Our thoughts

Introducing the Rufus Leonard iPhone app

By Peter Barker

Wednesday, 20 April, 2011

Categories: Technology

We’ve recently built our very own iPhone app to give a brief snapshot of some of the fantastic work we do across brand and digital for our clients, as well as keeping you up to date with the latest news from The Drill Hall. It’s an especially interesting app because it’s actually ...

Tags: app, apple, iphone, mobile, rufus leonard, web

The electric car revolution

By Peter Barker

Tuesday, 29 March, 2011

Categories:

If you live in London then you probably don’t own a car, but if like me, you wish you could justify having one, then you may have spent some time daydreaming about the option of going electric. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ...

Implementing the semantic web

By Peter Barker

Tuesday, 15 February, 2011

Categories: Technology

We’ve recently been working on an integration project to bring powerful semantic web capabilities to an EPiServer 6 website. The ‘semantic web’ term was originally phrased by Tim Berners-Lee to describe the method of allowing computers to understand the meaning or semantics of inf...

Web apps and native apps

By Peter Barker

Wednesday, 12 January, 2011

Categories: Digital, Technology

In the past year we’ve built two native iPhone apps. But now it has come to building our own Rufus Leonard iPhone showcase, we have changed our thinking and have decided to go with an iPhone optimised web app over a native app. What’s the main reason for our decision? A belief that web a...

'Appy Families

By Peter Barker

Friday, 19 November, 2010

Categories: Technology

I was in our Dubai studio a couple of weeks ago speaking at GITEX, (the 3rd largest global ICT conference apparently) on the topic of SMEs using Web Apps instead of traditional software and systems. The market in the Middle East is adopting new digital technology at a very fast pace and there is a...

Tags: microsoft, oracle, web apps

Banking and social media: The online conversation your bank has managed to avoid...until now

By Peter Barker

Wednesday, 15 September, 2010

Categories: Brand, Digital

The banking industry in the UK has been a slow adopter of social media, and it’s not hard to work out why. First Direct were one of the first retail banks in the UK to experiment with social media when they set up interactive.firstdirect.com, their social media microsite which allowed customers to a...

Tags: banking, banks, social media

That Flash versus HTML5 debate

By Peter Barker

Tuesday, 24 August, 2010

Categories: Digital, Technology

The Flash versus HTML5 debate has been raging on for a while now.  Back in the day, if you wanted video or animation on your website, you HAD to go the Flash route.  The only hiccup with this initially was you had to direct the user to install the flash plugin before they could see anythin...

Tags: apple, flash, html5, youtube

Open Source for Government websites Part II

By Peter Barker

Thursday, 13 May, 2010

Categories: Technology

Following on from my post on Wednesday, I wanted to expand on exactly what you can expect to gain from Open Source and what does it really mean in terms of long-term benefits. But will it cut your budget?Some reading this might think that using Open Source simply translates into lower costs from sa...

Tags: opensource

Open Source for Government websites Part I

By Peter Barker

Wednesday, 12 May, 2010

Categories: Technology

As Head of Development at Rufus Leonard, I’ve noticed that Open Source is becoming an increasingly viable option for government websites, with much change in public opinion taking place in recent months. A key milestone was in late October 2009, when the Whitehouse announced that whitehouse.gov had ...

Tags: opensource

Top ten tips to delivering technology development in a creative agency

By Peter Barker

Monday, 15 March, 2010

Categories: Technology

Creativity matters. It’s crucial to delivering the visual manifestation of our clients’ brands online. However, as technology developers in creative agencies, we must remember that projects for clients, regardless of how great they are creatively, are still IT implementations. The solutions still n...