Freelance Web Design & Development

Best places to find web design and development work

Jim Callender — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:11:29 +0000

Over the last few years I have used a variety of agents and sites to find work. Here are my selection of tried and tested, and more importantly – trusted, ways to get work in the creative and digital industry in the UK.

Job recruiters for Creatives:

Job search sites for Creatives:

The (Last and Next) Decade in Gadgets

Jim Callender — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:20:36 +0000

In January 2000, odds are that you didn’t own an MP3 player, digital camera or even a cellphone.

And the iPhone might as well have been a cardboard prop off Star Trek. But today, the iPhone is not only dully common, it’s the prototype on which most modern smartphones have been built.

But as of 2007, U.S. households were more likely to be use a cell than a land line.

Time has voted the Android over iPhone for Time Gadget of the Year

Here we are about to start a new decade, and the predictions are almost a sci-fi cliché at this point, but by the end of the next decade, it’s easy to imagine a contact lens, like any other contact, that could fit on your eye to provide a heads-up display (HUD) over much of your life experience.

For computers in the next decade, the mobile OS will be indistinguishable from the desktop OS. Portable computers will be but aesthetic shells for your omnipresent connection to information and processing power in the cloud.

Wordpress 2.9 features

Jim Callender — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:46:08 +0000

We’re really excited about the next version of wordpress coming out, version 2.9.

WordPress 2.9 brings major new “bling” to the table. As a reminder of WordPress 2.8, you can see the writeup that Jonathan Dingman brought us last time around.

Features include new or enahnced plugins and flexibility for managing themes (design), and content:
Image Editing, Custom Post Types, Comment Meta, Metadata API, Database Repair Script

Further reading - 10 things you need to know about wordpress 2.9

Web site speed test sites

Jim Callender — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:35:56 +0000

Your visitors spend around 5 seconds on your web site to figure out whether it’s for them. If they visit your site, you want to make sure they are not waiting for pages to load.

Web site speed test sites are useful as they help measure the download size, as well as simulating the time users have to wait for web pages to download on various internet connections. Remember, depending on where your users are, they may not always be on broadband connections, check your web analytics to be sure before using large images or rich media like video.

How it works

The tests loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser.

Enter a URL to calculate page size, composition, and download time. The services then calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component.

The iWeb service goes one step further by offering advice on how to improve page load time. The service incorporates the current best practices from Website Optimization Secrets, web page size guidelines and trends, and web site optimization techniques into its recommendations.

Top three speedtest web sites

Screenshot showing speed test report from Pingdom.com

BUSTA – A simple to way to better sites and happier clients

Jim Callender — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:26:26 +0000

One of the presentations that stood out in the recent Future of web design, London was from Good Barry.

Why? It really stood out as simple, plain and honest advice on how to work smarter in our current climate. Some easy to use strategies on how to set targets and get the right results from your actions.

Achieved using a acronym named BUSTA – this method was explained as giving more effective results, less conflict with clients and repeat business too. And for the freelancer, the bottom line – higher profits as less changes are required using this method as you build into this procedure what exactly is required.

Image showing breakdown of BUSTA acronym:

Presentation below using slideshare:

Brett Welch – FOWD London 2009

How to track a stolen Apple product

Jim Callender — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:07:20 +0000

Unfortunately due to the number of electronic items the average geek, freelancer and employee travels around the world with, it’s hardly surprising sometimes these items get lost or stolen.

Whilst costs can be covered by either business or home insurance, it’s not much fun filing a police report and having to deal with file and data loss.

Now you may actually have the chance to track your Apple product, whether it’s an iPhone, Macbook or any Apple computer with isight built in there are some fantastic anti-theft software available to reunite you with your hardware.

iPhone iredhanded or undercover
MacBook, MacBookPro, iMac undercover

Accurately locate your stolen Mac

Undercover uses advanced technology developed by Skyhook Wireless to locate your Mac based on Wi-Fi positioning. In addition, it also transmits network information, enabling their recovery center to accurately track and locate your stolen Mac within a range of 10-20 meters.

The software also sends screenshots of your stolen Mac at regular intervals. These screenshots will sooner or later reveal the thief’s identity (e.g. when chatting, reading and writing emails) making it much easier to work with the police in order to recover your Mac.

See who’s using your Mac

Undercover will transmit pictures of the thief and his surroundings every 6 minutes, making it even easier to identify the current user. It’s like having a private detective working for you.

MacBookPro recovered in only 3 days

Orbicule recently posted a story on their website about how a MacBookPro was recovered in just three days, thanks to the network information, iSight photos and screenshots (which captured the thief’s email address) provided by Undercover. If you or your users carry around expensive Mac portables, Undercover might be just the insurance policy you need.

The cost for this? Â£41 for up to 5 Macs..

Apple’s response to reporting a lost Apple product discussions.apple.com – Basically, there isn’t one, but the message is using the software here makes the chances of recovering your products much, much higher.

There is also a windows equivalent of this type of software, in case anyone you know may need this anti-theft protection at lojackforlaptops

Best UK Reseller Hosting Packages

Jim Callender — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:58:10 +0000

Like most web developers and small businesses I’m always on the lookout for the best web services that offer great value for money and make our lives easier and more productive at the same time.

If you are looking to start your own web hosting services, ideal for designers, developers and entrepreneurs.

All come with 24/7 support and are UK hosted. Instant setup and activation.

Fasthosts – 6 months free

Save Â£300 normal price Â£50 per month
Unlimited reseller hosting, bandwidth, web space, and email
Host unlimited websites, email and domain names in UK data centre and resell everything under your brand name
Windows or Linux OS

www.fasthosts.co.uk/reseller

Poundhosts – 20% off virtual servers

Full administrator, remote desktop access
Provides both dedicated and virtual servers, and latest Windows server 2008 bringing cost of hosting on windows the same as renting a Linux box
From Â£24 per month

The resellers receive a special offer for 20% discount on services, for the life of the order. The discount code is PHCustVS which can be entered at the order stage.

www.poundhost.com

Heart – Host unlimited domains and web sites

Unlimited web space, data transfer, mail boxes, mysql, ftp accounts, sub domains, databases
White label system, fully brandable
Â£29.99 per month

www.heartinternet.co.uk

Streamline – 50% off most popular packages

Unlimited webspace, bandwidth, mailboxes
Includesecommerce web site builder
Â£2.99 per month – normally Â£5.99

www.streamline.net

Which one is the best for you?

You decide. As a guide, you would be best going for dedicated hosting for high traffic sites, and for solid site security.

The extra money you pay for some of the larger hosts is for the quality of support and response to hardware issues at their datacentres.

If you are just running small static sites or personal projects some of the smaller hosts and the smaller costs will be adequate.

In my opinion Poundhost has probably the best value for money on offering dedicated and scalable cloud based (virtual) servers which are very flexible in the features you can add and remove using a state of the art control panel / dashboard.

Disclaimer: I am not getting commission on this, you will see no affilliate codes here. I just want to give let you know the best offers out there at the moment, honest.