Poke
We Should Hire This Guy
This interview with Danny from Poke NY on SiteInspire says a bunch of the things that I struggle to get across on this blog. And a bunch of new and interesting things too. He’s a UX / Strategy guy (if you need to put him in a box). It’s…
Taitley’s Bitter
The Poke Christmas party was fun. But I feel a little horrid today.…
Hungry Horace Badge
Working at Poke is always entertaining. Someone made this badge and left it on my desk. I think it’s a gift. At least I hope it’s a gift and not some kind of warning about something…
Sometimes It’s Hard
Poke NY’s unofficial motto is Don’t Give Up (at least it was last time I was there). There’s various versions of it all round the office. At first I wasn’t sure I liked it. But I’ve grown to realise that it’s a really important skill and…
Creative Similarities?
On the David Elsewhere stuff Tim just commented: I liked spike’s version from a year or two ago. With a link to this video: It’s a different thing doing a different job. But I can see how one would perhaps make you think of the other. For…
David Elsewhere and Motorola
Here’s a new thing that Poke have just finished. Well it’s not completely new. It’s taken a bit of time to get out into the world for various reasons. in fact some of the very eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed that I posted some of…
upl8.tv from Poke NY
The chaps at Poke NY have just spawned a new thing of total awesomeness. Basically it’s a YouTube viewer that allows you to browse YouTube clips using just the space bar. You visit the site and start watching. If you don’t like the clip…
Balloonacy is Go! Hooray!
After lots of late nights and hard work by lots of valiant people at Poke the Orange Balloon Race is finally live and running. And it seems to be working like a dream (fingers crossed). You probably saw it obscuring the front of the site…
More Balloonacy
There’s been some really good comments about the Orange Balloon Race. Including a couple of people mentioning some issues with explanations and UI on the site. We’ve made a bunch of improvements and hopefully iit’s getting better all the…
The Last Ever Clubpub Mix
Some people might know about ClubPub, a lot of you won’t. Basically it was a very irregular night that the Poke people have been organising over the last 5 years. It all started out with us just renting out a pub on Wednesday nights and…
A Guide to Spot the Bull 2
I’m not going to stop pushing Spot the Bull until everyone in the world has visited the site.
Spot the Bull is Back!
Orange’s Spot the Bull is back. And this time it’s bigger and better than before. Now featuring: team play allowing you to win up to 8 tickets per group live multi-cam video streaming from the field real time stats and bull-tracking…
Compfight.com
Andy our latest new Poke chap alerted me to the awesomeness of Compfight.com. It’s a Flickr search tool that allows you to find and view lots of Flickr images quickly with some key filters (like Creative Commons licensing). It’s a top way…
Portfolio Night
I was lucky enough to go to Portfolio Night 6 last night. Set up by the enterprising young dudes behind http://ihaveanidea.org/ it’s billed as a chance for young creatives to meet creative directors (for a fee of £10). I felt like it was a…
10 Reasons Digital Is Better Than Advertising – Remixed
This is all going to seem a little strange. Why on earth would anyone want to remix a presentation in such a fashion? Well it’s a funny story you see. I was mucking around with some basic VJing software. It’s a thing called Quartonian that…
In The Past
Nik just sent me this photo from a few years ago. It’s from 2001 I’m guessing. Before we started Poke we had a company called Nodding Dog that existed for a year or so. We lived in Naked’s basement sharing it with a TV company called…
4×4 Meme: More About Me
I got tagged by blackbeltjones with the 4×4 meme. So I rolled over and became a part of it. Plus it gives me a chance for some totally self-absorbed and pointless blogging. It looks like this meme has mutated a bit over time, but I’m going…
Loving Love
I popped in to see the chaps at Love in Manchester today. I don’t normally just turn up in strange towns and nip round to see people, but I got nice email from them yesterday as I was on the train (completely out of the blue), so it felt…
3d Video
Wow. This 3d flash video (using papervision) is simply stunning. I predict a lot of this technique being over-used a lot in the next year. But it’s perhaps a glimpse of what Google’s street level mapping might become in the not too…
Greg’s Show (and Marc’s Flickr)
Greg’s a very modest man and a very good coder at Poke. He’s also, it turns out, an awesome photographer. He’s got a show on at the moment which you can see here: http://www.nottingstill.co.uk/. Or you could just go to his Flickr Page and…
How To Do Digital Planning
I’ve been trying to post something like this for a few months now. But it kept morphing into a badly researched history of planning mixed with a poor how-to guide. And of course I kept veering off into bloody flag-waving about how digital…
How To Do Digital @ Scampblog
Great post by James Cooper (creative director of Dare) over at Scampblog. I particularly enjoyed his skillful deployment of the 180 degree handed complement: 2. Be original. Same rules apply to when all you lot who moan about whether…
The Internet (now in handy book form!)
David McCandless has been doing bits and pieces for Poke as long as Poke’s been around. In fact he’s written lots of the funnier words on the funnier projects that we’ve done. So it’s nice that someone gave him a book deal. And if he can…
How Stuff Dates
I kind of love this track. But it sort of doesn’t seem to make sense any more. And the video has aged really really badly too. The original (E2:E4 by Manuel Gottsching) has aged much better in my humble opinion. It might be the cheesy…
Making Good Shit Stick Is Tough
Don’t get me wrong. I love the meritocratic world of the web. Good stuff floats, average stuff gets suspended in the sea of mediocrity and bad stuff sinks without trace. And that’s the way it ought to be. It used to be really easy. Back in…
The Poke Lift
The Poke lift is a little bit broken – the LED panel has come off which leaves the circuit board uncovered. And you can probably see there’s a really lovely bunch of coloured cables behind. Every time I see them I have a really strong urge…
Recruitment Musings
This is a tough, slightly reflective post to write. It’s very much a brain dump, the start of some thoughts rather than anything resolved. I’m hoping that some of the smart people out there on the internet will add to it and help these…
Faris and Me on TV
Well not really TV, but it is sort of like TV on the Internet… This time I’ve actually managed to watch myself, so I’m making progress. I didn’t like it, but I did manage to stomach it. It’s from the Ideas Forum thing that Faris and I…
Great Climate Change Video
Forget about An Inconvenient Truth, it’s all long and boring and stuff. Watch this instead… To my mind this deserves to have a lot more views than it’s had – so I’m going to make it my mission to get more people to see it. Please blog it…
I Can’t Watch…
This is me presenting “10 Reasons Why Digital is ‘Better’ than Advertising” at the PSFK conference in London. I can’t even bear to hear recordings of my own voice so there’s no way that I’m going to be able to watch this… (I tried watching…
Spot the Bull
This is one of my favourite projects of recent times. It ticks all of the boxes that get me excited about the work Poke do. It’s a simple idea, that hasn’t been done before (as far as I can tell). We were basically tasked by Orange to come…
Zopa Wins a Webby
I found out yesterday that Zopa won a Webby award. Which made me happy. I’m not normally all that excited about awards. Having been on the judging side a couple of times you start to see how ‘the system’ works. And to be honest I think…
Webby Awards Vote
This is a shameless attempt to sway voting in this year’s Webby Awards. But being as it’s a People’s Voice vote I guess that’s the name of the game. Everyone else seems to be doing the same. You can vote here. This year Poke have got 2…
Kate Moss for TopShop
A new Poke project (nothing to do with me really): Kate Moss for TopShop. I like the fact it mixes up old style web stuff with flash video and things. It’s all a bit ‘fashion’ for me, but I still quite like it. Plus you know it’s going to…
Fancy Working For Orange?
Orange are on the lookout for a new Digital Manager. Obviously the best thing about the job is that you’ll get to work with Poke, and you’ll get to boss us around. And we have to be nice to you. But aside from that it’s a pretty cool role…
Yacco Blogs
Nice to see that Yacco, Poke‘s new creative director, has started blogging. It’s early days, but I’m sure there’s going to be some nice things on there… I made a NetVibes tab that contains all of the Poke bloggers in one place. It’s quite…
Evil Recruiters
Not all recruiters are evil, but lots of them are. In my inbox today I’ve got 3 unsolicited candidates from cold-mailing (i.e. spamming) recruiters. This is bad. And it’s unfortunate for the candidates as I’m not even going to look at…
Virgin Media, Slight Redemption
As some of you noticed a couple of people from Virgin posted in the comments on my post. Which was pretty good. So I got in touch. They dealt with my problem quickly and efficiently. And now I’m online with Virgin Media broadband. It all…
Our ‘Secret’ Creative Director
OK. It’s time. I can now finally reveal the all-new 3rd Poke Creative Director (after all the buildup). He’s the guy on the left. His name is Yacco Vijn – pronounce it as Jacko (like Whacko Jacko) Fine – pretty simple, and he claims it’s…
When Good Companies Blog Good
Here’s a site that Poke built that I’ve never written about. Probably because I had nothing to do with it. But it’s a great little site. Partly to do with what we did for them. But as least as much, if not more, because they’re using it…
Blog Recruitment Rules, OK…
Buzz and me with our new ‘mystery’ creative director A follow up to the Poke Seeking Creative Director post… In short, rather than doing normal job advertising, or going through recruitment consultants, I wrote a ‘job ad’, then Nik and I…
Google Maps Adventure Game for Penguin
If you’re into adventure type games. Or just want to win some great prizes. Or are a real nerd and want to see how we’ve used Google Maps as part of our quest interface. Head over to MaliceBoxQuest.com, something Poke have put together for…
2 Interesting Blogs
It’s nice when people you know start good blogs. It’s sometimes an interesting way of finding out more about someone than you used to know. Cookie has started up made-in-england.org (I really hope the title isn’t a reference to that crappy…
Yahoo! Mail Championships
Here’s a little Poke project. To promote the new Yahoo! Mail we’ve set up the Yahoo! Mail World Championships. Starting with the theory that everyday challenges became competitive sport over time (e.g. hunting became Javelin throwing…
Poke: Seeking Creative Director
Poke are hiring. We’re looking for a new creative director. It’s a nice place to work, or at least I think so. We’re looking for someone quite particular. If you’re interested, or think you know someone who might be, please take a look at…
One Day in History
I liked this idea about capturing a day in history through blogs: ‘One Day in History’ is a one off opportunity for you to join in a mass blog for the national record. We want as many people as possible to record a ‘blog’ diary which will…
Organic Blog
Not a blog about stuff with no pesticides. Stuff about the web agency Organic. Actually they might be pesticide free too, in fact they probably are. They’ve got a nice blog: Three Minds @ Organic. A smart blog with interesting things in…
Zopa Interview
Tom from Zopa said some nice things about Poke and did an email interview with me about the new Zopa site (which will soon be live, fingers crossed). It appeared in their monthly email newsletter. You can read it here if you like: This…
Mod Your Mob for Orange
Here’s a little something that we’ve been working on for Orange. Called Mod Your Mob it’s all about creating freakish versions of mobile phones. I’ve not had much to do with it, and I’m not quite sure if it’s a pisstake or not. I’m not…
Tony Davidson on Digital Creativity
The above image is blatantly stolen from the excellent DigitalAgency blog. But short of retyping the whole thing I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. It’s from the D&AD Student Annual, written by Tony Davidson (Creative Director…
Trial By Blog
As I’ve mentioned before, we’re working with Zopa at the moment to do a redesign of their website. It’s a great company and a great project. I was in a meeting last week when Dave from Zopa said “Oh, I’ve stuck some of the designs on the…
Where I work is OK
Poke have just been rated the top Digital Agency in the UK by Revolution Magazine. Actually more importantly we weren’t rated by the magazine, but by clients (as reported in Revolution Magazine). This is the second time in 2 years that…
I Hate Viral(s)
I’ve grown to hate the term viral: I hate the fact that it’s overused. I hate the fact that it’s misused. I hate the fact that ‘viral’ appears as a line on media plans. I hate the fact that people now call them virals. With an (s) as if…
Web Dogma
It’s been a while since I’ve read Boxes and Arrows, it’s a very good collaborative blog about information architechture and related jiggery pokery. One thing caught my eye today: Dogmas Are Meant to be Broken: An Interview with Eric Reiss…
Nike+
Wow. Nike and Apple have unleashed Nike+ By connecting sports shoes and iPods (using a tiny plug-in receiver) they’ve come up with something pretty sci-fi. Your shoes talk to your iPod, then your iPod talks to you, tells you how fast…
Interview With Me
Piers asked me a few probing questions about Poke‘s Webby winners. I answered them as best I could. Hope it all makes sense. Seemed to at the time of writing. Inspiration From IF! : Interview With Iain Tait, Poke
Teabuddy – Still on the Boil
Teabuddy.com – Poke‘s solution to teamaking shirkers in the workplace, got a mention in Saturday’s Guardian Magazine. Looks like they’ve just lifted the quotes from an earlier Wired interview that Nik and I did. I still love the fact that…
Webby Awards
This year’s Webby Award winners have just been announced. And I’m chuffed to say that Poke have managed to bag a couple. One for Talking Point for Orange, and a People’s Voice for Feed Me Better for Jamie Oliver. I’m personally really…
Busy not blogging
I’m faced with a daily paradox at the moment: the busier I get (sometimes doing quite interesting stuff) the less time I find that I have to blog about it. I need to get better at putting aside a few minutes a day to keep the site up to…
NSPCC – Dream Auction
Here’s a little (in size) project Poke have done for the NSPCC. The NSPCC Dream Auction is aiming to raise a huge amount of money to help to end cruelty to children. There’s a number of ways to get involved, from a huge gala auction at the…
BannerBlog
BannerBlog.com.au : Where Banners Click – nice site from Australialand. A regularly updated feast of online advertising with contributers from lots of agencies around the world (including Poke’s very own Tobie Cameron).…
Guns ‘R’ Us
Psssst. Wanna buy some guns? A brand new microsite by Poke. The film’s been done by Mother. We’re trying to get it seen by as many people as we can. So we’ve put together a microsite and have done some interesting distribution stuff…
Mobile Marketing
Yesterday I spoke at the Mobile Marketing 2005 conference. I actually quite enjoyed it which surprised me. It was a tricky old thing. From speaking to lots of people later it’s obvious that there’s a lot of different levels of knowledge…
Hulger and Skype
Nik, one of my co-partners at Poke has, in my opinion, finally nailed a proper useful-use for his Hulger Phones. Although an interesting design statement and a humerous novelty when attached to a mobile, I don’t think anyone would really…
Burger King Gets Farked
Adrants covers BK getting ‘Farked’ – an interesting story of a brand getting stacks of exposure though an online community running away with their ‘icon’ and co-opting it in their own way. The article kind of makes it sound as if BK had a…