Steps you can take:

Establish a detailed credit control system

This must allow you to easily identify invoices that have been raised, posted and paid.  You should be able to print off a report, which gives details of invoices that need chasing up.  It is also important to ensure you have all the correct client contact details, ie telephone number, contact, business and postal address

 Run credit-checks on your clients

 To do this you can request details of their bank and approach the bank for a credit reference.  You can also request 2-3 names of existing suppliers and contact them directly to determine how quickly they pay and if they have experienced any non-payment issues.

 Decide on your payment terms

 With a small business, it is likely that the normal terms will be 14 or 30 days – it is important that this information is displayed clearly on each invoice so your client is aware of your trading terms.

 Raise and post invoices promptly

 Once goods have been despatched or in the case of a service, the work has been completed – try to raise the invoice on the same day.  This ensures invoices are not forgotten.  It is important that the invoice is addressed to the correct company and contact name.

 Decide on a monthly reminder procedure

As most companies pay at the end of the month, it would be useful to flag all invoices due for payment that month and send a statement of account by the middle of the month.  This way it ensures the accounts department has the reminder in time for doing the next payment run.

 Chasing overdue invoices

Now this is not the best job in the world but it is one of the most important ones.  It should be handled by a trusted employee who has the responsibility to contact clients to discuss overdue invoices.  Now we all know the phrase ‘The Cheque is in the post’ but it just might be the case!  It is always sensible to listen to what your client has to say regarding the invoice, be patient and politely request that the payment is made by an agreed date.  It is important to make notes of your conversation, including the person you spoke to, what agreements have been made to pay and when the payment will be made.  This will ensure you can quickly and confidently go back to your client with a reminder of the agreement if your cheque did not arrive in the morning post!

And this is where the issue is, most people who use this new “browser selector” won’t know the difference’s between the browsers and so won’t know which to select.  For instance if they want speed then Safari is the fastest, if they want security then Chrome is the most secure, if they want compatibility then Internet Explorer has the most websites designed for it.  But even this list doesn’t say what is negative about a browser, e.g. page-loading speed, security, webpage compatibility etc.

Because the new “browser selector” randomly positions the different browsers to choose, for those who don’t have a knowledge of the different browsers already, there will be the following 2 outcomes; 1, the user picks a random choice and then spends the rest of their web-browsing life (with this computer) frustrated about why certain web-pages don’t look/work properly (exaggerated but still possible). And 2, the user simply picks the one that they recognise, that being Internet Explorer and the whole point of this “browser selector” (to offer competitors a chance) is lost.

And for those of you who are wondering, my favourite is Firefox with Chrome coming a close second.

http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2010/02/19/the-browser-choice-screen-for-europe-what-to-expect-when-to-expect-it.aspx

The Webby-winning Adidas UK website is a classic example of this as it gives the viewer an experience and interaction that makes you never forget . There are a number of experimental UI designs that not only encourage web users to explore but to leave a lasting impression.

Kinetic Singapore’s Sean Lam predicts “With the increasing popularity of Papervision3D, we’ll see a wave of 3D space-type user interfaces this year”

Gone are the days of just using the web for information. The exploration of that information is now fast becoming a fashion trend must have.

Even though technology is expanding the web horizon, a good interface needs to be simple and clear, but always invites you to play.

Some web designers seem to be more cautious in this approach as it’s so easy to get carried away in the first place.

For the few designers that get it right, others will get it oh so wrong especially if the designers sacrifice usability for bells and whistles.

It all falls back to the underlining questions: What do the visitors want, and how do they want it? How will they move through the site, and how can we make their experience pleasant and simple?

This effect is easily achieved when using somekind of back end CMS to power your website. For example WordPress automatically assigns a class of “current” to links which are active. This makes it really straightforward to hook into with a basic CSS selector, eg:

#nav ul li.current {
	border-bottom: 2px solid red;
}

(this is purely an example and would probably look pretty horrific.)

Achieving the same effect with a more basic site (with no CMS) can be a little trickier. You can either re-make the nav code in each page and add the class in manually (don’t do this). This is naff though as it creates duplication all over the place, meaning making changes to your menu would be a nightmare.

A better solution would be to code a single version of your menu (keep it in an include file), then use CSS selectors to point out the “active” item. Below is a quick method for doing this…

Step 1. The basic HTML:

<ul>
  <li id="nav-home"><a href="/">Home</a></li>
  <li id="nav-about"><a href="about.html">About us</a></li>
  <li id="nav-services"><a href="services.html">Services</a></li>
  <li id="nav-links"><a href="links.html">Links</a></li>
  <li id="nav-contact"><a href="contact.html">Contact us</a></li>
</ul>

This is a very bog-standard UL > LI > A structure, the only difference being we have given each list item it’s own unique #ID with the prefix “nav-”.

Step 2. Building our pages:

The next step is to build each of our pages. For each page we will add a #ID to the body tag, matching the #ID we set in our navigation. eg:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
	<title>About us | Fake Company Ltd</title>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" media="all" />
</head>
<body id="about">...

Step 3. The CSS magic…

Now we have our two matching #IDs setup for each of our pages/links, we simply need to hook them together with a bit of CSS:

body#about #nav-about a {
	border-bottom: 2px solid red;
}

This statement simply selects the A tag within the #nav-about LI on any page that is rapped in a body tag with the #about ID... Simples ^.^

There you have it, a simple method for creating that “active” state without butchering your HTML. It’s worth also noting that using a body id can help in many other areas, for example: if a design requires a different layout on a single page, you can hook into the body id to apply styles to this specific page – meaning you don’t have to create any additional classes/ids

I am relatively new to JavaScript and jQuery so I will be starting with the basics and aiming to become as fluent as possible. I am going to be reading Learning jQuery 1.3 by Karl Swedberg & Jonathan Chaffer.

I’ll keep you posted with my progress…..watch this blog!

Oh and my high score is currently: 21,623

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta , Lady Gaga to us,  has definately put the fun back into pop that I personally think has been missing since the 1980s.  I don’t know about you, but I find her larger than life character and crazy, wacky, gob-smacking videos fascinating. The woman oozes creativity though I must admit the Brits outfit was a little spooky…..and looked a bit of a fire risk too.

Yes,  I’ll say no more than I’m completely agog at Gaga !

Globalgraphics implemented new trading terms with clients back in March 2009, which has enabled us  not only to ride-out this economic storm but to also grow our business.  We have seen several of our major competitors fall by the wayside, as they were unable to adapt their business model effectively.  Globalgraphics have the competitive advantage of being a small, but extremely flexible organisation – we have changed  our trading terms and hence have tight control of our  cash flow. 

You can find out more on Cash Flow Management at the following:

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?type=RESOURCES&itemId=1073791122

But this led me to think, why is the programme so good.  It isn’t fast paced, unlike 24 with the awesome Jack Bauer.  It doesn’t have any special effects (although the deserted cities are very impressive) unlike Band of Brothers.  The character story-lines (so far) aren’t brilliant, unlike ER. And the acting (while good) isn’t brilliant, unlike all 3 of the previously mentioned TV series.

Obviously it doesn’t have the spending power of that of America TV series (Band of Brothers cost $125 million), but I would still happily watch an episode of Survivors just as much as any other TV programme.

The answer, for me, is quite simple: its imaginative.  With every episode they think up a new scenario which I wouldn’t have, last episode was some of the group being imprisoned to work as slaves down a coal mine. It is this that keeps me watching, what will happen next, what other lows will people stoop to in order to survive. It may now be fast-paced, amazing special-effects, good character-development or brilliant acting, but the sheer imagination and thought-provoking experiences that are in the programme make it a delight to watch.

Survivors is on every Tuesday 21:00 on BBC One.

Yes – it’s all true. It’s called ‘Born of Hope’ and is set in a time before the War of then Ring.  It centres on Aragorn’s parents and the Rangers of the North.  The movie is available for all to see – all 1hr 11 minutes of it – on Youtube. Oh go on then…here’s the link.. .http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qINwCRM8acM

I’m going to view it with a nice bottle of red some time in the next few days and will share my comments with you. I might even tell you then about the OTHER unofficial Lord of the Rings prequel that is out called ‘The Hunt for Gollum’. But enough on that for now!!