3 Years old

It's been far too long since the last Blog post but things have just been so busy.

However, last month marked an important date which we can't let slip past and that is we're now 3 years old!

It has been an amazing journey and we're still here having worked our way through some of the most economically challenging times the UK (and indeed the world) has seen.

iOS development requests continue to explode, and rails application development is also increasing.

We're solidly booked and working with some excellent clients. If you are interested in working with us then please feel free to get in contact.

We'll hopefully update the website with some of our latest work in the future as there has been a lot happening.

impatex - a work in progress

Hot off the press a re-vamp of the impatex.com website.

Powered by associateMe and other ruby on rails goodies...

More to come and further site-advances as time goes on...

Cupcakes By Jane

Here's a quick plug for a mini site we put together for some friends last year:

www.cupcakesbyjane.com

Providing really cute, really cool cupcakes (and other cakes) for folks in and around Southampton, if you need something special - you know where to go.

Weekly Planner

Here's an older community project that's moved along and now in use.

This is a ruby on rails based weekly planner.

With simplicity in mind, weekly planner lets you create labels (be that people, objects, events - whatever works for you). Once created you can assign those labels to blocks of time spread over.... a week. This is great for rotas, groups etc. and removes much of the bloat from a fully-fledged calendar app.

Printing, email reminders and uber drag-and-drop coming very soon.

Happy Christmas!

Flash

Enough said....

utopian work update

Here's a few things that have been keeping us busy...


Finalised Boomeco website:

3D Timeline animation for Polypool:

Simple 1 page 'catch-all' website:

Updates to 4itGirls, including animated flash header graphics, sale features and super-zoom:

With another couple of website previews coming very soon, a rails based intranet App and 2 iOS applications.... we'll get some screenshots done real soon!

Update iPhone to iOS 4.2 installation Error

If you are having some fun and games getting iOS 4.2 onto your iPhone then the following may help.

It seems the quick'n easy way to get the new OS onto your device for testing your Apps will no longer work. You'll find that downloading the updated OS and then restoring the phone in iTunes will partially complete, but right at the end you'll receive an error (often error 10) which leaves your iPhone in a state that needs fixing (restoring back to iOS 4.1 in iTunes).

Here's what you need to do:

- BACKUP your device.

- Ensure you have downloaded and installed the latest beta XCODE.

- Run XCode and connect your iPhone.

- Click 'USE FOR DEVELOPMENT'

- You may need to authorise with Apple using your DEV account.

- Once you are done, you'll get the option to restore the iPhone in XCODE. Ensuring the right OS is selected in the drop-down (other > select OS 4.2 that your downloaded from Apple), click restore.

- Once restored, fire-up iTunes and restore your backup. You 'may' have to try this a couple of times as sometimes the first time fails (don't panic!).

- Test away.....


Personally I think what we have to do now makes sense, it was too easy previously for anyone to hack-about and play with the new OS (non-devs just to get the latest features). Bringing it into XCode somehow makes me feel happier.

NOTE: no guarantees, do at your own risk!

Why the App Store rules are good (mostly)

To some, they are a complete pain - 'big brother', 'just let us do what we want' and 'you are stopping our creativity,freedom & choice'.

I disagree.

There are bad people out there, that like to do bad things. As proved with Windows when it's on millions of desktops, that's a heck of a lot of data that someone can capture, use and profit from.

We now have millions of iPhones - which is a real possible boon for the savvy hacker to exploit so they can steal your data. At-least they would if the App store was an open system like Android. It's not perfect (take for instance the flash-light app that made it through the gates with a little 'easter-egg' which allowed you to use your phone as a proxy server), but the vetting process does do a good job and protects its users.

Some feel they do not need protecting - I say go buy another phone.

To prove my point, Android the 'open' system has a lovely wallpaper app out there (Jackeey Wallpaper), downloaded by millions of users. Lovely stuff - until you find out that whilst you have been enjoying the wonderful imagery it has been sending your data off to some servers in China (browsing history, text messages, phone’s SIM card number, subscriber identification, and your voicemail password). This is just screaming 'windows spyware'!

Enjoy your freedom.

Jumping on the iPhone bandwagon

There is a right hoo-ha going on right now in the blogosphere... It revolves around the iPhone 4 and it's serious problem with reception (cough).

Yes people, we have a problem - if you are into holding your phone in a really awkward way, if you are into being awkward then this is truly a massive problem.

I'm ambidextrous (great for drumming or doing a 'Ronnie' on the snooker table), so without thinking use my phone in either left or right hand mode. Guess what, I don't get any problems. However, I can recreate the reception issue if I hold my phone at a certain angle, in a certain way... and do you know what my thoughts are?..... it's really not a problem at all.

If you want to make it a problem then buy a bumper.

Logo Size

Source credit to Smashing Magazine

A nice blog post

I just thought I would quickly post a link to a great blog post that I read a couple of days ago:

Why Design By Committee Should Die

It's got some great points in it which we come across very often.

It's apt for us, and it's also apt for clients when they think about setting up an internal focus group to decide on how their site/app should progress. In most cases - don't.

Enjoy.

DIY Swimming Pools by Polypool

Following on from the recent release of the utopia 365 designed and developed Polypool website, comes the newly launched DIY Swimming Pools website.

As you can see below, it shares a common(ish) look to the main Polypool company website, but with a few twists, additions and things (that’s a technical term that is).

We’re sharing common content between the two sites as part of our "Polypool Shared” project, within both associateMe and Rails directly.

Here it is.... almost as lovely as the main Polypool site from last month!

utopian concept

There's always lots going on in utopia, but as so many development firms know it's vital to maintain free flowing creativity. Once in a while we like to sit back and write something ‘fun’.

We have been developing our Ruby on Rails CMS system (associateMe) recently, with the addition of some fantastic gallery modules which are so simple to implement and manage.

There is a lovely system for uploading large images, and then producing various sized versions for use within the webpage (in what we call media blocks). These media blocks can be various sizes so we simply centre on the image to get the best fit. This works most of the time, but if an image is uploaded where we want the top area viewed we run into a problem as the image used is centred.

eg. We upload this image:

But we're using a letterbox view area on our webpage so we end up with this:

The normal solution is to edit the image offline by cropping the area we want to be viewed, then uploading and using in our media blocks....but, that's not smart enough for us...

Recently Andy has been working on a concept to allow us to control what areas of an image are viewed on a webpage.

This means we can end up with this:

If implemented into associateMe, will not only prove very useful for our general associateMe users, but hugely useful for our soon to be released eCommerce module for associateMe.

Enough words and pictures though, video demos are always much nicer!

Image Manipulation in Browser from utopia 365 on Vimeo.

Polypool website

Big concepts. Cute designs. Clean looks. That's the new Polypool website, just about launched at www.polypool.co.uk today.

We're still working together on some content so expect a few changes over the coming days/weeks.

We'll be working with Polypool on more future developments and designs than you can shake a stick at over the coming months! Big thanks especially to Ryan and Karen at Polypool - we're glad you're loving it all as much as we are.

Below is a massive preview of how it all looks. Nice isn't it! :o)

Gorgeous Galleries

Polypool.co.uk makes extensive use of our gorgeous galleries, through our own 'Media Block' system (dubbed UTMediaBlock, for our use only) - built directly into associateMe. We can also utilise UTMediaBlock independently of associateMe in other Rails websites we develop. As well as images, it can also handle: Video, Flash Video, Flash Movies, Silverlight, YouTube and audio (such as MP3).

Our famed in-line contact forms

We use these a lot - our famed in-line contact forms, and Polypool has one! Click the main 'contact us' link and it drops down from the top of the page ready to fill out... nice, smooth, functional and pretty much universally adored by our customers.

Beautiful Case Studies

Another advantage of UTMediaBlock is that we can utilise it as a method of navigation. That's just what we do for Polypool with their Case Studies, Completed Projects and Live/Current Projects. A large UTMediaBlock shows a pretty picture for each entry and you select between them using the Next and Previous buttons. UTMediaBlock then loads in the correct content for each entry as you work your way through. It looks and works beautifully.

associateMe

Polypool.co.uk is the first website to be built from the ground-up with associateMe and with associateMe in mind. We've used associateMe with a fair few earlier developments, but it has often been a case of trying to hack concepts and ideas into existing developments - never ideal. Now? We can start building our sites from day one with associateMe - and instantly gain access to much of the power it offers.

2 years on

It is with great pleasure that we wish ourselves “Happy Birthday” today. utopia 365 LLP are 2 years old!

These past 2 years have flown by and we have gone from strength to strength. It’s been an extremely exciting time, especially taking into account we have effectively started up during one of the worst recessions in history - we’re still here, and we’re still busy!

Being careful, selective and Andy doing some crazy hard work has ensured we have been able to progress rather than regress.

We look forward to what the future holds knowing some of the exciting things we are working on.

A big thanks to all our customers.

Cheers,

Chris

New website - Tyme4u

We've just put together a website for a local beauty therapy studio called Tyme4u.

This particular site uses Word Press (WP) for its back-end which enabled us to put the site together quickly and competitively.

Whilst WP does not have the flexibility, power and control of associateMe, it was able to fit the needs of this particular clients requirements and budget. To find out more, contact us.

Playing with iPad

Unfortunately we don't have an iPad yet (Apple, Mr Steve! can we have one please???) but, what we do have is the beta of the new SDK for iPad development. And.... it's beautiful.

We are of course under an NDA regarding new features so I cannot say much. However, I do think I am able to share the following with you.

The iPad is of course (at its most simplistic) a giant iPhone device, although the larger screen and improvements/additional features Apple are providing allow for much richer software experiences and usability for a lot of applications that could never function properly on an iPhone. This is mainly down to the physical size and the resolution of the screen you have to work with. That sounds obvious, and it is. 'Serious work' on a display the size of the iPhone's is difficult. The iPad make it not only feasible, but also useable, and in many cases, probably pretty enjoyable. That is massively important.

One thing that I'm sure you can understand Apple are likely to encourage with the iPad is the way applications adapt themselves to the physical handling of the device by its users. Many iPhone apps only run in a portrait mode because it is more useable for viewing lists of information or data entry and more often than not offers a better user experience for non-media content than landscape views do. This is mostly negated with the iPad because of the high resolution. In practice, for the first time with an iPhone OS device, you can have landscape views that are more useful than their portrait cousins for all kinds of applications. Showing more information and alternative information in a useful manor. I'd suggest that all iPad applications (except maybe games) should work in whatever orientation the user is holding the device in, and give the power back to the user.

Porting an existing iPhone app to the iPad can be either a relatively simple task, or a more complicated task - depending upon what the app is and what resources it contains and needs to work with (especially image resources e.t.c. which must be provided in much higher resolutions). This is mostly obvious because of the massive difference in the physical resolutions of the displays. The iPad does allow you to run existing iPhone apps natively at either their original size (smaller rectangle in the middle of the iPad screen), or zoomed in to fill the iPad's screen. This does not automatically gain you any advantage in terms of the actual screen space you have to work with because you are ultimately just looking at exactly the same as you would be on an iPhone.

iPhone apps which consist mainly of table views and lists of information (which so many do) are far easier and more efficient to port to the iPad. Other apps will likely require much tweaking, additional resource provision/creation and even more thought because you now have an iPhone OS device which is close to the screen size offered by your laptop. That's much more than a phone and you need a different mindset when thinking of the possibilities.

With some of our current 'play time', I have ported most of one of our client's apps to the iPad (I won't tell you what app it is because they don't know yet and now isn't the time!). As it's largely a data entry app, the process was more trivial than most ports are likely to be, but there is still much to do in terms of images used and the original assumption of an iPhone's 320x480 pixel display when designing, preparing and developing the app.

Whilst I have a few personal doubts about whether many people will feel an absolute need to own a product that fits neatly between their iPhone and MacBook/PC laptop, there is no doubt that the iPad is a lovely thing - and I'm sure anybody with an income that allows them to purchase a lot of new shiny things will be snapping one up. We're looking forward to getting our hands on a real iPad ASAP (whether Apple or Mr Jobs send us a freebie or not remains to be seen - come on Steve, go on..... you know it makes sense).

Polypool swimming pools

This is a nice one, a really, really nice one!


We are very proud to let you know that we are currently working on a website re-design for Polypool. They are the pros who basically give you a stunning pool (well, I say give - but I'm sure you understand you'll need to have a few quid burning a hole in your pocket to get one of these babies installed!).

The results are awesome, Polypool's products are awesome, the pictures we have to work with are awesome and the website we're building is awesome. It's going to be clean and cute and associateMe^™ powered. Enough said.


Polypool is the leading manufacturer and supplier of insulated swimming pools in the UK and have been at the forefront of swimming pool design for over ten years, working with domestic and commercial clients.

The new website will replace the existing website over at www.polypool.co.uk and will hopefully be launching within the next few weeks. We'd like to be able to give you a few picture previews of the site here, on the utopia 365 Blog, before the new site launches - so watch this space.

Staring at a desktop...all day

Often we'll spend more time looking at a computer screen than anything else during the day - in some ways a sad fact, but in other ways it's because we have lots of work to get on with and we enjoy what we do.

Having a nice calming desktop picture is always a nice addition to motivate; not too busy, not to bright - my preferred styles are plain and simple, so I thought I would share a lovely little site that often dresses my screen wallpaper:








http://simpledesktops.com/

There are thousands of wallpaper sites out there, but I really enjoy the simplicity of this site along with the great artwork. Resolutions offered 2560x1600.