http://www.milocreative.com/ en argy@milocreative.com Copyright 2010 2010-07-29T15:20:10+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/tiny-ocean-set-for-an-august-release/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/tiny-ocean-set-for-an-august-release/#When:15:20:10Z Following the release of Tiny Garden a couple of weeks ago work is well underway on the next instalment in the Tiny Explorer series of iPhone apps for toddlers & young children.  We are currently testing a prototype of Tiny Ocean with parents and children and are making finishing touches to the user experience and design. Tiny Ocean is set for release in August. As you might expect Tiny Ocean enables children to discover things that live under the sea, a whole host of strange and wonderful creatures and machines. Parents can add voice recordings to each picture to help their child recognise and match new words to pictures. Older children can record their own words building their confidence and vocabulary. iPhone & iPad apps, Applications, Games 2010-07-29T15:20:10+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/mock-elections-2010/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/mock-elections-2010/#When:11:34:41Z Mock Elections enables schools to recreate the excitement and drama of a real election in their school: this year, over 250.000 under 18s took part in the Mock Election that coincided with May the 6th General Election, making this edition the most successful ever for this project! Mock Elections (ME) is an online community that helps teachers engage young people with issues surrounding democracy and justice, and supports them running a mock election in their schools. Students can stand as party candidates, speech writers or canvassers, and voice their opinions by taking part in a fun active citizenship exercise, which provides an excellent introduction to the mechanics and issues involved in a real election. Results are aggregated on a national level and offer interesting insights of what young people think about politics. We were commissioned by the Hansard Society to create a website that inspired young people, while enabling teachers to manage their mock elections and Hansard to coordinate the teachers community spread across the four UK nations. ME is built on ExpressionEngine (EE), a flexible and extensible content management system. We used many of the EE native features, such as moderation tools and multilingual capabilities, and developed an EE plugin that allows site members (teachers) to easily log their mock elections results and the Hansard team to group them by constituency, election type etc. ME adheres to WC3 guidelines and is AA compliant. Website design & development, Content Management Systems, Expression Engine 2010-07-21T11:34:41+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/expressionengine-free-goody/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/expressionengine-free-goody/#When:16:45:44Z We are releasing a little yet useful ExpressionEngine plugin that lets users delete their own entries and comments, without having access to the back-end. We have been working at an online community website (due to go live soon), where members can upload and edit content collaboratively. All (well, almost all) this can be achieved with great modules like Solspace Friends and Brandnewbox Followers, that add elements of social networking to ExpressionEngine. Yet, deleting entries and comments is not possible from the front-end. We didn't want to give users access to the back-end, so we created a little plugin that enables them to be in full control of their content, without accessing the ExpressionEngine control panel. The plugin works on ExpressionEngine 1.6.x (it has been tested on 1.6.8 and 1.6.9). Hopefully you'll find this useful, as we did. Let us know! Download pi.delete.zip 2010-07-07T16:45:44+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/milk-monitor-is-59p/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/milk-monitor-is-59p/#When:13:22:20Z To mark Father's Day (Sunday 20th June) and National Breast Feeding Awareness Week (21st-27th June) we are reducing the price of Milk Monitor.  Milk Monitor is our firstborn iPhone app and as part of our first promotion campaign we are reducing the price to 59p. So take advantage of this promotion and get yourself your very own copy of Milk Monitor. Whilst deciding take a few minutes to check out some of the reviews that we've received from around the blogosphere over the past few weeks, most of them very positive. Enjoy promo week! GeekDad writes... Milk Monitor  was born after four new-ish Dads took a well earned lunch in Hoxton Square to have a chat about what they could do next... They’re all relatively new Dads and felt an underlying frustration that there was nothing in the app store that served the needs of their new families. So, in true iPhone app developer style, they made their own app to make their lives with their new babies simpler... They’ve made something that is simple and elegant enough to use while feeding, while churning out enough stats and figures to keep number crunching GeekDads happy too. GeekDad, wired.com review iPhoneMom writes... Milk Monitor has a cute feel to it and is a simple way to keep track of basic baby information. iPhoneMom, Milk Monitor review Jessica, from the Facebook Group 'If breastfeeding offends you, put a blanket over YOUR head', said... What I like about it is that the *default* setting is breastfeeding instead of a bottle, and that it simply records your baby's natural feeding patterns (rather than encouraging you to make up a schedule and force the baby on it like so many baby feeding monitor gadgets do). Jessica, If breastfeeding offends you, put a blanket over YOUR head What's the idea wrote... The application developers who think like people first and coders second are the ones who will win... The developer of Milk Monitor deserves congratulations two times: one for the app, one for the new bouncing baby. Steve Poppe, What's the idea iPhone & iPad apps, Applications 2010-06-16T13:22:20+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/what-is-the-best-cms/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/what-is-the-best-cms/#When:16:34:21Z We are passionate about creating websites that enable people to express themselves and communicate with others, whilst being easy to run for us or our clients. Every website stems from different needs, but all can benefit from a solid publishing platform: we have been working with various content management systems (CMS) over the past two years, among which Wordpress and Drupal, and we found ExpressionEngine (EE) is the one that better suits our workflow and our clients’ requirements. Wordpress is too blog-centric and Drupal seems to cause massive headaches in anyone who is not a fanatic open-source developer, EE instead represents a designer-friendly alternative to a fully fledged CMS. Built on the open-source PHP framework CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine is a commercial software with a development team that are approachable and constantly listening to their users (ie: us designers and developers). What we like about EE is: flexibility: EE offers a stable and secure framework that supports anything from standard weblogs to bespoke online communities extendability: EE’s core can be extended with modules, extensions or simple plugins: there are plenty of them developed by a relatively small (around 50.000 people, you judge if that’s small) yet vibrant community, or you can build your own, as we did  in many occasions administration: EE is not just a publishing platform but a collaborative one. You can really define exactly what a person logged in (an administrator, an editor, a moderator, or a simple user) can and cannot do.   We used EE to build websites like The Friend, Mock Elections and the coming-soon uScreen. While The Friend can be considered a solid yet simple implementation of EE (it uses mostly EE core functionality, with the addition of the E-commerce module and a few Milo plugins), Mock Elections and uScreen push the capabilities of EE by adding a range of extensions such as Solspace Friends and Brandnewbox Followers, that add elements of social networking. We made tweaks to the Solspace Friends module and created our own extension that lets users delete entries and comments from the front-end interface (we are planning to release this extension to the EE community at the end of the uScreen development phase). We have also built an API that enables various Flash tools to read and write data onto the EE database.   Our clients struggled a bit with EE initially (being such a powerful tool, its learning curve is quite steep) but eventually appreciate its flexibility, as it can be adapted to their workflows rather than forcing them to follow the way a CMS is designed to work. Website design & development, Content Management Systems, Expression Engine 2010-05-18T16:34:21+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/milk-monitor-update/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/milk-monitor-update/#When:16:01:44Z It's been a few weeks since we unleashed , our debut iPhone app, on to an unsuspecting world, or at least the unsuspecting new mums of the world.  We've been selling well from Korea to Finland and from Australia to Mexico and that makes us rather happy! To top all of that we've even had a few bits of great feedback from some happy customers: Great little App! I found this application useful, and a doddle to use. I recommend this to all befuddled new mums (and dads) such as myself! By Pacita, 5 Stars Simple and easy to use Great for tired mums who want to remember when they last fed and which side. I’ve used notes section to record when and how much I’ve expressed. By Tired Mum, 4 Stars So easy So easy, especially at night. Really like this ap. Would like more easy press options though, such as pumping, Meds, vaccines etc. Would like to see end of feed time also. By Saszey, 4 Stars While all that has been going on we've been listening intently to the other feedback we've been getting and we are just about to release a new version of Milk Monitor into the app store. We've fixed some minor issues and addressed some of the feedback we've had and hope that the latest version will be as well received as the last. iPhone & iPad apps, Applications 2010-05-13T16:01:44+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/introducing-milk-monitor/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/introducing-milk-monitor/#When:16:05:26Z Use the Milk Monitor iPhone app to track your newborn baby’s progress with a simple tap. Milk Monitor allows Mums and Dads to track and record their baby’s feeding patterns and other day-to-day activity all in one place. Milk Monitor makes it easy for parents to keep a record of the quantity and frequency of feeds, whether on the breast or bottle, and to be able to note down things likewhen medication was taken or if you baby delivered and extra special package! Using Milk Monitor will relieve the busy parent from that pile of lists and notes because they can now have all of that information in once place. Milk Monitor is easy to use and was designed to look great and has the features that parents told us they wanted to have. Our promo video showcases version 1.0 in action. Milk Monitors features Tap to record breast feeding times & select which breast baby has fed from Record quantity and frequency of bottle feeds Track your baby’s activity including nappies, medication & sleeping Identify patterns and trends through easy to see activity records Share activity with your partner via email or twitter Export your data via email Twins or triplets? Give each baby their own profile To keep up to date with Milk Monitor or find out more follow us on Twitter or become a fan on our Facebook page. iPhone & iPad apps, Applications 2010-04-23T16:05:26+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/is-there-a-gap-in-the-app-store/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/is-there-a-gap-in-the-app-store/#When:15:56:13Z So the discussion goes... 'What do you need at the moment for your iPhone that can can't get in the App Store?' The answer is invariably, 'Nothing, it's all in there!'. But we asked each other the question again and when we thought carefully we realised that we should be thinking a little closer to home. Over the past few years Milo has been hit by a little baby boom. Between us we have four delightful Mini Milos of varying ages, so the common theme we took into our first self commissioned iPhone App is that of early parenthood and how we can make things simpler. We've spent the last few weeks working on a prototype app that we can all take home and share with those who might use this kind of app. The WAGs! This helps us to make sure that we are making something that is helpful, simple and useful. Once we have completed our testing and made some more tweaks, we will then make a further announcement about our first App. Whoever said giving birth was easy! iPhone & iPad apps 2010-03-01T15:56:13+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/welcome-to-the-new-milo-website/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/welcome-to-the-new-milo-website/#When:16:06:02Z As the new year brings plans for the future, hope and some decidedly dodgy new years resolutions, we proudly present the new and substantially improved milo creative website that we've developed with the ExpressionEngine CMS. One of our better resolutions is to keep you up to date with our latest projects, development and news from milo towers. Whether you would like to engage our services in making something utterly cool, or just to say hello, you can drop us an email. Don't forget you can follow us on Twitter, friend us on Facebook, add us as a contact on Flickr or invite us for a pint in person! Website design & development, Content Management Systems, Expression Engine 2010-01-11T16:06:02+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/doctor-who-dreamlands-launches-on-iphone-android-nokia5800/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/doctor-who-dreamlands-launches-on-iphone-android-nokia5800/#When:11:28:31Z Our first webapp for iPhone, Android & Nokia 5800 goes live! We were recently comissioned to create a webapp and publishing tool to show an animated Doctor Who series called Dreamland. Dreamland airs from Saturday 21st November behind the red button across the BBC TV network. The app is available via the Doctor Who mobile website and will show a ‘comic’ version of Dreamland in daily episodes across the week. The Dreamland web application is aimed at an audience of young adults. The TV show will also be aired on BBC HD channel and on CBBC. The webapp is being made available on iPhone and iPod touch as well as Android phones. The Dreamland mobile experience couples the feel of a traditional comic with the polish of iPhone to deliver a smooth journey through The Doctor’s latest adventure. The webapp is driven by a powerful publishing tool that allows the producer to generate episode packages using pre-designed background images. The publishing tool also allows the producer to create flexible speech bubbles, thought bubbles and text blocks as well as applying simple animation and transitions to add that comic feel to their stories. The whole product is easy to reskin for new projects. iPhone & iPad apps, Applications 2009-11-24T11:28:31+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/save-our-sounds-wins-uk-radio-academy-award/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/save-our-sounds-wins-uk-radio-academy-award/#When:11:31:17Z BBC Save Our Sounds has just been awarded a UK Radio Academy award for Best Cross-Media Promotion or Campaign. Save Our Sounds is the BBC's campaign for listeners to help preserve endangered sounds from their cities through an interactive experience. To co-incide with the BBC World Service radio programme, we were commissioned to produce City Soundscape, a 3D environment in which users could explore a selection of virtual soundscapes. We're thrilled that Save Our Sounds scooped the prestigious award. Experimental, Games, Flash, Awards 2009-10-26T11:31:17+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/the-friend-magazine-goes-live/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/the-friend-magazine-goes-live/#When:14:27:46Z We've just completed designing and developing the Friend’s online magazine. The Friend is a subscription based weekly magazine that has been in publication every week for the past 168 years! We were asked to revamp The Friend website, appealing both to the existing readership and the younger audiences. Not only we did that, but we also worked closely with The Friend team to streamline their publishing workflow and help them manage their subscriptions more efficiently. We built the website and its back-end on ExpressionEngine (EE), our content management system of choice. Using EE publishing tools to create both standard blog articles and bespoke entries (such as magazine’s aggregated issues and ad listings). We also integrated the E-commerce module (which allows people to buy and edit their subscriptions online, via credit card or Paypal) and extended it so that The Friend team receive regular reports on new and expiring subscriptions, as well as email alerts when subscribers change their settings. The design is sober and elegant, focusing on content and optimal readability. Website design & development, Content Management Systems, Expression Engine 2009-10-23T14:27:46+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/y-vote-students-participate-in-mock-elections/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/y-vote-students-participate-in-mock-elections/#When:14:32:15Z Mock Elections enables schools to recreate the excitement and drama of a real election in their school! Mock Elections actively engages students with the political, social and moral issues that concern them by giving them the opportunity to stand as party candidates, speech writers and canvassers in a mock election. Students voice their opinions by engaging in a fun active citizenship exercise that provides an excellent introduction to the mechanics and issues involved in an election. Mock Elections provides a perfect opportunity for schools to explore issues surrounding democracy and justice. Teachers can get hold of everything they need to run a mock election and participate online with other schools. We designed and built the website - a Web 2.0 platform - with the Expression Engine Content Management System (CMS). The website includes moderation and multilingual capabilities and adheres to web standards, WC3 guidelines and is AA compliant. Applications, Website design & development, Content Management Systems, Expression Engine 2009-10-21T14:32:15+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/take-a-journey-through-our-city-soundscape/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/take-a-journey-through-our-city-soundscape/#When:14:37:38Z To co-incide with the BBC World Service radio programme, Save our Sounds, Milo Creative were commissioned to produce City Soundscape, a 3D environment in which users could explore a selection of virtual soundscapes. This project was one of the first interactive flash activities commissioned by BBC World Service and is currently available to their global audience. Utilising Flash Papervision, we built a immersive 3D space mixing visual and audio elements that enable the user to navigate their way through five virtual locations experiencing sights and sounds. Milo delivered this project from concept to launch in a little over four weeks. Experimental, Games, Flash, Awards 2009-07-20T14:37:38+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/milo-showreel/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/milo-showreel/#When:14:38:08Z A glimpse at the video and motion graphics work Milo has undertaken over the past few years. Music for the showreel was kindly provided by International Model Aircraft. We've created films for BBC Bitesize, BBC Blast, BBC R&D, BBC RaW, Channel 4, e-skills and the V&A museum amongst others. Video 2009-04-30T14:38:08+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/avatar-m-brand-design-across-web-print-film/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/avatar-m-brand-design-across-web-print-film/#When:14:49:32Z Milo has developed a brand style across web, print and film for this digital AV storage research project. Working with partners from BBC R&D, The Universities of Edinburgh and Southampton, Ovation Data Services and Xyratex, we designed print materials and a website to accompany a promotional film that publicises the project to the broadcast industry at events such as NAB 2009 in Las Vegas and IBC in Amsterdam. The website was built using the Wordpress content management system and enabled the client to take full control of publishing content over the course of these conferences. The branding ideas came from a series of interviews we did with the consortium partners while visiting their labs and seeing the prototype technology. In addition to this we produced a promotional film that enabled all of the consortium partners to highlight their involvement in the project and explain the potential benefits of AVATAR-m to the broadcast industry. avatar-m HD NAB 2009 from Ant Miller on Vimeo. Website design & development, Content Management Systems, Wordpress, Video 2009-04-29T14:49:32+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/creative-spaces/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/creative-spaces/#When:13:51:27Z Creative Spaces, a social network that, for the first time, brings together the online collections of nine leading UK museums. The National Museums Online Learning Project (NMOLP) led by the Victoria and Albert Museum launch Creative Spaces. Members are able to share their cultural passions through a variety of creative tools. A collection of inspirational films showcase how people, including Vivienne Westwood and Ian Hislop, are inspired by these museums collections. Milo Creative have been involved for the past year in this ambitious cross-media project; we were asked to design and implement the innovative social online platform that allows people to research and to share their passion around museums’ collections. Museums and galleries involved are The British Museum, The Imperial War Museum,  National Portrait Gallery, The Natural History Museum, Royal Armouries, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum,  and The Wallace Collection. Users will be able to fuel their cultural passions, searching and collecting items and adding them to their own notebooks. These digital notebooks are hosted at the site, and designed to be tools to support long life learners, designers, researchers and museum lovers of all ages. Notebooks can be published, eliciting a wealth of feedback and collaboration. Users can also gather and create groups to discuss their interests, share ideas and open their research to a wider forum. Milo also lead the production of 28 short documentaries featuring people who have been inspired by the museums and their collections. Vivienne Westwood, Gerald Scarfe, Ian Hislop and Robert Winston to name but a few, lead by example, showing us how they work, and how these museums collections are a constant point of reference in their careers. Creative Spaces Promo from Creative Spaces on Vimeo. Creative Spaces is due to launch at the end of February 2009. Be sure not to miss it. Get creative! Applications, Website design & development, Content Management Systems, Video 2009-02-25T13:51:27+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/globe-plotters-goes-live-on-future-morph/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/globe-plotters-goes-live-on-future-morph/#When:13:56:45Z We have been working with the Science Council to create Globe Plotter, an interactive 3D science map. Globe Plotter enables young people to explore science related stories around the globe, express their opinions and figure out what floats their boat. This is important stuff – a recent Science Council study found that just one third (35%) of students aged 16 – 18 believe that qualifications in science subjects will help them later on in life and only one quarter (28%) of students see the sciences as relevant. Applications, Games, Flash 2009-02-24T13:56:45+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/big-ambition-your-digital-career-starts-here/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/big-ambition-your-digital-career-starts-here/#When:13:53:13Z e-skills UK has launched BigAmbition, a campaign that gives teenagers an insider view of technology careers. Milo worked with e-skills and their target users to create BigAmbition - a campaign that is designed to inspire 14-19 year olds by demonstrating the wide range of IT career options, and how to get into them. Working with Milo has made the whole site a reality, from the initial concept creation through to the site design and testing their understanding of the target audience has meant that they have always delivered outstanding creativity and quality. Greg Welch, project lead from e-skills. The campaign is fronted by a website featuring interactive tools including a “dream job finder” and a “did you know?” quiz. Video profiles of IT professionals working in companies such as British Airways, BT, Transport for london, Tate and MySpace are also featured, to illustrate the diversity of the sector and show how rewarding a career in IT can be. The site also makes it easier for young people to understand the variety of degree courses on offer. With hundreds of different courses ranging from computer science to games design, the choice can be confusing. BigAmbition segments the multitude of courses into four ‘families’ to help students better understand the options and focus on the choices most likely to suit them. Karen Price, CEO of e-skills UK, is excited by BigAmbition and its role in showing how varied and interesting careers in the IT industry are. The next generation of IT professionals has a huge role to play in terms of UK competitiveness. The sector is large and growing – we need 141,000 new IT professionals every year. Young people really enjoy using technology in their every day lives and BigAmbition is full of information about how they can build on that interest with a variety of exciting, well paid careers in the IT sector. BigAmbition will help us achieve our goal of turning the UK into a world-leading IT nation. As part of the campaign e-skills are running a series of BigAmbition events that aim to promote careers in IT to young women aged between 13 and 19. The events have received some interesting feedback which you can read about on Lost Consciousness and Ganbaru. Applications, Website design & development, Content Management Systems, Expression Engine, Games, Flash, Video 2009-01-09T13:53:13+00:00 http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/milo-film-my-space-last-fm-moo-itv-and-tate-for-big-ambition/ http://www.milocreative.com/blog/view/milo-film-my-space-last-fm-moo-itv-and-tate-for-big-ambition/#When:13:59:08Z We're currently creating a series of compelling, short, documentary films for BigAmbition. The films take a look at how leading companies in the UK are innovating with technology. The films inform young people about careers with technology and illustrate the breadth of opportunities available. We have worked with e-skills UK to select a wide range of companies to illustrate the diversity of the IT sector and show how rewarding a career in IT can be. The making of BigAmbition video includes interviews with the milo team who talk about the design process and the challenges that we encountered along the way. All together we are creating 15 films about organisations that include MySpace, Tate, moo, Last FM, Plain Lazy, BBC Backstage, Roundhouse, ITV, British Airways, BT, Transport for London, Cisco, Red2 and Microsoft. Video 2009-01-08T13:59:08+00:00