Oh, and please can someone buy that website and turn it into something aesthetic!

We know clients’ decision on the agency they work with goes far beyond the creative quality, yet too many times it is the main focus right from the start. It’s a common approach for companies to ask agencies to pitch for creative work. Especially here in the UAE I experienced a lot of pitch work coming through the door.

Many times I met potential clients that didn’t even look at the 30 page proposal presented. All they wanted to see was the design. “Too much blue. Too much white. Ahh… I want option 3!” I even met clients sitting over 30 logo options, banging their head against the table, unsure which one to chose.

Is the creative output of the “pitch” the only way to judge the competency of an agency? Or might the creative pitch be the a reason why we are suffering poor quality work (And keep ranting about it in magazines/online)?

Let’s take a step back and have a look at how the average creative pitch works: A client sends out a RFP to 3 agencies to receive 3 concepts from each. Meaning the client sits there with 9 design options for his new project. He picks the one he likes most and assigns the job to the agency (we call her Agency B).

Question: is Agency B better then A and C?

Not necessarily. Maybe Agency B was just lucky. We all know that a professional design requires research, the development of a strategy and all the technical bits depending on the project. And how long does that take? Let’s say 3-5 working days to come up with something descend. This means that either Agency B has invested a heap of cash into the client’s new project with the uncertainty to win or… the agency was just lucky producing something the client liked with minimum effort.

Lucky Luke

Assuming that means that Agency B was just lucky, wouldn’t that mean the client was just lucky too? If the client was just lucky wouldn’t that mean it’s all just trial and error? Remember the logos?

Now one could argue and say not only the creative, but many other things influence the decision. True, but yet the chosen piece of work get’s published with little modification which leads to poor quality.

More focus on quality rather then quantity would save clients the headache of choice and better creativity. The industry has to win back the trust, but the only way to do so is if the clients start trusting the industry again and ask for as much support and guidance as possible. This will result in better work and eventually stop the pitch.

Image from WikiPedia

* A Pitch in the context of this article is the request of a company, to ask more then one vendor to propose creative work before the assignment of the job. We therefore refer more to a creative sales pitch rather the classical pitch for entire accounts etc.

This week Sony Ericsson has released their set of UI components including Button, CheckBox, List, Progress Indicator, Radio Button, Soft Keys and Wait Indicator. Looking at the component catalogue there are more to come.

Comparing both Sony Ericsson seems to have done the better job – at the moment. The components look more stable and come with a richer set of features (@Nokia somethings wrong with your Buttons text alignment). They look nice and are customizable by setting colors and properties.

Drawback, no source code available and no skinning capabilities for Sony Ericsson. Another worrying point seems the integration of direct phone commands into the components. In the component catalogue they mention the use of vibration events for dialogs etc. I only hope that this is optional and that both Sony Ericsson and Nokia do not start to make their components THEIR components.

There was detailed material available on the web proofing the piece of software was not for improving network performance.

The international media picked it up and we saw all the posts on BBC, Engadget, NY Times etc.

Then Research in Motion, developer of the BlackBerry released a removal tool which states again that the patch was not improving network performance, but sending messages back to a central server.

I thought by then it was official.

Yet, Etisalat did not waste a word on the issue.

Until today. Arabian Business got word from the vice president of Etisalat enterprise solutions that the patch was only to improve network performance.

And now some people are very angry.

The point is, people are not that upset now about the fact they are trying to install spyware on our devices. People are upset because Etisalat seems to think that their users are fulltime idiots.

Is that why Twitter is so successful? Because all we really need are 140 characters to kick off a heated discussion? Or we just need exaggerated headlines to make something sound bigger than it is? Is that why we had Wolfram Alpha the Google killer, Silverlight the Flash killer and there was some Video thing that killed some radio… can’t remember.

Google Chrome OS sounds so much like Google Chrome running straight on a Linux kernel. Ups, it is Google Chrome on a Linux kernel! Cool. Applications are developed as web applications running on Google Chrome “OS” and any other browser. Cool. Very cool. Web applications… ahh!

But this will not kill Windows, Microsoft or anything else as it is just not an operating system; it’s a browser on steroids.

Now, this is not a bad thing. I personally like the idea and would love to be more disconnected from the traditional desktop and more connected to the web, but web apps just can’t replace word processors, graphic applications, 3D games and all the other tools we use on a daily basis yet.

Windows gained over 90% share in the last year in the US netbook market and the main reason is that people are just too used to it. Not to forget; netbooks originally designed to be low cost notebooks for developing countries, now became mainstream and the consumer has that $50 extra for MS Windows.

You cannot just shoot down a platform with 90% market share, that’s as likely as the success of the emails you get that say: if we all don’t buy gas tomorrow the oil prices will drop.

As Mr. Spolsky once said, you could just end up doing free market research for Microsoft when they suddenly ship Explorer OS. A free version of Windows that auto starts IE and disables all the other buttons.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// The Literal class implements a control that displays raw HTML or Text content.

// Constructor.
function Literal(id, text) {
 if (id != UI_NO_INIT_ID) {
 this.init(id, text);
 }
}

// Literal inherits from Control.
Literal.prototype = new Control(UI_NO_INIT_ID);

// Content element for Literal text.
Literal.prototype.contentElement = null;

// Initializer - called from constructor.
Literal.prototype.init = function(id, text) {
 uiLogger.debug("Literal.init(" + id + ", " + text + ")");

 // call superclass initializer
 Control.prototype.init.call(this, id);

 // create content element
 this.contentElement = document.createElement("div");
 this.controlElement.appendChild(this.contentElement);

 // set the text
 this.setText(text);
}

// Returns the enabled state for the control.
Literal.prototype.isEnabled = function() {
 return true;
}

// Returns the focusable state for the control.
Literal.prototype.isFocusable = function() {
 return false;
}

// Returns the control text.
Literal.prototype.getText = function() {
 return this.contentElement.innerHTML;
}

// Sets the text for the control.
Literal.prototype.setText = function(text) {
 uiLogger.debug("Literal.setText(" + text + ")");
 this.contentElement.innerHTML = (text == null) ? "" : text;

}

We built a secure and scalable corporate website which included the customized MySHUAA Portal. A widget based secured section of the website allowing users to build their own homepage, while added widgets such as stock symbols, market watch and alerts enabled investors to be as close as possible to the stock market from any remote location.

Click here to visite the website