Waking up this morning on the first day of a brand new year, with the sun shafting into my bedroom, I was inspired to get up and take this picture with my iPhone 4s from the window.

I always think the dawning of a new year is a time to reflect over the year gone by, and I like very much to look forward with boyish excitement at the year ahead too.

We had a challenging year in 2011, but all of us in the Starberry constellation worked hard and had a good solid year. In the world at large the pundits are all talking of doom and gloom for 2012, and some even think that we will all be meeting our maker at the end of the year due to miss-information about the Mayan calendar!

Ben and I are not listening to any of that hokum and are actually looking forward to a very fruitful 2012 in more ways than one – We have won some great new business that spans the property sector to the financial sector and several e-commerce web projects.

Our team are buzzed and ready to kick some serious 2012 butt, so if you have any projects that you would like us to help you with this year please give us a shout.

W. R. Berkley Syndicate 1967 is a Lloyd’s syndicate specialising in underwriting a worldwide portfolio of insurance and reinsurance risks.

Utilising both the Lloyd’s worldwide brand and licenses and the established network of member companies within W. R. Berkley Corporation, the syndicate provides a wide ranging underwriting platform for it’s international clients, with an emphasis on core underwriting areas of Accident & Health, Contingency, Marine and Property.

Head of property – Alastair Blades, briefed Starberry to develop a clean, fresh, and professional website to allow W. R. Berkley Syndicate 1967 to stand out from the traditionally bland underwriter crowd.

The website incorporates live breaking news feed supplied by BNO on the homepage to feed all breaking relevant world news. Over the coming months Starberry will be adding additional feeds from NOAA’s National Hurricane Center and Insurance Insider, to be a useful resource for clients and brokers.

Starberry were excited to be involved with the startup business that is very progressive in its specialist areas, and have found that this sector is in great need of some innovative thinking.

W. R. Berkley Corporation, founded in 1967, is a premier provider of commercial lines property casualty insurance. Each of the operating units in the Berkley group participate in a niche market requiring specialist knowledge about a territory or product.

Syndicate 1967 holds a unique position in the Lloyd’s market. As a member company of
W. R. Berkley Corporation, one of the world’s leading insurance groups, the Syndicate combines the excellent reputation and trading environment that is the hallmark of Lloyd’s with the expertise and resources of the wider group.

As a Lloyd’s syndicate, W. R. Berkley Syndicate 1967 is able to provide a truly international platform for its clients, brokers and member companies of W. R. Berkley Corporation.

If you are an Underwriter or a Broker and feel that your company website could do with some Starberry ‘love’, then please contact us now.

Steve Jobs was one of the very few people in my life that I can call my hero. Since Ben and I purchased our first Apple Macintosh computer in 1989 we bought into something much more than a machine.

One of the things that sums it up very well for me was an advertising slogan he came up with that simply said “Think Different.” Those two words add a zen like meaning to everything we do at Starberry – far more than zeros and ones packed in a plastic box.

He and his way of thinking has inspired Ben and I for over 20 years, to strive harder and always go that extra mile with every project we take on.

On the morning of the 6th October 2011, I was in Leicester at Fanela’s T-Shirt factory with my colleague Tom Gidden, when we learnt the news of Steve passing away. We spotted a beautifully appropriate and clever icon on Twitter, that had been devised by Jonathan Mak in homage to Steve.

In the spirit of the moment we created a couple of T-Shirts with that icon and a few words typeset in one of Apple’s favourite fonts Myriad Pro, for us to wear as a way of paying our respects.

We will continue to think different, and strive for excellence.

Sent from my iPad.

Starberry are pleased to unveil our latest website design and development project for one of the UK’s ‘most established and highly regarded’ Estate Agent brands – www.johndwood.co.uk . We have worked extremely hard to take John D Wood & Co. to another level online, with a new content managed website, built on the ReapitWeb CMS.

The website integrates with RPS for sales and with Aspasia for lettings. We focussed on bringing Property Search to the forefront, making sure that a quick search for sales or lettings properties is accessible from the top of every page throughout the website.

On the homepage, there are quick links to instantly take you to area specific property results covered by JDW&Co. We have introduced a large featured property rotator which has been developed with JavaScript transitions rather than Adobe Flash to ensure that the website was visible across all platforms including PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry. A mobile CSS version is scheduled for release later this year.

News Blogs are another new introduction, with RSS and email subscriptions set-up for the press and the general public to easily be kept up to date with latest news and property updates. Indeed, John D Wood & Co. are really embracing social media, as you can see from the live Twitter feed and Facebook connect login functionality, plus Facebook Like and Twitter Retweet buttons under every story for easy sharing.

Property search results are presented with simple but smart tools for users to access all the required property information at a click of a button. The refine search tools give the user endless choices in which to fine tune and view results. When property results are refined from the min/max price sliders, the search results gracefully refresh using a an action script called Ajax without the whole page having to reload.

The left hand navigation on the results page defines exactly how many different types are properties are available by price, no. of bedrooms, bathrooms, reception rooms and more.

All ‘Actions’ have been clearly prioritised on the page with a green colour, making it jump out of the traditional palette of blues and white synonymous with the John D Wood & Co. branding for last few centuries. The Actions are without doubt the most important element within the website, only second to the instructions themselves. Actions can be anything from downloading property details, send to a friend, through to request a call back, property enquiries, valuation request and ultimately book a viewing.

My JDW&Co. has been designed to allow users to easily save there search results or a specific property with the ability to create email alerts to be sent out to them the moment a new instruction meets the users criteria.

This is just the first Phase of the new JDW&Co. Web strategy and we are excited to continue to work closely with their marketing team to rollout lots of new features, both on and off page, over the forthcoming months. Watch this space!

If you would like to talk to Starberry about designing and developing your Estate Agents website, please Contact Us.

Marsh & Parsons is delighted to have been announced as 2010′s overall ‘UK Estate Agency of the Year’ by The Times & The Sunday Times. Here is what the judges had to say…

With a history dating back over 150 years, Marsh & Parsons has certainly demonstrated staying power through not one but several downturns and with the dynamism of its business model one could be forgiven for expecting a certain level of service as standard, however Marsh & Parsons simply astonish at every turn with their excellent business focus and attention to detail.

Their utilisation of social media and the web from day one was pioneering and remains inspirational, and most of all they deliver what they promise with expert local knowledge and customer service levels of the highest degree.

Marsh & Parsons was also recognised for being an ‘early adopter of the web and social media tools’, acknowledged in particular, for their cutting edge website, designed and developed by Starberry over the last 4 years.

Marsh & Parsons web presence is impressive and Peter Rollings and his team harness the power of the web to position themselves as experts through commentary and blogging. Indeed, the homepage of their website is dedicated to the most recent articles and the site is user friendly, informative and easily navigable.

This sits well alongside the marketing which is always innovative and well executed and shows a depth of understanding for the target market and delivered with passion and pride for the brand and the services.

In the words of Marsh & Parsons itself, “Local know-how. Better results”. The judges couldn’t
agree more and are thrilled to award the gold to such a fantastic example of the best in estate agency. They are trail blazing.

If you would like an award winning website please contact us

DINGBATS® – ‘The wordplay game that will drive you crazy’. In 1980, cartoonist Paul Sellers created DINGBATS® as a newspaper feature. Since then, over 2 million board games, travel games and books have been sold worldwide. To celebrate the 30th Anniversary, we selected some of our favourite Dingbats, Thingbats and Kingbats for our amazing new iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch game!

Dingbats® is now the 5th best selling Word game app in the UK’s AppStore on iTunes, and one of the top 20 paid apps in the ‘Board Game’ chart since it’s debut in October 2009!

Here’s what the critics are saying:
“Dingbats is perfect for those who love logic puzzles or are wordsmiths. The app is very well-designed with smooth physics and nicely contrasting colours. This app is well worth the price tag, so go give your brain a workout.” – AppSafari.com

“Dingbats is a fun, but challenging game. Some of the puzzles are not too difficult to figure out, while other puzzles can be quite difficult. The game is entertaining and definitely passes the time. If you are into word games, you can not go wrong with Dingbats.” - CasualGamerChick.com

Here are a few of the hundreds of 5 star comments from our fans:
Addictive and Awesome – Love It!!!!!!!
by Had1004237
*****
“Really is an excellent game and my favourite ever App! Such clever puzzles and for the more tricky ones, a quick efficient hint system that isn’t a complete give away but helps you along a bit!“

THE best puzzle app, period
by CyberSaint
*****
“I used to play this game with my dad when I was a young child, so when I saw the app for iPod touch on iTunes I had to have it. I never thought it’d be as much fun as it was back then but it’s better! This game is amazing and is my fave app!”

What are DINGBATS®?
DINGBATS® are cunningly disguised names, phrases and sayings that are turned around, upside-down, sideways or jumbled up. You need to work out the hidden word or phrase on each card. It could be the size, position or direction that will give you a clue. Sometimes, the pictures combined with a word or a number will give you your answer.
If you get stumped by a puzzle, just relax and come back to it later. Then, when you figure it out you’re sure to let out what we call the ‘Dingbats Ahhh!’ We have included a ‘PASS’ button but use it wisely, as you are only awarded a few passes. If you get really stuck you can ask the ‘Ding King’ for extra help in solving them.

What’s next for the DINGBATS® app?
Starberry are just putting the finishing touches to the new version 2.0 of the Dingbats® game App, that has brand new puzzle game packs – ‘Dingbats® series 2′, ‘Junior Dingbats®’, & ‘Just Kingbats®’, that can be obtained via in app purchasing.
We have added a ‘shuffle’ mode for randomising the order of the cards delivered, plus hints and answers are now completely in-game.

The graphics have all been remastered for iOS4 & the iPhone4′s retina screen display. Dingbats® is also being optimised to play as a native app for Apple’s new iPad!

If that isn’t enough, you can get your Dingbats® fix on Facebook and play our very popular ‘Daily Dingbats®’ online version of the game, where you can pit your wits against your friend every day of the week.

- WEBSITE: http://dingbats.net

- WALL OF DINGBATS: http://dingbats.net/wall

- YOU TUBE Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMZ3df6wpjA

- TWITTER: http://twitter.com/dingbatsgames

- FACEBOOK: http://facebook.com/dingbatsgames

- APP STORE: http://itunes.com/app/dingbats

If you think you have an idea for the next best selling iPhone app, and you would like Starberry to help you develop it, then contact us now.

Starberry have recently launched a new Estate Agents Website for Sandfords (www.sandfords.com) which we are all very excited about.

The website has been built on our highly developed Joomla CMS platform and is our first project to utilise Reapit Sync. This allows us to collect data from Sandfords Applicant Management Software – Reapit, in real time and display in our preferred format on the website. However, this synchronisation works two ways – we can now pass the All Enquiry data, such as Book a Viewing, Tell a Friend, Call Me Back & Enquire Now directly back in to the Applicant Management Tools to be qualified.

We have also integrated a powerful Slideshow tool that allows images to be displayed with a variety of different transitional options, but most impressive of all, they can all be viewed at full screen resolution. At last, you can actually see property pictures in a large format on an Estate Agent website!

Sandfords are updating their Blog news on a regular basis and via an XML feed, this news is syndicated to numerous news websites, plus directly to their Facebook and Twitter pages, again in real time – this is a very powerful SEO tool.

The website has been designed to look very simple, smart and clear – this is something that everyone wants, as all to frequently Estate Agents websites become cluttered and crowded with shout boxes, left, right and centre.

If you would like to discuss how Starberry can develop your new website – Contact Us

MAP Environmental commissioned the development of their corporate website to communicate their Solar business offering to both the Commercial and Home Owner sectors.

MAP are one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of Photovoltaic Solar Panels and have a nationwide network of Installation Partners who are exclusively contracted to MAP Environmental.

With the forthcoming launch of the governments ‘Feed In-Tariff’ initiative, any excess solar engine created will be purchased back at the going rate and transferred back on to the national grid.

In preparation for the impending boom in solar engine, produced from affordable and subsidised PV Panels installed throughout the UK, MAP have commissioned Starberry to plan and develop an On and Off Page SEO program to dramatically increase their search engine keyword ranking across all major search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing.

This in-depth Search Engine Optimisation program includes a combination of keyword and competitive analysis, Directory, Press Release and Article submissions. Forum posting, Blog development and commenting, along with Social media creation and Social bookmarking which will also help to increase the keyword rankings. All these techniques will be combined to improve MAP’s overall SERP’s (search engine ranking positions).

Finally, a targeted Pay Per Click ( PPC ) campaign will be running in parallel. The knowledge and learning from the Paid Search campaign will be fed back in to the Natural Search ( SEO ) program.

The overall aim of the SEO and PPC campaigns is to increase the visibility of the MAP Environmental brand and further drive ‘qualified’ enquiries and overall sales of PV Panels and Solar Panel installations for MAP across the UK.

If you are interested in having a CMS website designed and developed for your business and or SEO and Paid Search services, please Contact Us

Starberry are proud to have designed and developed a brand new ‘content management system’ and ‘international residential sales platform’ for CB Richard Ellis. We have been working together with a CBRE global steering committee, to develop a residential property sales website that features properties for sale from over 30 CBRE Offices in 20+ countries around the world. The website has specifically been designed to allow CBRE to easily grow this number of offices and publish new rich content online, using the CMS via an amazingly simple, but powerful ‘web based’ Dashboard with multiple levels of access, depending on user defined permissions.

The new CBRE Residential website consists of five main content types; Contacts by Country/Offices, Properties broken down by Global view to a Region level, followed by Country and Office levels. This same hierachical breakdown of information is followed with the CBRE Services, Property News and Research/Reports. This concept of aggregating rich content, dynamically created and managed at global, regional, country and office levels, offers massive benefits to CBRE and their customers alike. As a CBRE customer, whether an institution, investment bank or an individual private investor, looking for residential property, services, news and research at a global, regional or country level has never been easier to access.

The phrase ‘think global, act local’ has truly been taken in to affect with this beautifully designed and architected, international residential sales property website. In fact, our Starberry tech web development team would prefer to refer to it as residential sales ‘software application’ or better so, a ‘web app’. The website functionality not only includes multiple levels of search by global, regional, country and office views, but also allows you to subscribe to all or any of this information depending on your criteria via RSS feeds and email alerts that can easily be updated, switched on and off as you wish via MyCBRE which is a free service to all registered users.

Behind the scenes, the CBRE Residential offices around the world can receive and share the realtime data capture. Depending on password protected user permissions, they have access to all or any part of the ‘captured data’ via the ‘web based’ Dashboard. CBRE directors and management now have their own version of ‘big brother’ in place, allowing them to easily view global activity from any web enabled device, including their mobile phones, as and when they so desire.

If you would like to learn more about how Starberry could help design and develop similar software applications for your organisation, be it a global or local focussed requirement, please Contact Us.

Yes, everybody’s talking about “rhubarb”…

Some 15 years ago, was the last time, brothers Rus & Ben Sellers worked with Lucy Gemmell to develop a name and logo for her home grown catering business – “rhubarb”.

Today, we are proud to launch the new “rhubarb” CMS website, which is truly a mouth watering experience wherever you explore within the site.

The business is split in to three key parts – the core business, Private Parties and Corporate Events, where “rhubarb” cater to the ‘rich and famous’, including the likes of Royalty, Elton John and even 007!

Then there is their growing Retail business, including their first “rhubarb” Food Bar in London Heathrow’s Terminal 3 and Gallery Mess, Restaurant/Cafe/Bar, in partnership with The Saatchi Gallery at Duke of York’s HQ, Chelsea.

Finally their are the “rhubarb” venues, at the races, on the river and in the country, plus over 70 accredited venues they cater at.

With it’s group of companies and team of 75+ staff, a fresh approach to their online presence was a must. Starberry have designed and developed the new “rhubarb” content managed website to ‘cater’ for this energetic business that is growing at the rate of knots.

Whether you choose to navigate through the wealth of ‘sumptuous’ content or just sit back to be entertained, the edible food photography and video footage throughout, will be sure to impress. This website has been described as being more like watching TV, than anything else!

You can keep up to date with “rhubarb” by subscribing to their Latest News/Blogs via RSS and Email or you may just prefer to follow them on the social networking websites Twitter or YouTube.

The combination of innovative Web Tools utilised for this website include, a comprehensive ‘Open Source’ CMS, Search Engine Friendly and fully editable Flash Pockets, an integrated and seamless photo and video gallery, with an impressive ‘full screen’ mode, and an easy to use web based Image Management Dashboard. The blog feeds are managed by Google’s Feedburner, plus there are a variety of data capture forms for capturing Enquiries, Quick Quotes, CV Submissions and more, through the password protected Back Office. Google Analytics has been installed to ensure “rhubarb” full visibilty of the activity, site wide.

Starberry have developed online tools that work in harmony together and most of all empower even the least tech savvy person with the ability to keep the site ‘live’ and bursting with ‘rich and ‘fruitful’ content.

If this website has ‘wet your appetite’ please Contact Us