on January 12, 2012 by David Stephens

Amazon has finally released the publishing tools required to create KF8 format ebooks. KF8 is Amazon’s new ebook format which offers a wider rage of formatting options which will enable publishers of illustrated non-fiction and reference titles to create well designed ebooks. The KF8 format will be supported on all new Kindle devices including the Kindle Fire when it is launched in the UK.

The publishing tools Amazon has released are KindleGen V2, Kindle Previewer and an upgrade to the InDesign ebook export plugin.

KindleGen
KindleGen is a command line tool which enables publishers to work in an automated environment with a variety of source content including HTML, XHTML or EPUB. KindleGen converts this source content to a single file which supports both KF8 and Mobi formats enabling publishers to create great-looking books that work on all Kindle devices and apps.

Kindle Previewer
Kindle Previewer is a graphical user interface tool that emulates how books display across Kindle devices and apps. Kindle Previewer makes it easy for publishers to preview the layout of a book and make sure its text displays properly for any orientation or font size to ensure publishers produce and submit the highest quality Kindle books.

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