Not Your Great, Great, Great-Grandfather's London

Jayson Jarmon
President, The Lux Group, Inc.

While visiting old friends at Think London (London’s official foreign direct investment agency), we had an opportunity to talk about the Capital’s economic growth and prospects, the rapidly approaching 2012 Olympic games, and the transformation of London itself as it progresses further into the 21st Century.

Think London has updated its HQ since we last met and have moved into London’s Canary Wharf area. To those who don’t know London, it’s a vast organic place with few buildings over 10 stories—the city grew over the centuries along ancient roads and byways. Canary Wharf, built east of the city in abandoned docklands in the late nineties, seems more like an American city with enormous skyscrapers and even a grid-based street system.



A Canary Wharf Skyscraper

Think London has a beautiful view up the Thames to the west, and you can see the cataracts of the river all the way to Westminster.

Here we see Lux Creative Director Ben Thompson enjoying the view:


Who let this guy in?

I Sing the Body Electric

Jayson Jarmon
President, The Lux Group, Inc.

Elsewhere on this blog I have made the case that “everything that can be digital, will digital”—perhaps this is even true of automobiles (well, if not digital, then electric at least). In the US, we pat ourselves on our backs over our hybrids and think we’re all that. In London tonight I saw some real thought leadership. Across from the Lyceum Theater near the Waterloo Bridge, I saw my first electric car at an “electrobay recharging site.” What appears at first to be a parking meter, is actually a plug and extension cord for recharging electric vehicles.



Hybrid? Schymbrid!


Clean, precise, efficient work with a nod to futurism in that little green light. Sounds like the essence of London design to me.

Blog-Archy in the UK

Jayson Jarmon
President, The Lux Group, Inc.



See, they even named a street after me!

13 years is a long time, and in Internet years it's a really long time. We've worked with multiple partners in the UK since 1995 when I was the original project manager for the BP corporate site, and I dearly love getting the opportunity to touch base in a city that is arguable darker and rainier than Seattle (somebody will have to consult Wikipedia on that). So, whenever we're in London it's fun to get a sense of what's going on in the design and development world (and the pub world, but that's an entirely different story).

So, this week Lux Creative Director Ben Thompson and I are off to the UK once again talking to folks about interactive development projects, and we'll be blogging from London and its environs on an irregular basis. We'll post photos, talk to designers, and see what's hot in London during the rainy month of May. Who knows, we may even get a glimpse of Ben's band onstage in Soho.

Nerd Alert!

Are you fond of retro-futurism? Each generation envisions the future a little differently than its predecessor. Jules Verne foresaw spaceships to the moon, Arthur C. Clarke imagined communion with higher intelligences. Even Hanna -Barbera envisioned a world of space needles and robots called The Jetsons. In time, these predictive fantasies are overtaken by history, encased in amber like the mosquitoes in Jurassic Park. They seem quaint.



Whole Lotta Rosie

The science fiction of each generation says more about contemporary thinking than any real future of course. Fritz Lang's Metropolis was more about class warfare and anxiety over the rise of fascism than it was about the distant future...the double-feature space monster movies of the 50's were always more about Cold War anxieties than the giant ants...don't even get me started about Starship Troopers.

As I was riding to work today on the retro-futuristic monorail, approaching the retro-futuristic Space Needle, I started thinking about computers and how predictive (or not) the sci-fi dreamers have been.

What does retro-futurism tell us about computers? Did anyone predict distributed computer networks, the World Wide Web, or the Internet? I don't think so -- generally, computers in science fiction come in three flavors:

• Super Computers that Threaten our Liberty (Colossus: The Forbin Project, I Robot, Tron, The Matrix)


• Defense Computers Run Amok that Threaten our Extinction (War Games, The Terminator)


• Cold, Disembodied Intelligences Rivaling or Superior to Humans (2001: a Space Odyssey, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

I cannot think of a single piece of science fiction that predicted microcomputers, distributed computing, or the digital revolution. Perhaps that's because the digital revolution is so unique and democratizing, that it failed to elicit the angst of the apocalyptic sci-fi visionaries.

So let this stand as a challenge: if you know of any well-known retro-futurist or science fiction writer who predicted the Internet please send me a mail that I might stand corrected.

jaysonj@luxworldwide.com

Microsoft Silverlight: Lux Worldwide is leading the way

Jayson Jarmon
CEO, Lux Worldwide

New web application development technologies appear (and disappear) everyday, but very few come out of the gates as strongly as Microsoft’s new cross-browser, cross-platform rich-media delivery platform, Microsoft Silverlight. As web applications become increasingly media experiences as opposed to simple text content and navigation, a platform that is .NET-based while still flexible enough to support AJAX, VB, C#, and Ruby is a valuable tool for internet developer’s like Lux.

We used the technology recently to create the Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map: a tool to help developers to navigate that sea of technical content, to access the information they need quickly, and to see the depth and extent of the content available to them at a glance. The application that represents a synthesis of much that is new at Microsoft, but not just in its content: Lux built the application using the Silverlight platform and the Expression Blend development tool.

Lux Worldwide is a leader in Microsoft Silverlight development and design. It’s a platform you should consider for your next interactive application project.

Jayson

IKEA Comes To Lux

By Jayson Jarmon, President and CEO, Lux Worldwide

IKEA-inspired chaos in the alley – please send Starbucks!

There is a great commotion this morning in Post Alley beneath the lofty Lux Towers: video production companies with caterers, klieg lights, gaffers, grips, and gawkers – the whole nine yards – are filming a commercial for IKEA. Actors are coming and going, cars and packages are strewn about the street; a whole comic uproar is taking place. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the production has come between ourselves and our Starbucks, and that there seems to be no immediate resolution to affairs cinématographique … one begins to feel trapped. So this blog stands as an interactive SOS – if anyone out there is reading this, please send coffee.

Jayson

Blacklist Patrol

By Loren Skaggs, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Lux Worldwide

I’d like to give a shout out to our IT Director, Rich Olson, who, in his apparently ample spare time, manages his own product line, particularly the popular anti-spam product SpamButcher.

Rich has just released a new product, and it looks like a winner: Blacklist Patrol. This product is designed for one very narrow, but very important purpose – it is designed to prevent you from ending up on an anti-spam blacklist.

If you’ve never had your domain blacklisted, then you may not realize the value of this product, but trust me – it could save you a lot of grief.

Here’s what happens: Many companies find their email servers listed on anti-spam blacklists even though they would never intentionally send spam. As a result, mail they send may never make it to the intended recipient. Often the problem is that either their server or one or more of their desktop systems has been compromised by spammers, and actually is sending spam.

Blacklist Patrol helps to address this problem by monitoring major blacklists to see if the your server is listed. Once the you discover that you have a problem, you can take action to get yourself removed from the blacklist.

Like I said, the solution is very narrowly targeted, but then, in my experience, the best solutions usually are.

Good luck with Blacklist Patrol, Rich!

Loren