Soda loves art, learning and play. Our Journal combines News with other entries by Team members.
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A Soda take on agile process 8 August 06
For some time now we have been looking at our design and development processes. We have also been talking to trusted advisers, clients and partners about different elements of this and have finally come up with a form of words to describe our revised processes. Our desire is to ensure that the way we work should allow us to play to our technical strengths and our creative culture whilst making sure that our partners and clients needs and requirements are always at the centre of our design and development activity.
The PDF file here is the latest version of this and we are now using this with clients. However, we welcome further comment and input as we will continue to review our processes.
Download Soda’s Iterative design and development process Aug 2006.pdf.
Standpedia.com 3 August 06
Standpedia.com - a wiki-style encyclopedia of controversy - allows users to ask and discuss difficult questions, all nicely presented via an interactive visual map. The ambition for these maps is to represent a well balanced range of views rather then a single definitive answer. Already there is a very interesting set of maps available, some of which have already started to ponder the system (standpedia.com) itself. See also Standpoint.com. (via solutionwatch)
Sodaplay hiccup 24 July 06
Something serious has happened to the server running Sodaplay.com and Sodarace.net. Soda apologises to everyone looking to play today; we’re working hard to fix the problem as soon as possible.
Irrepressible.info goes global 20 July 06
Following the success of the irrepressible.info launch in the UK, Soda has teamed up with Amnesty again to release an updated truly global version supporting multiple languages (currently English, French, Spanish with Arabic to follow soon). This is the second phase of irrepressible.info with an exciting third phase already in the making.
The update coincides with an Amnesty report about the role of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google in internet repression in China. The report can be downloaded from irrepressible.info or Amnesty (see press release).
Please keep up the amazing support for this campaign so that we can keep making it even better! Also your feedback is much appreciated and will help shape the next phase of irrepressible.info.
Discovering Newtoon 14 July 06
An exciting new Soda project “Newtoon, A play’n’create ecology for physics learning and mobile gaming” is one of just two proposals to be chosen to enter the “discovery phase” out of almost two hundred entries to Futurelab’s latest call for innovative learning technology ideas.
Soda’s previous collaboration with Futurelab has recently been launched as a commercial product in partnership with Harcourt at www.moovl.co.uk.
Strandbeests walk in London 5 July 06
Theo Jansen’s remarkable Strandbeest are visiting London where they went for a walk in Trafalgar Square before settling down for an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. His incredible wind-powered walking creations pre-date Sodaconstructor by several years and often bear an uncanny likeness to some Sodaconstructor models.
Soccer World Cup on soda? 5 July 06
There aren’t many soda members taking an interest in the world of soccer (well, there are some) but with the World Cup in Germany unfolding it can hardly be ignored. And I just found a nice web 2.0 aspect to the whole thing:
Yahoo/FIFA have a section on the official World Cup site called the 12th man. Among other things they invite their visitors to share their countless pictures using certain tags on flickr. Some of these pictures are then added to a gallery. Unfortunately they apply a very not-flickr-like moderation to the whole thing so that the gallery has only a few hundred images whereas flickr already sports several thousend correctly tagged pictures.
But still, it is good to see what used to be a niche practice entering the main stream (it is FIFA after all). And we have very recently done something similar sans moderation on b.tween2cultures.net, too.
The joys of parameterization 30 June 06
A hidden gem of parameterized tests discovered in Junit 4 javadocs.
While developing the tests for the new sodaplay.com, which needed to test that certain pages generated correct links no matter the name of the context path… That’s a pain because you want to repeat the same tests with just a single parameter difference (the context path). And I’m going to have to do that for each page that I want to test…
School Robot test drive 21 June 06
Matt and Fiddian were delighted by the children’s response to the prototype robot Soda has created for them with the help of Creative Partnerships London East. They were incredibly excited and took immediate ownership of the child sized mobot (Mobile Robot). Their first impressions were: “it’s sweet” , “it’s fast” and “it’s like a footballer!”
Futurelab’s Digital Tools resource 13 June 06
As part of their innovative ‘Enquiring Minds’ programme Futurelab have compiled a growing list of freely available digital tools for the support of learning activities. This extensive list of tools and resources of course references our very own Moovl and Sodaplay
Issues behind the success of US tech startups 13 June 06
I recently read this article by Paul Graham, sent through by Jose Marinez (fellow PhD’er and PeopleLab person). I found it especially interesting as all this stuff about cultures of innovation and enterprise seems really topical at the moment. I, abeit sometimes grudingly, agree with most of what Paul Graham says but what really resonates is the stuff about the openness (or sloppiness?) of American schools when compared to the exam passing factories that are the ‘better’ British schools. This factor coupled with entreprenerial attitude and the availability role models rings true for me as fundamental reasons for this difference.
together we are irrepressible 28 May 06
Join us in defending freedom of expression on the Internet with Irrepressible.info, a campaign conceived and realised by Soda for Amnesty International.
in between 13 May 06
Soda is proud to be speaking at b.tween06 and creating a new artwork in collaboration with Chinese artist Yang Lei called b.tween2cultures.net.
Sodaconstructor engineering workshops @Bristol 12 April 06
The Science Learning Centre at @Bristol have been granted EPSRC funding to do Angela McFarlane‘s proposal of running a scaled-up version of David Shaffer and Gina Svarovsky’s Sodaconstructor engineering workshops in the UK
Re-visioning Vision London 11 April 06
Soda are working with young people from schools across East London, Liz Jewell and Creative Partnerships London East and on a project that will consider how, if possible, technology could be used to provide a platform for young people to have a creative, legitimate and autonomous voice in regards to the various regeneration initiatives that are currently transforming young people’s spaces in East London such as the Olympics, Building Schools for the Future and Thames Gateway Regeneration.