Uproot

We have an exciting milestone to announce at Uproot. We’re moving to our new office at 110 Spadina Avenue next month. We’ll be closed on September 3rd, prior to the long weekend and be up and running by the following Tuesday.

We have a lot great things planned for our new home. We’ll hold off on the details for now but let’s just say that we look forward to making it an inspiring place for our team, clients and colleagues in our industry.

If you already follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you might have seen some of the photos of the new space as it evolves. For those interested, we’ll continue to post photos and information on Facebook to avoid cluttering up the blog with shameless self-promotion.

Our departure is bittersweet however as we’ll be leaving our friends at Idea Couture who have let us to grow in their space since Uproot’s inception. We’ve built Uproot from the ground-up without outside investment so being able to start here definitely gave us a head start. Our sincere thanks to Idris, Scott, Cheesan and their amazing team for making our time here memorable. We wish them the best as they continue to grow as well.

And to our clients, who of course are directly related to our ability to grow, we look forward to having you over to say thanks in person.

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Multi-touch interfaces are a topic of heated debate these days. Every minute someone is griping about their iPhone’s keyboard while somewhere else someone is praising Wired for giving the publishing industry new life.

There’s certainly no consensus but for deejays and producers, the multi-touch interface might be the next frontier in their craft. And Gerg Kaufman’s prototype for his thesis project at the Kansas City Art Institute might be the spaceship that takes us there.

Music is a big part of our background at Uproot. Two of us are former deejays while another is an electronic music producer. Needless to say, Greg’s project represents the type of creative technology we look forward to experimenting with.

Here’s photos of Kaufman’s early concepts for his Multi-Touch Light table including sketches and paper prototypes.

(Via Co.Design)

On July 2nd the Guardian UK released their Wordpress plugin. Said plugin allows bloggers to grab a feed of articles from the Guardian and re-post them on their own blogs. Of course, since this is proprietary content there are a few stipulations, however none so obtrusive as to prevent any sane news blog editor from using this service regularly. The terms of service are pretty simple, and they read as follows:

1. Changes: You mustn’t remove or alter the text, links or images you get from us.

2. Key: If you don’t have a key, get one here. It’s required. If you do have one, please don’t share it or use it anywhere else.

3. Ads: Articles come with ads and performance tracking embedded in them. As above, you mustn’t change or remove them. You can, of course, use your own ads elsewhere on your blog, too.

4. Deletions: Sometimes but very rarely we have to remove articles. When that happens, this plug-in will replace the withdrawn Guardian content within your blog post with a message saying that the content is not available anymore.

We think these are pretty fair and easy rules to follow and rule number 3 may be the answer to monetizing the online news world in a sustainable and progressive way.

Think of the opportunity that presents itself from this, the news paper / news agency can have their content syndicated to the millions of blogs that they claim have been taking readership away and still make money from it, and the readers get better news because there is that much more incentive to write news that readers feel is important and want to read. It’s really a win win!

For more information take a look at the full “Open Platform” service offering over at the Guardian’s website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform

We’re extremely excited to announce the launch of Flashpoint: Training Day, a live-action game designed and built by Uproot and produced by Xenophile Media for CTV’s hit TV series, Flashpoint.

This project has been a 14-month journey that started with an idea to blur the lines between the audience and the show. Flashpoint: Training Day places the viewer right inside the world of Flashpoint where an original storyline and the show’s cast takes the viewer through a series of tasks and missions, eventually leading them to becoming a full-fledged member of the Strategic Response Unit.
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We’re looking to add an Intermediate Interface Developer (2+ years experience) to for a 2-3 month contract with the opportunity to grow to a full-time role. Applicants must have a solid understanding of Flash, HTML/CSS/JS and show an ability to execute tight, standards-based code in an independent environment.

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You might remember that big debate during the early days of Flash. Many argued that it was hurting the standards-based movement for how we consume and interact with web content. Flash had to find its place in the web for it be successful without impeding the need for consistent web interaction paradigms.

It took a long time to get to a place where both technologies could find their niche. Essentially, Flash for presenting rich, motion-based media and interactions for game or utility-based experiences and standards-based HTML/CSS for content-driven news and commerce experiences.

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Sometimes we’re asked to solve a functional problem that’s really an emotional problem.

Case in point, a client asks us to improve cart conversion citing the poor usability of their current site. Taking a closer look, the issue wasn’t a problem of findability (getting to a product and entering the checkout process is straightforward) or usability (the form entry is daunting but functional). The issue was emotional: Why would I enter this transaction with you?

We spend so much time trying create the simplest way to get from one point to another that we get caught up in trying to solve all our problems with better architecture. Often, you need better content.

We just received our shiny new iPad this week at Uproot and while we are sure there are greater things to come from it, Apple’s first shot is nothing short of amazing.

Of course, what brings the device to life are the applications it runs. One app we’re really excited about is Adobe Ideas. It’s a simple sketching tool that has garnered positive reviews since its release early this month and has first-page status on our iPad’s home screen.
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A recent Ipsos Reid poll showed the average Canadian is spending more time online than watching television. To get a clear picture on how this shift in mediums affects us as technologists, we need to question exactly what people are doing on the web versus watching TV.
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When working with web typography we have always pushed standards while trying to balance a great aesthetic, starting with sIFR and lately Cufón, however those solutions both had significant drawbacks for us as neither was perfect. That being said neither is @font-face… yet, and not because of the usual cohorts of delayed progress. However, with the announcement that type foundries are starting to offer web fonts we are encouraged that @font-face adoption might finally be realized.

For proper @font-face embedding both IE 4+ (that’s right) and now Firefox 3.6+ are ensuring that web fonts are being delivered securely through the web and not usable on desktop systems. Where the support is lacking for both Safari and to a lesser extent – Chrome as we await a announcement hopefully about their full support of Web Open Font Format. ** Chrome supports SVG as does the iPhone, but they are both painfully slow at the moment.
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