At Cyber-Duck we believe in sharing knowledge about our projects and new technologies.
Through years of experience, Cyber-Duck managing director Danny Bluestone has become an authoritative figure from within the digital industry. Today, he has been hand-picked to present his valuable insights into the world of mobile apps to an audience at the Chartered Institute of Marketing Construction Industry Group's (CIMCIG) latest event in London.
Cyber-Duck hold an amazing free to attend event every two months called Digital Pond, where professionals from the digital and creative industries can get together to share the secrets of their success and learn more about the latest technologies. Each event focuses on a specific topic, and this month is all about ways to win business and getting that perfect sales pitch every time.
Cyber-Duck are pleased to announce that our latest Digital Pond event has been scheduled for 31st May 2012 where you can hear a motivating speech on how to win new business. We also got to grips with some advanced biometrics this week for some futuristic user testing and Facebook also announced their own app store launch.
Google has been updating their search engine algorithms over the last few weeks with a total of 52 updates in April. Panda and Penguin, the names for the two major updates have made some significant changes to the rankings of many websites. Find out about these changes and how you can recover if any of your websites have been negatively affected.
Lots going on this week at Cyber-Duck with an award nomination and new business strategies based on our recent Blue Ocean initiative. We enjoyed a business breakfast at UK Israel Business with guest speaker Michael Grade. There is lots to discuss in tech industry this week with Google releasing some new SEO updates and the Samsung S3 launch.
Cyber-Duck have been selected as finalists in the small business category for London and Hertfordshire. Cyber-Duck are ecstatic to announce that we have been nominated as finalists for the 2012 Business Excellence Award in the small business (SME) category. Global accountancy firm BDO is set to be one of the main sponsors and judges of the event.
It’s been another busy week at Cyber-Duck HQ as we officially announce the launch of the new EGS website. On top of that the Ducks have also made their presence felt at the University of East London, Matt Gibson was allocated a date and time for his presentation at Digital Shoreditch and the Ducks are thrilled to have a new ping pong table in the office.
Who are EGS? Don’t worry, you won’t find any political governors in this article, but simply one of the UK’s leading companies for repairing governing equipment for engines and turbines. Since 1984, EGS Ltd have been supplying and servicing mechanical governors to a wide range of clients in the industrial, utility, rail, petrochemical and marine sectors.
Phew, what a week it’s been, full of exciting new Cyber-Duck projects including plenty of celebrations in the office with two birthdays and a party to celebrate our 10th client launch of the year. It has also been a week to fondly remember Ceefax, BBC’s teletext service that saw its last day on 18th April 2012.
2012’s Digital Shoreditch is being acclaimed by critics and industry revellers as London’s greatest ever digital and tech festival. It therefore seems fitting that one of London’s greatest ever digital and tech agencies should be involved (I’m talking about Cyber-Duck if you hadn’t gathered).
Cyber-Duck are proud to launch a new ‘adaptive web design’ website for Liberty Wealth Management. Liberty Wealth Management is a wealth management business based in Switzerland, offering international workers residing in Switzerland and the rest of the world a range of comprehensive and professional wealth management services.
The good times just keep on rolling at Cyber-Duck headquarters as we can officially announce a brand new client win as well as a newly launched website for Liberty Wealth Management. Cyber-Duck have been commissioned to work as senior strategists for Need a Property Ltd, a popular online property portal which helps homeowners to buy, rent or lease their next home.
It’s been a busy week for Google and we look to run you through their latest product announcements (and some April's fool jokes). But before all of that we bring you some exciting news from Cyber-Duck as we have been selected as the dedicated digital agency for two new web ventures.
First and foremost this week comes the news that we have a new member joining the team. A ‘Design for Interactive Media’ Masters graduate from Middlesex University, Sarah Morrison will be utilising her user experience and web development knowledge to work with Strategy Manager Siji on building relationships with new and existing clients through networking, pitching and writing proposals.
We are pleased to be speaking to you from our brand new HTML5 website this week. After many hours spent wireframing, user-testing, designing, developing, tweaking and testing we are proud to announce that the new Cyber-Duck website is soft-launched today!We have removed the good old flash that we love so much and used HTML5 technology so that the website works without a plugin.
It’s almost a week since the ducks returned from SXSW and now that we’ve recovered we thought we’d share our experiences. It was about 6pm when we landed in Austin on a warm Texas evening, however due to some problems with our transfers from Houston to Austin we had to wait around for a couple of hours for a bag and one of the team to be transported.
The SxSW wanderers returned at the end of this week with plenty of stories to tell and knowledge overflowing (as well as a bit of jetlag). After an incredibly successful week of learning, interacting and meeting new people from all corners of the world, the 5 Cyber-Duck SXSW superstars returned triumphant.
Five excited ducks flew over to Austin, Texas this week to take part in the world’s largest interactive festival, South by South West. The weeklong event, known at ‘South by’ or ‘SxSWi’ is part of the wider event which also includes film and music elements. All of the world’s top interactive talent will be taking part in the event which is filled with networking opportunities,
Last Thursday Cyber-Duck’s official Meetup group ‘the Digital Pond’, successfully hosted an informative event on Adaptive Web Design. The title of the event was ‘Adaptive Web Design: Does Size Matter?’ and was created to tackle a variety of issues surrounding adaptive and responsive web design.
This week Cyber-Duck successfully hosted the second ‘Digital Pond’ Meetup, this time on Adaptive Web Design. The Meetup was a resounding success, with around 80 in attendance and some brilliant speakers sharing their knowledge including Michel Jansen from Lokku, Andrew Betts of Assanka and our very own Matt Gibson and Ramon Lapenta.
Six members of the Cyber-Duck development team visited the University College of London for the 2012 CodeIgniter Conference. Tomasz, John, Gareth, Ben, Ramon and Sangheethan were all in attendance at the CodeIgniter Conference at University College London. The conference took place over the weekend, during which time the team was treated to an array of interesting talks from guest speakers including Phil Sturgeon, Tyler Flint and John Crepezzi.
Cyber-Duck are pleased to announce the second London based 'Digital Pond' meetup, this time on adaptive web design. The event will be held on the evening of 1st March 2012 at our new central London office in the Innovation Warehouse, near Farringdon. Following on from the success of the ‘Node.js Showcase’ back in December, in which we had a room packed full of the brightest developer talent in London, we have created a brand new event.
Some great news for Cyber-Duck today, as we officially launch the new website for London Cardiovascular Clinic. Who are the London Cardiovascular Clinic (LCC)? London Cardiovascular Clinic is a private London-based clinic offering expert cardiology treatment to both British and international patients for a range of complex cardiac problems. The clinic offers expert cardiovascular assessment for a diverse range of symptoms, with in-house laboratory facilities for a one-stop service.
Cyber-Duck kick off 2012 with the launch of a new KFTV website and the announcement of a new project with Optima Systems. KFTV.com, our latest project for Wilmington Publishing & Information Ltd, part of Wilmington Group Plc, launched this week. Much like The Knowledge Online, which we also designed and built this year, KFTV is in the business of helping people find the best film, TV and commercial production companies and information out there.
Yesterday Google was accused of cheating through the use of sponsored links; a practice they actively discourage. In a surprising twist, the company has now accepted that they were in the wrong and dropped themselves in their own search engine rankings as punishment. In a classic case of ‘practising what they preach’, Google took the decision to manually drop the Chrome product in Google...
Cyber-Duck’s very own Harry Clark was one of 5 speakers at this week’s Figaro seminar on SEO. Harry spoke alongside client Edward Canavan from Wilmington Publishing & Information Ltd, part of Wilmington Group Plc about how we built ‘The Knowledge Online’ website with SEO in mind from the outset, as well as the results we achieved in doing this.
Members of the Cyber-Duck team grew moustaches for an entire month in November whilst taking part in the charitable phenomenon ‘Movember’. Nine members of the team took part, including Sylvain Reiter, Arpit Bajpai, Tom Hicks, Tomasz Tomczyk, John Hamelink, Neil Dawson, Raj Remanan, Gareth Drew and Sangheethan Subramaniam.
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.
Cyber-Duck’s Meetup group ‘The Digital Pond’ successfully hosted its first event from Central Working in London this Tuesday. The ‘Node.js showcase’ gave members the opportunity to speak to and learn from some of London’s most innovative web developers.The expert panel held real life demonstrations of how they went about exploiting the potential of the pioneering server-side Javascript implementation.
As we enter the final calendar month of the year, Cyber-Duck HQ is busier than ever with Christmas parties and awards dinners. Last night all the Duck’s gathered together at Giuseppe’s place in London Bridge to celebrate the annual Cyber-Duck Christmas party. The night involved lots of great food, wine, laughs and banter as all Cyber-Duck team members, their partners and associates celebrated another great Christmas and another great year in the world of Cyber-Duck.
After a year filled with more accolades than any year before, we’ve clinched yet another in the form of the 'Best use of Technical Information' Construction Marketing Award. Keeping with the Cyber-Duck tradition of striving to produce the most superior user experience and design combined with best-in-class technology, we created an amazing native iPad application for Optima.
In production this week is our yearly digital Christmas card. We are taking a different approach with a summary of 2011 at Cyber-Duck in the form of an interactive infographic!We will be sure to show this off when it’s ready, so look out for it here. The first ever full round of ‘Coffee Lottery’ was played today.
We’ve been living up to our award winning reputation this week with our Gold W3 trophy arriving, and discovering that we had won yet another accolade!This time it was an Interactive Media Award (IMA) for production of 'The Far Horizons' website that saw the ducks recognised. The judges scored the website a very impressive 481 out of a possible 500
Mobile is becoming ubiquitous. Unless you want to isolate the 25% or so of customers who use mobile as their main source of browsing the web, having a mobile friendly website at the very least is now imperative.According to e-consultancy, 70% of businesses are yet to launch a mobile version of their website, let alone a mobile app.
Exciting news from our meetup group The Digital Pond this week as we announce the location of our next event, the Node.js showcase.We’re so excited about the progression of real-time technologies like Node.js, so decided to create a meetup event so that anyone can come and show off their skills. It’s going to be a laid back affair
Cyber-Duck are pleased to officially unveil the UK’s first ‘total’ retirement application, RetireEasy - A new financial planning service for retirees in the UK. Who are RetireEasy? RetireEasy’s first product is called LifePlan, a retirement planning application that allows retirees to plan and visualise their future retirement.
Lots of exciting events and conferences are lined up for the ducks this month as well as the launch of the Cyber-Duck ‘Pondcast’. Following the successful test of last week, the Ducks have recorded their first podcast to be released on Monday. The new Cyber-Duck “Pondcast” will feature the latest tech news, gadgets, reviews and interviews.
Cyber-Duck begin testing on their very first podcast and Netflix is on its way to the UK. Today a few members of the team began testing for our very first Cyber-Duck podcast. The podcast featured a variety of topics including the launch of Androids Ice Cream Sandwich software, Netflix coming to the UK, the Apple iCloud and our panel of Gil, John and Neil shared their thoughts on the Best Gadget they’ve ever owned.
Android announce their latest smartphone software, whilst MC Hammer tries to put a stop to the market dominance of Google search. On behalf of @Cyber-duck, Siji and Harry were in attendance at a Twitter Eve with @BillBoorman, a networking event held by Social Media London. During the evening Twitter evangelist Bill Boorman spoke of the benefits of using Twitter,
There were two reasons to celebrate recently as The Far Horizons received two prestigious awards for our work on their new tailor made website. The Far Horizons offer adventure safari tours to East Africa and earlier this year Cyber-Duck produced a custom eCommerce website allowing customers to ‘tailor’ their own tour and view their safari itinerary using an interactive Google map.
It’s been a big week for us, with the official launch of ‘The Knowledge’ and two new awards being added to our collection. One of our biggest projects of the year was officially launched this week. The Knowledge, an extremely well-respected source of information to the film, TV and commercial production industry, was re-built from the ground up.
Maiden International a provider of custom and branded insurance products is set to work with Cyber-Duck to create a new website and iPad web app. Part of the Maiden Global Holdings group, Maiden International partner with insurers from around the globe to deliver specialist automotive and life insurance products to leading financial institutions and automotive brands.
Unfortunately today's weekly begins on a sad note as we pay tribute to Apple “visionary” Steve Jobs, who passed away on Wednesday. The Apple founder had been battling pancreatic cancer since he was diagnosed back in 2004. Tributes have been made by people from around the world, including Presidents, Prime Ministers and competitors.
Cyber-Duck are set to develop the new KFTV (Kemps Film and TV) website with long standing client Wilmington Publishing. The project involves Cyber-Duck planning, designing and programming the new website and to integrate it with their existing CRM and CMS systems. Cyber-Duck already have worked together with Wilmington on several projects over 2011.
A few months ago you might remember we were visited by Ortis Deley from the Gadget Show; well if you want to catch our appearance on the show then tonight is the night. Tonight’s edition of The Gadget Show will feature a comic based challenge, with Ortis Deley going up against Suzi Perry. We were chosen to work with Ortis on the show to help him realise his idea of an interactive Dracula-based comic.
A few months ago you might remember we were visited by Ortis Deley from the Gadget Show; well if you want to catch our appearance on the show then tonight is the night. Tonight’s edition of The Gadget Show will feature a comic based challenge, with Ortis Deley going up against Suzi Perry. We were chosen to work with Ortis on the show to help him realise his idea of an interactive Dracula-based comic.
The big news coming out of Cyber-Duck this week is the launch of the new retirement planning website from RetireEasy. The web application is the first and only comprehensive online tool that gives those in or nearing retirement peace of mind by empowering them to take control of their retirement lifestyle.
The Cyber-Duck Duckies Awards was hosted for the first time last weekend and it was a resounding success, with many in attendance. Clients, staff, graduates and UX design enthusiasts where in attendance at the awards ceremony as we packed out our new dedicated Elstree offices. There was a wide variety of graduate projects on display as well as tricks from world class magician Nick Einhorn and live music from DJ Steve Taylor.
For those of you that don’t know, the first ever ‘Duckies Awards’ took place on Saturday evening at the new Cyber-Duck HQ in Elstree. Each year, Cyber-Duck sponsors the UX Associate Prize at New Designers in the Business Design Centre, Islington. Each time the judging team were overwhelmed with the amount of outstanding new talent and we wished we could recognise more than one project a year – thus ‘The Duckies’ were born!
The Duckies Awards are less than 24 hours away and preparation is continuing as we prepare to welcome some of the UK’s brightest design graduates. A whole variety of graduates and their award winning projects are making their way down to our new offices to showcase the projects which have earnt them a prestigious Duckies Award.
Just one week to go as we continue to prepare for the Duckies Awards and Facebook roll out some new privacy features. Facebook have implemented their largest privacy overhaul in their history, as they rolled out new features this week.Some of the new changes include profile controls,
This week marks our first working week in Elstree House and so far we’re thrilled with the new office. After a lot of hard work and support from members of the Cyber-Duck team, last weekend we were able to move all our equipment into our new dedicated offices in Elstree. Many of the Ducks spent last Saturday lending a helping hand, and throughout the week we have all been doing our bit to help get settled in.
This week marks the end of our stay in our Borehamwood Offices, thanks Devonshire House, It’s been emotional. After much anticipation, the time has finally come for the Ducks to migrate to a new pond in Elstree. Benefits of our new office (a grade 2 listed building) will include a dedicated IT and comms room, free staff and client parking, new VOIP/ISDN telecoms infrastructure, dedicated eye tracking lab,
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.
CELEBRATE WITH US ON 10TH SEPTEMBER FROM 5PM IN ELSTREE We would be delighted if you would join us for this threefold celebration as we mark our 6th birthday, the inauguration of our new office and the birth of ‘The Duckies’ UX Awards.
Members of the Cyber-Duck team were in attendance at the Online Marketing Networkers event in London this week. The event was a great chance for some of the ducks to listen to some other online PR and social media experts including Heather Taylor from the BBC. The event took place upon HMS president, a permanently moored ship along the Victoria Embankment.
Another award, a new client win and a birthday were all celebrated in the duck pond this week. To start the proceedings this week, we would like to announce a new client; ‘London Cardiovascular Clinic’. Cyber-Duck will implement their award winning user centred design philosophy to revamp their website which will include multimedia elements, as well as targeted international SEO.
Cyber-Duck are pleased to announce this week the successful launch of Housepals – the flat share & roommate website. HousePals is a leading flat share and roommate matching service, connecting landlords with current and potential tenants. Users seeking accommodation have the ability to search the website’s massive community for a new room, flat, house or even a new friend to share their accommodation with (a HousePal).
Cyber-Duck are proud to announce the ‘Cyber-Duck UX awards 2011’ will take place on the 10th September (7pm) to honour the best UX talent that exhibited at this year’s New Designers show. Every year at New Designers (Business Design Centre, Islington, London) Cyber-Duck hands out the prestigious Associate Prize to the best User Experience Design project.
We have some great news to kick off this week’s blog, as we’ve just discovered we are the recipient of another Interactive Media Award. The “The EU: What’s in it for me?” website won an ‘Outstanding Achievement’ award in the Governmental category, and adds to the Horizon Interactive Award and Communicator Award won earlier in the year for the project. Cyber-Duck will have more to follow on this story next week.
Cyber-Duck client RetireEasy are exhibiting at the 50 plus show in London today and tomorrow. The show, which is designed to help those over the age of 50 ‘make the most out of life’ takes place in the Grand Hall of London’s Olympia exhibition venue. The founders of RetireEasy are there to spread the word of the revolutionary new online retirement planning software, which is being developed by Cyber-Duck and is due to be launched later this summer.
Some of the Ducks were attendees of the New Designers 2011 show in Islington this week, after Cyber-Duck sponsored the event. Whilst they were there, members of the team including Danny awarded an associate prize to Rory Colsell from the University of Dundee who created a new business platform on our blog article about the event.
Cyber-Duck were sponsors and attendees of the renowned New Designers show in Islington, London yesterday. The event showcases the best in UK post-graduate and graduate talent encompassing product design, interactive media and graphic design.The show is attended by leading business decision makers, the national press and international delegates who come to see the very best in British design.
This week has been big for Google with a variety of new features and we’re going to work our way through and show you all of them. The biggest news to come out of Google this week is the beta version of their new social networking website Google+. Google+ will go in direct competition with many social networking websites, a market which is dominated by Facebook. The new website allows users to share photos, messages and comments, integrates Google Maps and images and helps users organise and share information with contacts in specific groups.
There’s only one place to start this week and that is to congratulate Matt and Steph after they tied the knot yesterday.
Greenworks, a sustainable building solutions provider, has this week seen the official launch of their new website by Cyber-Duck.
Danny Bluestone and Andrew Millet from Cyber-Duck attended a WJR charity business breakfast this morning.
This week Danny spoke at EyeTrackUX 2011 on eye tracking vs. other user testing technologies.
Last week saw the introduction of Google’s +1 social media button, and we wanted to uncover what it is, and the benefits of being +1’d. The popularity of social media is taking the world by storm with all users’ able to tweet, like, share or StumbleUpon anything on the internet they wish to give their seal of approval. Well now there is a new player in town, and it comes in the form of Google’s +1 button.
Danny and Matt were at UEL (University of East London) this week as they presented awards at the Creative Futures Ceremony. Matt and Danny presented a variety of prizes to students of UEL for their work during the academic year, which included an Award for outstanding individual production by Jerome Defreitas with his Student Bursary project.
Cyber-Duck are pleased to reveal we will be developing a brand new mobile app for Fitbug. Fitbug is a pioneering product and website that allows you to take control of your health and lifestyle by aiding you in achieving your health and fitness goals. The website allows you to measure your physical activity daily, by providing you with a ‘Bug’ (a small device which you wear as you go about your day) which allows you to track your steps and calories burnt. You can then analyse the data on your Fitbug account online.
In this study we are comparing the findings between two competing user testing methods (and technologies); eye tracking (Tobii T100) and conventional user testing software (Silverback).
New client wins, fitness bugs, award wins, BBQs, chicken and bowling all within one jam packed week at Cyber-Duck HQ. Cyber-Duck are proud to unveil one of last weeks reported new client wins as ‘Fitbug’. The ducks have been commissioned to develop a mobile version of their popular web based platform hosted on fitbug.com.
Members of the Cyber-Duck team were interviewed by Autodesk a few months ago – we can now share the final video!
Earlier this year, 15 year old school student Jack Whitney joined the design department for a week’s work experience.
Videos from Figaro & Autodesk as well as news from Wilmington Publishing and 2 new client wins in a busy week for Cyber-Duck.
A new client win and a Facebook smear campaign are some of this week’s biggest news in the world of Cyber-Duck. We announced earlier this week that we will be working with leading film and TV directory service “The Knowledge Online”.The website is part of Wilmington Publishing PLC, with the ducks in charge of redesigning the online directory, which is due to be launched later this year.
The ducks are to re-develop leading film and TV directory service “The Knowledge Online” for publishing giant Wilmington Publishing. Cyber-Duck have been commissioned to redesign the website, a leading directory service for the video and broadcast production industry. The purpose of the new website is to increase industry awareness of the directory as well as convert standard users into subscribers.
Great news for the ducks as it was officially announced that we won not one, but two Horizon Interactive Awards.
After a weekend of Royal Wedding celebrations, the ducks returned to the office to discover we won two Horizon Interactive Awards. The duck’s were elated that this week we won two separate Horizon Interactive Awards. The European Commission’s new website, The EU: What’s in it for me?, won a Gold award, with innovative new freelancing portal OfficeCavalry.Com, winning silver.
Danny and Matt presented at Figaro today alongside Richard Collinson, a client and one of the co-founders of RetireEasy. The presentation went very well with Danny introducing the project and how Cyber-Duck took the UCD (User Centred Design) and agile approach to building the worlds first 'retirement planning' web application.
So you’ve heard about Google’s latest ‘Panda’ update and are wondering if you should be concerned for your search rankings.You’re right to be concerned - the altered algorithm has completely destroyed the business model of many websites and caused panic amongst many others. What is Google Panda?
This week we were pleased to find out that Cyber-Duck had another award to add to our trophy cabinet. We were bestowed with the honour for our work on OfficeCavalry.com, which was selected as an ‘official honouree’ for the category of employment at the 15th annual celebration of the awards. The website was deemed “beautiful to look at and interact with, and a testament to usability and functionality.”
Cyber-Duck have taken home their first ever Webby award from the 15th Annual event. The Webbys are an incredibly prestigious industry recognition of outstanding work in the digital industry, and with almost 10,000 entrants from around the world Cyber-Duck was one of only a handful to claim a prize.
A new marketing client, and the office prepares for the weekends Grand National. We are happy to announce we’re going to be working with leading immigration specialist, Permits2Work. Cyber-Duck already have a good working relationship with Permits2Work, having previously built and designed their current website back in 2010.
It has recently been reported that online advertising has broken through the £4 billion barrier
The latest Cyber-Duck masterpiece, “City Concierge” has been unveiled today. The website offers a range of luxury corporate hospitality packages to popular events throughout the calendar year. These include concerts, the theatre, premieres and sporting events, allowing the user to book from a range of bespoke offerings. City Concierge contacted Cyber-Duck to design a website that woul...
We created a brand new way for you Cyber-Duck fanatics to interact with us, as we roll out our new Cyber-Duck Facebook page.We made the change from our Facebook group, as the ‘Like’ button will easily integrate into our new website and blog when implemented, and will make it easier for our followers to interact with our website. So make sure you ‘Like’ us to keep up to date.
Danny shared his thoughts on the SxSW event with an article he posted on the BIMA blog.In his article Danny talks about the "awesome design" panel he attended which featured Jeffery Zeldman. The open debate was primarily about accessibility to content and how today’s designers have to consider a wide range of browsers, devices and app platforms. There are more articles like this to come from Danny so make sure you watch this space.
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.
Three of us have just returned from SxSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, after a week-long trip with UKTI as part of their digital mission. There was a bumpy start to the trip involving travel difficulties, ultimately meaning we had a 3 hour drive from Houston to Austin. Not an easy task when you haven’t slept for 24 hours! After driving round the somewhat confusing surrounding roads of Houston, we eventually made it to our out-of-town hotel.
The duck offices are a little quieter today as some of the team set sail for sunny Texas to attend the much anticipated SXSWi event. So after a long and exciting wait, the ducks have finally began their journey to the SXSWi event in Austin, Texas as part of the UKTI digital mission this year. Cyber-Duck will be in the presence of brands including Google and Facebook and we have also taken our popular Tobii Eye Tracker to showcase to all attendees of the event.
Conferences, fun runs and the much anticipated launch of the iPad 2 all make the news this week.
The team grows again this week with two new ducks joining the ranks and we joined a host of developers at the PHP UK conference.
We’re sad to say that we are losing a member of the team today, but we’ve acted proactively by recruiting three more.
As we know it’s always important to stay ahead of the game and try to have something which differentiates your business.
We are delighted to announce that Cyber-Duck will attend SXSWi in Austin, Texas as part of the UKTI digital mission this year.
In a week where we’ve welcomed two new members of the development team, several other big events occurred in the industry.
The continuing feud between Microsoft and Google is the hot topic of this week.
An exciting launch from Cyber-Duck with its latest iPad application; allowing for impressive product demonstrations on the iPad.
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.
We are pleased to reveal a previously reported big client win, and our successful application to become members of the Hospital Club. Cyber-Duck will be working with Arsenal in the Community’s awarding winning “Double Club” languages programme to produce a brand new website. Double Club encourages school children to learn foreign languages by combining teaching with football training.
Cyber-Duck is happy to be working with Arsenal in the Community’s awarding winning “Double Club Languages” programme on a brand new web presence. Cyber-Duck were selected by the European Commission backed language-learning programme as part of a tender process to build and design a new website. This project win follows on from the success of Cyber-Duck’s previous work on the design and build of “The EU – What’s in it for me”; a project aimed at informing the British public what the European Union does to positively affect their everyday lives.
A new client win and the launch of one of our latest projects were topics of discussion for the ducks this week. Cyber-Duck have officially announced the win of a brand new client this week. RetireEasy will offer a web-based service aimed at giving retirees and soon to be retired users the ability to understand and take control of their finances in retirement.
First thing to say in our first 2011 edition of the weekly is Happy New Year from all of the Ducks here at Cyber-Duck. Some of the Cyber-Duck team went along to the PHP meet-up in London this week. The event was designed to promote knowledge sharing and best practice amongst PHP developers and web development and business professionals in London.
It’s been chilly around the office this week, but it’s going to take more than the ‘Big Freeze’ to stop the productivity of the ducks. We completed our 2010 Christmas eCard and sent it out to all our clients and partners. The eCard captures a year in the world of Cyber-Duck, and gives you the ability to view and listen to all the ducks wishing you a Merry Christmas.
Cyber-Duck are pleased take you on a journey through Africa with the launch of the new “The Far Horizons” website. The website allows users to take an in-depth look at a variety of luxury tours in Uganda or Rwanda, including their route and a detailed description of the activities on each day. It even allows for customisation and booking of tours.
Christmas is nearly upon us and snow is falling so welcome to a (sort of) festive edition of the Cyber-Duck weekly. Cyber-Duck won RetireEasy as a brand new SaaS client. The company aims to enable people to take control of their retirement lifestyle. Cyber-Duck will be providing full digital agency services from branding and UX design right through to building the SaaS platform. The Cyber-Duck Christmas party took place in Covent Garden on Thursday night. Thai food and a few drinks after work were enjoyed by all, not to mention some weird and wonderful dance moves.
The UKTI “Technology World” exhibition took place on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, with Jerome, Khaled and Alex representing Cyber-Duck.
Cyber-Duck attended the Construction Marketing Awards with members of the team from both OAG and Optima Systems on Thursday evening. They walked away with the “Best Use of a Website” award for OAG. This is an achievement we are all incredibly proud of - well done to those involved including Matt Gibson, Rajkumar Remanan and Lee Hsueh-Chia.
Cyber-Duck has added to its long list of awards with a prestigious CMA Best Use of Website Award 2010 for its client OAG. The CMA (Construction Marketing Awards), organised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, recognise and reward marketing excellence within the construction industry. Cyber-Duck produced OAG’s website which was up against the likes of Sage Construction, Gifford and Groundforce in the award short-list. It features a professional design, easy to use graphical user interface and interactive diagrams which all matches up to OAG's position as market leaders.
A case study describing the incredibly successful online marketing campaign for SparksDirect, the electrical wholesaler, which included SEO, e-mail marketing and usability consultancy.
Cyber-Duck recently released it's own iPad WebApp; DuckPad. Here's an insight in to how it came about, and how it was created. The iPad and other tablets coming onto the market have presented the world with a brand new way of browsing, with 2% of UK users having access to an iPad. This presents an opportunity to give enhanced user experience tailored to the new type of interaction.
With another week, comes another website launch. This time it was the EU and their new website; “The EU – What’s in it for me?”. Cyber-Duck developed the website, which was designed to be a web based alternative to the "What's In It For Me" brochure, and was aimed at keeping information more up-to-date and relevant.
Cyber-Duck are pleased to announce that the EU’s new UK website, “The EU – What’s in it for me?” has fully launched. Cyber-Duck have launched their second website in as many weeks with the EU’s new UK website. The new website is based on the booklet "What's In It For Me?", a brochure aimed at providing information on how the EU helps Briton’s in their everyday lives,
Great news as Prince William and Kate Middleton announce their engagement, but there's bigger news in the world of Cyber-Duck. Cyber-Duck are pleased to announce that our latest creation; OfficeCavalry.com has fully launched. The website is a great way for Project Owner’s to find Freelancer’s via their ‘profile’ as opposed to traditional freelancing portals which allowed Freelancer’s to bid for the project’s.
This week saw the beta launch of the innovative new Freelancing portal; OfficeCavalry.com.
Cyber-Duck MD Danny Bluestone conducted a presentation on User Centered Design The one day event is designed for leading digital marketers who are looking to source new suppliers and improve their digital strategies. During his presentation Danny covered how brands are changing their approach to user centered design, in order to suit the ever changing ways in which people interact with the internet.
Khaled Weir, Web Strategist at Cyber-Duck discusses the pros and cons of two forms of user testing. At Cyber-Duck, we pride ourselves on our user centred design methodology and conduct user testing sessions using our eye tracker on a regular basis. Last week we had a great opportunity to perform some user testing on our client’s soon to be launched website at a busy graduate fair. With limited space, it would be impossible to effectively set up our eye tracker, so we decided to conduct guerrilla user testing instead.
Yesterday, Cyber-Duck’s Khaled Weir and Karolina Pajewska attended the Autumn Graduate Fair, and were joined by the team from OfficeCavalry.com. The Autumn Graduate Fair provides university students and recent graduates with information on employers, careers, jobs and postgraduate study options, and is a great way to source the best new talent for Cyber-Duck’s team. During the event we conducted some user testing on the OfficeCavalry website using Silverback.
We are pleased to announce that Cyber-Duck is continuing its award winning ways with a prestigious 2010 W³ Award for Rosslyn.
Yesterday, Cyber-Duck’s MD Danny Bluestone attended Middlesex University’s 'Ramp Up for Business' event, which is part of their MODNet development fund. The event provided the company with an excellent opportunity to meet with local business people, company directors, leading academics as well as colleagues from across London. The event’s guest speaker was due to be The Apprentice’s Karren Brady, but due to her cancellation, up stepped former Conservative Party politician Michael Portillo who spoke about our current fragile economy and described the benefits he had when he attended university, and compared it to financial hardships that many students are facing today.
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.
Several of us paid a visit to FOWA (Future of Web Apps) in London to see various talks by some of the world’s most prominent figures in Web Apps. 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.
September 2010 saw the long awaited launch of the new website for Scandinavian sports betting website - NordicBet.
Danny and Khal visited the C21Media iPad Entertainment Summit today (Friday) at the BAFTA HQ where Danny spoke amongst the likes of Tech Blogger, Actor and TV Presenter Stephen Fry, Jen Topping from Channel 4 and digital agency AKQA. Danny's talk was on Cyber-Duck's new interactive iPad web app ‘DuckPad’, which is now completed! You can find more information about it on the DuckPad Tumblr blog. We'll be posting more photos and video from the event as and when we get our hands on it.
The weather has been really miserable this week but there’s no time for any of that spirit to be carried into the office, where the atmosphere has been as sunny as ever. We imagine the same couldn’t be said for the Facebook offices however, when the site went down for around a whole hour.According to their software engineering director it was “the worst outage we’ve had in over four years.” Still, it was back to its former glory in no time, and people still lived to tell the tale so it’s not all bad.
First things first, Danny spoke at a Figaro conference on innovation this week to explain the benefits of Eye Tracking in usability. It was a great success and we had considerable levels of positive feedback using eye tracking to optimise user experience.
We’re sad to say that we have a member of staff leaving us this week; Siji who has come to the end of his placement. We’ll be sad to see him go and were going out for Chicken and Drinks tonight to see him off. Google has come up with its latest plan to make our lives that bit faster by launching instant search. If you are logged in you should be able to see the new version of the search tool which allows you to see live results as you are typing based on the best guess of what Google thinks you are typing.
After a relaxing bank holiday weekend we've had a compact but efficient 4 day week at Cyber-Duck. Titanium Fire has become a new client. The company works with large organisations to help with the integration of the Salesforce CRM. We’ll be working with Titanium Fire on some branding work and you’ll find more details here when we have them.
The lead up to the Bank holiday weekend means a lot of finishing up and tying loose ends. It also means a celebratory office meal and off to Notting Hill on Sunday! You may remember hearing about us winning a project working with The European Commission to produce their new site for ‘The EU and Me’. Well the site is almost ready to launch! We’re just completing the finishing touches and undertaking QA so it should be ready very soon.
Our beautiful new website has already been ripped off. And we're not afraid to name and shame the person behind it. As a brand conscious digital agency we setup Social Alerts to monitor what is being said about Cyber-Duck. To our surprise, we found a post on Freelancer.com, eLance and numerous other freelancer portals with an individual who was trying to hire a freelancer prepared to 'rip off' our website.
There's been plenty of pitching this week along with the continuation of the Duckpad project amongst the other news. First of all, Someone copied our site! It's unbelievable how people can be so brazen as to just completely steal your design and code. Spot the difference! They even forgot to turn off the robots.txt file which tells search engine robots to index pages in its results.
Welcome to another Friday. I bet you've missed us. Here's your weekly chance to keep up to date with the latest Cyber-Duck goings on. Our own Khaled Weir has got his Google Analytics accreditation with a score of 92%. We're all so proud we could cry. We wanted to enter the incredible Wufoo API competition to win a 'freakin' battle axe' but unfortunately proceeded to find out that the competition is open to US residents only.
Most importantly this week online marketing intern Siji injured his ankle in the company’s weekly 5-a-side football, which has sadly ended his Cyber-Duck (football) career. The good news is he has already been replaced by Alex Redfern, who is better anyway. After using the iPad as a test in one of these meetings, we have discovered some benefits but some flaws too. Battery life can be an issue. There’s nothing quite like running out of battery halfway through a presentation! It’s also hard to copy certain files – is it worth taking this device to new business meetings? We're just not sure yet.
We’ve had 2 new interns as well as a great new client win who will take you on an African safari. First of all, Alex Redfern and Luke Ashworth have started as interns in the Online Marketing and Development departments respectively this week. We wish them both a very warm welcome! We won an exciting new project from an African company; ‘The Far Horizon’.
Cyber-Duck is helping clients such as the European Union obtain critical user behaviour insight into their websites and apps using an in-house eye tracking service. The Eye Tracker allows Cyber-Duck's consultancy and production divisions to dramatically enhance usability, conversion rates and ultimately ROI using features such as Gaze Plots, Retrospective Think-Aloud, and Areas of Interest.
What do you get when you mix together, Jack Daniels, Eye-tracking, Freelancers & Aftershave – with a tint of Glue? Another week at Duck Headquarters. Wednesday was an eventful day at Cyber-Duck as we launched OfficeCavalry’s sign up page. All registrants are entered into a free prize draw to win an iPad or iPhone. Going live in September OfficeCavalry is an exciting website connecting freelancers and project owners.
A real progressive week including investigation into practical business applications of some technologies and setting out our goals for the next year. Due to his relentless levels of dedication, Matt won the Cyber-Duck World Cup fantasy football league. The rest of us felt the hour long victory dance around the office was a tad excessive though. Some of the team dedicated their entire Saturday to research and development on location based applications, Gowalla and Foursquare.
A busy week of meetings and events awaited us this week, you can see the highlights here! Khal and Paolo tried some eye tracking glasses which can monitor what you are looking at wherever you are! That could be very dangerous! Danny, Jerome and Matt have been at the ‘New Designers’ show, and have been really impressed with the level of talent there this year.Last night they presented the ‘Cyber-Duck Associate Prize’ to the best digital project at the show – SlopeScope.
We have lots going on this week. Four launches, some free tickets and a new member of staff amongst it all! First of all we’ve launched 2 top class websites this week; Permits2Work and Knight Precision Wire. As ever, the team involved has put every effort in to make these some of the best looking, most functional sites you will find on the Internet today!
In a week of beautiful weather in London, indoors we’ve had another exciting week of technology to share with you. 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.
We are offering clients free VIP tickets to come and visit us at the ‘New Designers 2010’ show. The New Designers event brings together over 3,500 graduates from the best design related courses across the country to the Business Design Centre in London. The purpose of the event is to allow these graduates to meet with potential employers and the media to exhibit their work.
Another week goes by at Cyber-Duck and we have kindly decided to share the highlights with you once again. 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.
Predictably, football has been the main topic of conversation this week (along with the latest from Apple). Half of Cyber-Duck have sometimes willingly been setting up their fantasy football teams this week. Some might say that not everyone has taken it seriously, but hey; who’s to say that Honduras won’t pull it out of the bag? We also got some really cool movie posters through based on the ducks – see them on our Facebook group.
It appears that 2010 is the year that just keeps on giving for Cyber-Duck, with more good news on the cards; this time about our work on Boonspace.com. Already this year we have been awarded a prestigious 'Best in Class' Award at the Interactive Media Awards, along with being nominated as 'finalists for Best E-business' in the recent FSB Awards. Our success can be extended further by the news that we have won not one, but two much sought after Communicator Awards.
Without Danny this week, we’ve had to work extra hard to keep up our usual high standards, but we’ve managed it! We’ve come across some very interesting technology news, and thought we would share it with you along with other ‘goings-on’ in and out of the office. Some great news hot off the press to begin with. We won 2 awards at the Communicators this week for the production of BoonSpace. The two awards were for Social/Networking (for the back end and functionality) and Visual Appeal (for the design), so this is great recognition for everyone involved in the project - http://bit.ly/tupMD
Matt Gibson, Cyber-Duck’s Production & Marketing Director gave an inspiring speech last week to students at his old university; UEL. The show was a chance for all final year students from Interactive Media Design BA, Multimedia Design & Technology BSc and Computer Games Design BA to show off their final year projects which make up a bulk of their final marks along with their dissertations. Matt gave a short speech about his time at UEL and what he gained from his experience there, along with how his career has panned out since! He then went on to give words of encouragement to a group of very promising young talent due to graduate from the university this year.
It’s been an interesting week at Cyber-Duck with nuts and berries being the food of choice, much in contrast to the usual KFC and Red Bull. Yes that’s right the office has discovered Graze, those guys that send you nuts in the post. Despite their questionable idea of sustenance; we love their word of mouth marketing, getting the evangelist customers to share the wealth of free boxes with their friends - http://bit.ly/aFKkIw
Cyber-Duck is known for creativity and innovation and to live up to that we’ve created a fun application for the social network giant Facebook. 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.
The European Union has selected Cyber-Duck to develop a website which is aimed at providing objective information about how the EU helps UK residents. Due to be launched in summer 2010, the site is designed to build on the popularity of the brochure, ‘The EU: What’s in it for me?’ which was first launched in 2007 and showed U.K residents aspects of everyday life that the EU contributes to.
So far 2010 has been a great year for Cyber-Duck, and we can now also celebrate being short-listed as finalists for the prestigious FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) 2010 Award too. Having already expanded the business through the successful acquisition of new high-profile clients, as well as increasing our talented team and winning a ‘Best in Class’ IMA (Interactive Media Award) for our production of the Vinifera Boutique website; Cyber-Duck have now been selected as a finalist at the prestigious FSB awards.
Cyber-Duck have been awarded the prestigious ‘Best in Class’ award at the IMA (Interactive Media Awards) for the production of the Vinifera Boutique website. To gain the award of Best in Class our performance had to surpass the standards of excellence that comprise the webs most professional work. The site was honoured specifically for excellence in the food and beverage industries. We managed to score an impressive 487 (out of 500) for the production of the website, with our scores for Feature Functionality and Standards Compliance & Cross-Browser Compatibility being the particular highlights.
Hablib, the revolutionary social property portal developed by Cyber-Duck for Anton Kreil has now fully launched after a successful 2 month BETA testing period. The user feedback has so far been excellent with a first time buyer registering every 20 minutes – Hablib is already working towards its goal of allowing anyone in the U.K to buy, sell or rent homes at no cost.
At Cyber-Duck we are deeply saddened about the destruction and loss of life that has occurred in Haiti last week and we want to do everything we can to help.
Cyber-Duck and Boonspace are offering you the chance to win an iPod Touch with their new website... Boonspace, Cyber-Duck’s latest web development, is an exciting new service that allows users to send virtual emotional gifts along with personalised cards, photos, audio and video messages to loved ones. A cash sum can also be attached to each Boonspace gift and sent securely via the internet so the recipient can choose a real gift to go along with their virtual one.
Cyber-Duck are pleased to announce the launch of a magnificent new website for Vinifera Boutique, the online wine boutique based in London. Vinifera Boutique are dedicated to importing exclusive wines into the U.K from speciality French vineyards. U.K wine lovers will now be able to access new small batch wines that have not previously been available to them without travelling to France.
Yesterday, Cyber-Duck presented a keynote speech about user experience design and optimisation for audiences at Ad:Tech London. You can view and download the presentation here.
Cyber-Duck’s recent hat-trick of awards has caught the attention of prestigious local business publication, Hertfordshire Business Independent. Editors were impressed by Cyber-Duck’s incredible achievement, picking up an International Communicator Award, a Horizon Media Award and an Interactive Media Award all within a month!
Cyber-Duck’s award-winning Optiman viral character has been the focus of media attention... Cyber-Duck Director, Danny Bluestone was interviewed by B2B Marketing for the article about Optiman’s growing role as an avatar for the Optima brand. Featuring on both the B2B Marketing website and in a shortened form on the monthly eNewsletter, the article outlines Cyber-Duck’s highly targeted marketing campaign for Optima, which won the company a prestigious Construction Marketing Award in November 2008.
Keep up to date with Cyber-Duck developments on Twitter now! 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.
Cyber-Duck has received official Apps developer status from Apple!Apple awarded Cyber-Duck with official accreditation so that Cyber-Duck can and is able to deploy custom applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch which work within Cyber-Duck’s current web 2.0 websites and software. 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.
Cyber-Duck is proud to announce that it has joined the prestigious UK Design Business Association. The Design Business Association (DBA) is the trade association for the UK design industry and helps design consultancies become more professional and profitable. The DBA was initially created to promote professional excellence through productive partnerships between commerce and the design industry to champion effective design which improves the quality of people's lives.
The awards just keep rolling in at Cyber-Duck HQ! The team’s latest triumph has been at the annual Communicator Awards. Cyber-Duck has today announced that it has won the prestigious, international Communicator Award 2009, for the second consecutive year. The Communicator Awards are endorsed by the highly-renowned International Academy of the Visual Arts and recognise outstanding achievement and excellence in media production, honouring the media projects that demonstrate the highest level of international skills and expertise.
Cyber-Duck has been honoured with two highly prestigious Interactive Media Awards at this year’s ceremony. The IMA competition is designed to elevate the standards of excellence on the Internet. Not only were judges blown away by Cyber-Duck’s sleek and professional company website, they were also delighted with the exciting and professional new blog the Cyber-Duck team built for London entrepreneur Anton Kreil.
For the second time Cyber-Duck has been presented with a prestigious international Bronze Horizon Interactive Award. Cyber-Duck was awarded the accolade in the Company Identity and Self-promotion category after judges saw the new flash-driven Cyber-Duck website. The 8th annual awards, held in the US, aims to “recognise excellence in media production.” Horizon honours the most talented developers of interactive media. The competition provides a level playing field to all participants regardless of company size.
Cyber Duck is proud to announce the birth of Wisteria Formations, a brand new website that allows users to create a Limited company in 10 easy steps! Wisteria Formations is an extremely intuitive and user friendly company formations service that Cyber Duck has developed for our existing client Wisteria Ltd; a highly prestigious and dynamic practise of chartered accountants, business plan experts and tax advisors with over 300 clients on their books.
Cyber Duck’s digital design and online marketing services have received a glowing write-up in the local paper. Cyber Duck’s continuing trail of successes along with a smooth company expansion and relocation to new premises has caught the attention of the community press in Borehamwood. Cyber Duck Director, Danny Bluestone and Head of Production, Matt Gibson were interviewed by the Borehamwood Times’ Suruchi Sharma for a quarter-page feature in last week’s newspaper.
The Cyber Duck team has put together a heavenly new eCommerce website for Christian jewellery and gifts company, Beatitudes Cross. The Challenge: Beatitudes Cross had a beautiful range of unique religious jewellery, including Christian rosary beads, christening spoons and holy necklaces. Each piece features a sterling silver Beatitudes Cross containing a capsule filled with genuine water from the River Jordan, where Christ was baptised, and sand from the foot of the Mount of the Beatitudes, where Christ gave many of his most famous teachings.
Cyber-Duck’s most recent website development, for BAM Construct UK Ltd, launched at the beginning of March. Visit BAM at: www.bam.co.uk The Challenge The BAM team set Cyber-Duck quite a challenge but, yet again, we have proved ourselves up to the task. BAM is one of the UK’s largest construction organisations operating from 12 regional offices and employing almost 3000 staff nationwide. One of the key objectives of the brief was to integrate the diverse business and service sectors covering the core areas of property development, design, construction, engineering, FM and plant hire.
The Periscopix website gets a fresh and fun update, courtesy of the Cyber Duck team. In December 2007, Cyber Duck caused a viral stir when they launched a new website for pay per click marketing firm, Periscopix. Alive with fun and flamboyant flash animations inspired by Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Rube Goldberg, the Periscopix website quickly turned heads, helping to greatly increase the company’s client-base.
The Halcyon Gallery, one of London’s most prestigious art establishments, has commissioned Cyber Duck to completely overhaul its website. In addition to working with Halcyon Gallery, Cyber-Duck will be working Halcyon’s Gallery’s sister art centres Washington Green and Castle Gallery. Cyber Duck will be overhauling the current Halcyon website, implementing a brand new design within the perimeters of the current Halcyon Gallery branding and working with Halcyon Gallery on improving backend database systems.
It was almost two years ago that Cyber Duck launched the first website for renewable energy solutions expert, Greenworks Energy. Now the site has been given some TLC in the form of an exciting new revamp…
Cyber-Duck has given Visa experts, UK Visa Appeal a great new website to show off their proven visa appeal services and fantastic track record. The Challenge: UK Visa Appeal provides vital legal services for those who have been refused a UK visa for any one of hundreds of reasons. The UK Visa Appeal team needed a clean, uncluttered website that broke down the often complicated details of the appeal process into manageable and relevant chunks.
Anton Kreil, star of BBC2’s ‘Million Dollar Traders’ and one of the UK’s most intriguing business men, has launched his own blog. The Challenge: Kreil needed Cyber Duck to build him a blog that would allow him to keep in touch with his contemporaries as well as his growing fan base and provide him with an arena to share his thoughts, business ideas and information on up-coming ventures.
No one could have avoided the X Factor final 2008. But did you know that the winner, Alexandra Burke was a Cyber-Duck client? Alexandra has spent the last two years singing at high-end corporate functions, weddings and other family events with the hugely-talented Gilev Showband. Cyber-Duck has been working with the Gilev Showband for the past year to put together a stunning website that really showcases the band’s enormous talent.
This week sees the relaunch of Wisteria’s website and the launch of two exciting new blogs, designed and created from scratch by Cyber-Duck. The new Wisteria website is packed with user-friendly content and useful tips. Cyber-Duck has created working tax calculators (incorporating the recent tax cut) and business plan templates as well as other tools for businesses of all stages to make the new Wisteria website as useful to its users and forward thinking as possible.
Cyber-Duck would like to wish all of its clients a merry and peaceful festive season. Thank you to everyone who has worked with us during 2008 and our very best wishes for a fantastic 2009.
Cyber-Duck has this week launched a brand new online quiz and competition for high end luxury jewellery store, Gladstone Jewellery. The quiz, entitled 'How Romantic Are You?' has been created to mark the opening of Gladstone Jewellery's boutique in London's Piccadilly and as a Christmas treat to all of Gladstone’s loyal customers.
This week Cyber-Duck has launched a brand new website for office recycling company, Paper-Round. Paper-Round’s old website was dull, tired and failing to get users interested in Paper-Rounds long-term services. Monthly enquiry stats were low and customers nearly always opted for Paper-Round’s one-off services. Paper-Round needed a new, fresh site that was user-friendly and really conveyed to customers how fantastic Paper-Round’s service options are.
Optima Group and Cyber-Duck win a prestigious Construction Marketing Award 2008 at New Connought Rooms, Covent Garden in a breathtaking ceremony. The award, for Best Use of a Website, was collected at the black-tie ceremony by Cyber-Duck Managing Director, Danny Bluestone and Christian Mabey, Customer Service Manager for Optima Systems.
Cyber-Duck's specialist development services have helped top TV production house, Zig Zag get their website up and running. Zig Zag Productions is one of the UK’s largest television companies. The company make a variety of programmes for digital and terrestrial television. Zig Zag specialises in incisive and engaging documentaries, covering everything from sport to politics and science to the weird and wonderful.
Cyber-Duck has recently become a sponsor of ZigZag, a local Mill Hill football team. Cyber-Duck is incredibly passionate about its local community and wanted to help a worthy project to give something back to area that has helped the company to thrive. Cyber-Duck has funded the team’s equipment and clothing including the home and away kits.
Cyber-Duck has launched a feature-packed new website on behalf of award winning office partitioning specialist, Optima Systems.
Cyber-Duck has launched a feature-packed new website on behalf of Strong Vend, London’s leading supplier and installer of bean to cup coffee machines. The Challenge Since 1980, Strong Vend has been recognised as innovators within the coffee vending industry thanks to its consistent quality and superior service. The company website should reflect this prestigious history whilst still being user-friendly.
Cyber-Duck is proud to announce that its website build for Optima Systems has been shortlisted for a prestigious Construction Marketing award 2008. Optima Systems, an expert in office glass partitioning, has been chosen as a finalist in the Best Use of a Website category. The judging panel liked the use of flash animations to convey important and complex information about the inner workings of each partitioning system, as well as the overall site presentation.
To ensure our clients always benefit from the best experience and the most professional service, the Cyber-Duck team is expanding! Cyber-Duck would like to introduce two new ducks to the team: Kristina Heaney is joining the team as the new in-house copywriter and marketer. In her role, she will support both the marketing and design teams as well as put together fresh new copywriting to interest users and grow search engine rankings.
Send some christmas cheer to clients and customers with a Cyber-Duck digital card. It’s getting to that time of year again; you may have even spotted the first strings of tinsel in department stores and supermarkets have been awash with advent calendars since early September! That’s right; Christmas is upon us once again.
Cyber-Duck’s controversial website build for Pay Per Click outfit Periscopix has been awarded a coveted Europrix 08 Quality Seal! The Europrix Quality Seal represents an outstanding achievement; 338 entries from 28 countries were evaluated by the jury team of the Europrix Multimedia Awards. After two rounds of judging by two separate panels of jurors, only 56 projects received the quality seal.
Jewellery Stylist, a leading recruitment consultancy for the jewellery industry has got a sparkly new website, courtesy of Cyber-Duck. Jewellery Stylist source the most prestigious jewellery jobs and the most qualified and capable candidates across the UK. The brand new website will make finding the perfect jewellery job or the right candidate for a vacancy quick and easy. Jewellery Stylist’s old website was dingy, tired and in great need of refurbishment which Cyber-Duck was happy to provide.
Cyber-Duck’s viral game Optiman, The Super Architect has this week been honoured with the W3 Silver Award for best game or application. The Optiman game was created for Optima Group (who specialises in office partitioning systems) as part of the viral marketing campaign to celebrate the launch of Optima Systems’ new website. The campaign was targeted at attracting architects and construction industry professionals to the company website and increasing brand awareness and conversions.
Cyber-Duck produced an innovative Web 2.0 web design for Greenstone, the leading North West London property agents, integrating new Multi-Map technology. After a competitive pitch and detailed brief Cyber-Duck launch a new property site for www.greenstone.com, North West London estate agents specialising in residential sales and lettings in St John's Wood, Little Venice, Belsize Park and West Hampstead areas.
Cyber-Duck have created a professional web design for Greenworks Energy, a child company of building and plumbing giants Jewson, Graham Group and Saint Gobain. Cyber-Duck have launched a new website for Greenworks Energy, part of the Graham Plumber Merchant Group. The green energy website promotes Greenworks' green products that save energy and water resources whilst also saving money for eco conscious home-owners, property developers and architects. The professional web design also allows UK plumbers and builders to get online quotes, call-backs, latest green energy information and bespoke training courses in the installation of environment friendly products and services.
After 3 months of hard work Cyber-Duck have produced a winning brand and website for Sterling Card. Sterling Card is a UK prepaid credit card company providing internationally accepted prepaid MasterCard (initially aimed at the UK market). Sterling Card is accepted in 25 million locations and over 1 million ATMs worldwide wherever the MasterCard acceptance mark is displayed.
Are you planning a new Web Production project? Looking for an agency to redesign your website? Looking for better results? Then this tips article is for you. We are frequently being asked to pitch for new website production work and like any business, we are always keen to win good quality new business. Many of our clients either no experience of producing websites or have worked with other IT companies / members of staff or web design and development firms in the past. Some of our clients have even produced their own website to various degrees of success.
In our latest SEO and online marketing industry update article, Cyber-Duck's SEO experts discuss the implications of Google Universal Search and the growth of user generated video content sites such as YouTube In recent months there have been considerable changes within the Search engine and Online marketing arena. Google, Windows Live Search, and Yahoo (the top three search engines) have updated their search algorithms (the DNA that dictates what sites rank at the top) so quality content, navigation and design play a more important role than ever.
Matt Gibson & Geoff Gaviria beat off competition to win a prestigious British Interactive Media Association Award for their design and production of "Dead On Arrival", an interactive film noir inspired comic. Cyber-Duck's Online Production & Marketing Manager Matt Gibson and Geoff Gaviria have won a prestigious British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) Award.
Cyber-Duck has launched a funky new website for one of the UK's top close-up magicians and corporate entertainers, Nicholas Einhorn. Can a Web Designer create magic out of something that is already magic? The Answer is YES! Cyber-Duck have produced an engaging and content rich website for one of the worlds leading international magicians. Nicholas found Cyber-Duck via an online directory and approached the company with a creative storyboard.
Cyber-Duck were primary exhibitors at the Internet World 2007 and had a very successful 3 days impressing many companies and winning several new clients. A Very Successful Exhibition for Cyber-Duck Cyber-Duck exhibited at Internet World 2007 as a primary exhibitor offering Website audits to blue-chip companies and startups alike. During the 3 days, Cyber-Duck impressed corporate companies by their quirky image and industry leading Web Production and Interactive Media.
Cyber-Duck have won a prestigious web award for their stunning and functional web2.0 production for Greenstone.com, a leading north west London property agency. North west London estate agents Greenstone required a website with a fresh and distinctive look, easy to use Graphical User Interface and search tools for buyers and sellers looking for (or to sell/let) residential real estate in London. The purpose of the Website Cyber-Duck produced was to increase conversions and communication between property punters and Greenstone estate agents and enhance visibility on search engines.
Cyber-Duck have produced a stunning new website and full branding for Syntaxin including logo design, print material and interactive flash animations. Syntaxin are leaders within the biotechnology industry with their innovative approach to developing novel drugs to tackle unmet clinical needs. Syntaxin's product pipeline surrounds the development of biopharmaceutical products for the treatment of diseases such as respiratory diseases, metabolic disorders, nerve and chronic pain disorders and endocrine related tumours.
Cyber-Duck have produced a very extensive and innovative digital solution for Sim2000 Imaging, including a fully integrated eCommerce system and CRM back-end. The Challenge Sim2000 Imaging is one of Europe's premium Print and digital Album Design manufacturers targeting UK and European professional photographers. Sim2000 wanted to redevelop their Website and combine an eCommerce gateway and offline 'Photoshop' style software so photographers can design, customize and purchase high end Digital photo albums and Coffee table albums. The Solution
December 2007 - Cyber-Duck have caused a stir with the fun & quirky flash animations on Periscopix's new website. Periscopix are leaders within the Pay Per Click Campaign Design & Management industry providing extensive PPC management services to clients in alsmost every vertical. Periscopix felt that their current site was dull and lifeless and hence wanted Cyber-Duck to produce an eye-catching flash site that would be fun, quirky and enjoyable for the user to bring the traditionally complicated and jargon-filled subject of PPC to life.
