Yearly Archives: 2017

One year ago, Instagram released their answer to Snapchat with a fun new feature called, “Instagram Stories”. A year on and the feature couldn’t have integrated better into the platform with businesses and individual users alike using it on daily basis.

This news comes at a delicate time for their direct rival Snapchat, whose shares are currently at an all time low.

Instagram Stories is being reported as seeing a staggering 250 million daily active users and the average time users spend on the app has increased significantly. A year ago, it was questionable whether the new feature would be a success but it’s clear that Instagram users are interested and there is room in the market for more than one “Snapchat” inspired feature. Now it looks that Snapchat will need to evolve and will be interesting to see the direction they take next.

If you are interested in learning more about social media or the Social Media service that we offer, please be in touch at [email protected]

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new website for the Gumuchdjian Architects. It’s great to see a project like this come to fruition! The Creative Director of this project was Andy Ellis of Your Brand Matters working also with Metric on design and DirectionForward for the website build.

The website is fully responsive with full CMS and multiple templates within the CMS to best display Gumuchdjian’s various projects. The website also features full screen photo slides with adaptive animations.

Already over the last 30 days, their new website is seeing a huge amount of traffic with 2,852 page views from 817 individual users.

Gumuchjian architects are an award-winning architectural practice, first founded in 1998 under the direction of Philip Gumuchdjian,

“Everyday work is devoted to delivering apparently simple and uncluttered buildings that clients can evolve over time. We want our buildings to evoke a crafted, hand made feel but to be of their time. We use generous landscape and hardy, textured materials that age with grace and evoke rich associations. Developing common sense sustainable environmental solutions is endemic to our approach because a 21st Century building can and should be a benign presence on our planet.”

To check out their new website and learn more about them, please visit, gumuchdjian.com

If you are interested in learning more about our Web Design and Web Development services, please be in touch at [email protected]

Pleased to announce the launch of the first website for Schyberg Associates at schyberg-associates.co.uk.

Director Seb has been a contact for several years, and we were keen to help his new venture get off to a flying staff. Schyberg Associates offer boutique recruitment services in the digital and tech spheres, with all sizes industry leading clients.

Their brief for the site was a one pager that fits with their ethos, showcases their personal approach, and also meets their initial budget as the company has only just launched! The site is responsive, and can also be quickly edited to cater for content amends/additions.

We wish Schyberg Associates well for the future. For budget friendly sites for your new venture, get in touch with us at [email protected].

Teleportation across space, at the quantum level, has already become a reality. Last month, Chinese researchers demonstrated teleportation between Earth by sending a photon to space using photon teleportation.

The experiment was conducted between Micius (the Chinese quantum satellite) and a ground station. The researchers were able to transfer the unknown quantum state from one photon here on Earth to another one in space.

Extreme measures are required to teleport all the properties of a particle (it’s quantum state) and reality is much less glamorous than what Star Trek have to lead us to believe!

The success of this experiment is crucial as quantum teleportation is a key requirement to create a quantum internet that allows quantum computers to communicate between themselves. At a fraction of the size, quantum computers are computers that use the laws of quantum mechanics to perform calculations faster than the best supercomputer.

Quantum communication uses the principle of entanglement, where two particles can influence each other instantaneously no matter the distance. If you entangled particles, their quantum state is then shared. Although entanglement is very useful, it is extremely fragile and can the quantum state can easily break — and the particles go back to being individuals. This is the reason it’s been so difficult to send these quantum states for more than 100 km (62 m) over air or fibre optics.

In order to create a truly global network for quantum communication, this research shows that quantum satellites will be needed.

If you would like to read more articles like this then please subscribe to our weekly newsletter here — directionforward.com/contact-us#signup

Even if you don’t have Snapchat you may have heard news and also concern regarding its newly launched feature called “Snap Map”.

Here’s some information and what you need to know to stay safe —

Snap Map allows users to share their location with each other. Anyone who has chosen their location will appear on the map as an “Actionmoji” — a cartoon avatar that changes to reflect what the user is doing.

By tapping the avatar, users can see the latest additions to that user’s Snapchat Story, chat with them over the map or go to meet them in person.

To get started on Snap Map, pinch to zoom on the Snapchat camera. The first time you open Snap Map you’ll be taken through your privacy settings, so you can decide who you’d like to share your location with. The choices are to share with a select group of friends, all your Snapchat friends or no friends at all — which Snapchat is calls “Ghost Mode”. The only people who can see your Actionmoji on the Snap Map are the people you’ve chosen to share your location with.

When you open up the SnapMap, you may also see some Snaps from people you don’t know. These are snaps that people have made public and added to “Our Story”.

Snaps submitted to “Our Story” are threaded together automatically based on a common theme, so people can see public snaps from a specific location such as a festival. The same goes for newsworthy stories and incidents.

The appearance of your Actionmoji on the Snap Map changes, depending on what Snapchat thinks you’re doing. The app figures this out by looking at things like your location, the time of day, your speed of travel and whether or not your headphones are plugged into your phone. For example, if it thinks you are driving in your car, it will show you in a car driving down a motorway.

Snapchat sees Snap Maps as a way for friends to keep in touch and get together and they also say there’s the greater aspect of seeing what’s going on globally.

This amount of personal information available to the public is raising alarm and concerning parents as a large portion of the apps demographic are teenagers.

If you don’t like the idea of sharing your location with your friends, here’s how to check your settings and/or enable Ghost Mode:
1. Open the Snapchat app and go to the Camera function
2. Pinch to zoom to launch the Snap Map
3. Tap on the settings gear in the top right hand corner
4. Tick the box that says “Enable Ghost Mode”.

Snapchat urges that sharing your location is optional and turned off by default, and users can control who can see their location at any time.

If you are interested in learning more about Social Media and how you can integrate it into your business, please get in touch with us to learn more about our Social Media service — [email protected]

We are pleased to have worked with and to announce the launch of the new website for Dolon.

Their new website is fully responsive and features an interactive services map that allows companies to determine how Dolon can provide a service to help them. Design credit goes to Metric London.

Dolon specialise in strategic pricing and market access for rare and severe diseases. They help their clients think strategically about market access, and prepare for pricing and reimbursement negotiations, by providing services in the following areas:

Follow this link to visit their new website — dolon.com

Please be in touch with us to discuss and learn more about our services, including branding, web design and build — [email protected]

The new update for Microsoft Pix, the AI-powered photo editing app, has launched with exciting new features. The app was originally designed to enhance iPhone photos by making tweaks to colour, exposure and other variables but with this latest update, it is offering new fun features, by turning them into art.

The feature is called Pix Styles, similar to the Prisma app, which allows you to transform your photos into works of art, and use other effects. These are not photo filters — the styles actually transfer texture, pattern and tones to the photo. Also similar to Prisma, you can swipe your finger across the style to increase or reduce the effect. When done, you can frame, crop and share the image to social networks, as before.

The app launches today with 11 styles included, but more will be added in the near future, says Microsoft.

A noteworthy factor is that the new features can be used without tapping into your phone’s data plan, or while your phone is offline. Pix works directly with your device itself to run its calculations and doesn’t need to access the cloud.

If you would like more information on app or would like to discuss design and our related services, please be in touch at [email protected]

The new design for Facebook’s business page is slowly rolling out and these changes are important to be aware of. Ensure you check your business page to make sure your content is being used in the new layout to its full advantage to best showcase your business.

The following are the changes to watch out for:

1. The Like, Follow and Message buttons have moved over to the cover photo area — similar to how it is now with Facebook’s personal profiles. Be sure to modify your cover photo accordingly so that messaging does not get disrupted.
2. The “about” box has moved into the left sidebar of the page. The left sidebar used to describe your business and link to your website beneath your cover photo — has now moved further down the page, beneath the info people see how many people have liked your page.
3. The apps/custom tabs are further down the page — all of the apps/custom tabs you had directly beneath your cover photo are now further down the page and photos and videos are beneath those apps/custom tabs. A way to guarantee people will get to your apps is if you link to them directly — which you can do by copying the URL from your browser’s address bar.
4. Notes are making a resurgence — further down, beneath the people who like your page, about, apps, photos and videos are a box for Notes. Notes are essentially Facebook’s version of a blog post where you can post independently from your timeline. If your last Facebook Note was posted in 2011, this is what is going to be displayed in this box in the left sidebar of your page. It’s a good idea to check this out and update with new content and remove anything irrelevant.
5. At the end, you’ll find the pages, your pages likes — at the end of the left sidebar are the pages that your page likes. This area is a good way to promote other pages that are owned or related to your business. If there aren’t any other pages that are relevant, you could like local city pages, organisations or causes you belong to.

As the new Facebook design rolls out, it’s important to keep on top of these changes in order to display your company properly. Look out, in your admin panel, for an invite to get the new page design early.

Social media is a benefit for businesses of any size. If you are interested in more information on our Social media management service, please email us at [email protected]

Gululu is gamifying hydration with their new water bottle product by using a virtual pet game, 90’s kids will remember as a “Tamagotchi”, to help you reach your daily water intake.

This water bottle is a cute and fun incentive to drink more water or to get your kids to drink more water.

The bottle has a built in screen on the sides that house a little animated creature. Inside there are sensors that detect when you drink, and the more water you drink the more your creature grows and evolves.

If you have a friend who has a Gululu, you can shake the bottle next to theirs and the creatures will make “friends”. It has a wireless connection, which allows for joint animation between the two creatures where they will even jump across to visit one another.

Tech is being infused into many of our day-to-day devices to help us keep on track with our health goals. Gadgets such as the FitBit are more popular than ever so there’s no surprise a product such as the Gululu water bottle has a place in the market today.

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