NZHistory.net.nz has been short-listed for the special category: Open Source for Creativity. The winners will be announced at an awards evening on October 17th.

Check out the case study in our work section and visit NZhistory.net.nz here.

NZlive.com was praised for its interface, its application of web 2.0 technologies and its extensively syndicated content. The information award is for digital applications developed for information gathering, sorting, presentation and sharing. The judging criteria includes a focus on ease of access to information and quality of information architecture.

MCH Chief Executive Martin Matthews said the award was a great accolade for NZLive.com and proof that it was a cutting-edge site on track for continuing success. “With more than 1000 current events on the site at all times, NZLive.com is already providing a valuable service to the cultural sector. It is clear that our innovative approach to; sharing and receiving content via free RSS feeds and open interfaces found favour with the judges. Importantly, we are also delivering a great user experience.”

This is the first of hopefully many awards for the new website NZLive.com and the third TUANZ award for projects by the Timebased team.

As for the content (the most important aspect of any website!) - can a single website represent a nation’s cultural produce? (We may be only 4 million but we’re prolific!) NZLive.com is certainly making a dent. Not only does the event guide list the usual exhibitions, concerts, festivals etc, but it also features historic places, national parks, and other “always on” cultural places and activities to be found across New Zealand, making this the ultimate resource for anyone looking to travel around the country, the island, or even the block! It’s an eye-opener not only for the tourists that visit, but also for the locals who may walk past culturally significant landmarks every day and not even know it. As an example - it’s only through NZLive.com that I learnt that I live next to the third largest carillon in the world with a master carillonist who performs regular live concerts, and all these years I had assumed it was a recording!

Another important aspect of NZlive.com is the public service role it provides - allowing other events guides, websites and individuals, free and customisable access to all the events and activities data. Anyone who has tried to run their own events guide will appreciate what a benefit it will be to have high quality, reliable and up to date events data only an RSS feed away!

The future for NZLive.com is bright and busy with more major developments, including searchable cultural funding databases and behind-the-scenes tools for cultural sector organisations, planned for deployment within the next few months.

The New Zealand cultural portal NZLive.com was launched in September 2006 by Prime Minister Helen Clark. Timebased was asked to provide a visual presentation for the event.The goal of these visuals was to create a vibrant wallpaper that highlighted the energy and diversity of the cultural events and organisations featured on the NZLive.com website - in effect to create a motion graphic representation of contemporary New Zealand culture.

It was important that the visual show could be mixed and controlled so that it could be highly energetic and engaging at appropriate focal moments or dropped back to calm, background “flavour” while other artists were performing. This was achieved by breaking the show into multiple looping elements across 6 DVDs and having a VJ mix between loops throughout the evening.

Recognising that browsing a website is generally an intimate interaction between the user and the screen, Timebased wished to avoid the dry and traditional website demonstration as the keynote launch presentation. Instead, the NZLive.com brand itself was used as the major ingredient of the show paired with eye-candy design elements of the website interface such as the bespoke icons and the Ajax search tool. These were presented in looping format along with other segments featuring heavily treated footage of New Zealand cultural events and art supplied with kind permission by the appropriate individuals and organisations.

Credits

• Art direction and production: Aaron Dustin
• Production and account management: Teina Herzer

Services Provided

• Planning
• Motion Graphic Production
• Direction
• Project Management

Client Testimonial
“Audio-visual presentations which Timebased Ltd created for the launch of the cultural portal project, and the launch of the NZLive.com website itself, were artistically and technically outstanding - a highlight for everyone at those functions”
Jane Kominik - Deputy CEO MCH

Some basic tips for finding a good online brand/domain:

Make up a word - Expand the lexicon like eBay!

Grab new terms - Language is rapidly evolving. New names, terms and slang are emerging everyday. If there is something that suits your product, grab it while you can but watch out for anything that will become dated, replaced or hijacked for derogatory slang.

Get scientific - Google did.

Consider the suffix as part of the brand - Like find.it or del.icio.us.

Misspell a common term - My least favourite but it can be effective (like digg). But be warned, you will always lose traffic to the correctly spelt domain and your marketing budget will have to work twice as hard.

Use a sentence or a call to action - A call to action can help with the marketing but avoid anything cloying. Sentences must be easy to remember but avoid anything with apostrophes or commas. These will confuse people when entering the URL.

Keep it obvious - It can seem boring but it’s often the best option (trademe.co.nz). Your marketing spend will go further and your audience knows exactly what they’re in for.

Use a familiar but non-English language  - In New Zealand we have the good fortune of having Maori as an official second language. Maori terms are fast becoming part of our everyday language and provide good opportunities for brands with an available dot com (e.g. Kia Kaha, Mana). The problem with these is, if you are targeting an international audience it will be an unfamiliar term so your audience will have trouble remembering and spelling the word. Make sure you also secure misspellings of the work and be prepared to work your marketing budget harder.

So how does an organisation or individual make the most of the medium and avoid their email newsletters joining the rest in the trash? Well, we’ve sent a few thousand emails over the years and while we don’t have all the answers and we certainly can’t guarantee that every email you ever write will be read through to the end (or even opened for that matter!), we have put together some very quick and very basic tips that may help improve the readability of your emails newsletters.
Simple Tips for Email Newsletters
The most important thing to remember is “People don’t read long emails”. There is a lot of commonsense reasoning and behavioural theorising behind this but bottom line - People are busy. They don’t read long emails.

Keep your email to one or two main points only. If you have more to say, send another email at a later date. Smaller, more frequent emails are much better than a six month mega-update!

Keep it short. Try to keep it under 5 short paragraphs. A good way to get used to writing good email length newsletters is to write them in your email software instead of using your usual word software. That way you’ll quickly see when your newsletter is getting too long.

Keep it simple. Write for your audience but don’t be too formal. Keep the tone conversational but appropriate. Avoid complicated or flowery language. Get your main point across in the simplest and clearest way possible.

Don’t curse. If you put anything profane in your email, you’ll automatically lose a big percentage of your readership to spam filters. The same goes for sex-related terms - sometimes even relatively innocent ones can get flagged!

Don’t be afraid to make your first email newsletter about your newsletter! People like to be reminded how you got their email, why you’re emailing them and how often you will be emailing them. And it’s a good idea to summarise this information in the footer of every email you send to reassure people who may have joined your newsletter list later on.

Use consistent and interesting subject lines. Make your subject line interesting and relevant. It’s a good idea to keep subject lines consistent and include your brand name in there so people can easily recognise and retrieve your emails from their Inbox.

Always include an easy way for people to unsubscribe.

Use a working email address to send from. If your newsletter’s auto-replies are getting bounced and start clogging up servers, you’ll be blacklisted before you know it!

Always include a text only version. There’s two reasons for this: A lot of firewalls and spam filters won’t let an html email through without a text alternative, and a lot of people still receive text only emails - whether it’s via a web mail tool or to their mobile.

Don’t forget to include links to your website! It’s surprisingly easy to overlook.

Use an email sever tool. For easy email list management, tracking, reliability, expandability and extra features like “forward to a friend” they are worth the cost!

And most importantly you’ll find using a reliable email provider will mean you get significantly greater deliverablity ( emails getting through ISPs to actually reach your subscriber’s inbox) than if you try to go it alone.

The Korea Times : Phone to Carry Video Projector