As you may know if you follow Cogapp on twitter, each Thursday we all pile into a local pub and learn craft skills from our very knowledgeable colleagues! So far we’ve had four-week introductions to knitting, drawing and origami courtesy of Joe, Eleanor and Martin.

Two weeks ago our interactive installations for the Magnificent Maps Exhibition were unveiled at the British Library. It was a project that Cogapp felt particularly proud of and thoroughly enjoyed working on. To mark the occasion, it seemed only right that our Cake Thursday was dedicated to a show’n’tell of the Magnificent Maps Project. What made this event even more momentous wasn't just that it fell on the day of the general election but also the fact it was the final of the great Cogapp bake-off, a highly anticipated event that would determine Cogapp’s most superior treat maker and a title earning both respect and a little resentfulness in the Cogapp studio. 

Sunday the 18th of April sees the inaugural Brighton Marathon. Three of Cogapp's permanent employees will be in their running shoes for the 9:00 am start and hoping to complete the 26.2 miles in time for lunch. Our runners give their reasons below and you may spot a few sponsorship links so please do sign up to donate.

Yesterday we attended the invaluable Wired Sussex Media Jobs and Skills Fair. Rather than telling you what it's about, I'll allow the good folks at Wired Sussex to do it for me: "As well as recruiting companies there were also media course providers exhibiting; and in addition to the exhibitors there were separate sessions for students and recent graduates, for freelancers, and for more senior candidates.". We ourselves weren't actually there recruiting for any positions in  particular, rather we were just in the Made in Brighton section to chat to attendees and support Wired Sussex and local students.
 
We took along the hideous face munging software to attract the curious to our stall. This sparked a broad spectrum of emotions, ranging from a horrified student who (understandably) couldn't cope with having my face, to a very impressed charismatic man who was poking his tongue out at the screen and making odd noises. Andy had the fortune of munging his face with the Mayoress, which I don't think many people can lay claim to.

“And the award for the best Offline: Kiosk, Installation or On-Site Application goes to” …you could cut the tension with a knife… “Cogapp and their interactives for the Great North Museum!” Cue cries of joy, surges of adrenalin, and all round jubilation.

On Thursday 19 November we were proud to take home a British Interactive Media Association Award from the ceremony at Camden’s KOKO. Having started way back in the digital olden days of 1984, the BIMAs are one of the oldest and most renowned awards of their kind - so it goes without saying that our shiny new trophy is standing with pride amidst its brethren in the office. Its also by far the most dangerous trophy we’ve received - made of stainless steel and slightly reminiscent of a Klingon bat'leth.

Now that I've got your attention, it's time for a rundown of musings from the corridors of Cogapp in our latest and greatest Internal Digest. Aside from the surfing dog above from Tristan, here's what else has been captivating the collective Cogapp mind of late:

Joe dug deep into the back-end of Google Maps, scouring miles of code and a nigh on infinite amount of pictures to find the deeply hidden algorithm that reveals how Google Street View works according to Google Japan:

To those of you looking for Top of the Pops who have come to this blog-post accidentally I say "fret not wandering searcher", for you have stumbled upon a treasure far more substantial than the much-mourned TOTP. You have stumbled upon Cogapp's TTOP: Tech Tuesday Outreach Program.

Firstly, let's a get a bit of background out of the way. Tech Tuesday is a fortnightly occurrence here at Cogapp central. The Technical Department gather round Japanese food in our conference room and discuss all manner of tech related trivia, from iPhones to ICONS and anything else they're musing about. This has tended to be the realm of the digital gurus, technological masterminds and computational wizards in the past, but this week Tristan decided to mix things up by opening the invitation to the entire office (and holding Tech Tuesday on a Wednesday, but that's less dramatic). Not only this, but having recently been to Brighton's Over the Air event, he had been inspired by the presentation given by Tom Hume [http://www.tomhume.org/] (MD of Future Platforms [http://www.futureplatforms.com/ ]) and Joh Hunt [http://bluejoh.com/] (a postgraduate research at the University of Sussex) called "Many Paths to the top of the Mobile Mountain". So with material generously lent to us from Tom and Joh and an invitation to the hallowed halls of Tech Tuesday extended to everyone, we descended upon the gathering. With almost all of the Cogapp team involved, Tristan had a much larger audience to demonstrate his digital delights to; the Tech Tuesday Outreach Program had begun.

Tristan started with background information and a brief about what we were going to be doing before swiftly moving onto the main event of the TTOP. "Many Paths to the top of the Mobile Mountain" is a group exercise designed to get people of different backgrounds working together on one project at the same time. This interdisciplinary approach creates a hotbed of creativity and ingenuity as ideas are proposed and almost instantly analysed by experts in various fields. With specialists from design, tech, production, user experience, finance and business development all bouncing ideas off each other, the inventive juices really got flowing.

But enough of the build up, "What was it you were actually doing?" I hear you cry. The exercise splits the group into several teams (in our case, 4 teams of about 5 people) and introduces us to the fictional Jeremy, a 34 married civil engineer with 2 young children. He is a novice in the world of mobiles - using his allocated texts, minutes and data allowance sparingly - but considers himself technically aware. He is dyslexic and enjoys nothing more than exploring his local peak as part of a spot of mountaineering. Each team was asked to design a mobile application for Jeremy that would allow him to interact with his workmates and family whilst on a mountain, and given a swanky dummy mobile on which to design it.

The teams all went to different corners of the office and got prototyping. Whilst I can't speak for the creative methodology behind the other groups, we had a discussion and created a Journey On- inspired mountain route planning and sharing application that we dubbed Journey Up. After hours (or minutes) of intensive (or lighthearted) prototyping, we had our idea, and we welcomed Mr. Joe Baskerville from a competing team for a bit of vigorous (or easygoing) user testing. This part of the exercise really highlighted the necessity of even the smallest amount of user testing, as clearly apparent but previously unidentified kinks in our product were brought to light by Joe's scrutinizing eyes.

After a reconvening session where teams displayed their designs so far, the proverbial spanner wasn't so much thrown into the works as it was hurled in with wild abandon as Tristan instructed us to swap the mobiles on which we were developing our apps. In all cases this completely changed the capability of the technology with which we had been working. All the teams had to adapt their development to accommodate the new technology and whilst some (a campfire emulator was adapted to incorporate a music purchasing program by one team) were more successful than others (Journey Up took a big hit when GPS was removed from our phone's spec), it showed how important it is to keep the wider audience in mind at all stages of development.

After a quick discussion of the lessons we'd all learned and a riotous round of applause, TTOP ended. Hats off to Tristan for a brilliant and welcoming Tech Tuesday, and indeed to Tom Hume and Joh Hunt for creating an imaginative and thought provoking exercise (read about their successful running of the event here [http://www.tomhume.org/2009/09/mobile-mountains-over-the-air-2009.html] and here [http://www.tomhume.org/2009/08/agile-2009-many-paths-to-the-top-of-the-mobile-mountain.html]).

To those of you looking for Top of the Pops who have come to this blog-post accidentally I say "fret not wandering searcher", for you have stumbled upon a treasure far more substantial than the much-mourned TOTP. You have stumbled upon Cogapp's TTOP: Tech Tuesday Outreach Program. Firstly, let's get a bit of background out of the way. Tech Tuesday is a fortnightly occurrence here at Cogapp central. The Technical Department gather round Japanese food in our conference room and discuss all manner of tech related trivia, from iPhones to ICONS and anything else they're musing about. This has tended to be the realm of digital gurus, technological masterminds and computational wizards in the past, but this week Tristan decided to mix things up by opening the invitation to the entire office (and holding Tech Tuesday on a Wednesday, but that's less dramatic). Not only this, but having recently been to London's Over the Air event, he had been inspired by the presentation given by Tom Hume (MD of Future Platforms) and Joh Hunt (a postgraduate researcher at the University of Sussex) called "Many Paths to the top of the Mobile Mountain". So with material generously lent to us from Tom and Joh, and an invitation to the hallowed halls of Tech Tuesday extended to everyone, we descended upon the gathering. With almost all of the Cogapp team involved, Tristan had a much larger audience to demonstrate his digital delights to; the Tech Tuesday Outreach Program had begun. Tristan started with background information and a brief about what we were going to be doing before swiftly moving onto the main event of the TTOP. "Many Paths to the top of the Mobile Mountain" is a group exercise designed to get people with different skills working together on one project at the same time. This interdisciplinary approach creates a hotbed of creativity and ingenuity as ideas are proposed and almost instantly analysed by experts in various fields. With specialists from design, tech, production, user experience, finance and business development all bouncing ideas off each other, the inventive juices really got flowing.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend i-Design, a one day conference and showcase for anyone with an interest or passion for interactive design and the digital arts. The programme certainly lived up to its aims as I came away truly inspired and entertained as well as being somewhat perplexed too!

The day kicked off with a panel debate centred around the idea of ‘Post Digital’ asking the question, 'If everything is digital, then what's next?' In a world where everything references digital media, how does our industry need to respond? This was a fascinating insight into the minds of the panel members more than anything, with the illustrious Adrian Shaughnessy leading the discussions.

This then lead the way for the first 5D interlude of the day by MOTH who beautifully showed their passion for experimental technology and for pushing the boundaries of traditional VJing. MOTH bridge the divide between video mixing and street art, generating site-specific video graffiti designed in response to the morphology, texture and ambience of the spaces and structures of the outside world.

Another presentation that particularly caught my interest was one by Lichtfaktor. You might recognise the work of these lords of luminosity from the TalkTalk television adverts (which also bookend each segment of ITV's popular X-factor). Their work in light-writing is spectacular, ranging from relatively standard incarnations of the practice, through to an amazing light-printer that allows pre-written messages to be created and captured in the same way as standard light-writing.

Like a traveling salesman making his rounds, Pech-app Cake-cha rolled back into Cogapp town this week. Hot on the heels of last month's successful Cake Thursday/Pecha Kucha hybrid, we once again sat down in out seats, picked up our forks, opened our ears and readied ourselves for 2400 seconds of joy!

First up to the stand this time around was resident User Experience Consultant Cathy. Giving a presentation on the CERN Common Control Centre and some work she conducted there before she joined Cogapp, Cathy's talk taught us all a little about physics, a lot about user-centred environmental design, some things about Switzerland and a huge amount about how captivating an audience can make them completely forget about the cake in front of them.