Omniversity of Manchester

Mike Little

We’re excited to announce a new Omniversity course, WordPress for Beginners, run by Mike Little – the co-founder of WordPress.

WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet’s “top 1 million” websites and manages a quarter of all new websites. It’s currently the most popular CMS in use on the Internet, with 75 million WordPress sites in the world.

The course will be held over the weekend of the 7th and 8th July.

For more information and to book.

Give me an H

We are excited to be featured in the Manchester Evening News about the HTML music video created by @mariaprohyena.

This video promoting the Web Design Foundations Course taught by Chris Mills has gained an impressive amount of attention, including some remixes. We are happy to see MadLab’s fame as a place for realising ideas, however crazy they are, spread. The article called “Give us an H: ‘Geeks’ create hit song and video spelling out what HTML computer language means” gives a bit more background information about the creative output of MadLab’s geeks.

Thanks again for everyone who took part in creating this hit. Big thanks to @samscam for the music and @DeShannon for the choreography and Hanna, Sarah and @paddysteer for knowing the moves.

The next course: Web design foundations 2: HTML Basics is on in a week on Monday, the 23rd of April. The second part teaches all the HTML you’ll need to make your way into web design and development with confidence! From text to tables, and links to images, this course has it all. It is a perfect possibility in getting started with creating your own identity on the web.

Book your place here.

If you haven’t seen the video yet, here it is:

When we made a music video to promote the Web Design Foundations course run by Chris Mills, we never expected to have such positive feedback. Lately some remixes of Sam’s (@samscam) original song have started to pop up and we would like to share them with you.

What are you waiting for, start creating your own space on the web!

Upcoming courses

Web Design Foundations 2: HTML Basics 23rd April and 30th April (6pm-9pm)
Web Design Foundations 3: CSS Basics 14th May and 21st May (6pm-9pm)
Web Design Foundations 4: Advanced CSS and HTML topics 11th June and 18th June (6pm-9:30pm)

Here is one by the David Edmundson-Bird @groovegenerator:

Read the rest of this entry →

Elliot Woods and Omniversity joined forces for the second time to run the VVVV + MapTools : introduction to the tools of projection mapping course in March 2012.

We’re looking forward to seeing what type of projects attendees will create with their newly gained skills! We’ve already had news from Stuart at the The Neighbourhood. He’s created a Cubic Light Tree which you can see in the video at the bottom of this post.

VVVV is a hybrid graphical/textual programming environment for easy prototyping and development. It is designed to facilitate the handling of large media environments with physical interfaces, real-time motion graphics, audio and video that can interact with many users simultaneously.

We are planning to run the course again later this year. If you are interested in this course, please join our mailing list for further updates or e-mail office@madlab.org.uk and we’ll let you know as soon as dates are announced..

Stuart:

With some clever geometric tomfoolery in our blacked out R&D grotto, we created a physical tree made from white boxes, that our designers could use to project their own animated creations back onto.

Omniversity is running the four part web design foundations course for the second time this spring. To get you interested, we decided to have a bit of fun with it and created a music video about HTML. The video was made by MadLab’s loyal filmmaker @mariaprohyena, big thanks to @samscam for the music @DeShannon for the choreography and Hanna, Sarah and @paddysteer for knowing the moves. The course is run by a web designer @chrisdavismills:

I believe that the Web is the most important communication and expression mechanism the world has ever known. It allows anyone to communicate with others, regardless of locale, ability or any other personal considerations. That is, if it is populated by web sites that are built properly, according to best practices and guidelines.

Here is are links to all the courses. You can jump in at any level.

Web design foundations 1: Introduction to the Web, and web design.

My first course is for complete beginners, who know nothing beyond basic computer literacy. Here I explain what the Web is and how it works, important underlying concepts such as accessibility, FTP, search engine optimization and information architecture, and have a basic play with some HTML and CSS at the end.

Web design foundations 2: HTML Basics.

The second part teaches all the HTML you’ll need to make your way into web design and development with confidence! From text to tables, and links to images, this course has it all.

Web design foundations 3: CSS Basics.

My third course looks at CSS, and shows you everything, from the real basic fundamentals such as selectors, text styling and the box model, to some fairly advanced techniques like web fonts, styling links and forms and multiple column layouts with floats.

Web design foundations 4: Advanced CSS and HTML topics.

This course brushes past the basics, looking at HTML5 syntax, forms and video, CSS3 bling such as linear gradients, opacity and drop shadows, and adaptive layouts using Media Queries and viewport.

Hopefully see you soon at MadLab!

Omniversity always aims to keep up with what is new and relevant and offers a beginners and an advanced course on Arduino in March.

‘Physical Computing’ and Arduino devices have made physical interaction affordable and available to non-experts. Whether creating interactive installations, information systems, prototyping products, or making new interfaces, there is a whole world of DIY electronics, interaction design and rapid prototyping available through this platform.

On the Beginners Guide to Arduino and Physical Computing you will get you grips with the basics. Starting off by making an LED blink (then two or three…) you’ll finish the day with a mini theramin.

If this is all kids play for you, we have an advanced course run by the forerunner of Internet of Things, Adrian McEwan.  Building the Internet of Things – Arduino and Ethernet (IOT)03 will allow you to connect objects to the world wide web. Some nice examples exploring the Internet of Things include the Twitter Drum made by MadLab’s very own Paul Plowman , a clock that checks your loved ones:

Here is a really sweet project made by ULAB:

Sweet Tweet from Uniform on Vimeo.

If that got you interested then check here for more information and booking.

Omniversity’s Short Story Writing Workshops have proven to be a success. This was the second time we ran the course and hopefully there will also be a third. Writers learned about structuring and editing their stories, but also how to communicate with the publishers. For many it seemed to be a great motivation to take their writing ambitions further.

Web Programming with SAP’s Internet Communication Framework with DJ Adams from Prohyena on Vimeo.

Get the course information here.

Due to poplar demand, we are running Elliot’s VVVV + Projection Mapping courses again. VVVV is powerful toolkit of media technologies, boasting a glut of built in functionality, tools and examples. You can safely presume that you can get it to interface with almost anything you want, it can generate almost anything you want. There aren’t any other media toolkits that can perform so much ‘out of the box’, having you projecting kinect tracked video onto buildings or controlling robot arms from twitter in days rather than weeks. According to Elliot,

it can usurp all other platforms in terms of development speed, power and flexibility.

VVVV + MapTools : introduction to the tools of projection mapping (2) from Prohyena on Vimeo.

The true power of the tool lies within the elegance within which it makes its features available. VVVV has been used for :

• Long term installations (>3 years runtime)
• Quick installations (<10mins to develop) Vast installations (>50 projectors)
• Deployed installations (>50 units)
• TV shows (The X Factor)
• Hosting websites
• Making my mobile phone ring when the postman arrives if I’m at the cafe downstairs (1 hour development)
• Almost anything

This 2 day course is a hands on ‘by the seat of your pants’ tour of VVVV’s features and how to get started with each bit. But don’t just take our word for it, here’s a testimonial from a past attendee.

I really feel like I’ve learned a proper, brand-new skill. And I’m not done yet! By happy coincidence, I’m already working on a projection piece at work, and after doing this course I’ve switched it up a little and we’ll be projection mapping onto objects instead of a flat surface.

More information and sign up here. Hope to see you there!