Author Archives: Grant

New exhibit: The Animator

<![CDATA[I've recently completed a new IT exhibit for Glasgow Science Centre called The Animator. The exhibit allows visitors to create their own Wallace & Gromit style stop-motion animations using a built-in camera and a simple touch-screen interface. The key with this one was absolute simplicity. All commercial stop-motion applications have tons of features that mostContinue reading “New exhibit: The Animator”

New site launch: heraldscotland.com

<![CDATA[We finally flicked the switch tonight on our first Polopoly-powered site! Heraldscotland.com is now officially a public beta, running in parallel with the main Herald and Sunday Herald sites for the next couple of weeks while we train everyone up on the new system. More details to follow when I have time (as well asContinue reading “New site launch: heraldscotland.com”

s1jobs 2.0 wins Online Excellence award

The new version of s1jobs has won the Online Excellence category at the prestigious Marketing Society Star Awards in Glasgow. The site, which was designed and built by my technical team last year, beat strong competition from Blonde, BigMouthMedia, Story UK and Whitespace to take the award. The win recognises the talent and dedication ofContinue reading “s1jobs 2.0 wins Online Excellence award”

Weekend project: Putting my doorbell online

Running your web server from home gives lots of opportunities to connect the real world to the internet. I’ve previously connected a webcam with motion detection so I can see people entering and leaving the driveway and, more recently, connected a wireless weather station to give regular Elderslie weather updates. I decided my next project would be to putContinue reading “Weekend project: Putting my doorbell online”

The new s1jobs shortlisted for top marketing award

s1jobs has been shortlisted in the category of Online Excellence at the 2009 Marketing Excellence awards in Scotland. The nomination covers the story of the development and marketing of the new site, which was the last major project I was involved with as Web Producer in s1. The winners will be announced on May 29Continue reading “The new s1jobs shortlisted for top marketing award”

Local community platform nominated for award

<![CDATA[The Evening Times community sites — based on the ‘s1local’ content platform I developed over the past couple of years — have just been nominated for the 2009 Newspaper Awards. They’re in the category of Best Use of New Media: http://www.newspaperawards.co.uk/markup/nominations.htm My original ET community sites post is here: http://do.grantgibson.co.uk/index.php/2008/03/04/evening-times-local/

New touchscreen and web game in one

<![CDATA[I've always been a fan of developing desktop and kiosk applications in Flash. Many people see it as a web-only technology, but over the years it has matured into a very capable programming language. And if you add on a third party extension such as Zinc or mProjector, Flash has all the file/registry/device capabilities ofContinue reading “New touchscreen and web game in one”

New Sudoku Algorithm – now with working puzzles!

I first developed my Sudoku game system back in 2005. Over the years thousands of people have played it and many have sent positive feedback. However, the one recurring issue since launch has been the quality of the computer generated grids – the quality was variable and often it would generate grids which had moreContinue reading “New Sudoku Algorithm – now with working puzzles!”