When building Poppley, this is the goal that we set ourselves. When it came to the crunch, this was the one piece of information that we would really love to see next time we are about to choose a movie to watch.

The social side of it makes watching films more interesting too. When you’ve seen a movie, you might find it fun to find out who else has already seen it so that you can discuss the big plot twist at the end. The kind of conversation you can’t have with people yet to watch.

Poppley is designed to make it fun to capture the likes and not so likes, so that you can get a picture of the friends whose opinion you trust the most. And – you can do it all on your phone too.

We have just come out of our private beta and are hoping that people will give the app a try. It’s not perfect yet – we have a load of ideas of where to go next, but we want to get feedback from as many people as possible before we push into our next development phase.

If you get a chance to give it a try, feel free to send us some feedback in the form at the bottom of the page. We promise to reply to every note we receive.

Thanks!
Jon

So how does the taskbar work? From memory, I’d say:

Taskbar: A bar of program icons, which, with a single click, will bring the corresponding program to the front and it will become active, so that we can use it.

But is that right?

Actually, there is a slight exception to this rule. If the program you want is already active, clicking on the taskbar hides the program.

Wait. What?

Surely that is the opposite of what it is supposed to do? I click on a program in the taskbar because I want to use it. Never because I want to hide it.

So the taskbar decrees that it is my responsibility to always know what is currently active? But I am lazy and keeping that information in my head is hard. What happens if I look down at my notes, or speak to a colleague or make a drink. When my attention is back on the PC, my first thought might be ‘I need a web browser’, so without hesitation I click the browser icon in the taskbar and watch in horror as the already active browser window hides itself behind everything else!

I suppose, there’s a chance that I am in the minority here. Maybe there are a lot of people out there that are always completely aware of the program that is currently ‘active’, and they love the fact that clicking the task bar item for the program will hide it. But that would also mean that these people are not only always aware of the program that is active, they also know which program is directly behind the active once. I.e. the item that will become visible when they toggle the active window from view.

Wow, those people are good!

So anyway, at least we have now figured out the way it works. A single click of a taskbar icon makes the corresponding program active, unless it is already active, in such case, the program will be hidden from view.

However, most of the time the programs I use have more than one window open. So what happens when there are multiple windows? The second window might be a new explorer window, I may have several emails open in Outlook or maybe two Word documents. In the Windows taskbar there is only one icon with a ‘stack’ graphic behind it to indicate that multiple windows are open. So, clicking the icon of a non-active program will bring all the windows of the program to the front and make the latest used window of this program active so that I can get back to what I was doing?

Right?

Wrong. Clicking the icon now gives me all of the open windows as options, in the form of small and often very similar looking previews. To get back to my work, I need to pick the window I want to activate, by inspecting the previews and choosing one.

So, this fundamental action that the whole of windows relies upon, changes completely as soon as a second window has been opened. If I want to switch programs quickly, I now need to remember which program is active and the number of windows the program is using.

Choosing the correct window takes concentration. However, if ever you are trying to choose between a few previews, try not to hover over them. Hovering on a preview makes the corresponding window flash to the front of the screen. I.e. it ‘appears’ as it would if it were active. This is distracting and sometimes confusing, however the feature might be useful if you happen to guess correctly first time. The window you want to interact with will be shown in front of you, but don’t make the mistake of moving your mouse toward it! As soon as your mouse stops hovering the preview, the window disappears again. To activate it, you no longer click the taskbar you want or the window you want, you must click the taskbar, then click the preview of the window you want.

Got it?

So at least we now have a definition we can rely on!

Taskbar: A bar of program icons, which may bring the corresponding program to the front with a single click, or may show a series of previews to pick from and require two clicks, or may hide the program you want from view altogether, if it was already active.

Good luck!

How to promote your business on twitter

Twitter is a great way to promote your business and to keep your fans informed of what you are working on. It is fast and allows a company to communicate with their customers on a very personal level. Customer feedback and complaints can also be responded to quickly and openly using the social tool.

For small businesses, twitter is a great leveller. It does not take a huge marketing budget to maintain a successful twitter account. In fact, small companies can market and launch a product through twitter without spending any money.

Getting started

Setting up a twitter account is very easy. By visiting the twitter.com website, you should be up and running within a couple of minutes.

Once you have created your account, it is a great idea to use the search feature to find the major people in your field, and from there, follow them. It is important to follow a variety of people and companies in your industry so that your twitter stream is both relevant and useful to you.

Secondly, if you have added a lot of the ‘big players’ in your field, twitter will automatically recommend further users for you to consider. This can lead you to discover new, up and coming people in your chosen insustry who you would not otherwise have heard of.

What to tweet?

When composing your tweets try to ensure that people will get something out of the majority of your messages. You can do this by pointing out new innovations in your sector, or by posting links to deals on related products. By helping people, their trust in you will be increased.

Try to keep track on the number of times you mention your own products and services. If people feel you are mentioning them too much, they will consider it spam and will ignore your future tweets. When you speak about your own work, try to give an alternative slant from the stale text that would be in a press release. For example, you could give your followers some inside information so that they feel that following you is worth the effort.

Twitter is a great way to promote your other online content. Links to blog posts, flickr galleries or facebook pages are great ways to let your fans know about content on other channels. However try to make sure your tweets stay creative. Posting a link on its own is not going to excite anyone, so maybe phrase the message in the form of a question, ask for feedback or try to add more context to the link.

Track your progress

Businesses of all sizes aim to get the most out of the time they spend on social media. For this reason, it is a great idea to use a URL shortening service such as bit.ly to track the number of clicks you receive for the links you post. Furthermore, if you are feeling technical, it is often possible to configure your CRM package to track incoming prospects from your twitter stream.

Don’t feel that you need to read all of the messages in your stream and don’t feel that you must reply to everyone that mentions your company name or product. Balancing your social activities with your actual job is hard enough without adding these kind of burdens.

Give it a try

Twitter is a great tool for increasing awareness of your brand without the need for a huge budget, however it can take a little while to figure out what works for you and your company.

Hopefully the tips here can help you get started!

But how can it be so important?

Google has been working on a new Operating System called Chrome OS. The Google Chrome brower is the centre of the OS and it has some very distinct advantages over other Operating Systems such as Windows or Apple’s OS X.

As you may have noticed, the way we use our computers is changing. These days virtually everything we do on a computer is done on the web.

Working this way brings us a lot of advantages:

• If our computer is lost, stolen or fails, our data is not lost.
• Someone else creates backups of our work and worries about security so that we don’t have to.
• Our data is not bound to a particular computer or location, it is accessible everywhere.
• We never need to worry about updating or reinstalling software
• Websites are updated all the time and we don’t have to do a thing.

The Chrome OS turns your laptop into a lean, mean, web browsing machine. There is no other software on the laptop and the hardware is stripped back too, meaning they can achieve: 10 second boot times, extraordinarily long battery life and very cheap prices.

When can I buy one?

The first laptops to use the Chrome OS were announced by Google today and will be on sale at Amazon soon. These machines are designed for the web so websites load and run very quickly meaning you can get your work done faster.

These are cheap laptops which need no maintenance, upgrade themselves, start up quickly and let you get stuff done without any hassle.

I feel a revolution is coming.

When trying to add an admin_double_list to manage associated records in a Symfony project, your database must use InnoDB tables. This is because MyISAM does not have any referential integrity constraints.

The demonstration is notable due to the massive impact that the introduced technologies have had on everyday life. In this demonstartion, Engelbart introduces the first publicly seen computer mouse, video conferencing, teleconferencing, interactive text, email, hyper-text and a real-time collaboration text editor.

Douglas is now widely known as the inventor of the computer mouse but this initial demonstration showed several other break through concepts, as part of their NLS (oNLine System), which was developed by the SRI International’s Augmentation Research Center.