UrbnStndrd

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[urbnstndrd]

Its been a while since I've posted, had many different things on my plate.

East London has recently been undergoing a massive project involving some of the pioneering street artists from across the globe. BBC's Tim Muffett reports on the two sides of the coin.

But will their efforts inspire or offend?

[urbnstndrd]

Ever wondered how to create a great website? The guys over at soundcloud have just posted a behind the scenes insight into creating the Next Soundcloud. Take a look at it here.

The front-end team at SoundCloud has been building upon our experiences with the HTML5 widget to make the recently-released Next SoundCloud beta as solid as possible. Part of any learning also includes sharing your experiences, so here we outline the front-end architecture of the new site.

[urbnstndrd]

Magnus Magnetic iPad Dock - Or just Magic?

Is this magic or just genius engineering?

The Magnus iPad dock is by far the most elegant designed Ipad stand i have seen on the market. Utilizing the magnets inside your iPad the dock cannot be seen from the front when the iPad is docked.

Magnus is first machine-crafted from pure aluminum and then hand-finished using the latest manufacturing techniques. After that, customized magnets are installed into the base, and rubberized feet are fitted to the bottom surface. A lot of hard work goes into each of these, and it shows. ingredients: machined, recyclable aluminum, nickel-plated neodymium, recyclable plastics, recyclable carton, PET-coated paper fiber.

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Nintendo E3 - The Round up

With the E3 expo fully underway I caught the Nintendo conference yesterday and although it came as quite a disappointment here is a quick overview of some of the key things announced:

The Wii U

The conference started off with an introduction to the Wii u and many of its features. This showed that the Wii U will support two of the new controllers at once, without a demonstration speculation has grew surrounding the quality of displaying a game on three screens at once. Miiverse online service is a new way to play games online. Reggie Fils-Aime was keep to point out that,

It’s much more than a social network!

With no demonstration again we were only given a screen shot showing Mii’s gathered around icon for different titles showing speech bubbles for text or doodles, with the ability to add screenshots. Not really much to go off there!

Wii U Titles

There were a few titles announced for the Wii U here’s a list of what we were showed:

Super Mario Bros. U

Batman: Arkham City – Armored Edition

Scribblenauts Unlimited

Wii Fit U

ZombiU

Lego City: Undercover

3DS Titles

There were only 3 titles named at the conferences all of which had already been discussed meaning that no new 3DS games were revealed. The three named included

New Super Mario Bros. 2

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

Nintendo Land

The final thing to be announced was Nintendo Land, a mini-game compilation featuring games based on a number of existing Nintendo titles and characters. In essence this could be descibribed as the Wii U equivelant of Wii sports as it’s a launch title that’s meant to show off and explain all the various different uses and features of the Wii U GamePad.

Conclusion

The conference went quite well in terms of the Wii U although more demonstrations and more titles wouldn’t have gone a miss, with that said the console look solid and well worth a go, depending on the price tag!

[urbnstndrd]

Nick Stern, an internationally acclaimed News and features photographer and founder of First News Ltd has recreated some of Street artist Banksy's Most icon work. After studying many of banksy's pieces Stern set out to bring them to life using real people, in his photo series 'You are not Banksy'.

When asked to comment stern said,

“I have always been intrigued by Banksy’s work and thought it would be fascinating to try and recreate some of his most famous images on camera.”

[urbnstndrd]

Disappointment - Mac book Pro 13" Specs Leaked?

There has been much speculation and rumours surrounding the release of the new 13" Mac book pro. Speculation suggests that Apple plan to unveil the new range at the WWDC Next week.

A leaked photo (Below) has emerged allegedly portraying the new 13" Mac book Pro specs. This comes from a Weiphone Forum member and if true it is safe to say that disappointment has resonated throughout the technology industry. The new specs show only minor changed to the current model without the expected retina display.

The Notable Changes include:

2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor

Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU.

Bluetooth 4.0

USB 3.0

Similarities:

Screen resolution - 1280x800

RAM - 4GB 1600MHz DDR3

Hard Drive- 500GB 5400-rpm

Identical 8x SuperDrive optical drive

Dimensions 12.78 x 8.4 x 0.95

Although the source cannot be verified it is safe to say that this image and these specs have stirred up a storm.

[urbnstndrd]

This is an interesting take on the life of a graffiti Artist brought to you from none other than Horfe... Definitely worth a watch for anyone into street art.

[urbnstndrd]

Five keys to success for measuring your website - according to Google

Today i came across a post by Francoise Brougher, Vice President of SMB Sales and Operations over at Google. It explained some key things that many people overlook when starting a website, anyone who owns a website or is thinking of starting a website for that matter should take 10 minutes to have a read below

Here are five things that every business should consider:

Identify your goals and track them correctly: Think about the ultimate business objectives of your website and identify specific visitor actions that indicate success, like finishing a sale, signing up for a newsletter, or viewing an important page. Then set up goal tracking to see how visitors are reaching those goals. You can also assign a dollar value to each goal to see how it’s impacting your bottom line, or set up ecommerce tracking to integrate online sales data.

Become a conversion detective: Businesses spend a lot of effort getting people to visit their site, so if your visitors aren’t converting or achieving your goals, it’s important to figure out why. There could be a variety of factors, like too many required steps to request a quote, call-to-action icons that are too small, or poor placement of your email list sign-up button. See what conversion metrics need a boost, and experiment with your site’s content and layout to see what works best.

Get to the bottom of your bounce rates: Bounce rates represent the people who are visiting one page on your website and then leaving immediately afterwards. This could signal that they’re not finding what they need right away. Think about what information your customers might be seeking, like contact information or links to promotions, and make sure it’s front and center on your site. Bounce rates can also show you how effective your marketing campaigns are. For instance, if you’re running an email marketing campaign but find that they’re resulting in visits with high bounce rates, you could be wasting time and money.

Discover important audience locations: The Internet can introduce even a small town business to potential customers around the world, so you might be surprised at what audiences are most interested in your products or services. Take a look at the countries, regions and provinces where your website visitors are coming from - it just might inspire you to run an ad campaign targeted to reach shoppers in France, or start a special promotion for your fans in Canada.

Make the most of mobile traffic: More and more consumers are browsing the web on the go with their smartphones, so spend some time discovering how many of your site’s visitors are coming from a mobile phone. Are they viewing multiple pages, staying for a long time, or bouncing away quickly? A local restaurant might want to know whether mobile visitors are quickly finding information like hours of operation, menus and address - because if they’re not, they could be going elsewhere. If you need help making your website mobile, you can find a ton of resources at www.howtogomo.com to help you get started.

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Bokane Records competition - Win BOK001

The guys over at Bokane Records are running a competition for one lucky winner to win an exclusive 12" gold edition of BOK001 Sparxy - Battousai/Deadlock plus a test press, with second place winning a standard 12" copy and third winning the full digital release.

In order to be in with a chance of winning these prizes simply like the Bokane Records Facebook Page and then comment on the official competition event page here.

The EP is due for release on June 20th and will be available from all good digital retailers.

[urbnstndrd]

Nike Air Yeezy II

Forging a new form of sport craftsmanship, the Nike Air Yeezy II blends classic Nike court breakthroughs with the performance and aesthetic demands of bringing hype to a crowd of thousands.

Nike & Kanye West have just announced the release date and price for the much hyped Nike air Yeezy II. 

According to nike 

There’s absolute function at the Air Yeezy II’s core. Unnecessary padding was eliminated, and the foot-hugging tongue and plush collar are both comfortable and breathable. Fit was essential to the design with the goal to make the shoe slimmer than the original by tailoring it to Kanye Westʼs foot. The collar was also lowered to allow for greater movement.

The Nike Air Yeezy II in the Platinum and the Black edition will be released in the UK June 9 at Hannon, End, Footpatrol and 1948 London in limited quantities and will retail at £210. If the hype isn’t enough to persuade you to purchase maybe the fact that the original air Yeezy’s were on Ebay only hours after the release for 4x the RRP

[urbnstndrd]

What makes a brand 'Truly' Independent? Ben @ VIHMIRU explores some different ideas.

So many good points were made in this post that it does truly deserve to be shared.