1. Don’t just focus on visitor numbers - although it might be the main statistic that you were looking for, visitor statistics does not really mean much. More important are the new visitor statistics

2. High Bounce rates need attention - When your website is getting over 40% bounce rate it will mean that you are doing something wrong. You can dig deeper in the bounce rate statistics to see what pages on your website are getting a higher bounce rate. With that information you can adjust those bounced pages to make them more accessible for  your visitors.

3. Analise the keywords that bring the visitors - Often enough you notice that the keywords that are getting traffic to your website are not the ones that you initially optimized for. This can be because of a trending topic that you wrote about in your news or blog posts or because that perticular page is better optimized than the other ones.

4. Analise your referrals - When talking about referrals in Google Analytics we mean the inbound links that come in to your website, if you have many referals from a certain website you want to make sure that your new blog posts or news items are mentioned again on that referral site so you can increase visitor numbers even more.

5.Build on previous success- If you have a blog post ,news item or certain page that is doing much better then the rest of your website pages you might want to create a follow up post on it and also add some more links towards other posts within that hot topic page.

The future of your driving experience will be pushed by that of your social network and the places they recommend and have seen (or are looking at in real time).

Take a look for yourself.

The original article can be found here.

Here are some more stars and there colors.

CPL is a leading well known provider of permanent, temporary and contract recruitment to companies across Ireland and Northern Ireland.  CPL also operates in the UK, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Spain.

Arekibo have recently worked in conjunction with CPL to redesign their new website.  The brief was to design a modern job search website with particular emphasis on the user experience.

Arekibo were commissioned to revamp the overall design and develop the new templates used in the new website.   Arekibo supported CPLs IT team to integrate the new templates and finalise the structure of the new site.

Services included: Web Design, Template Development, Online Branding, Usability review.

Visit the new website  - http://www.cpl.ie/

This is a rundown of the 10 most famous YouTube video’s that ended up being more famous that they bargained for from video remixes, sound boards to even mugs and shirts. These are the heroes of YouTube in no particular order.

Number 1: The Techno Viking

Number 2: Star wars Kid

Number 3: Charlie Bit me

Number 4: Ginger Kid

Number 5: Keyboard Cat

Number 6: Davids Dentist

Number 7: Bill O’Reilly

Number 8: Christian Bale

Number 9: Chocolate rain

Number10: Angry German Kid

Arekibo have continued their relationship with ESRI Ireland in redesigning and developing their new Corporate website.  ESRI Ireland is a partner of ESRI Inc which is the global leader in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

The website includes interactive flash on the homepage which leads the user into the main map sections of the site.   An interactive map section allows ESRI to incorporate their GIS maps into the site using iFrames.  This allows ESRI to demonstrate the advantages of using interactive maps.  Instead of using Google maps to show the locations of their offices, ESRI were also able to showcase and incorporate their own GIS maps.  The site also uses a selection of contact forms, support forms, booking forms and map submission forms. Information about their solutions is presented in a tabular format where ESRI can collate all information about their solutions into one tabbed page.  Case studies are an important part of this feature where ESRI can summarise case study information as well as a downloadable link to the full case study pdf.

To visit the website go to http://www.esri-ireland.ie

Now I don’t know much about Miley but I will not be contacting her. Why? Well I’d say she is very busy and I don’t think she would be as focused on delivering web services to us as she would be for Disney or some other TV network, so I think we will pass this time around.

So what’s the point of the email? We’ll as outsourcing becomes more prevalent it’s vital that companies who are looking to provide services make their proposition believable. Sending me an email signed James Bond, Lex Luther or even Miley Cyrus misses the point of that first introductory email. Do you want to develop a relationship with Arekibo? Well then give me your real name and we can take it from there.

For us to even consider doing anything with a company don’t keep sending us emails signed by a celebrity.

A message to the ‘Offshore/Outsourcing company’…don’t pretend to be someone you’re not…we won’t be flattered or find it interesting. If you’re going to engage with a company, make it believable and then we can see if we can develop a relationship. Plus don’t call our office and tell us your name is Miley Cyrus.

Email below…as you can see she is a very talented girl..

————————————
Dear Sir/Madam,

I am a web Designer, having a professional committed to deliver quality work on time, working offshore for many clients overseas at affordable hourly rates.

Our Expertise in Web Design below:

Web 2.0 Design

Great first impression -
Grabbing attention on your web page at first sight, retaining it throughout the website.

Good navigation and usability -
Showing your users the right content, making information easy to find.

Quick loading -
so your users don’t give up and go to a competitor.

Search engines to access your content -
Some designs are counter-productive and stop search engines from accessing your website.

Project your company image -
Your company’s character, branding and unique image to be portrayed on your web site.

Experienced for template skinning for costomization for Open Source below:

~ PSD to XHTML
~ PSD to Joomla
~ PSD to Drupal
~ PSD to CS Cart
~ PSD to Magento
~ PSD to Cube Cart
~ PSD to Oscommerce
~ PSD to Ecommerce
~ PSD to Wordpress

* Strong creative design skills
* Sound HTML knowledge
* CSS knowledge
* Good experience in web design
* Ability to incorporate pre-written Javascript into web pages
* Graphical user interface (GUI) design using HTML/XHTML/CSS
* Design & layout of e-mail newsletters
* Web standards compliance and basic accessibility issues

Expert
Xhtml Markup (W3C valid), table less using latest CSS starndards with SEO friendly html coding, content sepration and image replacement techniques.

- used to working to spec for PC and Mac platforms;
- well-versed in Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox;
- experienced with Joomla 1.5;
- Convert design (in PSD) into Joomla! 1.5 Template
- Setup / configure Joomla to meet client’s requirement
- Able to build Joomla Template (div and css based)

Have a nice day.

Thanks

Miley Cyrus

Instead of the more common “opt-in” model, Google pushed Buzz out to all Gmail users making users chose to “opt-out” if they were not interested. The complaint cites the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 and the suit has the potential to include all Gmail users — over 31 million users at the time of the Buzz release.

Watch this space folks, we’ll be keeping an eye on this over the coming months.

Our Google-love-o-meter is still in the red…

Read all about it from Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet

It’s like buses. Stuck with IE6 for years and then IE7, IE8, IE9…

While on that subject, here’s a great comic to explain why you should upgrade from IE6.

We’ll let Adobe do the talking - See how Arekibo Communications have used BC’s built-in eCommerce functionality in building the World Vision Ireland online store. They’ve taken the profitable “BC shortcut” by starting with BC’s extensive core eCommerce features, then extending the system via our powerful eCommerce APIs - reducing development time and costs, while delivering on the customer’s requirements.

http://businesscatalyst.com/v5/showcase/functionalities

The site was designed and developed by Arekibo using the Business Catalyst (GoodBarry) platform. The site uses Realex as the payment gateway and has been live since September 2009.

Congratulations to World Vision! Please support http://www.worldvisiongifts.ie/

Meh.

Why? Well for a start, I don’t appreciate that it has integrated itself into my Gmail and already had me follow people and allowed people to follow me, before I’ve even logged into my Gmail to investigate it! Also, it’s basically Twitter for Gmail. With pictures. And more inane stuff that I have no interest in reading.

Someone suggest a business case for this that hasn’t already been done and I’ll rethink my stance. But for now…

Meh.

I was on an excellent site today about wireframing called Wireframes Magazine. As I hadn’t been on it before I studied a number of articles and went back to a previous page of blog posts. When I got to the bottom of the page I was greeted with the following navigation system:

Wireframes Magazine Footer Navigation

Now, I actually put an awful lot of this down to over-analysis. Like the lift, rather than accept that the button dictates what I want to do, not what I want the lift to do, I have to consider the possiblity of both. Likewise with this navigation in Wireframes Magazine. While the titles of the links (older and newer entries) are blatently obvious, the directional indication of these links conflicts with the page numbers below. If I move to the (had to stop and think about it there again) left of the number 5, I go to the previous page (4) which are newer entries. But the arrow direction above this conflicts with this assesment and tells me they are older entries. Subconsciously then, if I want an older entry, I have found myself clicking on the link that says “Newer entries” based not on what the link says, but on the direction the arrow is pointing. Reading the links is clear, but when you subconsiously click links at the bottom of these pages, you rarely read them. You look for direction, not what they say. Your familiarity with web page design and direction systems is such that you will click links almost instinctively, rather than with proper conscious decision.

As there are no guidelines on how this should be implemented, everyone does it differently and I will tell you now that I find great difficulty sometimes in working out the logic of “previous” and “next” links on some blogs. Previous and Next what!? Does “Previous” mean the previous page I was on, or is it the previous page to this list of blog posts or does it mean that previous blog posts will be found at this link. Likewise does “Next” mean next page chronologically, does it mean next as in the order of pages (which would mean backwards in time) or does it mean next based on my current location.

Like I say, I am not alone in this “handicap.” If we must cater to the tiny number of people who browse websites without JavaScript and those that insist on using IE6, then this, surely, is a valid usability issue that must be raised. The answer to how this should work is that it should be simple. Links should be clear (in the example here, “Older Entries” and “Newer Entries” isn’t bad, it just visually conflicts with the list below) and should state Previous Posts, Older Posts or Newer Posts. They should never be coupled with the page list scale here, unless the arrows compliment the list. The combination of two alterative methods of getting to pages of posts is confusing and is enough to make me pause at the end of every page and have to think about where I want to go. And inevitably, I have clicked the wrong link more times than I would like, so frustration drives me away.

My advice in this matter is, as always, keep it simple. Steve Krug says it best with the title of his book, Don’t make me think! I could really do without being reminded of this issue I have every time I visit a blog. Directionally challenged people should be considered in designing these systems and in performing usability tests. But overall, use one system or the other, but never both.

Today Arekibo launched a new online presence for Clevamama. Clevamama are leaders in the design and development of baby products.

Arekibo worked in partnership with the Clevamama team to re-architect the new website, create a new online brand and integrate the website on the Sitefinity content management system. The website uses services such as Google maps which allow Clevamama to add their stockist locations across Ireland and the UK. A city search using Google maps lets the user to pinpoint exact location of stockists, address and contact details. The overseas stockist locator was developed in flash and flags stockists locations around the world. By clicking on a certain region of the world the flash map zooms in to pin point the exact country where the stockist is located. The user can click on the pin to get the overseas stockist details. Using the map users can zoom in and out of locations as they like.
The site also hosts a blog and a dedicated media section to publish Television and Radio clips relating to the Clevamama product suite.  Another great feature on the site is the Product details section, which includes downloadable images, relevant product testimonials and videos for each product in the Clevamama range. The website also includes a secure extranet, where Trade users can login and download information related to current products, training, product images and special offers.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Clevamama product range go to http://www.clevamama.com

Go Mocking Bird

The first web app is a wireframing tool from Go Mocking Bird (http://www.gomockingbird.com). It’s a tool that allows you to quickly produce informative and uselful UI wireframes of your site design for your clients.

Go Mocking Bird Wireframe

Go Mocking Bird comes with a tool box on the left which allows you to drag and drop elements on to the canvas of the page you are editing. A folder structure in the top left allows you to construct the sitemap of your site and have each page defined with it’s own mock up. This is great, as up until now, each different page would have required its own photoshop file or worksheet in a project folder. Now all the wireframes related to a project can be saved into that project.

The components that you can drag onto the canvas are all completely customisable, allowing you to move, align, resize and re-tag them at will. The current default tools are all that you could need for creating your basic layout, but there is an option to import your own components if needs be. This tool has already reduced the amount of time I have had to spend on wireframes, reducing a task which would have taken up to a full day for a project, down to a couple of hours. These are the kinds of time savings I like! Go Mocking Bird gives you the option to save the project online and to print the designs out as PDF/PNG. It does make hefty use of  the HTML5 canvas tag, so it will only work in Safari/Firefox/Opera. It doesn’t like IE at all…

Lovely Charts

The second web app is a flow chart tool called Lovely Charts (http://www.lovelycharts.com). This is a flow chart tool that allows you to quickly and intuitively create flow charts and processes for all and any process or applications you may require.

Lovely Charts Flow chart

 There’s a very informative video for this tool which gives an overview of its features, but once you get stuck in, you can start making very complex charts very quickly. The toolbox on the left of this app gives you options to create different types of charts, from flow charts like the one shown above, to extensive sitemaps. Again, custom controls allow you to create your own elements should you require.

This is really one of the best tools I have come across in a long time, which does what I need quite as succinctly and as well as I could require. Lovely Charts also gives you the option to save the project online and to print the designs out as JPG/PNG with quality and resizing controls.

Conclusion

Sure, Microsoft Visio, Adobe Illustrator and a host of others probably all do what these web apps have done for years, but there’s two major differences. The first is these are free. Totally free. Completely free. No cost, what-so-ever. The second is that, if say I decide to go an meet a client to work on a Wireframe or Process with them, then using proprietary software, if I don’t have a laptop with me with those installed, then I can’t guarantee I can do that. Everyone has a web browser and most people have web access, so why not shed the need to pay hefty license fees and the need to carry software around with me (seriously, how much do you use Visio that you need to buy a license for it?). I find these now an invaluable addition to my toolkit and like I say, have already found them to be worthwhile investments with regard to my time. The learning curve on both is both shallow and short. They’re very easy to pick up and start using straight away. Both require sign up, but again, the sign up forms are short and to the point. You really do feel like you are creating an account so that you can use the tools, not so that the respective company’s can contact you at a later point in the future.

I can’t really recommend either highly enough. I hope you’ll find the same.

Visit SiteInspire here.

(via swissmiss - thanks tina)

Check out this post from Web Designer Depot highlighting the good and bad practices of using drop shadow.

Having been born in the mid 70’s, I grew up with computers. I’ll never forget the first time I sat at a computer (my old school friend again!) and typed “dir” and marvelled at the list of files that grew in front of me. I might as well have been staring into a sea of thistles, but the spark was lit and I was hooked. In my secondary school, we had a fleet of IBM PS/2 8086 machines. DOS was booted off a 3.5″ disk. There was little or no hard-drive and minimal memory. About midway through secondary school, the school purchased an Apple Mac. I tried to use it once, but couldn’t really work out what was going on. It was my first time though seeing two things: a colour screen on a computer and a mouse.

Computers evolved quickly through the early 1990’s. Shortly before I finished school, my Dad and I went to buy our family’s first computer. It was a Wang 386 (can’t remember the model). It had a 40MB hard-drive, 2MB memory and ran Windows 3.1 on a lovely 15″ VGA colour monitor. It cost a fortune and we thought it rocked! I learned how to write batch files and about hardware and processes. All the while, Apple were there in the background, with amazing adverts and “Think Different” campaigns. But there appeared no reason to even look at them, sure hadn’t the PC won at this stage?

I went to college in Regional Technical College (RTC) Limerick (it changed to Limerick Institute of Technology while I was there), I excelled at C programming and loved it. I worked on PC’s all the way. The computer room in LIT had over 200 PC’s in it. By 1997, four PC’s had internet access. Email was limited to 3rd and 4th year students and only on request (and approval).  Meanwhile, Apple had fired and re-hired Steve Jobs (bought NeXT). We were on the cusp of the first iMac. Tim Berners-Lee had ironically used a NeXT machine in CERN in 1991 to come up with a thing called an “Internet”…

January 5th 1998: Michael Cunningham started a “Teach yourself HTML” weekly slot in the Irish Times. I devoured it. I created webpages and sites like there was no tomorrow. I raided the LIT library for everything on HTML. I emailed Liz Castro and got a reply! It was early days. Apple in the meantime were releasing the clamshell, briefcase like iBook. The age of Apple “iWant” was born.

Once I left college and joined the workforce, thankfully in web development, my interest in the technology grew with it. JavaScript exploded, CSS erupted! Flash… urgh. Flash was terrible, but then we were all still on dial-up connections. I shared an office with the “web graphic designer,” an NCAD graduate, who had brought his own Mac in to assist his designs. I was exposed to and learned Adobe Photoshop 5 on the PC. Still the Mac sat in the corner. I picked the mouse up once, laughed at it’s single button and put it down… back on the left hand side of the keyboard where the left handed designer had left it. The obvious advantage immediately escaped me.

I later gained employment in (or should that be “as”) the web development department of an online marketing company. I led the web development team and started down the long road of cross-browser compatibility, accessibility and usability. We bought in an iMac so that we could see how sites would look on the Mac. Looking after the Mac became a part of my job. Again (like so many things at the time), my dismissal of the Apple Mac as nothing more than a graphics tool was derogatory. With the end of the Celtic Tiger years and my subsequent unemployment my short sightedness (in all matters) was coming to a close.

I took on a part-time degree in Information Technology at Dublin Institute of Technology. I purchased a number of mp3 players (anything but Apple), convinced that someone was going to do it better than this new fangled iPod. When the iPod Nano came out and after returning my third iRiver, I succumbed. I have never been so happy with a retail decision.

A photographer friend of mine purchased a PowerBook on my recommedation that he use Apple. Never had I seen such a beautiful piece of hardware and never had I wanted one as much! I knew now what my savings were going to be used for! Friends of mine bought houses, other friends bought cars. I bought myself a brand spanking new top-of-the-range white MacBook. I loved it. The more I used it, the more simple it became to use. I kept a PC at home for a long time on the basis that “the software doesn’t exist to do the work I want to do on my Mac.” The PC was switched off in June 2007 and hasn’t been turned on again since. A cycling accident in January 2009 meant the end of my beloved Mac. The screen cracked from side to side, it became unusable. A generous family loan allowed me to buy myself a brand spanking new top-of-the-range unibody MacBook in April of this year. I still love it, more than ever. I have also now found all the software equivalents for the Mac that I personally need. I have even bought software for my Mac. Seriously! Real money!

After Christmas I hope to buy the new iMac 27″, possibly a low-end notebook for my wife and an iPhone in February. I am, as you would say, a convertee.

So why the necessity for the overlong personal history?

I read an article lately stating how Apple iPhone users suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. A comment below the article provides stark evidence that it is indeed true by rushing to the defence of the iPhone. I wanted to write this to say that while I agree 100% with the article, there are other reasons that people choose to use Apple.

We [insert product name] users have bought into the idea of the product. We like what it is and what it does. We like how it looks in our hand/on our shoulder/in our driveway/on our heads. When we buy a product, we do so (mostly) after careful consideration.

I have used many phones and have not used one that does what I like as much as the iPhone (I currently own two Nokia phones and an iPod nano. Putting them all into one pocket would seem a logical progression). So I like it and I want it. I also know the Apple calendar, so I’ll wait until after their usual upgrades and releases in January.

I have used many computers but I find the Mac pleasant to use and simple to understand. Sure, there was a learning curve, but I have curved and I have learned. For me, Windows 7 is the new black magic (and based VEEEEEEEEEERY closely on Mac OSX - no animosity here, I SWEAR). I had friends over for dinner recently. I informed them of my wife and I’s decision to buy a 27″ iMac on the basis that we need a home computer (my wife uses my laptop when I’m not) and we don’t currently have or want a TV, so this is a nice compromise between a home computer and a large tv with dvd player (the current price is of great benefit). My friend growled at me “but it’s an Apple”. I growled back “you drive a Citroen!!!” Each to their own. We will also probably buy a small MacBook for my wife. That, my dear readers, is an indulgence!

My point is that Apple answers all my desires as a company, as a brand and as a product. I know what to expect, when to expect it and how to deal with it when it happens. Good design, nice interface, great usability, easy setup: check, check, check, check. Apple does it all. Toshiba mostly does it too for PC laptops. I have spent too long though tinkering with and toying with and tweaking PC’s to care anymore. I still use them, almost every single day, but when I go home, I turn on my Apple, listen to the (Wall-E recharge signal inspiring) boot sound and do whatever it is I want to do. But Apple is only a company, only a brand and only has a set of products, in the same way that Ford, Coca-Cola, Cadbury’s, Epson, Nokia, Persil, Hoover and Google are all companies, all brands and all products. Apple do what they do, (objectively) maybe no better or worse than anyone else out there who produces smartphones, computers, operating systems or hardware. If Apple had gotten there first, would we still feel that Microsoft and the PC makers of the world were the underdogs? If business had chosen to adopt the Lisa over the PC, would this animosity still exist between the two nerd-camps? You can bet your life it would.

And still at the end, neither would be right.

Happy New Apple Year!!!

In the first part of this investigation, we looked at the cause of the problem. In the second part, we looked at some simple solutions. But of course, in the final part, we must look at prevention. Nothing beats protecting oneself from harm, than preventing ourselves from ending up in harms way. There are other reasons we should look at this prevention and some of these, you may not have thought of yet.

We spoke about being vigilant with regard to looking for our online information and changing/updating this information to protect outselves. We have a second task as well as our own protection which is to inform and educate others of these same facts. One cannot expect privacy from other people’s naivity. This also goes for educating our young. We will have children, who in 10-15 years time, will only know of an online world. They will not know what it was like to be disconnected. And we will be the “old-people-who-never-understand!” We must not treat the online environment how it is now or as how it has been, but more as it will be. We need to inform our children, new users of the future about ways our information can be compromised. The introduction of RFID biometric identification into passports and ID cards was proven (at a conference of Federal Agents in the States of all people!) to have created a new, easily accessible way to steal other people’s information. If you think about it, you’re carrying a document which has all your personal information in one place with you, every time you travel. And what is rumoured to be included in the next version of the iPhone? Yup, you guessed it… an RFID reader! That such an insecure format has been adopted for such an important document beggars-belief, but hopefully (in light of the proven insecurity), this will change in the near future. This is a prime example of a lack of forward thinking. It is this forward thinking we must instill in the next generation as their access and method of access online increases every day.

One should also be aware that the alter-ego you have, can also be used (and already is used) for sinister reasons amongst our children and our loved ones. In adopting an alter ego, it is important that we educate people as to why we are making this choice about our online identities and provide them with ways to recognise who we are. You can (in fact you should) share that alter-ego with your friends. You should make people aware of your changes that matter to you. Otherwise, this can be seen to be a sinister act. This is not the reason we want to do this, but we should be aware that there are those out there that do. Educating our children to recognise that, not everyone is telling the truth, especially online, is vitally important. I have a personal agenda against allowing anyone under a certain age use social networking media unsupervised, but this comes from a background where “social networking” meant meeting a load of mates outside Todds (now Brown Thomas) in Limerick at 3pm on a Saturday! Again, we are thinking for the future (not looking back on how things used to be) by protecting our children in this way and by informing them of what to expect.

Facebook’s recent privacy changes are, as all things American tend to be, unfortunately opt-in. There are clever devices used which make it a chore to change one’s details (for example, it is not possible to apply a global change to your privacy settings, it is necessary to go through each individually as well as having the “View only by me” setting lost within the “Custom” settings), but my advice would be to stick with it and if your online privacy is really important to you, you really shouldn’t mind (as I mentioned previously, my wife’s profile was completely invisible. When she selected in the new Facebook privacy settings to “Keep all old settings,” her profile has started to appear again in searches. She has now deactivated her account).

I was recently contacted by a client who, after removing a PDF from their website, was still able to find the document by doing a Google Search for it. Someone within the organisation had added the PDF to their Google Docs and made it public. Unfortunately, clients don’t often see the issues as being internal. Again, only vigilance, awareness and education can prevent against this occuring again in the future.

As we continue to exist and grow online and as our lives become more and more inextricably linked to our online activites, the only way we can continue to protect ourselves is by forward planning. As we sign up for that wishlist, who will be able to see our information? As we fill in that form, what is the purpose of the requested information? Only our own awareness can protect us in the future. Ignoring this leaves us exposed and with no one to blame but ourselves should our privacy become compromised.

I hope this investigation has led someway to helping you, as a reader, understand the gravity of our own control of our online presence and the information we give out with it. If you have any further queries or feedback, I’d love to hear from you.

Oh, and have a Happy (Private) Christmas!

One of the tricks I have discovered came from a simple realisation. I realised that certain sites I used did not rely on my providing true information. As long as my email address/username and password were real, the rest of the information was irrelevant. It is often required by websites for accounts but more often times, it doesn’t really matter. Think of YouTube, Vimeo, etc. What you need for these is quite simple. Any super-hero worth their salt had one and the reasons they did was the same reasons we should have them. Alter-egos allow us to protect our true identity online.

I have created an alter-ego from of my ancestors names. I have used it now for Vimeo, Twitter, YouTube and any unimportant blogs or forums I may contribute to or comment on. I am still trying to work out exactly how my wife has managed to make her Facebook account completely invisible, but once I have worked out, I’ll be applying the same. I have also deleted all unimportant social networking accounts (Bebo and MySpace). I am contemplating setting up a LinkedIn account based on the current indications that many business users source and contact new partners through it, but I need to investigate further the privacy settings of it before that. 

In short, where possible, I have removed any information that I don’t want anyone to even accidentally gain access to. A quick search shows that a number of friends have open Bebo, Facebook and MySpace accounts, through which my name pops-up, which justifies this decision.

One thing to understand is I am approaching this retrospectively. There are things I have put my name to over my 13 years online that now, I really wish I could remove. Many of you out there will be in a similar position so this is a project you can approach over a period of time. Set yourself a target that by a certain date in 2010 you will have removed as much of your online identity as you possibly can and stick to it. Make it a New Year’s resolution!

Being vigilant, regards being aware of the information you are giving out, as well as searching to ensure that your information is still safe. New sites pop-up all the time which make efforts to gather information about users. In conversation with an old friend from school he pointed out two recent events which had given him cause for concern. Based in Cambridge, his girlfriend had added her CV to the “Cambridge Network” in the hope of finding work. As a result, a quick search of Google with her name brings up a first page listing which gives her full home address and phone number. The second event occured when he did a “whois” of his domain name. To his surprise, his full contact details were available within the “whois.” Most domain services allow the user to turn this off, but many domain owners fail to do this. Again, the information maintained within the domain lookup information is not really pertinent (unless you’ve stolen the domain!) so if it’s your’s, make it up! He made the point that often, especially where billing is concerned, we see this address as a billing address and feel that we should provide the correct information. Check this type of thing carefully and don’t believe everything that you read.

(I was going to link “an old friend from school” to my friend’s site, but after writing the following points, I thought that might give too much away about him! It is also our responsibility to protect the identity of others. Think about the fact that if the information you are going to put online about someone else is not information you would like someone to put up about you, then don’t do it.)

In the final part of this investigation, I’ll look at how we should think about these factors in the future and what they mean to us. I promise it won’t be as long for the last part!

Check out Part III here.

Arekibo have continued their partnership with Ernst and Young. With the development of the 2010 budget Tax Calculator

http://www.ey.com/IE/en/Services/Tax/State-and-Local-Tax/Budget-mini-site—Tax-calculator

Click on the above link to see how much you can’t spend in the next 10 days!

Enjoy!

ENQA-VET are the European Network for Quality Assurance in Vocational Education and Training. The Guidelines website is a resource that ENQA-VET have commissioned Arekibo to develop to provide information on research gathered during their 2008-2009 work programme.

Arekibo visualised the ‘Building Block’ idea proposed by ENQA-VET into a playful interactive Flash feature on both the homepage and Guidelines page. The theme of Building blocks is carried throughout the website.

The website has been developed using the WordPress CMS. Arekibo provided the following services to the ENQA-VET project team: Web Design, Web Development, Flash Development.

The website is viewable at the following link: http://guidelines.enqavet.eu

Magee Clothing are an established Irish company who offer a timeless yet contemporary look. Their collections range from formal Business attire to a casual Weekend look.
Arekibo have recently launched a new fully content managed eCommerce website for Magee Clothing. Key features of the website include an extensive product catalogue showcasing collections for both Men and Women, dynamic Flash banners and an interactive timeline.

Arekibo engaged with Magee in an extensive consultation process to develop their internet strategy and information architecture. Arekibo also provided web design and development services.

The website is viewable at www.mageeireland.com

example here… Stunning is all I can come out with to comment on this.

http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/

They do it again! I love it. Now if only it was available on the iPhone…

…and I had an iPhone.

While choosing a project for my degree, I toyed with the idea of creating a plugin for Firefox which would allow developers to include their own fonts in stylesheets and webpages by using an attribute I called “lfont” (live-font). Once I started to examine the implications of copyright and licensing with regard to the fonts, as well as the requirements for the different operating systems to implement, I quickly moved on to something else. Thankfully, someone else took up the mantle long before me and this is on the cusp of becoming a new standard.

The “@font-face” attribute was created by (prepare to be shocked) Microsoft for Internet Explorer 5.5.

That’s right, 5.5!!!

Webkit (the backbone of Safari and Chrome) has supported it for years as has Firefox. Opera is reportedly working on integrating it into it’s next release supports it since version 10 and Chrome (though built on Webkit) has resisted the integration of “@font-face” until lately (as of 18th Nov 2009, it is in dev builds and due later in the year). “@font-face” effectively lets us, the developers, use any font we like (within reason, more on this later) on any webpage and have it display properly for the user, regardless of the fonts they have installed on their machines. This applies cross-browser, cross-platform and cross-time!

So why the sudden furore? It actually hasn’t been that sudden and only recently became a furore. With the advent of HTML5 and CSS3, a big push has come from the development community to provide a standard which allows for the use of unique fonts. While there have been Flash based solutions available for a few years (sIFR, Curon, etc), these do exactly what they say on the tin, which is require the user to have Flash installed. Try telling that to someone on a mobile device. They are also cumbersome and difficult to implement. Of course, this can be done, but without the ease and universality of “@font-face”. One of the most endearing points of “@font-face” is that, though not exactly implemented in a standardised manner at the start, it is now pretty much across the board on all browsers and will be in the future, especially once CSS3 is ratified.

Implementation

It’s important to mention a little about the implementation of “@font-face”. The following code shows an example of how to declare a font in your run-of-the-mill css file:

@font-face {
  font-family: ‘Graublau Web’;
  src: url(‘GraublauWeb.eot’);
  src: local(‘Graublau Web Regular’), local(‘Graublau Web’), url(‘GraublauWeb.otf’) format(‘opentype’);
}

(special thanks to Paul Irish for this one)

The above code allows the developer to use the ‘Graublau Web’ font within their web templates and not have to worry about whether the user has this font installed or not. Paul has two excellent articles on the matter:

http://paulirish.com/2009/bulletproof-font-face-implementation-syntax/
http://paulirish.com/2009/fighting-the-font-face-fout/

Both of which relate to the more specific implementation of “@font-face” and optimising it for different browsers (there are, of course, a number of tweaks that need to be made to accommodate each browser’s nuances).

None of this goes to explain though, why this “@font-face” solution has not garnered more notice until now. The reason for this is actually nothing to do with its implementation, but all to do with its support; namely, the fonts. A typeface, when it is designed, remains a product of the company that designed it and that company holds the license. Usually these fonts are licensed to providers or designers who purchase them for use in their print media. Obviously, websites are not print media, so the use of the font is not limited to one intance but multiple instances (one for every visitor to every page of every website in the world EVER!). The problem with creating a standard like “@font-face” before is that to work, the browser downloads the font from the server and runs it on the client machine. The key word in this statement is “Download” and the one which has caused all the licensing problems until now. As a result, “@font-face” can only support free and open-type fonts (Microsoft’s “.eot”, Open-type “.otf” and True-type “.ttf”). Chrome battled hard to have “.svg” formed as a new standard but fought against a growing tide and has now turned face to support the above formats. The beauty of the browser support is that, if an older version of the browser doesn’t support “@font-face”, the font will revert to whatever substitute you have suggested… but you’d need to go to IE5 for that to matter!

What has finally added to this new momentum is the provision of free and open font faces in libraries across the web. And not just one or two libraries. The number grows daily and already the number of actual fonts available online is in its thousands. While you may not find the exact font you are looking for by name, you can be sure there is a new free font out there which is very, very close and will certainly work in place of the one you chose.

This is a very exciting prospect for future web site designs. We will be able to use any font we want in any size and variation and will ultimately lead to more interesting and more stylish designs. I look forward to the implementation of it and seeing it grow and spread across the web over the coming years.

Further reading:

The @font-face website: http://www.font-face.com
Web Fonts wiki: http://webfonts.info
Mozilla Implementation Tutorial: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/beautiful-fonts-with-font-face/
Paul Irish (very authoritive knowledge on web typography. Name’s misleading - he’s not actually Irish!): http://paulirish.com
Open Font Library (for finding fonts): http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/Web_font_linking_with_@font-face
W3C CSS3 Font support draft (long, but if you have the time, interesting: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-fonts/#the-font-face-rule

I’d advise to search the online font libraries (like All Fonts, Font Fonts, Dafont, etc) for free fonts that can be used as web fonts. When you explore, you’ll be amazed what’s available to you.

In all seriousness though, I had quite forgotten that the end of 2009 marks the end of the first decade of this third millenium of our Gregorian calendar. One would naturally think that that should be next year, but 2010 is the first year of the “Tens” (or is that “Teens”… and will the 20’s roar again? ) I digress.

In light of this and as it’s the start of December, with the new year (and decade) on the horizon, there are lists everywhere. Pitchfork have the top albums/songs/artists of the decade. Empire magazine have the top movies. The Irish Times have the top everything (books, albums, movies, plays, recipes, blogs, style of socks, etc) and this is only the start. I’m sure we won’t be able to pick up a bumper issue of the RTÉ Guide without finding a top 10 list of something.

My problem is I can’t remember what was great last week, let alone at the start of 2000. For New Years eve of the new millenium, I was sitting on the roof of a friend of mine’s house in Århus, Denmark, watching the fireworks, drinking champagne. We celebrated the New Year again an hour later to compensate for the time difference between where we were and where we came from. Everything else between then and now has been a bit of a blur so in no particular order, here’s MY top 10 list of all I can remember of the past 10 years! (For added benefit, I’m going to leave out everything to do with the internet, web design and development)

1. Sigur Ros - without their music, nothing would be the same
2. J.R.R. Tolkein and Peter Jackson - they said it couldn’t be done
3. iPod - being able to carry all that music in your pocket is so much better. No music, no life.
4. Digital photography - it’s so easy now. Millions of pictures on a hard drive, none of them ever looked at again!
5. Digital media - not technically the internet, but being able to acquire high quality movies and music without leaving the house and without having shelves and shelves of plastic cases, is a godsend
6. Travel - still not free, but so much cheaper than it was
7. Mobile phones - popular since 1996 but really came into their own in this decade. I mean, who REALLY makes arrangements to meet outside Trinity tomorrow at 3pm anymore?
8. The Grand Slam - 61 years but we won it again (only winning the Rugby World Cup in 2011 would top 2009 as a rugby year!)
9. Marriage - it happened and it’s great
10. Peace on Earth - there’s 29 days left!!! It could happen!!!

(I didn’t realise how difficult it would be to make this list without mentioning jQuery, Google, PHP, Wordpress, Facebook, Wikipedia, MooTools, broadband, Apple Macs, MySpace, blogs, browsers, Joomla, eBay, external harddrives, memory capacity and speeds, chipsets, Intel, grid design, Photoshop, CSS, large monitors, ASP.NET, RSS,  XHTML,   Bebo, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn… phew!)

So while you’re making that list for Santa (27inch iMac please Santa… please), what makes your Top 10 of the last 10 years?

He says…”im not the referee… but if i hurt some one im sorry”

Well, “if” he hurt anyone could be debated….

Good luck Thierry…

So whats the point of this post…you only have to watch twitter to see the anger and reaction about Henry’s actions. Thierry Henry, Ireland, France and World Cup are currently in the top 6 trending topics on twitter with the majority of tweets taking a swipe at Henry.

Video’s and photos have been  made available in a matter of minutes to show Henry’s actions.

Follow the tweets (maybe abuse or should I say feedback…)

Thierry Henry -  Ireland - France

People are also asking us to boycott Gillette who sponsor Henry. Will his actions damage his sponsorship deal? (that’s another posts for another day)

Lets wait and see if Henry uses his twitter account to give a response to his actions…follow Thierry Henry at http://twitter.com/Thierry_Henry/ I’d say he will.

Surprisingly Henry follows 4 people on twitter…one being the other Hand of God fellow Diego Maradonna…

I’ll say no more.

Enjoy!

Part I

This post is about the problem. Protecting our privacy online is a problem. We use the web more and more for everything we do, so protecting ourselves (where possible) is something we should be aware of. Equally as important is the understanding that we are aware of how our privacy can be compromised.

Part II

This post is about (trying to find) the solution. There really isn’t any solution other than vigilence, but I’ll provide a number of hints and tips as to how simple steps you can take will at least protect some of your information.

Part III

This post is about evaluating the fall out and how it will affect our future privacy. As spiders and crawlers become more and more pervasive, how can the way we think about our online selves protect us from our own mistakes.

The influencing factors that I mentioned before are the following:

• This post about Google trying “not to cross that creepy line”
• This post about Facebook Groups being hacked
• A colleague’s Hotmail account being hacked
• A quick Google search for my name

So let’s get down to it. Imagine you are meeting a friend in a cafe. Let’s say you have a bag with you (let’s not get sexist here). This bag is made of clear plastic and in it, clear to the world to see, is a letter with your name, address and personal email address clearly visible at the top of it. Stuck to the front of that is a post-it with a list of the CDs, DVDs and books you would like for Christmas. Beside the post-it is a ridiculous photo of you taken on a stag/hen party “wearing” a pint of beer. And beside that is your company business card with all your details of your place of employment, including your position within the company. For good measure, let’s say your mobile phone is in the bag, with the bluetooth switched on and unlocked.

You sit for an hour and drink coffee with your friend, while every and anyone who sits at the table opposite can clearly see all your information and copy what they like from it while you are relaxing and chatting. It’s a horrific notion really and if someone said to you that this had happened to them, you would laugh and say, how could you be so stupid! The stark reality is that this bag doesn’t only exist, there are millions of them around the world. Most people in the developed world have one and most of them don’t even know they are carrying one around with them. No prizes for realising that this bag is the internet and rather than your information being available in a cafe for an hour, it’s available online 24/7 all year round.

We as a planetary population are very stupid with our personal information. We are inherently trustful of the web and readily give up our secrets to it. We rehash and reuse the same information again and again and again. Let me give you a quick example; I guarantee that 50% (at least) of you reading this post use the same password for your email account as you do for your Facebook account. If you have more than one free email account (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc) I guarantee that you use the same password to access both. I agree, this is a grandiose generic statement, and I still don’t know what your password is, but the fact that I know your habits (and those of millions of others) shows that the way we exist online is naive and unprotected. The majority of people with Facebook accounts have not switched on their security settings and the large proportion of their profile information (Facebook does apply some of it’s own security checks to protect your most personal information unless you are that persons friend) is available for the world to see. All those photos of that holiday in Spain are there for your Boss and co-workers to see. If I can access your Facebook account, I can find out alot of things about you. Your birthday, your place of birth, possibly your mother’s maiden name… all standard personal information required by your bank, mobile phone company, isp, etc. If this doesn’t scare you, then you might not like to know that in Ireland, you can apply for a copy of your birthcert online using only the information above. I need to provide no further proof of identity and the birthcert gets sent to me in the mail. And if I have a copy of your birthcert… well, you get the general idea. For those of you that think I might have already used this deceptive practise for my own devious means, I needed a copy of my birthcert recently. I could tell you why, but then you would know I was married… DOH! See how easy it is… The collective small pieces of information we give away online through our various profiles put us at risk.

Of course, nothing can protect us if one of these large corporations like Google or MSN get hacked and our details are stolen. This is malicious and unpreventable by us. What I AM talking about though is the small snippets of information we wilfully give to the web, which when collected as a whole, can be used to acquire quite a large picture of our lives. Let me give you another example and for this I’ll need a volunteer… No one… ok well I’ll use myself.

A quick Google search of my name revealed the following:

• I have my own web site on my own domain
• I have an active interest in photography
• I use an Apple computer
• The type of camera I use is mentioned in a photography forum
• I have a Facebook account
• I have a Twitter account
• I have a Vimeo account
• I have a Wikipedia account
• I have wishlists on Amazon
• I have written reviews on Amazon
• I write on blogs
• I comment on other blogs and forums
• I have worked as a developer for quite a while
• I was a rock climber competing in the Irish Bouldering League

Now those of you out there reading this will think, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? You’ve just consolidated all your personal information into one post!!!” Well, not entirely. The majority of this can be gleaned from the first page of a Google Search. And the majority of it I’ll be getting rid of over the coming weeks (and I’ll show you how I intend to do this in the next post). While I’m not too concerned over the information that is available as my Facebook account is locked down, I AM a bit concerned over the small amounts of information available from various sources. If I posted on Twitter for example, that I was going on holiday tomorrow (as people often do, coupled with their zealous need to rub it in over friends on Facebook; if their Facebook account isn’t secure then…), taking into account the second and third point on my list above, I’m inviting potential thieves to break in, telling them the type of haul they might expect to get and telling them approximately how much time they have to do it. This, for my part, is plain stupid and I deserve all that I get.

While the likes of Google Dashboard provide us with ways to lock down our private information, this is one service of many. Lots of us don’t use Google’s services, so it is up to our own vigilence to protect ourselves. I’ll go through the details of methods of protecting ourselves further but for the moment, take a look at this check list:

• Do you use the same password for more than one service (email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo, etc)?
• Do you use Facebook? Have you applied the security/privacy settings available to you?
• Do you use your personal email address on forums where you comment or answer questions?
• Do you have wishlists/playlists on Amazon, CD-Wow, Play.com, Last.fm, etc?
• If you search for your name in a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc), are you surprised by the number of results you get that relate directly to you? Did you find profiles generated completely automatically (Zoominfo, Lookupanyone, etc)? Did you find your Facebook page? Could you access it without having to log-in?
• Do you use different passwords for the different services you use? Do you change these passwords regularly?

The yes or no answers to the above should be self evident as to how safe or insecure your private information is. In the next post I’ll look at how we can tighten up our own personal privacy and a quick trick I decided to use to help protect me and my information. But for now, just have a think about your own personal information and how much of it is available online.

Check out Part II here and Part III here.

Call me skeptical, but I don’t see this taking off. While the Internet Archive requires no input from site owners themselves, and at times, while a useful resource, is more often used as a curiosity, I can’t see web site owners willingly filing away older versions of their spanky new web site, just so that some interested Future Joe might fancy seeing what their site looked like in 2009. I also can’t see many service providers accommodating the required server updates for free. It’s an interesting idea, but nothing that the Internet Archive doesn’t do effectively enough on it’s own already. Who knows, they could prove me wrong, but for now, I don’t really need to visit any older version of a web site enough to require this service. I also wonder, as it makes use of the date and time element of the HTTP request, whether this is something that Google will be considering as part of their SPDY research project, and will it remain part of the protocol. Only time (no pun intended) will tell.

The interesting thing about the blog post is Google’s “outreach” to the wider developer community at large. They’re working on creating a new protocol to more or less replace the ‘HTTP’ from 1996. I’m a bit unsure as to the implications of this in the future (will we eventually be dropping the http:// from our web addresses in our browsers?) but it seems that Google is all about making this experience faster through their research project called ‘SPDY’ (pronounced ’speedy’). To quote from their blog:

We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP. HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web’s tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.

It all sounds very promising. There are those of course that would think that with the imminent release of Google Chrome OS, the beta release of their Chrome browser for Mac and Linux due and Google Android proving a strong contender in the mobile market, that Google are not happy to sit on their laurels and are intent on taking over the computing world. This ‘open-source’ process seems to be a good way of keeping the monopoly watchdogs at bay, but does anyone else get the creepy feeling Google are being allowed too much freedom? Personally, I think a tipping point is on the way. Whether Google pushes over that tipping point and more to the point, gets pulled up for it, remains to be seen.

You have your favorite bands, and there is content on YouTube from all of them, maybe even entire albums worth of live performances or straightforward bootleg uploads. You can laboriously search YouTube and create Playlists,  or you can use TubeRadio.fm.

The Layout is reminiscent of iTunes, and it allows you to enter an artist, band and pull together videos from that selection and quickly add to playlists. The real killer feature is the Discography search which allows you to scan all of YouTube for entire albums worth of songs. If your selection is a reasonable one, you will get 70%-90% success and before you know it you’re playing an impressive playlist with the best visualiser available anywhere - the video content on YouTube. Put it on full screen for ‘party mode’ and let it play from end to end.

You can share your playlists or browse other shared playlists. Last but not least, the whole service is powered by Last Fm which presumably does all the heavy lifting when it comes to taking the meagre information provided by YouTube and relating it all back to albums as well as making recommendations about similar artists etc.

The following article conducted by Forrester Research on behalf of Akamai provides excellent insight into what customers think and for example 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less and 40% would abandon if it takes more than 3 seconds.

Anyway we would recommend you read the article on the Get Elastic site - Every Second Counts: How Website Performance Impacts Shopper Behavior

We’ll let Matt Cutts, from Google fill you in.

The second thing actually scares me just a little and this is how much Google already knows about me. As someone that accepted online tools, cloud facilities and digital formats of media very early on, I suppose I can’t really complain. Neither am I so scared that someone might find too much out about me (the information is certainly personal, but not something you couldn’t find out using other, less digital means, anyway). But as time goes on and I use more and more online tools, “Big Brother” will certainly know more and more about me. I suppose the causes for concern about this are peripheral to the function of Google Dashboard, but maybe it’s introduction and uptake will indicate to online users just how exposed they allow themselves to be.

I can feel a post on online privacy brewing… Check back soon!!!

Happy anniversary Sesame Street! Oh, the blogger is a person in your neighbourhood…

This post was brought to you by the letter T and the number 40!

Update: It may be necessary to visit Google UK (http://www.google.co.uk) from Ireland to see these doodles. I’ve also just discovered it’s the 20th Anniversary of Wallace and Gromit!!! Cracking stuff!!!

Arekibo are delighted to announce that two of our clients have been shortlisted for the Golden Spider Awards

• Best e-business Website (exclusive web business) - Ordnance Survey of Ireland -  www.osi.ie
• Best Entertainment & Games Related Website -  Today FM - www.todayfm.com

Arekibo have also been nominated for the Best Web Design & Development Agency for the fifth year in a row.

Awards to be announced on the 19th November. Find out more at www.goldenspiders.ie

Coming out of that meeting it has been agreed to to allow non-Latin-script web addresses, that is set to change the way to make the web more accessible to all users of the world wide web. Making the web truly world wide.
I heard about this while watching a news report from Korea where the reporter was in a class with Korean pensioners who were trying to learn how to use the internet. They were trying to recall their knowledge of western characters from their school days.

I understand that they are trying to iron the technical details of how this would be implemented and the aim is to have it in place by the end of 2010.

According to Rod Beckstrom - CEO of ICANN “This is one of the most exciting developments for the users of the Internet globally in years”

If anyone else knows more about the details of this please feel free to comment.

October 29th was when one message was sent from one computer to another… the message consisted of one word with three letters …. “Log” but the computer crashed and only “LO” was received.

More information is available on the First Computer to Computer Message

Of course you can watch  video  about the 40th anniversary of the net:

Here is some information about the daddy of the internet Leonard Kleinrock

Wonder where the party is?

There may now often be a link under the image that says, “Find similar images.” When you click that link, Google will show you images that look similar to the image you were looking at.

This could be useful if you are looking for something in a hurry …

It will be possible to search for what people are saying all over the web about leading news topics, such as celebrity, political or sports news to name just a few.

The service is still in Beta and I must admit that any of the keywords that I put in came back with no results and I used some from the “Hottest Topics on Twitter” …. time will tell

Check out Bing Twitter Search for yourself and let me know how you get on.

Good Luck….

According to the U2.com website - it’s the first time a show of this size will be streamed live.

U2 are known for being the first to embrace technologies if memory serves me correct 1-2 of their singles were available with the original iPod? I know someone will correct me if I am wrong….and please do.

The show will be streamed across five continents. It will be available in the usual YouTube way, as video-on-demand, following two full replays - after the live stream - on both U2.com and You Tube.
Anyway I look forward to it…. as I didn’t get to see them in Dublin this year….

Arekibo working in partnership with IBEC has developed a new website which is aimed supporting graduates to improve their skills and help them initiate their careers by offering relevant work experience opportunities.

The design caters for two audiences - employers and and graduates. The challenge was to create two distinctly branded areas of the website whilst maintaining a uniform look and feel.

Arekibo provided IBEC with web strategy and front end design services.

The Graduate website can be found at http://www.ibec.ie/GradLink

The campaign raised $70,000.

Check out http://beatcancereverywhere.com/ and the Independent article

Now, come to the rescue, is the multiplatform Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com/). This is a small application that you install on all your computers (even on your iPhone… if you have an iPhone… it is accessible through other mobile devices providing you have web access on them) which creates a centralised cloud based folder. Adding a file into the Dropbox folder on your work desktop makes that file immediately available to you on any of your other computers. There is no syncing required as a change made to a local file is registered by the folder and automatically synchronised with each of your other machines. My personal computer is a Mac and using this system I can drop a word document/photoshop file/php snippet of code into my Dropbox folder, come into work and open the Dropbox folder on my PC desktop and the files are there for me to access. Simple. No having to get the latest version or making sure they are sync’ed. They’re just there. There is also a “Public” sub folder and by dropping a file in here, I can get a web URL for the file, in case I need to email it or IM it to someone who doesn’t have a Dropbox account. This is a much more convenient way of transfering larger files to clients than email.

Of course there is a sign up process, but this is one of the most painless I have come across in a long time as the signup is part of the installation process. Your account is free up to 2GB of storage and there are pay monthly options to avail of more space (2GB is fine for what I typically need). There’s a really good tour on the site too so you can have a quick look and see if this will do it for you.

I have to say from a personal perspective, this is one of the most useful applications to come out in years. I can’t recommend it highly enough!

Check it out at: http://www.getdropbox.com

Arekibo ranked at number 37 in the 2009 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Ireland. Rankings are based on average percentage revenue growth over five years.

The Fast 50 programme, now in its tenth year in Ireland, ranks the fastest-growing technology companies in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This year, there are 14 companies from Northern Ireland in the ranking. The average growth rate of the Fast 50 companies named in this year’s ranking is 789%.

Announcing the winners of the Technology Fast 50 programme, David O’Flanagan, Partner, Deloitte, Dublin said: “The aim of this year’s Fast 50 was to showcase the resilience and determination of Ireland’s indigenous technology industry and this has certainly been achieved. Our winners show that they are rising above the challenging business environment and are proof that inventive companies will continue to be successful.”

The awards took place in Clontarf Castle on October 15th. Industry figures speaking at the event included Paul Rellis, Managing Director, Microsoft Ireland; Michael Dwyer, Founder and CEO, Empathy Marketing Limited (Pigsback.com); and Jim Sloane, Lead Technology Partner and Vice Chairman, Deloitte UK.

Given their mountainous terrain the Nordic countries have always been the leaders in wireless technology and more recently providing broadband  One wonders how the Web will change when the rest of the world catches up with these kinds of Internet speeds and global access…. doesn’t seem long ago since the cackling sound of a 56K modem cranking up!!

Below is a link to a list of projects which we have worked on for a the last couple of years.

Arekibo Corporate Social Responsibilty Projects

As a result Arekibo are always looking at ways that our charity clients can incorporate new ways of getting people to support their organisations. I came across an interesting article that outlines 10 ways to support charities through social networking tools

The article can be found at http://ecoble.com/2009/07/14/10-ways-to-support-charity-through-social-media/

Its well worth a read !

The website Schmap Picks Trending Restaurants & Bars search tool lets you see the collected tweets about restaurants and bars in 13 cities around the world.  Visitors to the city can search by category (pizza/burgers, seafood/sushi, etc.) and  by district/neighbourhood.

The current list of cities include:

• New York
• Portland
• San Francisco
• Miami
• Los Angeles
• Nashville
• Washington DC
• Orlando
• Seattle
• San Diego
• London
• Philadelphia
• Sydney

Lets hope Dublin makes it on the list soon…..

The web site allows you to publish you clips to the likes of youtube or you can keep your clips private where you need a username and password to access.

First go to the website - www.qik.com to see if your model of mobile is supported

Then sign up for a free account.

The Qik application is available on most mobiles.
Go to qik.com on your mobile to download the app (Internet access required)

Install app and run. Open webpage on another device and see the results.

I found a 3~4 second delay but this is probably dependent on the quality of your Internet connection.

Happy filming !

Here is a link to full article - http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/10/social-media-in-healthcare-marketing-5-tips-for-approval/

interesting stat from the article -

41% of physicians’ research takes place online The bottom line is physicians and other healthcare personnel are already spending time online.

Not sure if there are similar stats for Ireland but if there please feel free to let me know.

Enjoy !

In a nutshell, AJAX is a relatively young technology the allows portions of the page to be updated without refreshing the whole page making the browsing experience faster and more enjoyable. The technology that makes this possible has been around for long time (raise your hand if you never heard of JavaSrcipt before…), but the technique is quite recent (4~5 years). AJAX is cross platform and it has been quickly supported by the major development environments and browsers, therefore the development community adopted it pretty soon and we have been experiencing the result on a daily base since its adoption: google chat, gmail, web msn and other services implemented it.

The root of the problem: when it comes to interactive content, advanced features such as site searches (google suggest and asp.net popup results are among my favorites), booking engines and other interactive tools, a minimal part of the content is displayed to the user, but the rest of it is hidden and, most important, a user cannot save a direct link to the final result. The web crawlers used by search engines mimic the user interaction with the website prior to saving the result of their queries to a database.

What happens then with AJAX websites? search engines only parse part of the content and cannot provide a direct link to the source to be returned for later use. As stated on the Google blog:

“search engines traditionally are not able to access any of the content on them. The last time we checked, almost 70% of the websites we know about use JavaScript in some form or another. Of course, most of that JavaScript is not AJAX, but the better that search engines could crawl and index AJAX, the more that developers could add richer features to their websites and still show up in search engines.”

Here comes the cavalry: Google, in the name of the Web and clearly forseeing profit for boths parties (search engine industry and users), offered their support to the development community by writing a proposal with recommendations for a new standard that would make AJAX controls easy to crawl and would add support to permanent links within AJAX powered pages.The following are few key elements in it (from Google blog):

• Minimal changes are required as the website grows
• Users and search engines see the same content (no cloaking)
• Search engines can send users directly to the AJAX URL (not to a static copy)
• Site owners have a way of verifying that their AJAX website is rendered correctly and thus that the crawler has access to all the content

This idea sounds like a win-win-win-win to me! I could make even cooler websites (enjoying even more what I already enjoy working on) and, at the same time, my boss wouldn’t be worried about the learning curve for this technology (reduced expenses for better results), the clients would be happy about their ranking results (more profit) and, most important, the users would have an easier access to the information on the site (improved usability).

Hopefully (and almost probably) this proposal will be seriously considered by the involved parties and all going well we’ll see this standard implemented in few months… I’ll keep an eye on this proposal and I’ll write something about it as soon as there will be news, so keep an eye on our blog if you are interested to know how it evolves!

Mercury Engineering is a global provider of solutions within the engineering and construction industry with annual revenues exceeding €450 million.

Arekibo provided web strategy, design and development for the launch of the all new Mercury website. Reflecting the top class services that Mercury provides was paramount to the success of the website. Through numerous design rounds and workshops and also gaining consensus from all departments in Mercury was key to establishing a professional yet cutting edge online presence.  The site was built upon Adobe Flash and Microsoft’s .Net Framework.

The new website can be viewed at: http://www.mercury.ie

The article can be found at http://econsultancy.com/blog/4728-pharma-companies-online-talk-to-activity

Enjoy !

Even if you haven’t been affected, hurry up and change the password now if you haven’t in the past 2~6 months!

Worth the read and we will post the next parts over the coming weeks

http://www.colgate.ca/app/IrishSpring/CA/EN/Bodywash/IrishToYourGame.cvsp

Check out the T-Shirts - Lassie how’d you like to put the spring back spring back into me Shillelagh… and the ringtones.

Fair dues to the fella’s

Online spending grew 4.6% to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, while TV spending shrank 16.1% to £1.639bn.

Overall advertising fell 16% compared with the same period in 2008, said the study by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

John West (Viral Advert)

Arekibo have worked in partnership with the Arts council to create a website for the Vital Signs Exhibition Initiative.

Vital Signs is a programme of arts and health events taking place in October 2009. Vital Signs is an Arts Council initiative, developed and delivered in association with Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts.

Full details on the initiative can be found at http://vitalsigns.artscouncil.ie/

What is it exactly? SideWiki is browser add-on (for both IE and FF) that adds wiki-like functionality to virtually ANY existing page on the web.( I guess you know what Wikipedia is and what it’s for at this stage, so I’m not going to explain the purpose of that project). When you browse a page and this add-on is active, you can add your own notes to the page or its content, and the comments will be shared with other users (that installed the add-on, of course).

How does it work: I had a quick hands-on experience with the tool, and it’s pretty easy to configure (actually, you need no configuration to let it work). Once you start browsing, a “Side Wiki” button appears in your toolbar: by clicking it, a side panel will appear on the left. This panel contains all the comments left by other users and can be linked to any item in the page.

According to Google, the target of this add-on is to make sure  that users “see the most relevant entries first”. Some sort of SEO within the page itself ! Honestly, this is a great idea: it’s true that in many occasions you strive to find information you are looking for on the page… this is where this tool should come to the rescue.

Unfortunately, I reckon this won’t work as intended. Wikipedia itself , during its early days, has struggled to prevent junk content and spam from being added all over the place; to overcome this issue, they adopted the “moderation” model, where content is submitted, reviewed by authorised staff, and finally published or rejected. This is not the case with side wiki as there is no moderation (although you can report content)… and I’m afraid that spam and false information will be added to several pages. Actually, I’m more confident rather than afraid: I used sidewiki for a couple of hours… on Facebook’s homepage, for instance, there were (already) hundreds of spam messages totally irrelevant to the content. The feedback I’vefound on the web is generally positive in terms of functionality, but most of the users agree that this will become a spam tool.

The bottom line is: the tool is great and could be really helpful, but can we trust “ourselves”? Perhaps if some moderators were to be nominated…

Lots of very good points and observations.

Check it out

Arekibo have developed a fully content managed website for the All Island Project, which is a joint initiative run by the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) & the Northern Ireland Authority for Utility Regulation (NIAUR).

The aim of the project is to create a single market for natural gas and electricity on the island of Ireland.
The services that were used to deliver the fully content managed website included:

• Development of online strategy
• Information Architecture
• Web Design, including online branding and look and feel
• Web site development
• Content Management System Integration
• Hosting

The new website can be viewed at http://www.allislandproject.org

Arekibo have worked with Edelman Ireland to design their site for the Irish Market.

Edelman is the world’s largest, independent PR company - with over 3,100 people in 51 offices worldwide.

The services that were used to deliver the fully content managed website included:
-    Development of online strategy
-    Information Architecture
-    Web Design
-    Web site development
-    Content Management System Integration

The new website can be viewed at http://www.edelman.ie

The latest figures show Microsoft’s share of the search market has grown from 8.9% in July to 9.3% in August.

Google is still the search engine of choice in the US with64.6% of the market.

Bing has also made small inroads into Google’s market share in the UK, according to online measurement firm Nielsen, the number of searches on Bing increased by 5% last month, while Google searches were down 1.7%.

Find out more at comScore and the BBC

Event Tracking -  use event tracking to measure the number of user interactions with a website. For example:

• The total number of times a document is downloaded
• The length of time it takes to load a video
• The number of validation errors users get when filling out a form

Navigational data

The Google Analytics web interface provides a navigation report. Analysts use it to infer which links visitors click on, from one particular page to the next. Now that this data is available through the API, you can create new visualizations, such as custom site overlays, to see which links get the most clicks.

Increased filter length

The length of filter expressions has been increased to 128 characters. This enables developers to perform more complex queries with fewer requests to the API, saving bandwidth and quota.

Here is a video explaining the new API.

This graphics and music awakened some dormant feeling i had… I felt as I were 6* again for a moment !!

Ahhh… the good ‘ol times ; )

*yeah, I got my first C64 at that age

In the past 2~3 weeks, misterious doodles appeared and referred to (alleged) extra terrestrial phaenomena:  on Sep 15 crop cyrcles composed the daily google doodle. At the same time a message that read “51.327629, -0.5616088” (clearly coordinates) was twittered on Google’s account. Within few hours, some sci-fi fans realised that that address is very close to the locatin where in H.G. Wells’ novel the aliens land on earth for the first time, but Google didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Today, the last of Google’s set of sci-fi inspired doodles has been published on the search engine’s home page: as per the previous doodles, it links directly to a pre-set search that ultimately links to Herbert George Wells , best known for his novel “The War of the Worlds”.

A post on Google’s blog  reveals that all of the clues lead to H. G. Wells: more precisely, the 143rd occurrence of his birthday. Furhter explanations come from the post:

“Inspiration for innovation in technology and design can come from lots of places; we wanted to celebrate H.G. Wells as an author who encouraged fantastical thinking about what is possible, on this planet and beyond. And maybe have some fun while we were doing it.”

Apparently the web enthusiasts were split in two major groups: most of them enjoyed this “treasure hunt” and happily celebrated this birthday (possibly making new discoveries about the author thanks to Google’s recommendations), while many others expressed a bit of disappointment as they were expecting some major announcement involving a new product or some event.

In Arekibo we really enjoyed playing along with Google, discussing about what their doodles meant and we totally agree with their final message: there are many sources of inspiration and tools that most of us use on a daily base without really realising how impossible they were just a few years ago… but thankfully somebody thought they were possible, and there they are now ready to be used : )

Arekibo have just completed the planning, design and development of a new website for ERSI Ireland. ESRI Ireland specialises in the provision, implementation and support of ESRI based GIS systems.

The new campaign website Routing Solutions| The Future of Transport Logistics has been created to showcase ESRI’s ArcLogistic product suite that  can help  Logistics & Distribution companies to reduce their costs through effective and efficient route planning, tracking and  scheduling.

Arekibo have been working with ESRI Ireland since 2006 and are also currently working with ESRI Ireland to redesign the organistations corpoarte site which will be launched shortly.

Google Flying Saucer Logo

Have to admit, this one is for real geeks… I happen to be one and I couldn’t resist the temptation of finding out what was it about! I really love riddles, so i delved a bit deeper…

On their twitter account, Google published a “weird” sequence of numbers:  1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20,15 21,19 and a link to twitpic. After a few minutes of thinking,  quite anybody can guess that these are just letters’ positions: that sequence of numbers translates to “ALL YOUR O ARE BELONG TO US”. Good then, we’ve got the second clue! But what does that mean?!?!

Now, this requires a bit of (really nerdy) explanation: this phrase comes from a Japanese video game published in late 80’s,  “Zero Wing“, whose European version was incorrectly translated to “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US“.  In early 2000  this phrase rapidly became a meme and was used over and over again to make fun of poor translations and it’s quite commonly referred to as of nowadays in geeky environments.

OK so, where are we at? the “ALL YOUR O ARE BELONG TO US” mysterious message. The “treasure hunt” quickly spread on the web: people twittering from all over the world trying to decipher this message from the googly aliens. I guessed I had enough pieces of the puzzle, but I couldn’t understand what the lads in Google really meant… mumble…

The next question I asked myself was: what do the Google staff use special logos for? Usually, anniversaries of findings, dates of birth, social events and other recurrences. They also used some special logos to introduce new services they’ve published over time, but this wasn’t the case as they haven’t announced anything. So what then?!?

Idea: for sake of curiosity, let me check on wiki what date was that “Zero Wing” video game originally released… Oh look!! September 5 1989. Coincidentally, It’s the 20th birthday of a modern meme! 

That’s about it… no alien invasion has been planned! It’s just Google’s way to celebrate a “symbol” modern culture.

So, what’s with this post? Apart from the fun hour spent deciphering their message, what really surprised me is (once again) the growing influence Google has on our lives… million of users tried to solve this riddle using forums, instant messaging applications, twitter and so on as if that had some real meaning. Can you picture in your mind what would happen if Google started a viral campaign about something? How much interest would the momentum build up? What if this was just an experiment to see people’s reaction to these events?

Well…. 9.20′19 1 13.25.19.20.5.18.25

Arekibo are delighted to announce the launch of the World Vision Community Gifts website.

Worldvision Ireland is a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by addressing the causes of poverty. The Community Gifts Catalogue is part of World Vision’s planned initiative to help some of the world’s poorest communities make their way out of poverty.

The World Vision Community Gifts Catalogue is run on the Adobe Business Catalyst system – an integrated online Business solution which runs the World Vision online shop, email marketing and customer database.

Arekibo used the following services when delivering this project:

• Information Architecture

• Site Design

• Online Strategy and development

• eCommerce development

World Vision now has the ability to easily -

• Manage all aspects of the online gift shop
• Sell Products and manage orders online
• Track customers and customer activity using the built in CRM system
• Send Email Newsletters
• Measure success, using the built in reporting features

This project is Arekibo’s CSR project for 2009

Community gifts are available to purchase at - http://www.worldvisiongifts.ie/

Understanding the business and marketing objectives of eircoms emergence into the Business Mobile market was key to the success of the first release. Workshops were held with Stakeholders as well as Sales, Marketing and Customer Service teams we attempted to simplify the approach and presentation of eircoms Price Plans and Mobile Phone offerings. This process also afforded us the opportunity to gain an understanding of both eircom and their customers’ needs.

We implemented a number of Design rounds, working within strict brand guidelines and delivering front end templates and functional documentation. Arekibo were also responsible for leading permanent and contract development staff at eircom.

The new website can be viewed at - http://business.eircom.net/mobile/

The EU group which is based in Belfast chose Arekibo to implement a new design and to integrate a content management system that hosts thousands of documents and offers services such as different permission sets, advanced searches and workflow notification services. The project also involved the creation of a member extranet.

Arekibo used the following services when delivering this project:

• Internet Strategy
• Information Architecture
• Web Design and Development
• Content Management System Integration
• Extranet Development
• Website Accessibility

The new website can be viewed at http://www.seupb.eu

That is of course, on everything except Internet Explorer 6.

Now, there will be those who will argue that this statement is not exactly true. HTML 5 and CSS3 are being structured to degrade gracefully to older browsers and Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) will, for the most part, do its bit to show new technologies in the way that they are intended and if it can’t, it will deal with them. But it will deal with them because we, the developers, are expected to provide for the fact that it has to deal with them. If you ask any web developer (designers not so much. Designs can be implemented. Making them do what the designer expects is where the problems occur and this is down to the development) worth their salt what the biggest hurdle in current web development is, they will say IE6. There are online campaigns to eliminate it. There are hacks you can add to your web page to encourage users of IE6 to upgrade. And, with great glee, we awaited Microsofts expected “ceasation of service” to IE6 which was expected next year, 2010.

Then this morning they announced that they would continue to support IE6 until 2014.

There are a number of things that bother me about this. Personally, I find IE6 cumbersome, boring and unfair. I find it unfair because, why can’t I do the things I want to do!? Why do I have to support this “piece of junk” (solely my opinion) browser? It’s been around since 2001, it’s outdated and it doesn’t support much of the new technologies that are available properly (even AJAX has to compensate depending on the mode of the browser and javascript libraries like jQuery and Mootools would be lighter if they didn’t have to accommodate IE6). It won’t be able to handle HTML5 and CSS3 and as newer techniques and technologies emerge, IE6 will continue to lag further and further behind. I also don’t understand how, with all the updates that Microsoft makes, there is not yet an IE6 update (that does not involve upgrading the browser) which will help IE6 accommodate the more recent changes and, with a little foresight, enable it to cater for HTML5 and CSS3. Surely there is something that can be done…?

And on another point why are there so many IE6 users!? Well, as any business who hasn’t upgraded from Windows XP to Vista will tell you, in large corporations (the likes of 500 - 1000 employees plus) it is not always as easy to roll out a browser update, just to enhance the web user experience. Many large corporations actually find the lack of support for web technologies in IE6 of benefit as it means lower maintenance requirements (a quick Google search fails to reveal exactly how many security updates there have been for IE7 since release, but safe to say it’s alot!) and also decreases the amount of time employees will waste browsing the web while in the office. They adopt an “IE6 standard” and IT support refuses to upgrade beyond this stance.

So what, as a web developer (and more importantly, as a web design agency) do we do? Well, for the moment it’s put up or shut up. The reality is that the statistics do not lie (W3 Schools and  MarketShare) and regardless of personal opinion or mob mentality, IE6 is here to stay, at least until 2014. It would be remiss and arrogant of us (or any developer/designer) to dismiss IE6 as “past it’s sell by date.” Even taking W3 Schools lower estimate of users of 14.4% in July 2009, with an estimated 1.6 billion internet users worldwide, that’s… (carry the 2… denomenator… Start > Run > Calc!) 230 million users. Try alienating that many customers and surviving to tell the tale. I admire the staunch advocacy of the IE6 resistant groups out there, but the reality is that for the next 5 years at least, we will need to consider and cater to our IE6 users. It’s a painful admission, but one we should embrace as a test of our abilities. Our skills as developers and designers should be such that our sites should work uniformly across all browsers and we should inherently be aware of the issues and resolutions to these problems we will encounter with IE6. We will continue to garner respect, not for our exclusion of IE6 but for our open-armed embracement of it.

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

The results of their research are as follows:

• 40.55% Pointless Babble
• 37.55% of tweets are conversational
• 8.7%  are of Pass-Along Value

Read the report or check out the BBC News article

Arekibo have developed a fully content managed website for the Summit Finuas Network which is a national network of member associations operating in the international financial services industry in Ireland.

The services that were used to deliver the fully content managed website included:

• Development of online strategy
• Creation of website look and feel
• Web site development (HTML and CSS templates)
• Deployment on content system
• Hosting

The new website can be viewed at http://www.summitfinuasnetwork.com

The new website for the Irish Software Association (ISA) has been launched.

Arekibo worked in partnership with the ISA to deliver the following services:

• Internet Strategy
• Information Architecture
• Web Site Design & Development

The new website showcases the work of the Irish Software Association and includes a press area and an events calendar.

The new website is available to view at www.software.ie

As part of the campaign famous artists have design the graphics for bikes that Armstrong will ride.

See the new bike designed by Damien Hirst and follow Armstrong on twitter.

Edward Hill-Wood, executive director of Morgan Stanley’s European media team said the report was  “one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen – so we published it”

Matthew claims that, “Teenagers do not use Twitter, most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they realise that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting Twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). They realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless” and that teenagers, “cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarised on the internet or on TV.

Arekibo conducted a report with the Ombudsman for Children back in 2006 - Teens prefer web over TV that had similar feedback .

See more articles on the Morgan Stanley report

Financial Times - Intern in the News: Matthew Robson

Guardian - How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City

Guardian - Has Morgan Stanley’s teen media expert met his match?

Bloomberg - Morgan Stanley Intern Says Teens Don’t Twitter, Prefer Events

CrunchGear - Morgan Stanley report shows that teens don’t use Twitter, don’t buy music (but still go to the movies)

It seems that our methodology is similar to that discussed in a recent article on paid  v’s natural search in internet marketing magazine btobonline.com

In the article, Chris Dawkins founder and CEO of search engine optimisation company Trace Media Marketing outlines his recommendations for managing both PPC campaigns and natural search campaigns.

More information on Arekibo’s approach to search engine optimisation is available on the Arekibo site.

Upon googling the term “Irish companies on twitter,” I came across Damien Mulley’s post on Irish company’s on twitter…

(I  am delighted to know that I was on the same wavelength as him…. ) The post was written over a year ago and some of the comments on his post have some great ideas. I particularly liked the suggestion for AA to twitter road traffic problems announcements. This suggestion is still relevant today.
If anyone wants to add to the wish list of useful ways of using twitter in everyday life – feel free to add to the list here….
Don’t forget you can follow Arekibo on Twitter …..

Please send you CV with examples of work to jobs@arekibo.com.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Unfortunately, like all good things people decide to start tinkering and attempting to improve what’s already a very good service leading to the onslaught of micro-blogging. Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micro media such as photos or audio clips and publish them. In short YouTube and Twitter.

Personally, I view YouTube more as a viral marketing tool than a blogging tool but I’m afraid that I’m in the minority on that. Twitter on the other hand provides real time updates on the people you are following. True this is more “blog like” but I always feel left wanting to know more. These are both great tools and tooted as available for all but are they truly accessible to all. Let’s examine one and to see.

Twitter.com is built to be an intuitive and easy to use site but it fails on a number of important accessibility and usability points:

- Html is not structured correctly with its headings out of order
- Forms are not correctly marked up
- There is a host of validation issues with cause screen readers to fail

And this is without taking into account the “tweets” added by users. Obviously, I am not the only person who noticed the accessible short comings of Twitter and
Dennis Lembree using the API provided by Twitter has built an accessible interface - accessibletwitter.com

So how does this interface compare to twitter.com:

- The site meets most of the WCAG checkpoints falling short by not having valid code
- All links are keyboard accessible.
- Simple, consistent layout and navigation
- Headings and page titles are implemented for optimal accessibility. This includes an H3 heading (for author screen name) added to tweets to assist with screen reader users.
- Works with or without JavaScript.
- Ajax actions are concluded with an alert that notifies the user of the result of the action.
- Large default text size and high colour contrast.
- When entering tweets, audio cues indicate when the character limit is almost reached.
- Forms and data tables are marked up for optimal accessibility.

Combined Twitter and Accessible Twitter provide all users with a usable micro-blogging tool that is truly accessible to all. If either can improve on their approach is to have a link from the main Twitter website to the accessible version.

What I’m really happy about is the approach that will be used to shape this product: it’s a product conceived from users and for users. What’s new then? It will be open source (as Linux is) but Google will lead and coordinate development cycles, releases and most importantly, its features. I’m a huge fan of Linux, but I think that lack of leadership in the Linux community has caused many issues. First of all, too many different distros (or versions) have spawned, but what I really think it’s the main problem with Linux is that there’s too much choice with programs that causes confusion: if you think of a doc or xls file, you almost probably take for granted that Word or Excel will be executed when you open it. On Linux that’s often not the case - at least not the first time - because you are prompted with a list of several programs and you have to choose which one to use. I find this annoying and confusing, especially for non techies.

Google, on the other side, got us used to simple things, but still are able to propose many advanced features that can be used even by less experienced users. I would expect their OS to follow the general guidelines used so far: think of gmail, google docs, the calendar… very easy to use, but stuffed with advanced options for any level of expertise, extremely flexible and customisable. Hopefully Chrome will be like this?

I don’t really know what to expect on the Look & Feel side, but if I had to guess, I’m confident they will take bits and pieces of every OS around (Vista, Leopard and Gnome as major influences), blend them all together and add some simple but good looking user interface as they usually do.

What about the consequences? I immediately think of the 3 major OS in use (Vista, Leopard and Linux), their producers and their users. How will they react?

I reckon that Microsoft more than everybody else will have to come up with something really good and really quickly or they might lose territory on a daily base. Virtually every office runs just windows powered machines: it is hard to replace… but what with licence costs? Another advantage Microsoft guys have is that the gaming industry spins around them and die hard gamers (there are more of us than you may think! :p) will stick to Windows until there are other platforms that will support games as well as it does. They are a wealthy company, but this will be a thorn in their side… a big one.

I don’t really think Apple will be affected that much instead, as their users are too happy and proud. They have formed something that looks more like a cult than a simple set of users:I can’t see them renouncing to well designed computers or to the elegant OS that never causes grief.

Linux users, instead, might be quickly converted: hopefully, with Google leading this project, many Linux developers and enthusiasts could embrace this new project at an early stage and could potentially become the first set of users for this new OS. Linux users love to dare by nature, and this looks like a good challenge.

Of course I might be wrong with my preditcions, but this is just what I see could happen. I’ll close this post with a question that has just come to my mind: how long before the server counterpart for Chrome-OS will be announced? Place your bets!

The specification is still a work in progress and quite a long way from completion, but despite that, its modular structure allow us to start implementing parts of it.

HTML 5 has been brought to life thanks to the joint effort of different web organizations, such as W3C and WHATWG, and with the active support of all the most prominent browser vendors: Mozilla, Microsoft, Opera and Apple. It goes without saying that the browser vendors involvement in the project is completely necessary, and hopefully will lead to agreement on the specifications and, consequently, to a cross the board support for HTML 5.

HTML 5 aims to enhance existing features such as forms and multimedia embedding and to introduce some new features such as, for example, the ability to add dynamic scriptable rendering of bitmap images in a web page simply using the new <canvas> tag.

The doctype of the document becomes very easy to remember. Forget about all the different DTDs now available. The doctype of an HTML 5 document is simply  <!doctype html>. It tells the browser that the page is HTML. No versions anymore, or transitional or strict DTDs. Simply HTML.

Among the aims of this project is the goal to allow people to create more semantic documents. When we build a site using XHTML we usually use div elements to indentify the different sections of the page. Every div has a unique ID that describes its content.

This way of structuring the page is largely due to the lack in HTML 4 and XHTML, of the necessary semantics for describing these parts more specifically.

HTML 5 addresses this issue by introducing new elements for representing each of these sections. Tags as <header>, <nav>, <article>, <section>, <aside> and <footer> are now available to give a proper semantic structure to our pages. Both search engines and screen readers will greatly benefit from the use of these appropriate semantic tags, as they’ll be able to easily figure out what’s what in the page. Assistive technologies will also be able to give more options to their users, letting them easily skipping over the navigation section or quickly jump from one section to another or from one article to the next, without the need for the use of hidden links.

Unfortunately the browser support for this new specification is still pretty poor, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot start using some of the new features. Opera and safari are, at the moment, the browsers that best support HTML5 and Firefox is running fast to catch up with them. Enhancements and bug fixing are happening every day and in the case that a browser doesn’t support a given feature, there may be viable JavaScript workarounds to have the functionality work in the interim.

Alternatively, we can consider implementing the new features in those browsers that already support them whilst making sure that the content is still available for older browsers. This is what is often called graceful degradation and progressive enhancement, specially in relation to accessiblity.

If you’re an IE6 user you will see things slightly differently and you might not have the latest and coolest features available, but you’ll still be able to browse the content of the site. Conversely, if you’re an Opera, Safari or Firefox user, you’ll be able to get the most in terms of user experience from the site.

To sum up, let’s start experimenting with it!

If you are keen to take a peek at some well-designed HTML 5 websites, you can visit the first HTML 5 showcase. Even if in beta version, validators are already available to test your new HTML 5 pages: W3C Validator and Validator.nu.

For further information on HTML 5 visit:

• A List Apart: A preview of HTML5
• HTML 5 and CSS 3: The Techniques You’ll Soon Be Using
• HTML 5 Cheat Sheet (PDF)

For more info about the current browser support visit:

• HTML5 Comparison of Layout Engines by Wikipedia
• When can I use…
• WHATWG’s “List of Known Implementations of HTML 5 in Web Browsers”
• WHATWG’s Sections
• Molly E. Holzschlag: A Selection of Supported Features in HTML5

You can read the article on the Irish Independent website http://www.independent.ie/national-news/number-of-blind-to-soar-170pc-in-next-25-years-1810713.html

More information available on Arekibo’s approach to web accessibility is available to view on

http://www.arekibo.com/services/web-accessibility.aspx

There is no doubt that being on the first page of a search result is the holy grail for your business. However relying on Google Ads (Paid Search) to attract customers to your website can be a very expensive investment.

Arekibo recommend to all of our client’s that they adopt a Search Stratey that combines  ‘Paid for Search’ with ‘Organic Search’, where paid search brings immediate rankings whilst a organic search startegy is being implemented.

The survey revealed that web users pay more attention to ‘organic’ search over ads but do users really know the differnce betwen the Top 2/3 paid results that rank above the organic search?  We don’t so.

Overall the findings of this article don’t advise you to abandon Google Ads however using them as your one and only search strategy is not advisable as it will have long term implications on your balance sheet and make you question the long term benefits of search.

Find out more about Arekibo’s Search Engine Optimsation Strategy Services

Arekibo have continued their partnership with the Office of Tobacco Control to create the National  Register of Tobacco Retailers Website.

The new website is a fully content managed website built on the Sitefinity Content Management Solution.

The services provided by Arekibo were

• Internet Strategy
• Information Architecture
• Web Site Design & Development
• Integration of Content Management Software

The website was created for any Retailer who currently sels or intends to sell tobacco products must register with the Office of Tobacco Control (OTC).

For more information on the National Tobacco Register for Retailers go to:

http://www.tobaccoregister.ie/Home.aspx

It has been reported that Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and many other sources of information were all hit by this calamity: the world of the web 2.0 struggled for a good few hours due to the incredible amount of requests and posts about the celebrity’s death. The effects were similar to what happens in case of real cataclysms: mass panic.

Google confirmed that for the first couple of hours from the unofficial announcement of pop star’s death, the too frequent requests for information related to Jackson have been treated like automated attacks, therefore for a few hours the search engine refused to return results on that subject prior to returning to normality.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, faced a different issue: several thousands of users stormed the encyclopedia’s website to give their input to what is likely to be one of the biggest events of the decade. The result was that, due to the lack of real information, the administrators of Wiki had to do “some” extra work: users added details to MJ’s death while others deleted those entries claiming it was all false news, starting some sort of battle to “the last edit”.

Twitter crazed: as the news first appeared, twitter’s users started requesting for links, posted bits of information and posted links to YouTube videos. Some websites thought to play a prank (of really bad taste) claiming that other famous actors were reported dead: as a result twitter was spammed with false information about these alleged deaths (June 25th will also be remembered as the day of Farah Fawcett’s death, and this one is unfortunately for real). After few hours, when official sources denied those happenings, everything went back to normal.

Many other websites all over the world, especially news related ones, collapsed under the weight of too many requests. As a user, I’m the first to get angry when I receive a “connection interrupted” message by my browser while trying to access some website, but I also know that insisting is of no help to anybody: neither to myself nor to the poor lads that have to deal with these issues on the hosting server (fellas, you have my sympathy)…

Every earthquake has at least one… what’s with aftershocks? I can’t tell the future, but I can guess what’s already happening. Sales on iTunes are likely to skyrocket (and I’m confident this is happening as I’m writing), YouTube will be flooded for several weeks with tribute videos, black hat communities will start releasing leaked and previously unreleased material from the pop star to the public while online newspapers will start revealing “secret” details about his life and legacy.

In regards to countermeasures, I’m pretty confident that the “authorities” of the web have already started preparing emergency plans in case similar events happened to occur again: I have a funny feeling that next time there will be no “quick, everybody hide under the table!!” emergency signal and the Web will respond even more promptly.

Here is just a taste of what has come out of the conference:

Does a site have to look the same in every browser? The answer is definitely “no”.
Firstly because that’s impossible. In fact, we need to take in the fact that browsers are simply different and they are not meant to display the information in the exact same way. Secondly because users are not going to compare our sites using different browsers to check out if they look the same. Finally because CSS3 is a reality that has to be embraced to start making the Web more attractive, and, at the same time, give a better reason to IE6 users to move to a new generation of browsers.

Build systems, not web pages. The key is to build “modular” websites with highly flexible layouts in order to improve re-usability, scalability and cut down maintenance costs.

Bring realism into your designs. Use the world around us to get inspiration. Pay attention to every detail, making sure that they are subtle but effective. Providing a familiar environment to the user will better his experience. Realism helps usability. Take a look around you, a natural look and feel is the answer.

Focus on the users. The success of a website or a web application has its roots in how well you know your visitors, requirements and market. Make your decisions according to their needs by choosing a suitable technology. Never forget to invest in your process, usability and accessibility to assure quality and their satisfaction.

And what about HTML5? Well, it is out there and it is happening now! It’s true that it’s a work in progress, but you can start using it. In fact, it is defined in a modular way and some modules are ready to go. But if there is something worth metioning is that all browser vendors are burying the hatchet and collaborating to make it a reality.

We will be posting further details about the conference, speakers and presentations soon. Stay tuned to the Arekibo Blog

With this in mind it is important that when designing a website that the website is designed to be visually appealing without compromising on the overall user experience.

Patrick Lynch has written an interesting post on the ‘A list Apart’ blog which goes into this in more detail. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/visual-decision-making/

The web is more than just a space for information – in any project there is always an opprtunity to create meaningful graphic expression without compromising on usability.

• Audio (Real or recorded)
• Video (Web Cam or Video playback)
• Documents (Office, PDF, Graphics, etc)
• Computer Screens
• Web pages
• Hot dogs

Ok, maybe not the Hot dogs, but everything else is fantastic! There are also apps that allow you start meetings from your iPhone, mashup facilities, the list goes on. And, as it’s all web based, the possibilities are endless. There’s no client to install and it just works. It even looks great!!! View the full feature list from the Dim Dim website.

Try it next time you have a need for a web meeting. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

It’s a great one stop solution to the current mess of trying to sort out your phone numbers. One number for everyone, but different types of phone calls for different situations. All very good if you ask me. It’s not going to be immediately available in Ireland (obviously the US is the focal area) and it’s an invitation only process of signing up, but when it happens, and it will soon, it’s gonna be big. You heard it here first folks!

Topics of interest will be

• HTML5 for the Markup Agnostic
• New Approaches to a Modern, Accessible Web
• Font Embedding and Typography
• The Web Platform Just As It Is

Looking forward to it and being able to put the knowledge gained to good use !

I performed a search for my local cinema last night (Vue), just like every search engine Bing returned the results in the standard format. I was please to see that Bing hasn’t introduced the “sitelinks” that appear under the results for a Google search, instead Bing provides contextual information and links in a popup when you hover over a result. In my case the contextual result provided me with a brief summary of the top films and links to each movie separately.

Where Bing really shines is with its image search, when you perform a search you have a number of options to pick from to narrow your search down whether it’s the size or colour of the image to its layout and style which is very intuitive for the user.

I am also not a fan of the new “related searches” bar, it’s a personal dislike but I feel that if I perform a specific search then the algorithm should just return the results then always assuming I am looking for something different.

On a personal and an accessibility note, Bing should re-evaluate its colour scheme the number of results returned and the advanced options link are very little colour contrast and is very hard to read for people with deuteranopia (red/green colour blindness).

Either way Bing is the new search engine to watch and has some surprising features that can give Google a fight. Decide for yourself at bing.com

Cool app that was borne out of the classroom as a teaching aid for kids.  Wordle is a word cloud generation tool that allows you pump any text/feed/blog you wish!  Here is an example that was taken from the Arekibo newspage:

So, what we could it really be used for?!  Aside from snazzing up a presentation or an email, etc. we are looking at how this could be used for aiding us in website content & SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Try it out yourself!!

http://www.wordle.net/create

Since I began monitoring persiankiwi who is inside Iran - (unconfirmed)  I’ve been following his activities and updates every few hours.   His tweets are having an effect as his  twitter following is increasing each day currently  at 34000 when writing this post (now at 34120 - 30 mins later)

I’ve looked at a number of other twitter sites and it’s very interesting to see how Twitter is being used inside Iran (and outside) and how the twitter community are following the activities…

see

http://twitter.com/#search?q=Iran

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23iranrevolution

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23Iranelection

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=iran

The results  are quiet interesting - for me personally the two key findings were:

1 - SEO and Email marketing are the most popular method of digital marketing (used by 3/4’s of respondents)
2 - 87% measure the results of their digital campaigns, the most popular being benchmarking against goals set prior to the campaign

Both of these findings are close to my heart as I believe they are key to the success of any digital marketing campaign.

The report and its methodology can be found at http://images.forbes.com/adinfo/AdEffectivenessStudy.pdf

Arekibo redevelop Version1 website

Arekibo were recently commissioned by Version1 to redesign their website. The project involved Arekibo creating a new look and feel of the website. Arekibo were also responsible for developing the suite of templates required which are incorporated into the website.

The new website is available to view at http://www.version1.ie/

Arekibo develop IFG Pensions, Investments and Advisory Services website

Arekibo have continued our partnership with IFG Group to develop and design the IFG Group Pensions website.

Arekibo have developed the website to be fully content managed  using the  Sitefinity Content  Management System. Arekibo worked with IFG to develop the website in tandem with their new brand strategy.

The  Arekibo services which were used to deliver this project were:

• Internet Strategy
• Web Design and Development

Future enhancements include - the integration of the new design for the Pension Portal Login Area.

The new website is available to view at  http://www.ifg.ie/content/homepage.aspx