Technology Neutral.

It’s a phrase you are going to hear more and more from various digital agencies but also from companies offering new and exciting tools. In a sentence, technology neutral means it/we/them will work or interact with any standard technology. Sound a bit vague? It is. What we basically mean is we can work with any technology you want, or we can use the best technology for the individual project. What it means for projects which are “technology neutral” is that they provide APIs (application programming interface – which we’ll cover at some other point in the future) which allow any other technology to interact with it completely.

Why is this important you might rightly ask!

From the point of an application or website it is becoming not only a nicety but a necessity. The vast majority of people posting tweets on twitter do so via APIs – mobile phone apps, desktop programs even via Facebook. The web is no longer a place when you want to protect all of your content whatever the cost – you want everyone to take it, as much of it as possible. To share it, comment on it, pass it on. It is a revelation and a complete turnaround from the days when you would right click on a web page and get a message telling you to shove off and not copy the website’s images.

You can speculate why this has happened for the rest of your lunch break but I think it comes down to vast amount of choice out there. If website A won’t let you copy their photo then website B will have 20 photos which are better and will let you have them all. In HD. There is always someone else out there who is better and cheaper so rather than protecting the content, websites are using it as small bite-size advertising. Passing the content around for all to share always providing a nice little “Read more” or “provided by” link to pull traffic back to the main site.

So back to the topic, a technology neutral site will usually refer to their API which will allow other sites or programs to collect or pass data to and from the site. In the Twitter example, the API allows you to login and post a message and also allows you to read the posts on that person’s feed.

In terms of us, a digital agency, being technology neutral, it purely means we can work with anything you like (within reason – if you pull out a programming language developed in the early 70’s and ask us to build a new Facebook then we might just head straight to the pub for a stiff drink). With our expert knowledge there hasn’t been a language or a project we haven’t be able to take on yet.

Why do you care?

Being technology neutral allows us to do the tough work without needing to find a new developer for each project you undertake. Marketing projects often span several technologies - 3D, Flash, Mobile, Social media to name just a few. We manage it all for you, no headaches getting the website to look like the iPhone App or the 3D animation to match up with the email mailout. We'll do it all. You can also relax in the knowledge you'll be able to cope with whatever your clients throw your way such as Microsoft’s latest programming adventure... F# anyone?