Virtuaffinity work

M2 Designs - Lighting and Lighting Specialists

2007-05-29T22:53:00.000+00:00

We're delighted to announce that we're in the process of building a new website for Stockport based event lighting and lighting design specialists M2 Designs.

M2 Designs Ltd are specialists in all types of event lighting including,

Festivals
Bands
Awards Ceremonies
Car Launches
Product Launches
Corporate Events

Balls of various sorts

2007-05-22T18:25:00.001+00:00

Balls
Originally uploaded by virtuaffinity.

I've been testing taking photos on the Nokia N95 today and the using the web upload service to send them to our Flickr account.

This is a blog entry direct from Flickr.

It works but it's not ideal. I've tested it now in both our blogs but because the code used from Flickr has a clear: both; call in the inline style it drops below our floated sidebars. That's no good to us and means we'll need to edit each post to remove that.

That said, it's a nice quick way of getting Flickr images straight into our posts.

Free Website Privacy Policy

2007-05-15T12:38:00.000+00:00

One of the key issues for encouraging a trusted relationship with your clients is letting them know what you are going to do with their data. Many customers will look for a privacy policy on your web-site, a statement as to what you are going to do with their data. Normally, getting hold of a privacy policy means shelling out to a lawyer. However, the rather beautifully formed (ahem!) PushON have arranged with one of their clients to make available a free website privacy policy for your use. The only cost is a credit to Contract Store with a linkback which seems fair

New Website Launch - Pure France Now

2007-03-21T11:52:00.000+00:00

We've just launched a new website build for purefrancenow.com. Pure France Now is a new company that specialises in property rental and property sales in the Roannais region of France.

So if you're looking to rent holiday property in France or want to buy property in France then have a look at their website.

There's also a Pure France Now blog available at http://blog.purefrancenow.com

Google is taking over my desktop and it's all good.......I think?

2007-03-08T00:54:00.000+00:00

There have been some major updates recently to the Google range of Online applications. First of all came a major update to Google Apps in a timely manner to compete with the launch of Office 07. As a small business who wouldn't be tempted by,

...and get on with business.
It's all hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software to install or download, and minimal setup and maintenance. You can get up and running quickly, even if you don't have technical resources.

New! Try Google Apps Premier Edition for free through April 30th, 2007.

Then recently I noticed a whole load of improvements to Gmail. The junk mail filters on Gmail have always been top notch in my opinion but now there's a fantastically easy method of implementing message rules which makes organising your email very easy to. What's more you can now use Gmail as a webmail interface for multiple email accounts which means you can pick up your business mail on the move, oh and it works really well on a mobile to so who needs a blackberry or oversized phone/pc thing. And just another mention of the junk mail filters, I occasionally find the odd legitimate email has strayed into my junk box but I think I can honestly say hand on heart it's caught every last bit of spam thrown at it and for that Google should surely receive some sort of medal of honour.

Google have also just released an update to Google desktop. Originally pitched as just a replacement for the crappy search option offered by Windows, Google desktop has expanded somewhat recently to become so much more. The implementation of gadgets/widgets or whatever you want to call them in previous versions of desktop offers XP users a Vista like desktop experience without having to upgrade and although most are just pretty I've found the "To Do" list and "Scratch Pad" very useful. The latest update (version 5 I think) starts to give us a real glimpse at what Google are trying to achieve here though.

Access my gadget content and settings like To Do lists, Scratch Pad notes, favourite stocks, and more from any computer.

Index and search my documents and viewed web pages from across all my computers.
(This feature transmits the text of your indexed files to Google Desktop servers for copying to your other computers.

Both the above new options require a Google account.

So Google is slowly creeping its way into all aspects of my computer experience and I'm buying into it slowly because it's doing it all so damn well.

Viral Marketing Through Video

2007-02-22T21:49:00.000+00:00

We've been busy over at PushON experimenting with viral marketing via video through YouTube, Google Video and the like.

Our first experiment is a comedy look at popular misconceptions that we face as web developers and Internet marketeers.

Take a look and tell us what you think,

Search Engine Marketing Video

Windows Vista

2007-01-30T11:52:00.000+00:00

So Windows Vista has been launched and I was stupid enough to sit and watch an hour of QVC where they were punting out the Home Premium and Home Basic versions. "It's a bit unfair to call it basic" says the presenter, and I think, yeah stupid name and then realise, not so stupid Microsoft. Of course they had to offer and affordable version but we all know the basic name will drive people toward the more expensive version.

Is it any good?

Unfair of me to say because I haven't tried it yet but after watching someone from Microsoft demo it for an hour I was left feeling a bit disappointed. Sure, it looks nice, although similar looks could easily be achieved with XP and some nice wallpapers and skins but there was just nothing there that made me go "wow". Perhaps if the Aero feature hadn't been leaked and we were seeing it for the first time at launch then it might have had a wow factor but apart from that,

what is there to shout about?

"Well it's got widgets down the side."

Yeah and so have I on my XP machine, I've been using google desktop for a while now so I already have a scratch pad, to-do lists, search, weather, calendar and rotating image gallery.

"Windows Media Center is now integrated into it so managing your media is easier"

Hmmmmm I already manage my media fine. The Sony Viao laptop I bought 2 years back came with a media manager thing, infact it looks identical to the "new" microsoft interface. Do I use it? No, I can find things quicker and easier without it.

"Yeah, but it looks nice and there'll be nice themes you can use"

I remember when XP was launched everyone thought the default idyllic hillside theme was great. I think I ran it for about 30 minutes before thinking it was too distracting and too much of a resource drain and quite frankly not that nice really. Over the years the PC I use has improved in spec but as the years go by I've turned more and more visual effects off from XP until today I run it at the most basic level. Does anyone remember going to the "more themes online" drop down in desktop preferences? I think you'll find that page has remained the same for many years now, there have been no new themes and the service is a chargeable extra.

So will I upgrade to Windows Vista?

Of course, eventually I'll have to, but I certainly won't be rushing out and will wait until at least service pack 1 fixes the major flaws that will be found.

Just to confirm I'm not anti Microsoft particularly (although the time I've wasted because of bad Microsoft products in the past does tend to eat away at my insides when I think about it) but I'm just offering my opinion based on what I've seen of Vista so far.

A Word from Sunny Las Vegas

2006-11-14T23:51:00.000+00:00

If you've wondering what the boys at VirtuAffinity are doing, we're in Las Vegas at Pubcon with our PushOn hats on. If you're interested, you can track what we're learning via the PushON online marketing blog.

Some rather interesting news is that we took a quick trip over to San Jose to meet Propel. These people make what we consider to be the absolute best internet web accellerator available. We have now signed off on an agreement to market and deliver this product in the UK. We'll be launching with the Propel Web Accellerator 6.0 which handles graphic compression rather cunningly. So effectively you get three huge benefits with the product which are:

Faster downlaod over vaious types of connectivity
Less bandwidth usage minimising bandwidth charges where they apply to the client
Reduced bandwidth charges for the ISP.

We'll be developing a completely new UK brand to deliver this really quickly.

To say we are chuffed would be an understatement

Be one of us

2006-10-12T15:01:00.000+00:00

We've got more work than we know what to do with right now so we're looking to recruit some rather marvellous people. We need people at PushON as well. A skilled business development consultant would be absolutely marvellous. That's a dificult post to fill as we do not want anything like your "traditional" sales person. We're just not like that. But that's for another blog.

Hers the Job description. If you are that person or know that person, get in touch

Position: Web Designer / Developer

Company: Virtuaffinity

Website: www.virtuaffinity.com

We are looking for a good general all round web designer / developer who has a strong focus on web standards and accessibility. The successful candidate needs to be a good all rounder so either a programmer with strong design skills or web designer with good knowledge of programming. It is important to the growth of Virtuaffinity that we identify people who want to work in the same manner that we enjoy, who are prepared to commit to hard work and enjoy the flexibility of the environment we cultivate.

The Job will require the candidate to work alongside our existing creative director building new web sites and servicing existing clients as well as maintaining numerous in house sites.

The candidate should also be comfortable with working diligently in a “virtual” and flexible environment. Virtuaffinity will be acquiring new premises in the near future and the candidate will then be expected to mix working from the office and from home as appropriate.

Experience and Skills desired:

Excellent communication skills whether spoken or written, online or offline.
PHP
MySQL
HTML
Dreamweaver
Contribute
Open Source Software
Photoshop
Flash
Understanding of W3C standards
Understanding of accessibility issues

Qualifications:

English Language
Maths
A relevant degree would be nice but not essential

Package:

Starting salary is £18K
Holidays: 25 days a year including bank holidays

By the way, if you are a recruitement consultant reading this, the answer is no.

New vLegal Site

2006-10-02T18:37:00.000+00:00

We've implemented an instance of Joomla (Formerly Mambo), a fantastic, open source, content management system for vLegal.

The process involved having an installation in a developement enviroment and branding the templates to reflect the vLegal brand. This allowed vLegal to populate the site fully with content before relaunching. The database and site were then transfered to the live enviroment which wasn't without it's problems.

For those of you not aware of vLegal and their services, in short, they provide interim legal management services which mean should your company have any legal issues they'll sort them out at a fraction of the cost of a law firm. For a full explanation visit their site.

The Proverbial Happens

2006-09-26T16:38:00.000+00:00

Just in case you've been trying to mail us today, youmight have had a bounce message sent back to you. We've had some problems with our mail server which aren't fixed, buth they're getting there. It's just, y'know, one of those things

Which ISP? Re-Launched

2006-09-21T14:43:00.000+00:00

Well we've been so busy we've hardly had time to blog recently. Loads of cool stuff has been going on and not been getting reported but this I just had to tell you about.

We bought Which ISP? a long time back now with a view to completely rebuilding it at some point and making it the authority ISP directory site. Other work commitments meant Which ISP kept getting put on the back burner so we agreed that a mid-term rebrand of the site would surfice in the interim and that the big daddy update we always planned would happen in early spring 2007.

Today we launched the rebranded version of the site. It's basically the old site with a new skin and some new information. There's also the ability to create your own Free ISP account if you don't find an ISP you like in the directory.

So, What is Which ISP?

It's an ISP Directory fundamentally that is split into,

Free ISP Directory

Broadband ISP Directory

Unmetered ISP Directory

Subscription ISP Directory

The next version will include a massive data cleanse and structure overhaul and inclusion of WiFi and other new technology like VOIP.

What? Another New Browser?

2006-09-01T15:12:00.000+00:00

Yes, as if there wasn't enough browsers out there for us web developers to test our sites in along comes another. This isn't a browser though it's a Browzar.

Is it any good?

No idea because I haven't tried it yet but it's unique in as much as it claims that no visible trace of your browsing or searching is left on your computer. So basically if you are you using Browsar as your browser you might as well wear a T-Shirt that says, "I search for dodgy stuff on my computer".

Still, each to his own as they say.

UPDATE!

I've still not tried it nor perhaps will I ever. Browzar has been slated by security experts and branded as "Adware" since its release.

See BBC Technology report.
See The Registers report.

New Account Win

2006-07-31T14:55:00.000+00:00

We are very chuffed to announce that we have just won the account for site design for Manchester based lighting specialists, dbn. As you can see, anything is an improvement

Accessible Web Search

2006-07-31T11:22:00.000+00:00

Google has an accessible web search portal in Beta. As we understand it, it will favour websites that render well without images and be easier for blind and pertially sited people to navigate.

The potential consequence of this is that blind and partially sited people will use this portal by default and take their rather considerable spending power there. So it should be the case that sites built to W3C guidelines will be favoured by this portal. It just so happens that accessible website build is one of our specialities.

More Browser News

2006-07-27T15:38:00.000+00:00

There's a new Firefox update available that fixes javascript security flaws. So update ASAP!

Microsoft have announced that IE7 will be made available as a high-priority update via their automatic update system as soon as it's ready.

Zoom function in IE7

2006-07-25T14:14:00.000+00:00

After downloading and testing IE7 yesterday I spotted the zoom function available. Opera have had a zoom function for some time now and it looks like IE are getting in on the action. It's a sound idea and a great accessibility aid.

I thought I'd test a few of our sites to see how they looked on IE7 bearing in mind that making them work properly on previous versions has meant including IE only hacks I was prepared for the worst. In actual fact they all performed really well and look exactly how they should do. Pheeeeeeew!

It was then that I spotted the zoom function in the bottom right hand corner.

Testing the zoom function gave a few unexpected results.

This is the how the menu in our Free ISP 12Free should look,

and this is what it looks like in IE7 with the zoom function on 150%,

now that's not very good now is it. The zoom function is supposed to improve website accessibility but it actually makes it impossible to read the menu.

So how does it look in Opera,

spot on! Looks like the good people at opera can do things properly but IE manages to make a mess of things. No surprises there then.

A New Batch Of Browsers

2006-07-24T17:56:00.000+00:00

There's a new batch of browsers on the horizon and they're all going to be vying for your attention.

So will you be changing your browser soon?

I'm not convinced I'll be changing from Firefox and luckily for Fox lovers, Version 2 beta 1 is available for download now. http://developer.mozilla.org/ Of course as always with beta versions be aware it may contain bugs so either put up or wait until the full release is out. There doesn't appear to be too much obvious change with "Inline spell checking for text areas" being the change I'm most enthused about, but then Fire Fox is pretty good already.

IE 7 Beta 3 is available for download and of course has a whole host of improvements to shout about but that's because previous IE versions were so far behind the times. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx Unfortunately, where previously it had been easy to install a standalone version alongside IE 6 for test purposes it's now much more difficult. It would cerainly be nice for developers of browsers to consider web developers that need to test on a range of browsers for once!

Opera 9 is out and available and pretty damn good I have to say from briefly using it. Opera is the only browser that performs properly in the Acid 2 Browser test which tests browser support for web standards. During my brief session using Opera I have to say it was noticeably quicker than Fire Fox as well.

For a more thorough comparison of all the browsers mentioned visit the Extreme Tech article.

Word Verification

2006-07-20T11:20:00.000+00:00

Just a quick one because this is something I've needed to get off my chest for a while now.

WORD VERIFICATION DRIVES ME MAD!

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware of the reasons for it and agree there needs to be something but probably 9 out of 10 times I use one I haven't got a clue what the stupid warped letters are supposed to be. Are they uppercase and lowercase or all lowercase, is that L an I or what?

To be fair the blogger ones have improved but there are still some real stinkers out there. I struggle and I work with graphics and fonts all day long so how does someone with dyslexia get on for example?

Surely there must be a better way?

I'm wondering whether an animated gif might be a better option? Where the letters are all very clear and obvious and come one after the other in sequence and then you're asked to type the word.

Like this for example:

Obviously it wouldn't be set to just continually repeat like above and a play button would be required to start the sequence but at least you can read the letters!

Blogger Comments Contain the No Follow Tag

2006-07-19T12:48:00.000+00:00

I've discovered this morning that links added to comments made on blogger automatically get given the No Follow tag rendering them useless with regards to increasing link popularity with search engines.

Where have I been?

Well it wasn't until recently that I turned on the "highlight no follow tags" option in the excellent Search Status extension for Firefox and then only this morning that I spotted it.

According to the Google Blog they introduced this in January last year and it seems that any blog related software has been using it ever since. The reason is to stop blog spam and I'm sure it works but a potential SEM technique has been lost which is sad because if it had been used properly it could have had good effect.

Losing Traffic Through RSS?

2006-07-19T12:18:00.000+00:00

About 3 months I created myself a Bloglines account. For those of you not aware of bloglines and what you can do with it, in simple terms it's like an online email client (webmail facility) for RSS feeds. If you're not familiar with RSS feeds then here's a quick guide.

Basically all the sites and blogs you visit regularly can be added to your bloglines account (as long as they have an RSS feed) and from one single page you can see when new content is added and read the headlines.

I love it, I check it every morning and read the latest tech news headlines and other info etc from the 20 or so sites I would probably have visited individually through the day.

So, I'm wondering, and realising, and thinking, and pondering whether or not I'm actually visiting my favourite sites as much as I used to, and I'm not. I skim through the headlines and occasionally click through to read more from the full article but I'm not visiting the sites as regularly as I used to. Therefor the sites I'm not visiting as regularly are missing what used to be daily opportunities to catch my eye with other related information and potential sales revenues.

Are they Losing traffic?

Driving Traffic through Tags

2006-07-17T13:50:00.000+00:00

As a key element of online marketing, we have to consider how people choose to access information via the net. For many, it is just via search. Others prefer to use t the Yahoo directory or maybe a niche directory related to their business. Increasingly, we are seeing tagging as a means by which people will find information that they need. So people will surf clouds of tags, say, on business networking. If people choose to use a method, then serve up your valuable information how they want to find it.

This obsession with Google

2006-07-17T08:35:00.000+00:00

At times it seems that every second word out of my mouth is Google. We eat, breathe, sleep and.... the rest Google. Why? Well quite simply, The vast majority of searches in the Uk are performed via Google. There is of course competition. You have Yahoo who are certainly a major player and MSN and who can ignore the power of Microsoft? In all seriousness, you need to give consideration to both Yahoo and MSN. They have market share and that means potential clients. The client demographic is also shifting and we'll see increased shift over the next few months. Google tends to get more pure research and search traffic, in other words, people who are looking to learn. However, due to its' partnerships and focus on advertising via Yahoo Search Marketing, Yahoo can be an excellent place for gaining consumer oriented traffic. MSN will of course become a major force because they have so much money to throw at it and in effect, they are already at war with Google. However, for the time being Google sits top of the pile no matter whose metrics you look at.

So perhaps you are concentrating on trying to achieve great results for search on Google. You check your pet term that you want to rank for and find that you are page one on Google, so you ring your chum to brag. They search and they see no sign of you. You check the way they are spelling the search term, it's correct, and they try again with absolutely no sign of you. So what's happening? Well you have to consider that Google is an amorphous thing. It isn't just one big computer somewhere that you question and it spits out a consistent result. That would be marvellous for us, but it doesn't. First of all there are many Google data centres round the world. Places where there are huge amounts of computers churning and calculating and spitting out results. The data in these data centres across the world is not consistent, nor are the methods they use to calculate the results you are after. It's almost like a tidal system of information. Then consider the amount of switches and filters that you can control from your browser. Do you select to have results only from the UK? Have you got Google desktop search enabled on your PC? Were you looking for a commodotised product and did you get a Froogle excerpt at the top of your results?

It's going to get worse, or better, depending on your opinion. We think you'll see increasing focus on localised results. Getting results for your query that are appropriately locally based that is. From the client point of view, that's possibly very good as long as the supplier of product, knowledge or service is up to the job. What that means for you is that you have to consider what your online presence is about. Do you offer good quality information that's easy for all to understand and relevant to your subject area? Are you using the right channel to take your product to (online) market? If you don't know, talk to someone who spends a bit of time working with these things.

That actually reminds me why I started this post. We'd been seing drops in ranlings for some of our key search terms. They're back up if you use google.co .uk and reasonable if you use google.com. We took some remedial action, nothing too drastic, just appropriate. We expect to see more fluctuation as Google makes ongoing change but in general we're ahead of the game and we see good sign up our internet isps. Hence revenues stay excellent.

Free ISP moves down a couple of places

2006-06-09T23:53:00.000+00:00

Our Free ISP 12Free has dropped 2 places in the Google index over the last 2 days. Does that signify an update is happening at Google or is something else to blame? It's got us scratching our heads at the moment but as with all these instances it's best to let the dust settle before looking for something to apportion blame to.

We'll continue to employ all the good SEO techniques we've learnt and build content and links in the hope that the drop is a minor glitch. We're getting very good at all things SEO and SEM and our sister company PushON continues to grow.

Having just checked Google sitemaps I noticed that the sitemap for 12Free had moved to a status of "pending" which is very odd. It's been re-submitted and is showing a status of OK again now. I can't see that being the reason behind the drop though.

The top Free ISP

Rather annoyingly the site currently enjoying the number one spot for the term Free ISP is a frames based site with very little content which as far as I'm aware hasn't changes in about 4 years. That really hurts when we go to the trouble of building our sites to W3C standards and keep the content fresh and new as much as possible. I've seen old badly built sites return to the top of Google results on a number of occasions recently and I'm begining to question just how good the results Google are offering really are.

Tags: Free ISP SEO SEM Google

More Podcast related chinanigans

2006-06-06T21:40:00.000+00:00

After testing out RSS2Podcast my initial enthusiasm has been dampend some what. You can checkout the result of turning our blog RSS feed into a podcast with RSS2Podcast here. You'll notice if you play it that the podcast is split into mini sound bites for each headline post and contains little more than an advert for RSS2Podcast and the title of the post. It's a bit disappointing but perhaps the paid version will be much improved.

Feed2Podcast

Eager to quash my disappointment a quick search of Google for an alternative offered up Feed2Podcast. Another Free resource for converting RSS feeds to Podcasts. The result, although not perfect is much improved on RSS2Podcast. The link opens it's own Podcast player (bit squashed in FireFox) and the Podcast inlcudes titles and the full post body.

Try our Blog Podcast created by Feed2Podcast

Tags: Podcast RSS