It’s always handy to know a quality local tradesman someone who doesn’t shy away from a challenge. One such craftsman is our new friend Hayden. He’s produced a fantastic coffee table that’s sure to appeal to all you retro gamers. If you’re quick off the mark you can purchase of one of these made to order tables via our sister organisation Pedestrian where one will be on permanent display in the gallery.

The very talented Sally Rose Renner has finished off our entrance mural. It’s stopped many people in their tracks. The detail is amazing. It’s inspired by our wonderful city’s history, people & buildings.  We commissioned Sally to do our walls after her wonderful work on www.iloveleicester.com

Last week, Google announced WebM, an open source media project which will attempt to solve the lack of built in support for video within modern day web browsers. Video has become an essential part of day to day web experiences, but there is still no free and open source method for implementing it.

The draft HTML 5 specifications feature a <video> tag, which intends to embed video within the webpage rather than rely on 3rd party plugins on the host system….this plugin is provided by the browser itself. The main browsers are separating themselves into different camps at the moment – Google Chrome and Safari both support the H.264 codec, whilst Firefox, Chrome and Opera opt for the Ogg Theora codec, which is free and open source, but supposedly lesser quality than H.264.

Which opens the doors to the open source WebM project from Google. The project hinges around Googles acquisition of On2 who developed the VP8 codec, which was rumoured to be a competitior to H.264.
Google have made the bold move to release the VP8 codec under a BSD style royalty free license in an attempt to end the video wars we’ve seen so far. There are some early adopters in the browser world – Mozilla have announced full support, Opera has already released a Lab Build of a WebM compatible browser and Adobe has announced that it will support VP8 in its next flash player release. Microsoft have stated that “IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows”….which does kinda miss the point! The last major player is Apple, who have thus far not shared others enthusiasm for the news!

The fact that Google have started to convert HD YouTube videos into this format shows their commitment to the project.

If you’re keen to have a look, head on over to wmproject where you can download the latest overnight builds of HTML 5 supported browsers and preview some films at youtube.com/html5.

This week, our APP OF THE WEEK is WordSearch Rush, by local developer We Are Colin.

Check out the full video review over at AppyFamily

Welcome to Leicester, city of the Stars!  The latest addition to our ever-improving Cultural Quarter is being installed today ahead of St. George’s Day tomorrow – our very own Leicester Walk of Fame…  Check out the stars we have right outside the studio:

This week we have all been playing Sketch Nation shooter from publisher Engineous Games.
It is a seriously addictive top down shooter, where you can completely craft your own characters, enemies and levels from drawings, vectors or even typography!
Check out our video review below for a full look at this app.

Our new studio required a few finishing touches. So we got in touch with Krasznai based in Barcelona who produced these great porcelian pieces for us.

We found these coasters on the wonderful http://supermarkethq.com They came straight from the designer in NY hence the lovely packaging.
They look ACE on our G plan studio coffee table.

We’ve had our first review for our latest FREE iPhone App – The Halloween Scream Machine – AppFriday!
Check it out over at recombu

Join the Bulb Studios Planters Scheme…

If you can put us in touch with someone in a business that wants to pay for our services. . . We’ll pay you.

All you have to do is put the two of us together and we’ll give you 5% of our first invoice to them in return – no limits – it’s that simple.

To join the scheme, drop us a line to planters@bulbstudios.com and we’ll put you on the list – then when you have a contact just make the introduction and we’ll do the rest.