June 2023 – Direction Forward

Investuary – public sector investment platform for the Thames Estuary Growth Board

We are proud to present our latest project – Investuary, an inward investment platform driving growth in the Thames Estuary Region, created for the Thames Estuary Growth Board.

Investuary was built alongside our creative partner, Your Brand Matters, who were responsible for the branding of the new entity, design of the platform itself, and the visual assets throughout.

Launched by the government’s Thames Estuary Growth Board at UKREiiF 2023, this innovative online platform aims to drive more than £18 billion of investment for the South East region, and offers the “UK’s biggest investment opportunity” as reported by Property Week. The platform provides a centralised portal for all 21 Local Authorities in the Thames Estuary area to drive investment potential and deliver growth.

The platform includes a full CMS (content management system) to enable editing of all investment opportunities, showcases, reports, downloads, and entity information such as partners. Opportunities are organised into categories, which themselves each have showcases to provide further insight on the industry/sector. Each opportunity can be set as ‘current’ or ‘coming soon’, with appropriate layouts and calls to action according to its status.

Users can access content initially and are invited to register on the platform for further information and deeper functionality – such as downloading reports, sending messages, and requesting meetings. Each registered user can choose the sectors they are most interested in to receive updates on these sectors and relevant opportunities as soon as they are released.

The platform also features dynamic content to aid users in using and navigating – for example, if a report is requested but the user is not yet registered, or is not signed in, then a context-sensitive message is displayed to guide the user as to how to proceed. Users’ activity within the platform is also tracked for their benefit, so their profile stores ‘liked’ opportunities, downloads, notifications, etc.

Visually the platform features a variety of custom animations, controlled in different ways – for example, looped animations, animations triggered by user scroll, and timed animations. These are achieved via a mixture of HTML5 videos, including use of WEBM to deliver high quality video in very small files for performance benefits, as well as utilising the Lottie framework and custom coded animations.

The portfolio team managing Investuary receive notifications on all appropriate user actions – such as registrations, messages, meeting requests, downloads, etc. These notifications are stored in a database within the platform but are also sent to relevant parties via email and instant message (eg Teams). This is in the process of being integrated into a CRM to facilitate management of the investments being made and reduce micromanagement for the portfolio team.

You can view the recently launched platform at investuary.com.

Twitter is launching keywords ads on its platform

Twitter has confirmed the roll out of a new advertising capability across its platform, called Search Keywords Ads. This allows advertisers to promote sponsored tweets in search results.

This means that advertisers will be able to pay for tweets to appear at the top of search results for specific keywords, in addition to the previous functionality where promoted tweets appear on users’ timelines.

You can create a Search Keyword Ads campaign as a new campaign objective in the Twitter Ads interface. This is still currently in Beta, the initial availability having been at the start of 2023, but Twitter has been using feedback from customers to help them finalise the service.

Apple to close down ‘My Photo Stream’ service in July

Apple has recently announced that they are shutting down’ My Photo Stream’ on 26th July 2023.

First introduced in 2011, the ‘My Photo Stream’ service was an early example of cloud storage – it uploads your most recent photos to iCloud so that you can view them on and import them to another device. Here’s our guide on what to do if you still use this service.

Why is Apple shutting it down?

‘My Photo Stream’ only uploads your most recent photos, storing them for a maximum of 30 days in iCloud before deleting them. It also has limits on file size (and therefore quality) and types (e.g. Live photos are not supported) of images uploaded.
The newer alternative, iCloud Photos, has been operational since 2015 and has superseded ‘My Photo Stream’ on newer devices. iCloud Photos uploads all your photos and videos, stores them in iCloud on an ongoing basis, and syncs them to the libraries across your devices – without you having to select what to keep.

When will it be shut off?

The service will end on 26th July 2023, but as part of the transition period there won’t be any new uploads after 26th June 2023. Any photos uploaded to before 26th June will remain there for 30 days, which means that there shouldn’t be any photos remaining in My Photo Stream by the date of the switch-off.

How can I keep my photos safe?

Any photos in ‘My Photo Stream’ will already be stored on at least one of your Apple devices, so you won’t lose any pictures whilst you have access to the device with the originals stored on it. If there’s a particular recent photo that you want to keep, you should download it to one of your devices before ‘My Photo Stream’ is shut down.

How do I use iCloud Photos instead?

You can turn on iCloud Photos on any iPhone or iPad with iOS 8.3 or later, or Mac with OS X Yosemite or later. This allows you to view all your photos and videos in the Photos app on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, iCloud.com, and even a Windows PC with the iCloud for Windows application installed. To check whether iCloud Photos is enabled on your device:

On an iPad / iPhone:
Go to Settings > your name > iCloud and make sure ‘On’ is selected next to ‘Photos’
On a Mac:
Go to Apple menu > System Settings > your name > iCloud and make sure ‘On’ is selected next to ‘Photos’
On a Windows PC:
Open iCloud for Windows > Next to ‘Photos’ click ‘Options’ > Ensure ‘iCloud Photos’ is checked/enabled > Click ‘Done’ > Click ‘Apply’

Google Workspace improvements for the Business Starter plan

Google has announced improvements to storage in Google Workspace for the Business Starter plan.

Firstly, Business Starter customers will see their storage updated from the current model of per-user storage for Google Drive (which includes Gmail, Google Drive files, and Google Photos) to pooled storage. Pooled storage is a shared storage model for all users with each user’s licence adding to the total available storage for the organisation’s pool.

This means individual users will potentially have access to more than the storage included in their individual licence, as the total storage limit is the maximum amount across all users in the organisation combined.

In the announcement on their blog, Google says that pooled storage ‘provides a more simple and flexible way to manage storage…removing the need to manage it on a per-user basis’.

In addition, Business Starter customers will also gain access to shared drives, which has previously only been available in higher tier plans. Users will be able to create shared folders in Google Drive that belong to the team rather than just an individual. As well as collaboration features this also means retaining access when a team member leaves.

New subscribers to the Business Starter plan will automatically have access to pooled storage and it is being rolled out to existing customers over the coming months (starting 22 May). Once all Business Starter users in an organisation have been given pooled storage, the ability to create shared drives will then become available.