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With the Christmas festivities well underway we are growing ever closer to the big day, with only 5 advent doors standing between us and the big man in red! Consequently, we’ve been very busy elves here in the MEC Manchester workshop and have been working hard amid snowflakes and tinsel.

The 2011 festive season has seen a number of incredible advertising campaigns; however, we feel one campaign had been slightly overlooked this year – the comeback of Coca-Cola’s Mr Clause.

In 2011 the UK has experienced very different times. There is fear of a double dip recession. Slight murmurs of doubt turn into nationwide catastrophes overnight. A false sense of security exists. According to the latest NVISION Changing Lives Research there have been global and UK factors causing a push down on UK recovery. The former has been partly caused by a globally integrated financial system and increased commodity prices such as oil and food and the collapse of the Euro is threatening to bring down the entire Eurozone. Consumer confidence has remained very low, it plunged with the VAT increase and has remained the same since.

Ten years ago, Sky decided it was about time to introduce a new bit of kit to its satellite offering – and what followed could arguably have been one of the pivotal moments in the company’s history.

Sky had established itself as a major force in television through its football and film coverage, but it was keen to find a way into more and more homes, so the decision was made to introduce an all knew personal video recorder (PVR) to the UK market.

Women’s Health, the sister publication to the highest circulation men’s consumer magazine in the UK, is set to launch on 8^th February 2012. Currently published in 12 countries, the magazine is planning a further nine launches worldwide next year, bringing lifestyle, fashion, celebrity, fitness and health content to female readers everywhere.

With an initial print run of 200,000 planned, the venture will be a 50/50 split between Hearst Magazines UK and US publishers Rodale. There will be an online offering launched in December 2011 to build brand awareness in preparation for the launch.

The Independent’s compact sister paper ‘i’ celebrated its 1st birthday on 26th October, sporting an “i am one” badge on its front cover.

It could be said the newspaper has had a year to be proud of, with a winning formula of concise news coverage, sport, opinion, features and arts – all within 56 easily accessible pages. The title has proved to be something of a success with readers too, having overtaken both The Independent and closing in on The Guardian.

The late Steve Jobs once called Adobe’s Flash system "a spaghetti-ball piece of technology" and his disdain fuelled Apple's decision to ignore Flash compatibility across all of its mobile devices from iPhones to iPads. 

While this was no doubt one of the last nails in the coffin of Flash, Adobe has now announced that there would be no further development of the framework for any mobile browsers. Instead the group will focus Flash on the development of native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores.

As the world's number one search engine, it's no surprise Google is constantly undergoing upgrades and improvements. It has been estimated that the number of tweaks the site performs per year is now around 500 and one of their biggest was last year's Caffeine update.

Caffeine revolutionised the way the search index was updated. Rather than analyse the whole web before including updated content, the system made it possible to review the internet in smaller portions, allowing it to more quickly add fresh content. At the time, Google Research head Peter Norvig referred to it as a change from indexing "batches of billions" to "billions of batches".

The Independent celebrated its 25th anniversary with a commemorative edition last Friday, featuring a personal account of how the newspaper began from founding editor, Andreas Whittam Smith.

JC Decaux has launched a nine-screen digital ad format named ‘e-motion’ at Euston Station, as part of wider investment in its rail portfolio. The site comprises of nine full-motion 9m x 1.6m landscape LCD screens on three sides of the main station concourse.