The Ducks helped to produce a new video for London Cardiovascular Clinic and twitter’s war with Google continues.

Filming began today for the introduction video which will be used on the new London Cardiovascular Clinic website. Cyber-Duck’s UX Producer Ya Sheng was present during the filming which was co-produced by Adam Morley, Cyber-Duck’s dedicated videographer. The London Cardiovascular Clinic website is one of Cyber-Duck’s latest creations and the video can be seen when website is officially launched.

A couple of snaps from the shoot.

Twitter has announced that they intend to battle Google over their “Search Plus Your World” update. The new changes integrate social search into their regular search results, and Twitter feel that their real-time information is often the most relevant result for users. Twitter have stated that Google’s changes will make it much harder to find such information, as they look to blend public Google+ pages into regular search results.

The current ICT programme which is taught in all schools across the UK has been described as a “mess” by the current Education Secretary, Michael Gove. Mr Gove also announced that the ICT curriculum will be replaced by a flexible curriculum in computer science and programming, designed with the help of universities and industry.

It has long been claimed that the UK is too far behind the likes of America, Japan and Europe when it comes to computer science with Google’s Eric Schmidt claiming in August that education in Britain is holding back the country’s chances of success in the digital media economy. It is hoped the reform will enable today’s youth “to work at the forefront of technological change”.

This also follows on from the news last week that the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has vowed to take an online computer coding course.

In other news, Google has persuaded one of Spain’s largest banks ‘BBVA’ to switch all 110,000 of their staff members to use Google’s Cloud service. The deal is the biggest Google has signed with one individual company for its cloud computing services. Some concerns have been raised about security of customers banking details; however the deal is seen as a breakthrough in corporate adoption.

Microsoft and LG Electronics have announced a patent licensing agreement which covers tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices running Google’s Android or Chrome operating system. This is the 11th deal Microsoft has made with a device manufacturer with others including HTC, Samsung and Acer. The news means “more than 70 per cent of all Android smartphones in the US are now receiving coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio”.

There has been a strong reaction by Reddit this week to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills, which aim to crack down on internet piracy. Reddit, a popular news sharing website is planning to protest by shutting down normal operations on 18th January for 12 hours and they are hoping they will receive backing from the likes of Google, Facebook and Wikipedia. You can find out more about the SOPA act by watching the video below.

Last month, US hosting firm GoDaddy had come out in support of the the SOPA anti-piracy law, however they had to discontinue their support as angry customers threatened to transfer sites and domains away. Despite the U-Turn, many customers continued with the changeover.

London based Meetup ‘The Digital Pond’ took place on Tuesday, and the team started preparing for Christmas with secret santa.

Cyber-Duck’s first London based Meetup ‘The Digital Pond’ took place this week. The Node.js Showcase was aimed towards the development community, but encouraged anyone in the digital industry to attend. The evening featured guest speakers who spoke in depth about how they have used Node.js in their projects, as well as providing real life demonstrations.

Cyber-Duck would like to thank all speakers and sponsors of the event which included Couchbase, Clock and Byng Systems.

The Meetup was also the perfect opportunity for us to launch and showcase our latest DuckLab project; Cyber-Duck’s very own Coffee Lottery. The web application is designed to put the fun into coffee making at home or in the office. Users sign into the website using Twitter, before being invited to start a round of Coffee Lottery; participants then have 5 minutes to enter their order before Coffee Lottery randomly selects someone to make the whole lot!

We launched our Cyber-Duck Christmas infographic on Wednesday. The infographic included information on all the ducks as well as our coffee count, countries we have visited and the number of projects we have worked on throughout 2011. Take a look for yourself and share with your friends!

Cyber-Duck are also pleased to welcome on board a new client in Titanium Fire. Titanium Fire specialise in managing advanced SalesForce.com implementation for large corporations around the world, and Cyber-Duck are now tasked with building a new, innovative website for their Sales Force consultancy service as well as integration with Orchestra CMS running off Sales Force.

The ducks got into the seasonal spirit with their secret Santa gifts too this week. A pick of our favourite gifts included Gareth’s Nerf Gun, John’s baby food and Tom’s self-adhesive hooks. Thanks Santa!

The Ducks wait patiently for their Christmas gifts.

We had a number of birthdays to celebrate as 3 ducks turned a year older. The ducks had cake and gifts for Ya Sheng, Paul and Raj to celebrate and we will all be going out tonight to continue the celebrations. Once again we would like to wish them all a happy birthday!

Neil and Ya Sheng got back from from the Mobile User Experience Conference (MEX) in London at the end of last week and we’ve since had some of the knowledge imparted upon us. MEX is a 2 day event where 100 of the brightest minds in mobile, media & design come together to learn, network and create a collective response to the MEX Pathways.

Ya Sheng and Neil from Cyber-Duck join in on a debate at MEX.

The designer duo were able to attend the event for free as part of the MEX scholarship programme. The scholarship was sponsored by the kind guys at the ICT Knowledge Transfer Network (ICTKTN).

Twitter has unveiled a completely new redesign. The popular micro-blogging site has released a simplified version of their web interface for both desktop PC’s and mobile apps. New features include an improved Twitter timeline and users’ profiles, as well as a new discovery tool, which replaces the @Mentions section, and an easy-access “tweet” button.

Finally we would like to welcome Ramon Lapenta, the latest front end developer to join our talented bunch. Welcome on board Ramon!

The riots make the Cyber-Duck weekly and the duck’s continue to prepare for the ‘Duckies Awards 2011’.

Work has continued for the ‘Duckies Awards 2011’ which is scheduled to take place on the 10th September 2011 from 5pm at our new offices in Elstree. The ducks now have a dedicated landing page so you can RSVP to the event there. Interest has been growing over twitter so if you want to get involved then tweet with #Duckies2011.

Official banner of The Duckies UX Awards 2011.

We are also proud to announce we will be embarking on a new adventure with UK’s leading Jewish Charity in Aish. Cyber-Duck will be supplying full digital agency services to Aish in order to produce a superior user experience and a smoothly designed web interface. The project will also involve Cyber-Duck providing full marketing and online support for the popular Jewish charity.

It’s hard to go this week without mentioning the shocking riots which took place up and down the country. Social media and instant messaging platforms were constantly used to organise and incite the violence, with Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry Messenger being used to organise the riots. Feel free to check out our very own article on how social media influenced these recent events.

However, it should also be mentioned that social media was used in the clean-up mission after the riots, with social media users and the metropolitan police using platforms to clean affected communities and identify the rioters and looters.

Cyber-Duck’s Neil Dawson has made it through to the second round of the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership challenge. Neil has been designing an interactive visualisation which allows the user to quickly learn the basic facts behind a news story and how it has developed. You can all support Neil by reading his blog and following his progress, you could tweet #MozNewsLab or simply visit the Final Project Gallery.

Competition is fierce among the Cyber-Duck office as the ducks make their final preparations to their fantasy football teams. All the ducks have been making changes to their team all week, and now it remains to be seen who will take the lead from this weekend’s round of premier league football fixtures.

Cyber-Duck football managers get their teams ready for the weekends football.

Twitter has been in the news a lot recently, and the company have also been able to showcase their new activity stream. The stream has been created with the user in mind, in the hope it will help them easily discover what’s happening on twitter. Two new tabs include the @username tab which replaces the mentions tab, which allows users to identify when they have been personally contacted and the activity’s tab is similar to the Facebook news feed as all information will only relate to who the user follows.

The features don’t stop there either; Twitter has also implemented a new interface enhancement which easily allows Twitter users to contact the profile they are viewing. Twitter opted not to publicise the change, but expect to see the mentioned changes to be rolled out in the coming weeks.

The new Twitter interface allows you to easily contact profiles you are viewing.

An Apple Injunction against its chief rival in the tablet market has stopped Samsung from selling their Android based Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the European market. Apple claimed its “design rights” had been breached, as the shape of the Galaxy Tab, its user interface and even its packaging had been copied from the iPad. Samsung have filed a motion to lift the EU ban and a hearing for the case is scheduled for the coming weeks.

We stumbled upon an interesting article from Mark Dean, Chief Technology Officer at IBM in the Middle East and Africa. In the article Mark discusses how IBM were forward thinking in their decision to leave the personal computer business in 2005, and how tablet PC’s are starting to take over as a primary computer for many users. To read all of Mark’s views then simply click here to read the full article.

The team arrived back from SXSW this week bringing with them gifts, photos and a lot of stories to share.

So a very tired looking team returned back from SXSW which took place in Austin, Texas. The trip was a huge success, with our Tobii eye tracker being a real hit with everyone who visited Cyber-Duck at the UKTI stand. We posted an article reviewing the whole event, so have a look for yourself and see what you think.

The SXSW event was a major success.

Twitter have been accused of shunning developers in order to make more money. Twitter had suggested that they did not want developers to replicate their interface after a post from Twitter’s coding chief Ryan Sarver suggested that companies should stop making such software.

Many developers have condemned Twitter as they believe they are partly to thank for the success of the social media platform. We found an interesting response from Fred Oliveira, who stated that Twitter should be grateful that third party clients have developed some successful features, and that Twitter should embrace the innovative developments that they provide to the platform.

There was fierce competition in the office as we took the time out to compete in a game of Rawkets, a massive multiplayer game in which you can shoot and interact with other players in real time. The game uses HTML5, Canvas and WebSockets technologies (However, it only appears to work in the Chrome Web Browser).

Danny topped the leader board with a massive 150 kills whilst Raj came last with a respectable 4 kills.

We’re sad to say that we lose a member of our team this week, as Alex Redfern finishes his internship with Cyber-Duck.

Alex has effectively worked on both online marketing and new business since the beginning of his 6 month internship at Cyber-Duck and will now return to working towards his Business Administration degree at the prestigious University of Bath. We wish him the best of luck for the future.

Cyber-Duck are also pleased to announce that the Optima iPad app has launched this week. The native app is a user-friendly way for Optima to present its products to their customer base in a fast and efficient new way. The app is currently only available to Optima’s sales force, but will hopefully be available to all users at some point in the future. Stay tuned to the Cyber-Duck blog to find out more.

Optima’s new native iPad app.

Intel has appointed Black Eyed Peas front man Will.i.am as ‘director of creative innovation’. The Unique collaboration entails the development of new technologies, music and tech advocacy. The official press release reported that Intel and will.i.am “share a strong interest in innovation around music, art and lifestyle” and will build upon Intel’s “compute continuum” vision, in which more and more devices will compute and connect to the Internet.

Will.i.am showcases his new role at Intel.

British engineers announced they are planning to launch a mobile phone in to space. A team from Surrey Satellite Technology Limited in Guildford, want to test the capability and resilience of today’s consumer electronics in one of the most challenging environments known. The phone will run using Google’s Android operating system, however we have to see which model will be blasted in to space.

Whilst on the subject of blasting things into space, a group of friends based in the German town of Wolfsburg have launched 200 paper airplanes to the edge of space inside a helium filled weather balloon. Each paper plane has a memory card containing a unique image, and the instigators of this feat want to hear from whoever finds one of these paper planes. So far the planes have travelled as far as California, Canada and South Africa.

Google have announced that GMail users will now receive desktop notifications when they receive new chat messages and e-mails. The new HTML5-based feature only works currently on Chrome, but Google say they are hard at work to make notifications part of the standard web platform.

Career driven social network, LinkedIn has bought CardMunch, a company that scans your business cards and converts them in to your phone contacts. As a result CardMunch will now be free, having previously charged users for the service. The acquisition is seen as great way for users to boost their social graph.

LinkedIn collaborates with CardMunch.

Popular micro blogging phenomenon, Twitter, can expect 2011 to be their best yet according to a report from research firm eMarketer. Twitter anticipates earning £95 million in 2011 which is three times more than the £28 million they earned in 2010. The growth of twitter will be down to promoted tweets and trends products, which allow advertisers to pay for prominent placement on the service.

Finally we leave you with Tumblr’s new official downtime image inspired by Oatmeal comic artist Matthew Inman, Enjoy:

The Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman posted a letter via Twitter asking Tumblr to “please oh please” use his image.

Danny Bluestone, MD of Cyber-Duck attended Hertfordshire University’s Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Seminar this week.

The event was designed to inform businesses in the Hertfordshire area about the Government scheme which is designed to generate partnerships between companies and universities around the UK, therefore generating positive outcomes for University Students, Businesses and the Government by saving resources. Most graduates don’t know about the scheme, but the event was part of a series of events around the country designed to increase awareness. At the event, Danny spoke to Kevin Morris, an MBA Graduate from Herts who helped a local company to grow by introducing new branding, marketing and sales strategies. This is a classic example of how universities and businesses can work together with support from the government to rejuvenate the economy.

Gap have made a spectacular Gaff (or amazing PR stunt depending on which way you look at it) in producing a new iteration of their logo. The news, which was widely reported on news portals and blogs around the internet, didn’t seem to go down very well with the public at all, with many choosing to slate the new design. This has resulted in GAP ‘rethinking’ the decision.

We were joined by a new member of the team – Tomasz Tomczyk. Tomasz will be working with us as a PHP Web Developer. We’d like to give him a warm welcome to the team and hope he enjoys becoming one of the Ducks!

Yahoo is ditching Yahoo Directory UK & Ireland on 8^th November 2010, according to the help section on their website. Yahoo reportedly told the popular Search Engine Optimisation blog ‘Search Engine Land’: “As part of Yahoo!’s on-going effort to build products and services that deliver the best possible experiences for consumers, we are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others.”

Danny & Matt have been invited to give a lecture at the University of East London on Interaction Design and how to find out what users want. They will be presenting to students using real life examples from Cyber-Duck case studies.

Greater Manchester Police used a twitter feed to show every call / problem they dealt with over a 24 hour period. According to the force, the exercise was designed to illustrate the type of thing they have to deal with on a daily basis.

Jerome and Sylvain also attended Aston placement fair this week to meet some of the best new talent in the country. In addition to providing a place to meet potential employers, the annual event enables students to speak to peers in their final year about their placements, providing an understanding of the world of work along with advice on job searching skills.

We are pleased to say that we won a W3 award for the Rosslyn Analytics website in the recent winner’s announcement.  The judges were impressed with the site which makes use of an original design and 3D owl characters to make it not only stand out from the crowd, but perform better than its ‘spend analysis’ competitors too.

Finally, we’re now listed on TheyMakeApps.com which is a directory featuring all of the top mobile application developers in the world. We’re a sponsor on the site and one of the first companies to be featured on the site who are based in London.

Those talking included Naveed Anwar from PayPal, Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, Ryan Carson of Carsonified, Mark DiCristina of MailChimp, Mike McDerment from FreshBooks and Ryan Singer from 37 Signals. We all gained some valuable insights from the many talks and will certainly be attending (and maybe speaking!) next year.

An incredible stat uncovered this week highlights the incredible search in web traffic through mobile phones, particularly smartphones. The research, which was uncovered by Tamar, is that mobile search traffic has increased by 247% in the last year. At Cyber-Duck we have been recommending the creation of mobile friendly versions of all websites for some time now, and it’s becoming more and more business critical with every day that passes.

DuckPad was officially released to the world. The Webapp is accessible right now! To experience the app as intended, please press the + button next to the address bar in Safari and ‘Add to Home Screen’, re-launching from the icon on your home screen will open the app full screen.

Gillette launched a Twitter campaign to find out if the public likes beards. The zany campaign seems to play on the upcoming ‘Movember’ campaign whereby men all over the country are encouraged to grow a moustache in the month of November. The Gilette campaign involved a pair of Twins, one with a beard and one without. The winner will be the one with the most Twitter followers.

BrandShandy, the popular digital marketing blog, or as they put it ‘probably the best digital marketing blog in the world’ featured an article from Cyber-Duck’s web strategist Khal Weir on ‘The Five things to consider when planning user testing for your website’.

Facebook has had a flourish of announcements recently after its summer ‘lockdown’ period, where all development staff worked longer hours to get some big projects finished. Some of the announcements to come in the previous week include the ability to download all of the personal information you have put on Facebook including wall posts. They also announced the re-launch of the Groups feature to allow people to easily create sections of friends or family to send status updates, links or pictures to.

The new Gap logo is creating a stir, with some people expressing their intense dislike of it all over Twitter. In fact it seems that GAP themselves even set up a twitter account specifically for their new logo. The whole thing seems to have got them a lot of press attention anyway, with all the major new sites and blogs mentioning it in some context or other.

OLPC (one laptop per child), the organisation set up to ensure children all over the world have access to a computer, have announced that they intend to release a tablet. Concerns have been expressed, however as to why a child in the developing world would be best suited to a tablet rather than a laptop.

Good news – your PC will soon be booting in single-digit seconds, says Intel. This comes thanks to some breakthroughs in the technology behind the BIOS (basic input/output system), the first piece of code which runs when a computer starts up.

Make sure you’re careful and “boot safe” because if you get a virus you will probably be BANNED from the net if plans suggested by Microsoft are implemented.

Last but not least in this epic weekly (the longest so far) comes the news that Danny was featured as the Alumni of the month for October on the Middlesex University website. This is great news for Danny and recognises some of his achievements so far, as well as featuring Cyber-Duck and one of our larger start-up projects of the moment, OfficeCavalry.com.

RIM (the makers of Blackberry) are looking to break into the tablet market. The company has announced this week that it is working on a business-centric tablet, which it calls ‘the world’s first professional tablet’. The tablet is already in the hands of a few select enterprise customers but RIM claim it won’t be widely available until next year.

Twitter have started to more widely roll out the big change in layout and functionality it has been talking about for some time. Twitter claim it will provide “an easier, faster, and richer experience” to Twitter users. The main changes include a more user-friendly design, embedded media, related content and the ability to see mini profiles without navigating away from the current page.

We’re working on a new project for our long term client, Wisteria. The project is a new website based around their business plans service, following on from its recent popularity. News from another client project; ‘The Far Horizons’ project is now fully designed and at the coding stage! We’ll be announcing it on here when the website launches.

Google have been working on a brand new image format ‘WebP’, which they claim after tests on around 1,000,000 randomly selected images “resulted in an average 39% reduction in file size” without “perceptibly compromising visual quality.” We’ll be keeping a close eye on its progression as it could be great for mobile use, however it’s likely to be some time before it becomes widely used as most browsers and softwares cannot yet recognise the format.

Finally, the most important news of all…Clement is leaving. After working at Cyber-Duck for more than 6 months on his SUPINFO placement, he is going back to France to complete his Academic studies. Clement has been a real asset to the team and his skill and dedication has shone through every day in his time here. We’ll miss having him around, Good Luck Clement.

Cyber-Duck has always prided itself on being a very sociable company and as such, we’ve joined the world of social networking!

Follow us now on Twitter by clicking here for all the latest news, developments and general office banter from the Cyber-Duck London web design studio.

Social networking via sites such as Twitter facilitates a two-way dialogue between Cyber-Duck and its audience in their chosen environment, allowing us to listen to and learn from their comments and feedback whilst offering them an insight into the way we work.

Cyber-Duck believes this open and transparent dynamic is crucial in building lasting and successful relationships with our clients and counterparts in the digital media industry.