We couldn’t write this week without mentioning the football, well done England you finally pulled it out of the bag. All they need to do now is to beat Germany, Argentina and Brazil.

If you’re interested in design, you will want to read this article Danny wrote for the BIMA blog this week on ‘Design by Community’. The article is centred around the idea of basing a design on the exact things that the user wants to see. We think we’re going to see a lot more of this in action in the coming months and years, leading on from the user feedback trend using tools like uservoice.

Apple really are having an exciting time aren’t they? Khal was at the local o2 shop at 6am on launch day for his upgrade! 4 hours later he came back to the office with a grin on his face and an iPhone 4 in his hand, and was promptly pounced on by the rest of the Cyber-Duck staff; all hoping to get a glimpse. He seems pretty satisfied with it, and we’re all really impressed with the increased resolution, speed and gyroscope.

To celebrate this launch at Cyber-Duck we’re planning to launch a cool new app in the next few weeks. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on the details.

Another exciting piece of news from the office is that we’ve been trialling an eye-tracking device which will soon be a permanent fixture for in-house use. The device will allow us to test designs and wireframes for levels of usability by asking users to perform tasks and seeing how their eyes interact with the page when attempting them. The resulting analytical data from the eye and mouse activity will allow us to perform detailed analysis of websites during the usability stage so that we can make the user experience as well optimised as possible in the final version.

As for what to look out for next week, we are going to be at the ‘New Designers’ event at the Business Design Centre in London. The event is designed to allow new graduates to exhibit their work to high-end employers and the media. Keep your eye out for some more information this week on the blog, we’ll see you then.

This week saw the launch of the iPhone app we created for our clients Wisteria. The app is a Tax Calculator which allows users to easily calculate how much tax is payable on their salary, VAT, capital gains, inheritance tax, and student loans in the UK. The app is available now and free to download at the iTunes store.

In the red corner we have Sole Traders, In the Blue Corner we have Ltd Companies. This week marks the launch of our latest web creation on behalf of our clients Wisteria Formations. The microsite uses a vintage boxing poster theme to explain the pros and cons of someone setting up a new company as a sole trader compared to a Ltd company.

Each week we try and find a topical and interesting viral to delight you with. This week the BP Spills Coffee video came to our attention. Posted to Youtube on the 9th of June this comedy video poking fun at BP’s handling of the catastrophic oil spill has already received 4,324,525 views.

And finally, as World Cup Fever grips the nation our office rivalry is getting increasingly intense with the lead constantly changing at the top of our Metro Fantasy Football table. Congratulations go to the ultra-competitive Matt who is currently top with 856 points, but hot on his tail is Sylvain with 804 points.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Try out our application here

Facebook applications are a key feature of the social network site, with over 500,000 active apps in existence, and 70% of users engaging with them on a monthly basis. The most popular apps are the ones that actively engage users.

Our app is called ‘Moustache My Mate’ and allows Facebook users to add what we think most modern men (and women?) are missing – a moustache. Once the app is loaded up, the user is invited to select a photo to add the ’tache’ to, and then position it in the most accurate way possible by resizing and rotating it to fit the photo. Once it’s perfectly lined up, the user can recommend the app to friends before previewing their masterpiece. They are now given the option of publishing it to their wall or of viewing a gallery of moustaches they’ve previously created.

We saw that there was a gap in the market for such an app and took it upon ourselves to fill it. It was important that we created their app using the latest AJAX technology instead of Flash to ensure that the app did not suffer from usability problems. Using AJAX will make the app much faster and easier to use.

Matt Gibson, Production and Marketing Director said, “The ‘Moustache My Mate’ app has been great fun for us to work on, and combines the talent and skill of our developers with the creativity of our online marketers and designers. We hope to promote the Cyber-Duck brand through the app and produce similar apps for our clients in the future.”

The accreditation comes in the wake of Cyber-Duck’s iPhone App development for a leading provider of emerging economies financial reports and data. The App was developed for their management staff to run their business on-the-go.

The new mobile application allows Cyber-Duck’s client a scaled down version of their website’s back-end functionalities. Management can access the website’s database via their iPhone, allowing them to track client activities, update the internal CRM system and record and send new meeting notes as soon as a meeting has finished.

The App was rigourously tested via focus groups to ensure maximum ease and usability.

With full accreditation from Apple, Cyber-Duck can move on to developing mainstream Apps in the future, available for everyone to buy via the iPhone Apps Store. Cyber-Duck will also be designing more client-specific Apps that will help make them more effective in managing their business too.

Contact Cyber-Duck today to enquire about our Apple solutions.