My final (maybe) trip of the summer was to Westminster, London, for the annual Sonic the Hedgehog convention, Summer of Sonic. (http://2013.summerofsonic.com)

I last visited Summer of Sonic (SOS) for the 2010 and 2011 conventions and unfortunately had to miss the 2012 one so I was surprised to see how much the convention has grown since, and how much more organised it is. SEGA have taken more control in the past couple of years to secure more exclusives and other cool things.

I was there, as ever, to represent Sonic the Comic (STC) along with a bunch of others from the team, we had a stall in the artists alley section of the convention next to the wonderful Nigel Kitching, Nigel Dobbyn, and Ferran Rodríguez (all originally worked on the print version of the comic, all inspirations to me) and also next to a selection incredibly talented Sonic fan artists, including Thalia Evans, who used to work with us over on STC and has produced some of our most recognised images of 'Super Sonic' (Seriously, check them out!).

We had loads of print outs of our stories and various art for visitors to look through and in some cases take with them such as the mini-cards from Moo.com, showcasing the many panels from our ongoing 'summary' project. I had also designed and made laser cut versions of our logo and our comic host, Megadroid for photo opportunities throughout the day.

The highlight for me was the goodie bag which, for the first time ever, an issue of Sonic the Comic. And not just any issue, the lead story of our recent #261 celebrating 20 years of STC including artwork by yours truly! To say it was a dream come true would be to undersell it, such an amazing thing to happen.

Over 1000 people attended (and if the venue had been large enough, thousands more would have too) and throughout the day we got to speak with many of them as the entire STC team were drawing requests for fans from our stall.

While I was mainly there for STC, I ended up helping out around the event in various other capacities including the Uk based charity Special Effect, who develop technology to allow people with disabilities to play video games. The demos they had on display were amazing, including a version of a Sonic game that users could control using their eyes, incredible! Take a look at their website: www.specialeffect.org.uk

It was a great, if rather long, day full of Sonic fans and artwork, I even got a chance to play the next Sonic game, Lost World that's due out in October for WiiU (It's interesting, visually lovely, though a bit of a change in the control scheme that may take a little time to get used to. Either way I'll probably be buying a WiiU in October to play it) and meet Sonic himself!

The culmination of a 20 year dream: An actual, official, printed edition of Sonic the Comic featuring my artwork! Printed by SEGA for Summer of Sonic and in collaboration with Nigel Kitching and Nigel Dobbyn, whose stories and art in the original comic had a profound influence on my formative years and even life beyond that. Achievement Unlocked! :D

Because two events and trips away in one week simply wasn't enough!

I'd barely recovered from my weekend of little sleep at Startup Weekend Sheffield and I was spending a day over at Doncaster College for their annual LearnPod Unconference. (http://lanyrd.com/2013/learnpod13)

It was my first ever unconference so I found it rather odd at first that there was no schedule. The schedule is made on the day by the attendees (who must pitch sessions they want to run) which, as it turns out, is actually a great way to run an event like this; why attempt to anticipate what the attendees may want weeks or months in advance when you can present to them the sessions they want at that time. Great concept and I'll be on the look out for more events like this.

I successfully pitched a session on VLEs related to my upcoming MSc research, another session on VLEs was also successfully pitched so it's clearly a hot topic.

I attended three sessions throughout the day , the first one centred on iPads in colleges and universities. Almost all the attendees at LearnPod were using iPads yet very few people in the session seemed to know how to use them in education even though their institutions had spent tens of thousands of pounds on buying them leaving it a distinct appearance of a solution looking for a problem.

A lot of the ideas floated seemed to involve apps that my degree students would have been offended at being expected to use in a class as they were using incredibly basic apps that wouldn't look out of place in primary school.

My main concerns with iPads is that as most tutors pushing for them aren't particularly technically savvy enough to understand the implications of them. From the socioeconomic aspect of using iPads and specific exclusive apps in classes (what happens if a student can't afford an iPad? Or if the apps won't run on their existing tablet or laptop?) to their idea that they could replace all their computers with them (how are students supposed to learn and use industry standard software such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Suite? And how are they supposed to learn how to build the apps their tutors are convinced are the future?) and the entire session just concerned me greatly that many colleges and universities are out there spending money on devices they have no idea what to do with and that promote vendor lock-in to one specific product and one specific avenue to buy software for them…

Tablets (not synonymous with iPad, shockingly) are fantastic devices, and they absolutely can offer a lot to education, but it seems there need to be better resources to educate the tutors first.

Next up was a session titled 'Is the VLE Dead?' which proved without a doubt that the VLE is most certainly not dead, but what is expected of it is evolving. It seems a lot of people have a lot of problems with their current VLEs (Blackboard and Moodle) and are continually having to try and find third party alternatives to suit their needs. I won't go into the specifics here as I'll save that for the MSc. ;)

After a wonderfully catered lunch (the cake selection alone was deserving of an Instagram upload) I ran my session on VLEs that evolved from the previous session's problem finding into a discussion on how we could solve problems. A couple of attendees were actually the VLE developers at their respective colleges which provided an interesting counterpoint to the rest of the delegates, who were all users.

No sooner had I returned from London and Reading I was packing my bags once again for a weekend jaunt to Sheffield for Startup Weekend!

Start-up weekends are wonderful 54 hour events held around the world by a global network of entrepreneurs out to inspire, empower, and educate people to share ideas, form teams, and launch startups. Take a look at their site here: http://startupweekend.org

This particular weekend was held and sponsored by The University of Sheffield, hosted on their campus in the Enterprise building, and facilitated by their knowledgeable and helpful staff.

The format is fairly simple: arrive Friday, pitch your ideas, form a team, then work on them over the weekend before presenting your final pitch to a panel of judges on the Sunday.

I have already been working on a startup project for a little while and therefore pitched that on the Friday. I can't really say too much about it here but in hindsight it was far too large of a project to really do much with in only 54 hours, still away I pitched.

The pitches were a little chaotic but there were plenty of really interesting and unique ideas presented, 20 people out of the 60 attendees pitched, which was a pretty good ratio of ideas people to those interested on working on the ideas.

After a crazy voting session involving post-it notes and people shouting in a manner reminiscent of marketplace sellers (seriously, I still don't quite know what was going on!) nine of the pitches came out with enough votes to put teams together. Mine unfortunately, didn't survive the official voting process but I had intrigued enough people to start a splinter group to go work on it anyway. :)

The first couple of days are a bit like being on The Apprentice, you're given a task, then have to put together a team and quickly make it happen. Some of the teams even had a few power struggles and stand-offs that seemed ripped direct from the BBC show.

Thankfully mine was a little more relaxed, I teamed up with a couple of far more realistic and technical developer types who convinced me early on that there was no chance of having anything resembling a finished product by the end of the weekend so we began working on getting one section designed into a non-functioning prototype.

I've been freelancing on my own for a while so it felt quite strange to be working in a team again but it was such a good feeling to be able to bounce ideas around and speak to someone working on the same thing as you and it turned the prototype into a much better product than it would have been otherwise, so thank you to Ryan and Mark for that!

We also got great insights from both the staff (who knew a lot about this kind of thing anyway) and the mentors who had been brought in to offer their help and support. These sessions resulted in a name change for the product and a complete change in direction on the Saturday evening.

After two nights of getting a couple of hours sleeping on a floor before continuing to work I'll admit Sunday wasn't my finest hour but we pulled it together and began to prepare for the second stage of the event where it turns from The Apprentice into The Dragons Den.

We had six judges, all from different business and startup backgrounds and just five minutes to present not just our idea, but the entire business plan, which was a little daunting for a project so large…

Anyway, we successfully (more-or-less) distilled what was rapidly turning into a presentation only just shorter than a Harry Potter audio book into a five minute almost breathless rapid-fire set of points to cover the presentation requirements. Following the presentation was a very Dragons Den inspired grilling, I felt sorry for some of the teams as I saw it happen to them but that still wasn't enough to prepare when it happened to me; some tough questions were asked, and answers were given (I think, again it's a bit of a blur) that were more-or-less satisfactory.

Unfortunately none of the judges really had any experience in the sector the product is meant for, and as it's not a small product it wasn't as easy a thing to present and discuss in ten minutes. Throw in the fact that I couldn't discuss some things due to NDAs and I think it's easy to see why we didn't win any of the prizes! Still, one of the judges has given me a great contact that will hopefully move things forward so it can't have been too bad.

Still, my enthusiasm for the product has definitely been increased and it's in a much better shape than it was before. I'll be working a lot more on it over summer and maybe by the end of the year I'll even be able to talk about it on here!

Overall, Startup Weekend Sheffield was a brilliant event, I got to meet loads of interesting people who do lots of interesting things and hopefully made some very useful contacts for the future. It also introduced me to the thriving creative and business startup scene in Sheffield, which I'm definitely interested in exploring further.

I'd recommend anyone interested in launching a startup business, or even just taking part in one (there's always room for more designers, developers, and business/marketing/finance types, trust me!) as it's an exciting and fast paced way to learn if it's something you could do.

This summer is setting itself up to be a whirlwind tour from one event to the next; meeting new people, gaining new skills, and generally just spending a lot of time on a train. Over the next few posts, I'll be recounting the events I've been to and the interesting things I've learned along the way.

First up, an Education Technology event on the Microsoft campus in Reading in association with the University of West London.

Last year the University of West London (UWL) upgraded their student portal and in the process won a UCISA-Eduserve Award for Excellence. Take a look at the video here for a little information on the project:

http://youtu.be/T7o0ju21PDI

Essentially they didn't have a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) before, and what they did have was a bunch of disparate services all requiring their own logon details. For this project they teamed up with Fulcrum consulting to consolidate all their services under one single sign-on (SSO) system and also added Office 365 for Education and Blackboard (a VLE) to the mix too.

Office 365 for Education has always seemed like a great complement to education in my opinion, not only is it free (though obviously there are costs incurred by the institution for support staff etc. but the product and hosting are free, which is pretty amazing for what you get.) it has more functionality than Google Apps, and also means students get a better insight into using Office and related services, which are still used in the professional world.

I've used Blackboard as a student before and while it does receive upgrades every year I was not overly enamoured with it during my time having to use it. However, it would be a huge step up from not having a VLE at all so, unsurprisingly, the student feedback has been quite positive.

An SSO system is incredibly important when presenting a good user experience across multiple services. The average user sometimes struggles to remember one set of login details, if they're presented with having to remember (and use) multiple logins for multiple services, it can prove frustrating for both the user and the staff supporting them.

Hi there!

I'm Michael, I run Pretty/Confused, and in between making gorgeous bespoke websites and designs (amongst other creative type things), I'm going to be blogging here about the work that I do, things I find interesting, and anything else I think you that you might find interesting!

Stay tuned for more words soon!

A few months ago I learned about Windows Live Custom Domains. Yet another great product Microsoft have but have completely failed to advertise or do anything meaningful with other than dump it on the internet and see what happens. The email service that comes with most hosting packages is usually IMAP or POP and anyone who knows about mail servers knows how lacking these services are compared to EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) and while I was able to set up my IMAP account on my Windows Phone, Outlook 2013, and the Windows 8 RTM Mail app, I didn't have a calendar for it, nor contacts so everything was getting stored as part of my personal Hotmail account. I've been pretty busy the past few months but finally decided to stop thinking about it and take the plunge! As Microsoft haven't really done anything with the service, getting support is very difficult. The support links on the website don't lead to anything remotely relevant and the support forums are incredibly slow to respond, if they respond at all. A special shoutout to the @MicrosoftHelps Twitter account for pointing me in the right direction though, thankfully they're quick to respond to problems people have! Anyway, once I was able to research a bit on my own I finally solved the problems I was having and decided it might be a good idea to post a handy tutorial for future users so here goes:

Warning: Transferring your mail server to Windows Live will delete all your accounts and their mail from your current server. Backup all your mail to an archive using something like Outlook 2013 (currently available as a free trial from the Office Preview site) before continuing.

Visit domains.live.com, input your website URL and select 'set up Windows Live Hotmail* for my domain' then click continue.

*Yep, WLD is so neglected it wasn't even ever updated to use 'Windows Live Mail', yikes!

Accept the agreement.

You'll be booted to the Domain settings page, this gives you details on how to prove ownership of your domain and setup the mail server by accessing your DNS settings via your hosting provider's control panel. The layout and options available differ from provider to provider so you may not be able to complete all the options provided such as setting up messenger but so long as you're able to create the MX record to set up mail and prove domain ownership you'll be fine.

Once you've modified your DNS, hit the refresh button and a message will appear saying your service is active.

Next up, head to the Member Accounts section and you can begin adding accounts. This section is pretty simple to work with new accounts.

At this point, however, I came up against what seems to be a rather common problem which meant I was unable to create my account, giving me this error: "The requested account name is already in use or was used in the past and has not been through the required waiting period to re-use." There's no real documentation on what to do here, but after a lot of digging and acting on a hunch or two, I found out why this error appears and how to solve it. It seems that if you've ever used your custom email account as an account you're able to send/receive from within hotmail.com/mail.live.com/outlook.com the address will appear in your Microsoft Account page and therefore WLD won't allow you to create that account again as it thinks the address already exists. To get around this, log on to your Microsoft Acount and go to the Email section. Here you should find the email address you've been trying to create. Click remove to wipe the address from your records and you'll now be able to create your preferred email address.

Such a simple process but there's no documentation anywhere on Microsoft support for this problem causing me to be without my mail email account for over 24 hours! As of writing I'm still waiting for acknowledgement from the support forums even though I marked the post as urgent, madness! Anyway, back to the main setup:

Once you've set up your mail accounts you also have some options to customise the mail experience for these users:

The first option is to creat a custom address such as http://mail.example.co.uk for users to visit rather than the standard outlook.com address. To do this you'll need to add a new record to your hosting DNS.

You're also able to co-brand the mail experience by adding a small header logo. The page indicates there were plans to add more co-branding features such as region/language customisation but this apparently never materialised.

A very cool feature is the ability to allow anyone to create a free email account using your domain. Head to the Open Membership section and all the information on how to create a sign-up module for your website is there. I've not needed this but it's a very cool thing to offer clients.

And that's it! Users can now visit a customised email page using your custom address and enjoy all the benefits of Windows Live Mail such as true EAS syncing and having a seperate contacts list, calendar, and to-do list for the account whether their using the website, a mail program, or their phones.

I'm amazed Microsoft don't advertise this service as a few people I know use the Google equivelent but had no idea there was a Microsoft option available to them. I hope there are plans to revamp the service using Outlook.com once Windows 8 and Office 2013 launch. In the meantime, it's a pretty solid service providing you don't need any support!

I decided to consolidate my various thoughts and feedback (and quick mockups) for Windows 8 (the consumer preview) in one blog post so apologies for the slightly random tone change between sections! APP FEEDBACK Messaging:

Needs to be able to send messages to people who are offline (which is how a lot of people who use Facebook and WLM on their phones appear).

Should open by default in snapped-mode. Who needs a full screen messaging app?

Music:

Looks like it's built for use with an Xbox controller, not touch/mouse interaction. Everything needs to be smaller and easier to manage.

Live Tile needs cover art/artist art like on Windows Phone.

Live Tile could also do with simple controls built in too, how cool would that be?

More features to allow management of songs like cover art, song information, playlists etc.

Small snapped view needs more info. I can do more with the Windows Phone music app in a smaller screen!

Right now the entire program is slow and buggy but I assume that'll be worked out anyway.

Videos:

Smaller controls please! Or at least have them vanish quicker as they cover up the start of videos far too much.

Like the music app, the interface seems more designed for Xbox than a PC or Tablet, make things smaller!

Cooler live tile showing box art or screen shots...

Mail:

Option for POP and IMAP accounts please!

Support for Hotmail Aliases

Needs notifications

Internet Explorer 10:

Option to show more than one tab at a time

When snapped, switch to mobile site view (with an option to change back)

Calendar:

Colour coding for different calendars

Filter by calendar

Pinch-to-zoom for different views

Facebook calendar integration

Needs notifications

People:

Ability to send Facebook messages directly

Ability to post to my social networks directly from the app, just like in Windows Phone. Ditto for changing user photo

Ability to mention in Tweets

Less space taken up by individual items in 'What's New' feed

Ability to filter different Social Networks in 'What's New' feed

Filter people list to only show Windows Live contacts

Display the entire post from Facebook, don't cut it off!

Start Screen:

Allow change in amount of tile rows available.

During the Developer Preview sometimes the display settings would get messed up and I'd end up with four rows of tiles instead of three. I found this much better with mouse/keyboard use and also for touch. I'd like the option to change my start screen to display four rows if I want. Heck, five or six or seven even! Windows can start off with the default amount of rows but it should be my choice if I want more.

Use larger icons for tiles showing desktop programs, settings and folders and maybe tint the tile to match the icon colour..

Allow double tiles for desktop folder tiles perhaps showing dynamic thumbnails of what's in the folder..

Pinned websites look dreadful! Make them more colourful, give them larger icons and larger text or allow creation of a screen capture/custom image to use instead...

So this is my start screen right now. I know things get more colourful and vibrant with all Metro apps but as a pro user I have a load of files and programs pinned too. Right now they look dull and very uninviting. The internet shortcuts are equally dull, surely we can make them more visually interesting?

How about this? I loved the Windows 7 taskbar feature of the highlight being the colour of the program icon. I'd like to see that carried over here and having a tile coloured to match the icon. Already looking more vibrant! It would be better to have larger icons though. For the folders, I'd like to be able to have double length tiles for them that might give my a peek inside them also? Same for the shortcuts, how about having a thumbnail image (as on Windows Phone 7) and then having an overlay occasionally popping up with the name (also like in WP7) and an IE logo? Surely it's more visually interesting and nicer to view?

More variety in live tile transitions. Where are the flips and other cool transitions from Windows Phone?

Jump lists! There are basic versions in the app bar but hopefully we'll see more jump list options as apps mature

Metro Apps (General):

Please stop calling them Metro apps. Immersive apps sounded better. Too much confusion with people taking about 'Metro-style' apps vs Metro apps… #headspin

Allow Metro interface to cover two screens

Metro on both screens please! While I don't know many general consumers with multi-monitor setups it would would be nice to have the option. Also, right now it just looks weird when I'm only using Metro and my second screen just displays my desktop wallpaper...

If we can't have Metro on both screens then at least let us use desktop on one screen and Metro on the other. Right now if I clicked on the desktop in this setup I'd lose the Metro screen. I'd like to be able to work with both simultaniously.

Allow four apps side by side on one screen

Why can't we have four apps snapped? This would be a great second screen setup.

Data driven apps need to scale properly on larger screens. If I'm only using my 24" screen I don't want everything to look twice as large as on my tablet… The Mail app is guilty of this. On my tablet I'm glad the accounts pane is hidden but on a larger screen it's more useful to have it always visible.

If you're not using a touch screen I think at least the bottom app bar should always be present. Gestures are very intuitive with touch but surely it would be easier for mouse users to always have the app bar visible?

Metro Environment:

Allow more customisation (more colours and patterns, ability to add your own patterns)

A 'one-thumb' keyboard in the style of Windows Phone 7

Allow start screen snapping, it would be useful for opening multiple apps.

Allow correct scaling on multiple screens. I can't get more than three rows of tiles whether I'm using my tablet or my 24" screen...

Desktop Environment:

Have a more minimal Metro-inspired theme that can be used as an Aero alternative to perhaps try and make them look a little better integrated…

When hiding the taskbar, allow a swipe up gesture (as with Metro style app bars) to access it.

Why isn't the Recycle Bin just part of the taskbar? Either pinned like Explorer or as part of the notification area? Having it still be on the desktop seems weird...