Thanks to our expansion in 2011, FelineSoft have moved to larger premises and our new address from January 2012 is 1F, 26 Baldwin Street, Bristol BS1 1SE
We look forward to welcoming our existing and new clients to our new Head Office in Bristol in 2012.
After lots of hard work, FelineSoft successfully delivered the interactive digital outdoor ad for creative partner Being who have been working with British Airways on their latest campaign to promote their flights to the Caribbean.
The concept behind the campaign was to showcase a mystery Caribbean island LIVE and encourage real-time audience interaction to guess which island it is. The campaign went live on 19th and 20th March 2011 at Westfield Shopping Mall in London.
The digital outdoor ad enabled shoppers to interact via SMS with holidaymakers in an unknown Caribbean destination, asking questions to find out more details about the island. If they correctly guessed the location they were entered into a draw to win a seven night stay on the island.
The technology behind the scenes largely consisted of jQuery and html coding, with FaceBook integration. A live video link via a laptop on a beach in the Caribbean was relayed onto the digital billboard in the shopping mall and shoppers were able to text a question to the Caribbean holidaymakers. The holidaymakers would then give their answer which would be displayed on a ticker feed at the bottom of the digital billboard. (Of course, all the questions and answers were subject to moderation to make sure no one was offended!)
FelineSoft were proud to have been chosen as the digital partner for this innovative socially interactive media campaign which combined live streaming and real-time participation. You can follow the campaign via Facebook or to read more about the campaign go to:
http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1060645/ba-readies-live-outdoor-campaign-westfield/
http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/2011/03/british_airways_2.php
This morning you might have seen Lionel Blair on BBC Breakfast this morning, talking about AgeUK’s Spread the Warmth campaign and particularly about Lionel’s Wheel of Warmth. You can see the interview here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12127051
The Wheel of Warmth was one of the projects the FelineSoft team delivered on before Xmas 2010; it was a team effort so thanks to all who had a part in developing it. Of course, with the AgeUK website setting the standard in terms of accessibility, the Wheel of Warmth will work regardless of whether the visitor has javascript enabled or not.
Will you spin the Wheel and do an act of kindness?
Go on, you know you want to! Spin the wheel (http://www.ageuk.org.uk/get-involved/spread-the-warmth/wheel-of-warmth/)
Earlier this year, as one of Draftfcb’s trusted technical partners, we were commissioned with the build of a website which was part of a digital marketing campaign to boost traffic to the Jamaican Tourist Board with a’ Dad Dancing’ online competition. The main feature of the Dad Dancing site was it’s integration with the YouTube API; we created a custom skin and customised the YouTube player API to make it chromeless (enabling the player to create their own controls). Once all the HTML and javascript coding of the site was done, our expert front-end developer finished the skinning and integrated the Google tracking code so that the site traffic could be monitored easily by our clients.
The Dad Dancing online competition to get more families interested in booking holidays in Jamaica was pretty successful as they’ve achieved a 40% increase in booking enquiries since the campaign started. Pretty impressive stuff and not a bad ROI for a total budget of £16,000. To see the full case study written up by Draftfcb’s marketing director Laura Holme read on here.
We have since learned that the Dad Dancing site won the Best Consumer Campaign in the MAA Best Awards 2011. Congratulations to the wonderfully creative Draftfcb team in London!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/best-awards-2011/full-list-of-winners-best-awards-2011
Date: 12th November 2011
Venue: Max Events, Bristol
Weather: Wet and windy
Finally, the day set aside for the FelineSoft dev team to have some fun arrived along with a rather rainy and blustery spot of weather. After donning overalls and posing for a pre-mud bath photo shoot, the Bristol dev team looked more like a bunch of factory workers than the usual motley, slightly geeky crew of .Net developers.
First up was the quad biking circuit and the team were soon getting stuck in (not literally -yet) and ripping round the course. Pete, our Tech Director, with his childhood ’scrapheap challenge’ background was most definitely the fastest rider- at least one of us was lapped by him several times in one sitting!
Check out the video here
and the photos here
Next up was the ‘off-road rage buggies’ and what can only be described as the muddiest thing I’ve ever done apart from getting into a hot mud bath in southern Japan. Unfortunately the mud wasn’t even warm, but at least there weren’t any old men gawping at me this time…
The challenge of driving the Mad Max style buggies was being able to get enough mud off your goggles to actually see where you were going at the same time as trying to grip onto the slippery steering wheel – amazingly noone managed to crash or go upside down but we all managed to get completely plastered in mud from head to toe.
The third activity was ‘hovercrafting’, an unbelievably frustrating way of getting around on dry land if you ask me! One of our SharePoint guys, Paul, managed to cruise around the course without getting stuck and scored 9 out of 10 – you don’t know how good that is unless you’ve tried it yourself! The rest of us spent most of our time getting stuck in the long grass and waiting like helpless children to be rescued by the Max Events instructor.
After a very welcome late lunch, we headed off for the final activity of the day- crossbows. Our project manager Jason with his military background gave us some top tips on how to aim for the kill, but it was Pete our Tech Director who actually scored the highest in the final target practice. Lucas, one of our genius .Net developers, and Paul were close seconds though.
By the end of the day, we were a bit cold, wet and utterly plastered in mud and quite happy to get onto our return minibus (notably not the same plush one that delivered us there that morning LOL). Conversation on the bus turned to the usual random topics we have here at FelineSoft- did you know that Johnny Cash was nearly killed by his pet emu? And did you also know that duck-billed platypuses have a poisonous stinger on their feet either did you?
This week we are welcoming 2 new members of staff to the FelineSoft development team. Ramesh Jetpole joins us as a Senior SharePoint Developer, and will be based in London working for our clients Comic Relief and Kempinski. Mark Godfrey also joins us as a software developer, having completed his PhD in Quantum Cryptography. Mark will be based in the Bristol head office working on our many .Net projects.
With a career spanning over 10 years as an Information Architect and User Experience Architect, Mercedes has worked in some of the best agencies in London and for some of the most recognisable brands both nationally and internationally.
With a background in Industrial and Product Design, Mercedes has successfully moved to other areas of design such as user and brand experience, information architecture, software and graphic design by applying the same user centred principle: giving users and stakeholders what they need at every step of the way.
Millions of people have used interfaces and systems that Mercedes has designed for organisations such as O2, T-Mobile, Oxfam, Audi, General Motors, National Rail, NSPCC, British Airways, Comic Relief, the Department for Education and Skills, and the Design Council.
She has worked as Head of User Experience in London agencies like Digitas and Complete, and, as an independent professional, she has worked in other well-known top agencies such as Razorfish and TBWA\Tequila\Agency.com.
You can now follow FelineSoft on twitter at twitter.com/felinesoft
If you’d like to keep up to date with what’s happening at FelineSoft then visit our FaceBook page »
We are very pleased to announce that our new Content Management FrameWork product, FelineCMF, has been tested and meets the criteria for the Microsoft “Platform Test for ISV Solutions” program. Specifically, FelineCMF has passed these 3 tests: Platform Hosted Tests: Web services and .NET Framework , Platform Windows 2008 Server, and Platform SQL Server 2008
FelineCMF is a web-based content management framework which allows you to easily modify whole sections of a website with drag and drop functionality. FelineCMF works with Windows 2008.
