We’ve had a reshuffle and made some extra office space available.
Valve is a very creative environment, including designers and developers working in diverse digital fields. We have a great feel to our working environment, including the private “Valve Café” on the ground floor, and an excellent location in the heart of Helsinki.
Get in touch and find out more if you are interested!
Contact Miia Wren
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During December we are going to use some of our manpower and knowledge to raise awareness of the causes, issues and organisations that are important to us. You can see the action unfold on our Christmas Calendar.
Different people from Valve will be contributing everyday. We are encouraging our friends, colleagues and networks to get involved and help spread the word.
Give us your support – become a Facebook fan, follow us on Twitter or get the RSS feed for your favourite reader. Follow our Christmas Stories and share them around – we appreciate all your help, in the virtual world or if you come along and join in…
We just got back from L.A., where three of our Flash developers attended Adobe MAX 2009 to connect, learn and get inspired.
This year, much of the conference was focused on mobile development. The Open Screen Project, funded by Adobe more than a year ago is about to bear it’s first fruits. Flash Player 10.1 was announced and is heading to a mobile near you. This means that in the near future, you’ll be able to enjoy the full user experience of the Flash Platform on a mobile device, both embedded on the web as well as in stand-alone applications.
Adobe has put a lot of effort to optimize the Flash Player for the mobile computing platforms. Without these optimizations it would be almost impossible to run Flash applications on your mobile computing platform. For example, the memory footprint of running applications has been reduced by as much as 50%, a crucial optimization for most, if not all, mobile devices. FP 10.1 also includes multi-touch input and accelerometer support.
Most notably, however, is the fact that Flash Player 10.1 will include GPU-acceleration for the full rendering pipeline. Everything from drawing vectors, decoding video and compositioning will run on the GPU. The demos that we saw increased the frame rate of a Flash application running on an Android device from 5 fps to 25 fps while reducing the power-consumption by 90%. Amazing.
Most of the major mobile device manufacturers are now part of the Open Screen Project, with RIM beeing the last to join. Only Apple is missing, but I believe that it won’t take long before they join the fun.
Other notable news from the conference include that Mark Hamill (aka Luke Skywalker) is really old nowadays and that - although beeing bought by Carlsberg - Budwiser Lite is still quiet terrible.
Artek.fi, created and implemented by Valve, has won the red dot award in the category of communication design 2009.
The red dot design award is the leading and largest design competition worldwide with 12.000 entries from 60 countries. The red dot seal of quality is valued around the world and stands for the best in the design business.
Artek.fi is a bold move for the brand’s internet presence. Artek’s high quality product catalogue is at the heart of the new design concept supported by a stunning selection of interior design showcases. The dynamic and contemporary feel of the site appears to have been achieved using Flash-based technologies. However, Valve’s developers implemented the site with pure CSS and HTML coding. This enabling use of technologies resulted in user experience benefits and excellent search engine optimization.
At the red dot gala on 9th December, Artek.fi will compete for the “best of the best” and “grand prix” prizes, with the elite from the communications design community.
To guide the next phase of development of Finland’s most awarded digital agency, Valve has announced the appointment of Timo Julkunen as CEO. In a fiercely competitive marketplace Valve is proud to have secured the appointment of a talented leader with a strong history of creating value for global brands.
Timo was previously at Satama, Hasan & Partners, and most recently at Taivas as Managing Director. On joining Valve, he said “this was an opportunity I could not miss. As the financial climate accelerates the migration of marketing communications to the internet, Valve has the strategic, technical and creative competence to stand out. The way brands are built and engaged is evolving, new types of agencies are appearing, and consumer behaviour is rapidly changing…” Timo sees preserving and developing Valve’s strategic leadership as key in a market where “so many agencies are entering the field and claiming expertise.”
All at Valve are pleased to welcome Timo on board. You can contact him at timo.julkunen@valve.fi +358 40 549 043
Using keywords for the classification of data is a centuries-old concept. Traditionally part of pre-defined taxonomies, keywords were also integrated with early computing software. It was about five years ago, when tags as we know them today – free-text keywords with no hierarchical order – were introduced to the web. They quickly revolutionized the organization of information. With the arrival of user-created tagging on sites such as delicious.com and Flickr, the year 2004 marked the birth of folksonomies. Today, the use of tags is one of the backbones for many “Web 2.0” services.
It is therefore no surprise that this year’s ACM conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, Hypertext 2009, had plenty of presentations on folksonomies. The research presented covered many topics on how to utilize the implicit information contained in tags. Tagging by users is an uncoordinated distributed process, that generates a lot of meaning beyond attaching a keyword to some content. Mining this data allows for all new ways of personalization (such as social search, that takes into account the user’s tag cloud), user experience (e.g. tag recommendation when adding new files) and exploitation of the “wisdom of crowds” (discovering the wisdom hidden in tag rankings and occurrences).
Over the last years, Valve has been working on a variety of projects where tags are integrated as an integral part of information architecture. We are excited to explore the latest trends in tag-based computing and are always looking forward to make use of the latest technological possibilities to serve our clients and their users with the best solutions.
Hypertext 2009, the annual conference of ACM’s Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia and the Web, was held in the end of June at Turin in Italy. Besides folksonomies, the conference covered the evolution of hypertext-based information structures. Participants discussed the role of social contacts as hyperlinks, the use of hypertext for narrative tasks, the tracking of user behavior in hypermedia systems and last but not least Ted Nelson’s alternative to HTML, xanalogical data structures.
Last week’s “Media Playground 2009″ at Cuba Café (organized by IIR in cooperation with Valve) provided a plate full of food for thought on changed consumer behavior and marketing in today’s media environment. The participants took part in ten presentations and a panel discussion by experts from the field.
Following the opening words by the event’s host Ville Tolvanen, the morning started with Tuukka Temonen sharing his insight why internet videos should not be treated any different than films produced for other media. Antti Seppänen continued with a presentation of the Staraoke concept as an example how to use multiple media around a concept and Antti Öhrling gave a thorough introduction to social media marketing, using the success story of Blyk as an example.
Our presentation stood in direct continuation of Öhrling’s final thought “Let the customer own your brand”, talking about the complexity of user generated content. Tuomo Sihvola and Sebastian Greger aimed at raising awareness for the fact that each of the conceptual dimensions of UGC (immediacy, public dialogue, customer insight, low participation threshold; to name a few) brings along both possibilities and risks. Our on-stage dialogue - which thankfully evolved into extensive discussions with the audience - ended with a list of six rules we identify to be crucial when acting in the field of social media in general, and UGC in particular. We will elaborate further on these topics in a later blog post.
After the lunch break, Marco Mäkinen showed how established and emerging marketing strategies should be combined for success. He was followed by three case studies, Nina Venäläinen presenting Nokia’s social media launch strategy for the N97, Minna Lenander showcasing valio.fi’s online TV and Risto Vuorensola sheding light on the “Satellite bicycle” viral videos YLE launched last autumn. The two final talks were by Per Kristian Tandberg, on targeting as a means of cost-effective digital marketing, and Kim Weckström, about digital customer care.
In the closing panel discussion, Heikki Rotko, Kari Kivelä, Roope Lehtinen and Reetta Meriläinen discussed with the audience about ongoing changes in the media and how the established media can keep up with the user-driven trend away from the traditional forms of media.
This has been a great day, with a well-selected balance between insight derived from hands-on experience and very concrete case examples. Having enjoyed the numerous discussions with both seminar participants and the other speakers, we are happy to have been the partner in this event and took home a load of new thoughts to digest and take further.
Since this spring, Valve has been offering Drupal as its primary web application platform. Valve’s commitment to Drupal shows not only commitment to clients’ needs but to overall quality and productivity. As web development is shifting towards long-lasting yet rapidly evolving solutions, Valve sees Drupal as the flagship of the changing era. In Finland only few Internet agencies have this capability although Drupal has already been in use for several years by pioneers of digital world like Adobe, MusicTV and Google. Valve aims at excelling in overall technological quality when applying the array of possibilities Drupal brings along.
The Finnish Centre for Health Promotion (FCHP) (Terveyden edistämisen keskus ry, Tekry) rewarded the Federation of the Brewing and Soft Drinks Industry (Panimo- ja virvoitusjuomateollisuusliitto) with Health Promotion Act of the Year award (Vuoden terveysteko) for the Drunk, you’re a fool (Kännissä olet ääliö) campaign. The campaign was planned and implemented in co-operation of Bob Helsinki and Valve.
Valve congratulates the Federation of the Brewing and Soft Drinks Industry! 
Check out the new Artek site Valve designed and implemented. If possible, use the newest Safari 4 version to see the cool CSS animation on the landing page!
Valve together with PHS received a honorary mention for Tapiolan Helppo henkilöstöpaketti in BtoB campaign category. In addition, Valve and Tripsay scooped three honorary mentions for Tripsay in this year’s Grand One. The honorary mentions were received in BtoC service, Start up and Infodesign categories. Grand One Gala was celebrated on 19th of March in restaurant Apollo, Helsinki.
For Ardites’ latest customer magazine on user experience technologies, Valve has been asked to contribute an article on the use of vector graphics for mobile user interfaces. With our long experience in mobile UI design, Valve is very excited about the new possibilities vector UIs bring to the mobile user experience. You can read the article here on our blog:
20 years ago the Internet dreamt up in a research paper by Sir Tim Bernes-Lee. Well, it actually was not the Internet, but the World Wide Web, but who can tell the difference anymore?
For this invention we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Also, big thanks to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Alva Edison, Nikolai Tesla, Konrad Zuse, Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs for pioneering stuff that made the Internet possible.
Valve and Tripsay compete in the Grand One final in three different categories with Tripsay travelling service. Helppo Henkilöstöpaketti -campaign is also amongst the finalists - a B2B-campaign designed and executed for Tapiola in co-operation with PHS.
The winners are announced on 19th of March in the Grand One Gala in restaurant Apollo, Helsinki.
The guys at Tweehouse, the MMO gaming company Valve co-founded 6 months ago, are very pleased to be able to announce that last Thursday they received a Tekes grant of 350,000 euros to assist in the, and I quote ‘ongoing development and research of Tweehouse’s technology vision’. With this grant Tweehouse team will be able to grow its current size of nine developers and designers in Finland and additional marketers and producers in Los Angeles, CA.
Tweehouse’s first project was also made public as Eco-Rangers online, a ‘green’ MMO game targeted to media savvy kids in North America. Eco-Rangers online will be released later this year.
Tweehouse also opened a blog last week to cover wide range of topics from technology to game design to business. There’s a very good overview of TrunkTech, a proprietary platform developed and owned by Tweehouse as well. In brief, TrunkTech is a cutting-edge technology platform solution and a service concept that can be used to build massively multi-player applications - or more specifically – virtual worlds. Projects implemented on TrunkTech come with relatively low intial cost and zero investment on infrastructure. TrunkTech will be published as SaaS (’Software as a Service’) later this year.
For more technical insights on the Tweehouse platform and MMOG platform development in general, head over to my blog, where I’ve started to write a small series to share my thoughts and learnings from the experiences I gain by working on the TrunkTech platform.
Finland Travel Bureau (Suomen Matkatoimisto) is set to launch a revolutionary new mobile travel service. The cost-free service, the first of its kind in Finland, will literally put travel services into the hands of travelers, wherever in the world they might be. Users will be able to view itineraries and information about their trip right on their mobile phones. The service will allow users to access a whole of information on hotels, restaurants and sites of interest from their mobile phones. They can also comment on locations. The service has been created jointly by Valve, Amadeus and TripSay. Valve and TripSay share office space, which makse working together on a project like this a snap. Check out the service here!
Valve spent last Friday afternoon designing something totally different from pixels - we had a mission to pimp our office. Materials such as plastic, paper, ducktape etc. were given to the teams to create prototypes of themed spaces that separate a meeting area of the open space. The six teams ended up creating and presenting a variety of creative, outstanding and amusing solutions to use our office space more effectively. See the pics below and visit the office to see the compositions in real life
Designing in process.
Implementation, team Jungle Heat.
Team Arabian Nights building interior to the tent.
Die Western Lounge under construction.
Presenting the prominent beer dispenser of Die Western Lounge.
Taking a peek to the Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau (note the periscope on the left next to the sea lion!)
Arabian Nigts full heat.
iBooth in active use straight away.
Fressis Anti-Smoking Campaign won a Cresta International Advertising Award in the Integrated Campaign category. The campaign along with fressis.fi website was designed in co-operation with Hasan & Partners.
Coffin Shop has also been awarded in Eurobest and Epica as well as in Vuoden Huiput.
The winners represent less than 2 percent of total entries and were chosen by Cresta’s International Grand Jury. The Cresta Awards were launched in 1993 and the competition has grown to be one of the most valued ones in the field of advertising.
Valve team has once again grown. During the last few weeks Santeri Mäkinen and Lari Niura from Flash Fabriek joined us. This week Kim Olenius from Ego arrived and next week Susanna Laanikari who used to work in Tietotalo and Giuliano Cremaschi from Sulake will reinforce the ever growing Valve crew. We warmly welcome all the newbies!
