Tuesday, June 29th

Should site award site be awarded a site award?

Established ten years ago last month, the Favourite Website Awards (FWA) is generally regarded as the leading platform for recognizing achievement and innovation in website design. I’ve mentioned them many times here before; partly as I’ve used their site as a key resource for making my own personal recommendations for sites to visit. It certainly doesn’t look like it is, but the FWA project is still unfunded and is kept going and growing by volunteers and sponsors who provide their services for free.

So the UK-based FWA’s own website has always been a personal favourite, and I’m pleased to say that the complete redesign that went live at the beginning of March is even better. Once again designed and developed by Belgian agency Group94 – themselves multiple FWA award-winners – the new site has many new features. These include more search facilities, video reels of winning sites, a ‘dock’ that allows (registered) visitors to assemble favourites of their own and a public votes area.

What hasn’t changed is that each day the FWA showcases a Site Of The Day, with a Site Of The Month being selected from that month’s previous daily winners. At the end of each year the twelve monthly winners enter the contest for the People’s Choice Award and for the ultimate accolade of Site Of The Year. The site also features interviews and articles with designers and developers of winning websites.

Meanwhile the Group94 site is showcasing a demo of their own ‘flash94 CMS’, actually integrated into their own site (above). The in-house developed system is provided at no extra charge to their clients so that they can manage the content of the Flash (and/or hybrid technology) sites designed and developed for them by the agency. As regular visitors to my blog know, Group94 have a passion for photography, and a large part of their portfolio features sites they’ve designed for photographers, some of which I’ve featured in my ‘film, video & photography’ posts. They also designed a great site for the Bale Resort in Port Douglas – our favourite holiday location. Since Bale was taken over by the Peppers Group, it’s longer the official site, but you can still see the original design here. I wonder if we could afford a Group94 redesign of my own 12 year-old amateur effort…Most mornings I now listen to Radio 4’s Today programme FM Internet stream in the bathroom and then take the 'radio' downstairs while making the coffee. At other times we can listen to The Lounge, Whisperings, any other Internet station or digital music over our Wi-Fi system anywhere around the house. One of my best investments.

Friday, June 11th

Squeezing radio streams and digital music

During our last few breaks in Port Douglas, in North Queensland, which has become our favourite holiday destination, local radio station ‘The Lounge’ has become a part of the ‘audio backdrop’ to this wonderful place. Whether on the hi-fi in the house or on the car radio, my wife and I have come to associate its idiosyncratic offering of “cool, calm and relaxing” music with our vacations. We’d already often tuned in to the Internet radio stream on our home Mac when back in Amsterdam to bring back memories before our recent return trip last month.

So it was that we of course tuned the receiver in our rented house to 106.3 again, and all was fine for the first few days. Our house this time was at the bottom of Flagstaff Hill, from the top of which is the mast that broadcasts the station. Then one evening the house lights flickered and the The Lounge went off the air. I e-mailed the owner, who kindly told us that they were working on restoring the signal, but while we were waiting we used my laptop connected to the house system to tune in to other streamed offerings.

Via the Live365 portal we found a station we really liked – providing a solo piano stream called “Whisperings”. In fact we liked it so much that within a few hours I’d signed up for their “PureStream” variant. For $30 a year, this provides a higher quality 128kbps stream and an expanded playlist with no ads. I also downloaded the Whisperings iPhone app, which I’ve since used to enjoy the great music and block out the noises when travelling around Amsterdam.

When we returned from Port Douglas a few weeks ago I decided to look for a digital audio system that I could use to access Internet radio and stream music from the collections on our Macs, both through our hi-fi and on portable players that we could take anywhere around the house. There are a number of alternatives, but it’s hard to find any for sale through retail outlets here, so I soon realized I’d have to buy online. I eventually chose Logitech’s ‘Squeezebox’ system. We now have a ‘Squeezebox Duet’ (above) attached to the hi-fi and two ‘Squeezebox radios’ (below).

Most mornings I now listen to Radio 4’s Today programme FM Internet stream in the bathroom and then take the 'radio' downstairs while making the coffee. At other times we can listen to The Lounge, Whisperings, any other Internet station or digital music over our Wi-Fi system anywhere around the house. One of my best investments.

Monday, June 7th

‘Taste of Amsterdam’ returns this month

A year ago I posted here about how two Amsterdam specialist agencies – Brownys Events and Downtown Events – were each staging a 4-day outdoor culinary event in the city in June 2009, each featuring a number of restaurants showcasing their signature dishes in tents, and only three days apart. At the time I noted that this culinary clash sounded like a sure-fire recipe for a marketing food fight.

In the event – if you’ll excuse the pun – the 2009 edition of ‘Amsterdam Culinair’, which had already had a stop-go history, was cancelled at the last minute. Anyway, by all accounts ‘taste will out’, as the first edition of the other one – ‘Taste of Amsterdam’ was a success. The ‘news’ page on the Downtown Events website only has a piece about the success of the last year’s ‘Taste’, which may seem a little strange, but the site of ‘Brand Events Benelux bv’ provides links to the official ‘Taste of Amsterdam’ website, where they are listed as the organizers with the same address as Downtown. I finally discovered by visiting the Brand Events UK website that Brand Events Benelux is in fact a joint venture between them and Downtown Events, staging both ‘Taste’ and the ‘Top Gear Live’ events in Amsterdam.

Last year’s four-day ‘Taste of Amsterdam’ attracted 15,000 visitors, and this month’s event seems to be sticking with the formula that had proved to be so successful. As it’s being held from June 24th to 27th, it first seemed to me that there would be some rather stiff competition from the World Cup, especially as Oranje will be playing their last group match against Cameroon during the event’s opening session on the Thursday evening. The organizers have sensibly taken this into account however, turning it to their advantage by proposing that watching the match in the Amstelpark with a glass of wine and a Taste of Amsterdam meal would be an attractive option.

A number of very high quality restaurants are once again taking part, including Peter Lute’s and Ron Blaauw’s prestigious Ouderkerk establishments and one of my favourite Amsterdam restaurants, Toscanini. Tickets for entry to ‘Taste of Amsterdam’ cost from € 15.00 in advance or € 17.50 on the day, and can be ordered via the event site. ‘Florin’ tokens, with a value of € 1.25 and used to purchase drinks and meals, can be purchased on site.