Grant

Twitterendum: HeraldScotland and Equator partner on #indyref swingometer

Today we’re excited to bring a new innovation to HeraldScotland; the Twitterendum monitors real-time public sentiment towards the Scottish independence referendum by looking for keywords within public tweets. The tool also shows changes in opinion over time – visitors can click back through history and see the twitter opinion for any day, along with theContinue reading “Twitterendum: HeraldScotland and Equator partner on #indyref swingometer”

Wee Red Book app 2013-14 edition now free!

Following on from the success of the Wee Red App in the 2012-13 season, we decided to update and publish it again for the 2013-14 season. With the season now well under way, and with the print edition now sold out, we’ve decided to make the app completely free for the rest of the season.Continue reading “Wee Red Book app 2013-14 edition now free!”

Talking careers: every kid wants to be an inventor

Last week I was invited by a local school to give my first ever careers talk. It was really nice to be asked, but it got me thinking: what is my career? Leading digital development at the Herald & Times Group is certainly a big part of it, but that’s not the whole story –Continue reading “Talking careers: every kid wants to be an inventor”

New ABCs: The Evening Times is the fastest-growing regional news site in the UK

Today the latest ABC circulation update for newspapers was released, covering both print and digital. While the print figures are broadly in line with the industry average – and long-term gentle decline – the stand-out story is digital performance. As I’ve blogged about before, I took over technical and subscription responsibility for the Herald &Continue reading “New ABCs: The Evening Times is the fastest-growing regional news site in the UK”

HeraldScotland: Paywall trends and figures released

<![CDATA[As I’ve blogged about previously, I took over responsibility for the technical, design and subscription aspects of the Herald and Times Group news sites in January 2013. At that time my first priority was to improve the speed, reliability and search engine optimisation of the platform where I could see some big improvements were possible.Continue reading “HeraldScotland: Paywall trends and figures released”

My Project of the Month in Popular Science

I was amazed to discover that my toy box is Project of the Month in the December 2013 issue of Popular Science. Very exciting for a geek like me! It was too late for my video to make it into the US edition of the app, but it did make it into Popular Science UK…Continue reading “My Project of the Month in Popular Science”

Peanuts for the code monkey

Write code, commit to GitHub, get peanuts… A few months ago I bought a mini gumball machine from the clearance section of Maplin – I think I paid about £4 for it. I wasn’t really sure what to do with it, so I just left it for a while. Then I had an idea: aContinue reading “Peanuts for the code monkey”

Controlling PowerPoint with bananas

<![CDATA[Recently I was asked to give a presentation to my 300 or so colleagues at the Herald & Times Group. I'd given a talk to the same audience on pretty much the same subject just a couple of months before, so I felt I needed a bit of a twist to make it interesting. So…Continue reading “Controlling PowerPoint with bananas”

Biometric security toy box

A couple of weeks ago Apple announced the new iPhone 5s with Touch ID, a fingerprint identity sensor that replaces the need for a conventional PIN number or password. It got me thinking… wouldn’t it be cool to make a lockable toy box with fingerprint access for my son’s toy car collection. At the heartContinue reading “Biometric security toy box”

Shooting water balloons with lasers

I recently got a TriggerTrap V1 for my birthday and I’ve been doing a few experiments with it to see what’s possible and how fast it really is. In this post I’ll focus on my attempts to shoot pictures of water balloons at the moment they burst. I settled on the TriggerTrap laser detector forContinue reading “Shooting water balloons with lasers”