After 4 months of intense work, we have just launched the Weplay beta. Weplay is a sports network for children, something like Piczo meets TeamSnap. The client is a startup backed by Major League Baseball, Pequot Capital and Creative Artists Agency. By transferring our technology, and working closely with the outstanding development team at Weplay, as assembled by Luke Melia, we helped Weplay hit a very aggressive launch target.
Weplay.com is one of the biggest sites Mint has built. It includes a complex model of parent to child permissioning, a state-of-the-art UI, and a very robust security model to ensure the online safety of the children who make up the sites core demographic.
It’s a neat little app that counts down to your holiday. Every day it offers you a local tip and tells you the weather in the place that you are travelling to.
The app is part of the promotional campaign for the Lonely Planet Encounter city guides. Over the next few weeks, the Desktop Countdown will be promoted on coffee sleeves at 14 locations in London, banners on Yahoo! Weather and on London Underground posters. The total reach of the marketing campaign will be to over 3.6 million people. We snapped this poster at Vauxhall tube, round the corner from our office.
From a technology point of view it is pretty cool. It is the first time Mint has used Adobe AIR. AIR is Adobe’s platform for creating desktop apps. It brings the web closer to our desktop. It blurs the boundary between online and offline. In short, it opens up a bunch of new possibilities.
“Prove it,” you mutter cautiously. Actually, for an entire day, the proof is right on our website—today, we’re celebrating the annual CSS Naked Day!
We’re obsessed with making great things, even the parts you don’t think about. We use modern techniques and web standards to build our sites, and that makes them more robust on new and old web browsers alike. On CSS Naked Day, you can see the results: our website stays usable and content-rich even when you strip away the styling. This is especially thoughtful for users with slow internet connections (the content loads right away, and the styling shows up later) and for visually impaired users who depend on audio screen readers, not shapes and colors.
Hundreds of forward-thinking web developers are joining in, and demonstrating that websites should work well at their most basic level—content. Among the Mints, Phil Nash’s blog and my personal site are also stripping down to promote web standards. Here’s to another year of pushing the web forward!
Mint has just returned from a long weekend in the Dorset countryside. We split into 3 teams and spent 4 days competing to build the best web application.
As well as drinking loads of booze, we created some pretty cool apps.
Oh!Creative is a platform for freelance designers to showcase their work. It also allows people commissioning that work to manage their work flow and scheduling.
Mint has pulled off an almost unprecedented one-two for the Content 360 competition at MipTV. ‘One Month Movie Marathon’ is shortlisted for the Ogilvy category. ‘Kissing Against the System’ is shortlisted for the National Film Board of Canada.
Furthermore, Mint collaborated with Different to create ‘Dr Who: In Parallel’. This multi-platform concept won a place at BBC Innovation Labs.
We’ve just started a semi-regular round table for New York people interested in social media. Hosted at the Grand Sichuan, we can guarantee the food will be hot.
Firstly, to let fans get closer to the show’s production process. Skins is written by a team of super-talented young writers, working with a bunch of experienced professionals. SkinsLife mimics this process and expands it online.
Secondly, to combine web and real-world activity. A key part of SkinsLife is a party tour. Big-name headliners (soon to be announced) mingle with SkinsLife members showing off their talents. This collision of web and real-life talent will make the parties burst with energy.
The site is striking visually (thanks, Tal!) and offers our slickest usability yet (I especially like the multimedia commenting, a new BloomBox feature).
On the web, words are key. It has been fantastic working with a red-hot drama team who know how to write sentences that feel authentic and zing off the page. Combine that with very deep feeling for their audience and you begin to understand why Skins feels different.
We are really proud of SkinsLife. Hope you like it too.
We are happy to announce the launch of Menthol TV. We are delighted to announce that Jeremy Lee, formerly Series Producer at Ricochet, will be Director of Programmes.
Jeremy has been involved in some of the biggest factual entertainment formats of recent years. Credits include Supernanny, Risking It All, It’s Me or the Dog and Can You Live Without? Menthol TV will specialise in Factual Entertainment and Entertainment formats, many with a multi-platform edge.
Jeremy says:
“Menthol has a unique understanding of how the web and TV can interact to deliver genuine cross-platform entertainment. In a year where we will see advances in TV production and the way broadcasters commission, Menthol TV will be leading the way with a new generation of break-out hits”
Over the last few years Mint has developed lots of cross-platform ideas (some of them awardwinners). It has proved difficult to take these further. A big problem has always been the number of stakeholders involved in making these ideas a reality. Over the last year, many key broadcasters have unified their cross-platform commissioning structure. Menthol TV means we have unified the delivery mechanism.
Check out the new Menthol TV site. It doesn’t say much but - with any luck - it conveys the vibe.
We’re very excited to announce that Paul Dix has joined Mint. We’re going to be helping him with his super-cool Tahiti project. He’s going to be lending us his super-hot Ruby skills.
He’s already survived his first hot pot (centre left). This is becoming the initiation ritual both in the UK (welcome Jeremy and Adam!) and in the US (welcome Ron!).
Phew… Everyone at Mint can breathe again. This was Channel 4’s first online vote since the TV voting scandals earlier this year. We had to adhere to a super-strict set of new guidelines. We built a system capable of recording hundreds of thousands of votes a day. We’ve withstood penetration testing by a bunch of Channel 4 employed hackers. We’ve logged votes in two separate ways and securely transmitted them to an independent adjudicator at Olswang for analysis.
But this is rock’n'roll. It’s about the parties. And it’s great to know that Alex Zane (seen here carousing with Thomas Pomfret, VP Technology) digs our web technology.
I have just returned from the Sheffield Documentary Festival where at a glittering awards ceremony on Saturday night we scooped the Crossover Prize.
The idea entitled ‘Museums of our Future’ (then renamed ‘Tomorrow’s Today’) was the output of a week working with Diarmid Scrimshaw from Warp Films and Anna Higgs from Quark Films at the UK’s first ever Crossover Lab.
A few things that stand out for me about Crossover/DocFest:
1. I love our idea
As well as loving my team, I love our idea. It works beautifully across three platforms (TV, web and real life). We are going to work hard to bring it to a screen, laptop and event space near you soon.
Happily the idea was not spawned by some elaborate ‘lets all think about the future’ type of brainstorm. It emerged from a meeting of minds over dinner one evening. An intellectual debate ensued, a creative match emerged and, hey presto, an idea was born.
2. Creative environment
The Crossover environment was really conducive to thinking. We were literally locked up in a hotel for a week (okay, not literally). At times it was all too much but ultimately all the teams developed inspiring ideas.
3. Great people
It was a pleasure to meet loads of creative people with different skills and experiences from around the country. The mentors, commissioners and, most of all, the other participants really rocked da house.
Three things that I learnt from the experience were:
Go with the idea that you are passionate about. If you don’t love your own idea then nobody else will;
Run it past anyone who will listen. An old colleague from my accounting days had a screensaver that read “Feedback is the breakfast of champions”. Hard to apply in the world of auditing but a great maxim for devising crossover documentaries;
When it seems like you have hit a brick wall - keep going. Give yourself a deadline by which time you have to pitch something. Otherwise great ideas can be written off as soon as they reach the first “this is difficult” moment.
On a more personal level, I found the whole experience quite emotional. I sometimes act like a ‘cold as ice small town likely lad’ (although, like many Welshmen, I burst into tears at the opening bar of a male voice choir or watching the rugby at Cardiff). At Crossover, I experienced a sense of hiraeth. Normally this feeling is reserved for Neath, Swansea and Port Talbot area but now I must add Skipton to that list. Very odd.
Marvellous memories, inspiring ideas, but most of all firm friends.
We’ve just launched a new version of the mobileAct website for Orange, SonyEricsson and Channel 4.
1500 bands initially applied. This was whittled down to 50 when the show started and now twelve. Bands can upload video and pictures and write blogs - building their online fan base will be crucial as the series progresses.
On November 8th and 9th, the TV, digital media and advertising industries will converge on the Future of Television forum. Speakers include executives from Fox Interactive, NBC, ABC and Endemol USA.
Mint is one of the main media sponsors. The Future of Television builds on the success of UGTV and NYTVF’s Digital Frontiers panel to promote discussion about the creative possibilities of cross-platform TV.
The Islandoo casting system is now open to anyone casting for TV, film, music, adverts or theatre. (Previously, it had been exclusive to the Shipwrecked team). In the first week, 8 shows signed up.
We designed the system to help casting professionals. There is a slick interface for managing the casting process. Each opportunity gets promoted to Islandoo’s 38,000 members.
The community gets what they are looking for: lots of chances to shine.
At the end of November, Mint is dividing into two teams for a long weekend of coding. Each team has four days to build and launch a web app.
We thought we’d do this to:
Spur creative thinking
See what we’d come up with
Have the fun of starting with a blank sheet of paper
Focus on a project in a small team
The rules are:
Max 5 people in a team
No .net*
Stop working at 5 on Sunday - what’s live then gets judged.
Before the Weekender you can spend as much time as you want brainstorming and researching the concept. Also, you can register a domain name and set up the plumbing.
Does anyone else want to join? We thought it would be interesting to open it up and see what other people get up to…
I’m imagining each team would work separately. We’d have a wiki so that teams can report back progress. We’d meet on the evening at the start of the Weekender for a drink. At the end we’d have a party. We’d find some neutrals to judge. We’d invite a celebrity (probably Cameron Diaz) to present the prize.
We’ve just launched a community site for US mobile content provider Thumbplay. The community section has tight integration with the rest of the Thumbplay site (using BloomBox’s RESTful API to share content). Also, it’s the first BloomBox site with mobile upload and download.
The clip above isn’t the launch of Thumbplay community. In fact, it’s my wedding. My wife and I just had 1300 professional photos delivered, but I’ll spare you. Here’s a couple of user-generated ones: the MC and the henna (preparation) day.
Mint blog
This blog consists of (1) any news that confirms Mint's own existence and (2) thinking on the ethics of user-generated TV, the anatomy of cross-media hits, the principles of participation design and the battle to unmute audiences.
We are talking social media at:
Digital Hollywood
The Emerging Law of Wiki, Blogs and Social Networks and Its Impact on Traditional Business and Entertainment"
Tim Morgan 6th May '08
BloomBox is a web application that makes it easy for television producers and broadcasters to make shows based around user-generated content.
Read more at: www.bloombox.tv
