FACT lanuch new website, more features, easier nav and a shiny new look? For me the site is an improvement but falls short of the ‘great site’ tag. Navigation is quite simple if not too obvious at the start but there’s too much flat content on black, making it a tad boring to browse. Saying all that, it’s an information site and a huge amount complexity to incorporate under one domain. What do you think?

The annual Google Zeitgeist list has been released this week.

If a measure of the importance of an event is reflected in numbers of searches it receives through Google, then in decades to come the list may well provide social anthropologists and insight into the most important events of that year.

Depressingly enough, the top search terms for 2009 are Susan Boyle, Michael Jackson (in the wake of his death) and Lady Ga Ga. I mean, Christ all mighty.  Global depression, climate …

Join Author and CinemaTech editor Scott Kirsner at FACT on Wed 27th Jan 2010 for an interactive and intensive workshop titled ‘Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age’ on how creative artists can cultivate big audiences and earn a solid return from their work.

Lets have a digital winner here! Any ideas? The search for Merseyside’s most innovative companies has once again begun with the launch of the annual Merseyside Innovation Awards. The awards, aim to recognise and reward the use of innovation as a means of boosting growth and profitability.

Soap giant Unilever has made a research and development agreement with Daresbury Innovation Campus, the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has confirmed. STFC scientists will use modelling and simulation to develop new software tools to speed up the development of new and more efficient products across Unilever’s personal care range.

Mando Group has launched a new website for public art project Art for Places www.artforplaces.com. The project, a partnership between NewHeartlands, Liverpool Biennial, Arts Council England, and local authorities and housing associations, will run for the next three years. Mando chief executive Matt Johnson said: “The Liverpool region has much to offer its residents and we’re proud to be helping it build on those assets to ensure future success.”

Liverpool design and brand agency GVC has launched a new online retail venture specialising in a range of exclusive Premier League merchandise.
premiersportsgifts.com retails the UK’s only personalised Official Liverpool Football Club 2010 Calendar – the first in a select range of official club merchandise shortly available on the website.

Liverpool Stuart Hughes as designed the worlds most expensive i-phone with 200 diamonds and costing £1.92m. It has taken ten months to make for the anonymous Aussie businessman who commissioned it. Hughes said most of the ten months was spent trying to find the seven-carat diamond used as the front navigation button.

Creative and digital support agency Northwest Vision and Media has invested more than £130,000 into four Merseyside companies through its Regional Attraction Fund (RAF). Well done to games production company Catalyst Outsourcing, digital art production studio Milky Tea, and games company Dou Yi Dou.