My favourite of these would be my iPhone 4.  It is an amazing phone and makes so many things possible while on “the go”.  However my favourite piece of technology which I use isn’t hardware, it’s actually software.  The winner of the prestigious award goes to Google Apps!

Before now all technologies worked separately.  I was terrible at checking my personal emails as it meant turning on my computer every time I got home from work, something I was unwilling to do just to see if I had an email waiting or not.  Now my emails are instantly pushed to my phone, or I can check them from any PC (with Internet).  My calendar (and colleagues and families calendars) are also sync’d to my phone, along with my contacts too.  Google Apps offers a way for us to centralise this information so that we can access it from multiple mediums wherever we may be. Should my phone be lost or stolen, then I simply change the password (to stop the old phone accessing the information) get my new phone, type in the username and password and immediately my emails, calendars and contacts will all be updated, no more manually transferring of contacts and calendar appointments whenever you get a new phone.

There are other “Google Apps” out there, for instance Apple Mobile Me, however Google Apps was the first (that I’m aware of) to offer this for free.  I will continue to push Google Apps onto my friends and family for as long as I am able to!

The first thing is to think about what you want from your internet connection.  Is it price, quality, speed, customer service, convenience, functionality etc.

If price is the main deciding factor then you would be best off looking at a price-comparison website (e.g. www.uswitch.com/broadband/).  They are able to search through lots of different companies to show you good results.

If quality is what you are after; like amount of downtime, do you get the speed which they say you do etc, then the best way is to search the online forums, see what people are saying about the company.  You will always get people saying bad stuff so it is important to look at the overall picture and not just what one person says.

If speed is important then there are a few options available.  Virgin broadband currently offers one of the best download speeds (Up to 50Mb) but this means signing up to Virgin (which requires cabling) and is also very expensive. Most companies will now offer up to 24Mb download speeds so there are a lot to choose from.

If customer service is important (for trouble shooting, help and advice) then (in my experience) the smaller companies are the better one to go for.  Large companies tend to have a habit of losing you in the system and not returning calls when they say they will.  Also you can call up any number of times and never speak to the same person so problems just keep rolling on.  Smaller companies tend to have smaller support teams who are prepared to go out of their way to help you, because your business really matters to them.

If convenience is what you want then the best bet is to go BT or another large company.  Chances are that is what the person before you had and they will be able to have you up and running quickly.  You won’t need to do any “homework” on them because you already know that they are a trustworthy company.

If functionality is an issue for you, like you want to do something more with your connection that  most people won’t want to.  E.g. static IP address, POP3 email collection from third-party email accounts, running a web-server etc.  Again I would recommend a small broadband company for this.  In my experience big companies expect you to fit into their “ideal” customer profile, and if you don’t then they don’t like you.  Static IP addresses are required for many different reasons however if you have Virgin broadband you will need to upgrade to their business broadband which is VERY expensive when all you want to do is have home broadband with a static IP address.  Most companies will simply offer a static IP address for an additional £5 per month.

My 2 favourite broadband companies at the moment are O2 and Be.  O2 are very cheap (especially if you already an O2 customer) and Be offer brilliant packages (although slightly more expensive).  Be Pro comes with unlimited usage, almost double the standard upload speed, and 1 static IP address, this package would be great for someone wanting to do more than just surf the internet.

In conclusion, think about what you want from your broadband, not just now but in the future.  If you think you might need to work from home at some point then take this into account.  Shop around, read up on a company.  If you are a normal home user wanting a normal internet experience then pretty much any broadband provider will do, but if you are wanting that little be more from your provider then make sure you know what you are getting into when you sign up for 12 months.

I strongly believe that now is the best time to make any type of ‘gadget’ purchases, as once the new vat rate is implemented, it will made Britain one of the most expensive countries to purchase such equipment.  The conversion rate of pounds to dollars is already extremely weak and this will make items from the USA even more expensive.  So if you want that new ipad or iphone, get it before Dec 2010!!

Perhaps you should have chosen to use Globalgraphics Associates for your new web site design, we would have provided a first class, sleek and professional site – which is user-friendly, modern and looks professional!  Please contact us if you require a quotation….

@font-face is a CSS declaration that allows custom font files to be embedded in a site’s stylesheet. This effectively gives unlimited font options over the standard ‘web safe’ fonts (Arial, Georgia, Times etc). The @font-face rule is actually nothing particularly new, and has been present in Internet Explorer since version 4. The reason use of @font-face had never taken off is due to IE’s relience on the proprietary .EOT format (Embedded Open Type), which was not supported in other browsers.

What’s changed?

Modern browsers such as Safari & Firefox have added support for font embedding using more common file formats such as .TTF (True­Type Font) and .OTF (Open­Type Font). This means that by using a CSS declaration that includes formats for all browsers, we can now use @font-face

Basic Implementation

The most common/robust method of embedding fonts today, known as the ‘Bulletproof/Smiley’ method looks something like this:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Graublau Web';
  src: url('GraublauWeb.eot');
  src: local('☺'),
         url('GraublauWeb.woff') format('woff'), url('GraublauWeb.ttf') format('truetype');
}

The above code first declares a .EOT version of the font for IE, then adds files for the other browsers using a second ’src’ property (this is ignored by IE). For more information on this method, checkout this article.

Limitations

Okay, so there are still issues, the biggest of all being licensing. Because font-embedding effectivly installs a version of each font on the client’s computer, many font’s don’t allow for embedding within their EULAs.

There are also the normal issues you (should) expect with any CSS property, but do websites need to look the same in every browser?

Typekit, webfonts.fonts.com, Google Fonts & others…

So one of the easiest and quickest ways to get going with web fonts is to use a web font library. These librarys take away all the hassle of using web fonts, including: formatting, licensing & embedding. Services such as Typekit charge a low monthly fee and offer a wide range of fonts, which have been specially licensed for use on the web. Newer players, fonts.com offer a similar service, tapping in to the massive Linotype®, Monotype® & ITC® foundries. Google have very recently introduced a similar (currently in public beta) service which you can checkout at http://code.google.com/webfonts.

Free fonts & Font Squirrel!

Another option is to use open source fonts which are freely available and licensed for web use. Foundries like The League of Movable Type and exljbris offer great free fonts which can be used on the web.

Font squirrel offers an @font-face generator which allows you to upload a font file and generate a .zip file containing all the neccassary CSS (utilising the ‘Bulletproof/Smiley’ method, above) and font files ready for embedding (this requires you host the files yourself). Font squirrel also offer a range of pre-created font kits from their library of free fonts – well worth checking out.

Update: You can now also add Fontdeck to the list of ‘all-in-one’ font hosting providers. Fontdeck, a new service from Clearleft, offers a CSS only font solution at a reasonable (yearly) rate – check them out!

Fancy a game?
Go here!

• Web design Birmingham
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Using each of these search phrases will bring up a different list of results from a Search Engine.  So if your business has a website the big questions is ‘What search phrases are your customers using?

Finding out the answer to this is essential to your on-line success and can quite easily be done using free Key Word Research tools. Google has a great one that shows the average search volume per search phrase for previous months.

Once you have discovered what key words/search phrases your customers are using it’s time to optimise your website to make sure your business gets onto that first page of Google!

Sound interesting? Ring us today to find our how we can help your business….