On July 14th (Bastille Day to those non-francophones), the French government did something similar. It released the site France.fr, an information website aimed at tourists and foreign investors alike. I was sent this by a friend in France who suggested I have a look at it as I like to visit France from time to time. I’d love to tell you what it’s all about but unfortunately, I don’t really know. Why? Well by the time I got home on the 14th the website had crashed.

And it’s been like this since. The rather unhelpful English notice, in no way represents what is written in French:

“The team of France.fr regret not being able to help you find the doorway to France. We currently have a problem with our server configurations. We have undertaken an audit of all our systems to allow us to reopen [the website] as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and see you very soon!”

This error was taken from the site today, 19th June. Naturally, my interest was piqued further. A quick search of Le Monde, showed that the website which had so spectacularly failed on the day of Liberty, Brotherhood and Equality, cost the French taxpayers €1.6 Million. Not only that, but they acerbically point out, that this now leaves France as one of the few European countries without a website. The Le Monde article also shows the alert that was on the site on the day it went down as:

“Because France.fr is a victim of its own success, the high number of very important visitors [to the website] has constrained us into adding additional capacity to our servers. A number of disturbances to the site across it’s five languages have therefore occured, for which the team at France.fr ask you to excuse us. Everything will be restored as soon as possible, thank you for your patience.”

It’s funny how content like this changes. The “number of disturbances” that have kept the site inaccessible for so long, leads me to believe that the Dark Side is on the rise! As of today, there’s still no indication of how long this is going to take and if it will be rectified soon.

Le Figaro mentioned in passing that the site is inaccessible and continues to extoll the virtues of the site, the languages it supports, the markets and industries it will open and of course, how much it cost. One gets the impression that Le Figaro are close bed-fellows of those behind the France.fr fiasco, as there is little criticism of the failure to deliver. Already the article discusses how there will be a “renewed” version 2.0 of the site released in November. The final site will amalgamate approximately 12,000 sources of information including national media, television, sport and of course, weather, into the one portal. They even have a screenshot of how the site looked before it went belly-up.

Fancy!

I’ll be keeping an eye on the French media for more. Let’s see how this one unfolds.

Update: Uh-oh! Looks like not everything is rosy in the state of… erm… France. According to the latest updated error on the website, the France.fr portal will not be relaunching until the second fortnight in August (read: possibly early September). They do assure us that everything is bang on course for an offering of a “particitpative dimension” in their November update. Are you holding your breath yet?!

Neither am I.

Very exciting news today about one of Arekibo’s latest projects – read about our involvement at Silicon Republic - Ireland’s Government reveals its social media strategy

More to follow about MerrionStreet.ie

Worldwide:

1. wimbledon +200%
2. michael jackson +160%
3. f1 +110%
4. iphone 4 +90%
5. aöf +80%

Ireland:

1. daa +500%
2. glastonbury +350%
3. wimbledon +180%
4. wimbledon 2010 +150%
5. iphone 4 +140%

UK:

1. f1 +130%
2. glastonbury +120%
3. wimbledon +100%
4. england +80%
5. iphone 4 +80%

The contents of this blog reflect the statistics gathered from Google Insight Search who is responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein.Pressing any of the trending keywords will open up Google Insights for Search where you can further analyze the data.

Worldwide:
1. manute bol Breakout
2. anelka +2,550%
3. wimbledon +400%
4. equipe de france +350%
5. cricinfo +70%

Ireland:
1. graeme mcdowell Breakout
2. us open +950%
3. wimbledon +400%
4. wimbledon 2010 +300%
5. pga tour +100%

UK:

1. budget 2010 uk +1,950%
2. budget 2010 +1,600%
3. budget +700%
4. wimbledon +250%
5. wimbledon 2010 +250%

So the famous island has been realized on map software by a lost enthusiast and he used ArcGIS to create it..

Great software created a great map which caused a great viral to spread the web !

1. The Dutch reach the final twice in a row… and lose

This is a bit of a personal drama and although i wasn’t born yet at the time the events were spoon fed to me as if i was there.. This is what Wikipedia told us about the events..

In 1974, the Netherlands beat both Brazil and Argentina in the second group stage, reaching the final for the first time in their history. However, the team lost to West Germany in the final in Munich, despite having gone 1–0 up through Johan Neeskens‘ early penalty kick before any German had even touched the ball. The Dutch were trying to embarrass the Germans at home while they were only up 1–0. This would prove their undoing. Supported by the crowd, a converted penalty by Paul Breitner and the winner from Gerd Müller led to a victory for the Germans. Despite losing the final Clockwork Orange and Johan Cruyff had written a new page in football’s history.

In 1978, the Netherlands reached again the final of a World Cup, only to be beaten anew by the host, here Argentina. This side played without Johan Cruyff, Willem van Hanegem, and Jan van Beveren, who refused to participate in the World Cup. It still contained Johan Neeskens, Johnny Rep, Arie Haan, Ruud Krol and Rob Rensenbrink from the 1974 selection. The Netherlands were less impressive in the group stages. They qualified as runners-up, after a draw with Peru and a loss to Scotland. In the second group phase, however, the Netherlands topped a group including Italy and West Germany, setting up a final with Argentina. However, the Dutch finished as runners up for the second World Cup in a row as they ultimately lost 3–1 after two extra time goals from Argentina. Agonisingly for the Dutch, Rensenbrink hit the Argentinian post in the last minute of normal time, with the score 1–1.

2. Maradona and the Hand of God..

This was the match against England that saw not only a handball be allowed but also the best goal of the tournament being scored…

The hand ball:

And the goal of the century:

3. Zizou’s headbutt..

Its the final of the 2006 World Cup final , both Italy and France are in a deadlock…. Its heading to penalties and then this happens…

4. The match with 16 yellow cards and 4 red ones..

Another 2006 drama in which again the orange machine plays a crucial role… This time by breaking the worldcup record of most cards in any game.. 16 yellow cards and 4 red ones to be precise.

5. How the USA beat England with a 1-1 score..

Yes its this world cup and we already have some drama… The England Keeper Robert Green made an amateurish mistake that not only made him go very viral on the web… it also caused the New York Post to see 1-1 as a victory for the USA…

USA Wins worldcup ?

6. Any world cup..

So I picked a few memorable moments but to be honest ,the world cup is drama not just on TV but the fact that we have to wait 4 years for it to happen , the fights and complaints we have to endure from our partners and the emotions when wrong decisions are made is just drama ! So to finalize the post here is an overview of 70 years worldcup football with a lovely German narrator..

Sorry for the delay in the trends report but busy times are good times

Here at Arekibo we have found a lot of value in listening to what the web is saying and that’s why we want to share this information with you . So we will give you the search trends for the last 7 days. This information is valuable for anyone who wants to make sure they are informed and up to date with the latest news and well… the latest search trends.

The contents of this blog reflect the statistics gathered from Google Insight Search who is responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein.Pressing any of the trending keywords will open up Google Insights for Search where you can further analyze the data.

Worldwide:

Ireland:

UK:

So as you can tell.. The worldcup is the trending topic for this week… which is no suprise to us here… and i bet the trending topic for next week is how France is out of the worldcup !

Next month volunteers from the Dublin Airport Fire Service will attempt to scale no less than eighteen mountains in an incredible sixty-two hours with all proceeds going to Beaumont Hospital Foundation for Cancer Treatment.

Arekibo have selected the 18 Peaks/62 Hours as one of our CSR projects for 2010 and we have created a website for the campaign which was launched this week.

To find out more about the challenge visit the site – http://www.firefighterschallenge.ie. Watch the TV3 interview - click image below (opens in a new window).

1.The really old ones

In the late 50’s some smart Swedes came up with the car phone which although not really mobile due to the size it was able to make calls and so prince Philip got it build in to his Aston Martin to chat to his mom while driving around..

The sizes changed a bit but most of these models were still very large and therefore not very mobile..2. The 1G phones

The first generation phones where those which could use the 1st generation wireless technologies first launched in Japan around the 1980 this technology allowed wireless communications to work a lot smoother due to its ability to move “cell sites”. With the older mobile phones you couldn’t really move away from where you initiated the call because it would drop the call.  As the technologist got better so did the phones and we were getting a real hand held device..

Mobile from 1984

3. The 2G Phones

In the Early 1990 the second generation of the wireless communication technologies was that of going digital using the GSM Standard. With this new techonolgy came some great features like SMS , Longer reach and digital encryption. Most of you would have had a 2g device because they were the first phones that would come with a Pre-paid option as well

2g Phones

4.The 3G Phones

10 years after the launch of the 2nd generation networks a japanese company launched its 3rd generation network. The benefits of the 3rd generation was mostly its network speed and today’s 3g networks can allow 14mbit/s downloads and almost 6 mbit/s uploads. These would enable mobile phones to do a lot more things then just browsing and it allowed for Surfing the web and watching streaming videos from the web.

iPhone 3g

So that was the list for now and maybe you have noticed that every 10 years we go up a generation of mobile technologies.. so 2010 should be the year of 4G enabled phones !

The contents of this blog reflect the statistics gathered from Google Insight Search who is responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein.Pressing any of the trending keywords will open up Google Insights for Search where you can further analyze the data.

Ireland:

UK:

So the week has been filled with grief for Webster !

I think that this is brilliant and refreshing as the days and the argument of making everything digital well let’s say is not the only answer.

So what  should you need consider before replacing your traditional newsletters with digital versions or any other online services for your clients?

1. Think about who your clients are - Are your clients the type of people who will have time to read a ezine? If you are pretty sure that’s not good enough, you need to ask them and then make a decision.

2. Will technology help you or your client? - Will having an ezine (or an extranet etc) help you or your client? If it’s going to help you more than your client, think again.

3. If it’s not broken why fix it – If your current methods of sending out printed material to clients is proving successful and they are happy with it, then be very careful changing it. If you are using an ezine and it works then that’s brilliant, don’t change it because of me.

4. What experience do you want your clients to have – Does it make you feel special receiving a document in the post? Do your clients feel the same? If they do then apply point no. 3.

5. I’ll look at it later – How many times do you receive an ezine and think ‘I’ll read that later’ and never get around to it? This can easily happen. However if it arrives in the post, I’ll do the same thing but the document will sit on my desk for a few days until I eventually look at it (which I will).

6.It will arrive - Unlike ezines , the post won’t disappear in a “spam” folder or filter. If it does get filtered what impact will that have on your business?

7.Will it be different – How many printed newsletters have you received in the last 6 months compared to digital versions?

Just to clarify

I’m in no way advocating that ezines are of no use.  However it is refreshing to see that organisations are acutely aware of the risks of digital  information overload and by reverting back to traditional forms of communication,  they believe they have a better chance of reaching certain customers.

This as a result puts the focus back on us to ensure that we provide our clients with the best advice even if that means they don’t spend money on technology for certain tasks.

A test survey by global Internet metrics company, Ookla, has found that Ireland ranks among some of the poorest countries in the world when it comes to broadband speeds, in fact we were trounced in to 41st place behind Mongolia.

That’s according to an analysis of the results by Internet users lobby group, IrelandOffline.

It called on Minister Eamon Ryan to deliver concrete actions to get Irish Internet speed and quality up to the same level at least as that of the central Asian desert kingdom.

http://www.businessworld.ie/livenews.htm?a=2610321

1. Reading a real newspaper – Back in the day I used to buy a news paper, a comic book and magazines now-a-days I browse to the web to get my quick news fix.. So do I miss it ? A bit because reading the paper would be a single task which was relaxing and enjoyable. Now reading the news is just part of a multitasking cycle done everyday

Retro paper

2.Playing board or card games - Monopoly was one of my favorite games and I used to play it a lot ! Outside in the garden with my friends playing monopoly , trivial pursuit , 31en (Dutch Card game) , and connect 4.

old monopoly board

3.Going outside and getting up to mischief - Climbing trees, building huts, playing a game of football, all sorts of outdoor activities were part of my daily dose of oxygen. Although I do have to admit once in a while when I am alone some where I tend to climb a tree or two..

4.Preparing & Watching TV - My first memory of the television was when the cable company came to lay the new coax cables for television, a green tube with cables ended up sticking out of the ground close to our home and my brother and I couldn’t wait for them to finish the installation so we ended up “connecting” the cable our selves each night until after a few weeks it was properly installed by the cable company. Another part of the preparation was the TV Guide which we fought over when it arrived in the mail. Just to see what movies are coming the next week and reading the comics in the back.

Retro Tv Guide

5. Renting a VHS with no knowledge of the movie - I have seen some bad bad movies… Why? Because the only information we had available was the art work and the text on the cover of each VHS and when your younger you are easily impressed with a bit of fancy graphics on a VHS Sleeve.

cool VHS Sleeve

6. Going out on set times - Mobile phones made life a lot easier but also a lot more controllable and although it does not have a direct link to the internet I wanted to mention it anyways. Going out to a pub or a club and meeting your friends we were able to spot our friends without mobile phones in the largest and most crowded places. You would be able to go out without anyone calling to check up on you, and yes if you were late the parents would deal with it the next day. A lot more freedom back in the day.

So that’s the list for this week !

The contents of this blog reflect the statistics gathered from Google Insight Search who is responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein.Pressing any of the trending keywords will open up Google Insights for Search where you can further analyze the data

Worldwide:

Ireland:

UK:

So as you can see the birthday of Pac man was a hot topic so for all your pacman fans out there…

Pacman

Powered by: MySpace Games

]]> http://blog.arekibo.com/wednesday-the-trends-for-this-week-26052010/feed/ 1 http://blog.arekibo.com/how-small-companies-use-facebook-to-promote-their-business/ http://blog.arekibo.com/how-small-companies-use-facebook-to-promote-their-business/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 15:59:58 +0000 Antonie Geerts http://blog.arekibo.com/?p=2151 Facebook , the fastest growing social network ever has according to many internet marketing sources a huge potential for online businesses. So how are these businesses making money with Facebook? Big ad campaigns? Billboards? Banner Ads?

Many approaches have been tried but they are often very expensive with no real extra value. So how are the smaller businesses doing it? Actually a lot smarter than you would think and here’s how…Photo Ad Tagging

Photo tagging was one of the earliest features in facebook which allows you or a friend to “tag” a photo so your snapshots will be shared without having to upload the same photo in each profile (just think of a group photo).  Now a new generation of online business owners have found a way to promote there product by Tagging their friend/s on a product they are selling.

So here are some benefits

1. The product you tag with your friend on will be displayed on their wall (so all his or her friends will see it).

2. The friend will get an alert that they are tagged and will be curious.

3. You can market very specifically (e.g. you tag a nice dress or bag you’re selling to girls while you tag a xbox game you’re selling to guys.)

4. Way more effective than banner ads

5. It’s free!

Of course this guerrilla marketing technique can/could cause you to lose some friends so be smart and don’t overdo it!

http://www.fastcompany.com/pics/world-cup-mascots-borderline-offensive-oddly-mincing#0

I wonder what Ireland would come up with if we were ever to host it… if anyone has any suggestions feel free to send them on… best suggestion gets a ticket to the final when Ireland host it.

Enjoy!

After his presentation there was a Q&A session and we asked a question – “If we search for a term on Google.ie, what’s the difference between the search results returned from ‘the web’ and ‘pages from Ireland’ (remember were searching from the .ie domain).

Keeping in mind that Google has changed their homepage recently which resulted in localised search being harder to find and even though you visit the local domain (google.ie or google.co.uk etc) the default search results returned are from’the web’ and  ‘Pages from Ireland’ can sometimes be different.

Matt Cutts quickly answeredthat the Google search engine will automatically try to find the most related results based on the geographical location in the URL and he used the example of searching for the term “bank”. The results were when going to google.com Bank of America was first while in google.com.au the Australian Westpac bank would be the first returned etc. So in this example Google seems to localised results event though you don’t specify the  ‘the web’ and Pages from Ireland” option.

However

Try less popular terms and there are inconsistencies (try Seo Services or flu symptoms or banking advice etc) there are inconsistencies in the two results.

Google - the differences between web versus Pages from Ireland

Matt can you give us an answer why this is?

Finally to return to the recent changes in the search pages that Google have begun to test/rollout. When you offered the user the ability to  select where you would like Google to search from – ‘the web’ or ‘Pages from the Country’ it was clear that the search results would/could be different.

Google - Current UK homepage versus Ireland Homepage

So final question to Matt…Now that the option has been taken away from the homepage is there any need for a ‘the web’ and ‘Pages from Ireland’ if we are on the google.ie domain?

Finally Matt, thank you for taking the time out today to present to us all and for bringing the sun to Dublin.

1. Being very busy at work definitely counts.
2. Being late to the party with stuff that interests me.
3. Having too much to blog about.

The first two are pretty self explanatory and go hand in hand. When you’re too busy, by the time you get around to blogging about something that interests you, someone else has already written a better, more relevant post. I often feel if I’m late to the party, unless I’m absolutely sure my opinion is unique, it’s really not a good idea. Hence Martin’s quick link posts to other blog posts of interest are great and make enough of a point. He’s really good at that and it keeps us in touch with the market.

Having too much to blog about is less apparent. If, like me, you’re subscribed to an RSS Feed Reader like Google Reader, top left corners like this might be familiar:

You get to the point where, on top of being very busy, you’ve actually neglected the news too. I don’t buy a paper or watch tv and read all my news online. All it takes is 2 days and we’re at 1000+ posts. Add to news the items I’m interested in and you get loads on design, technical updates, coding practices, etc. Very quickly you have a glut of information and sifting through it takes a couple of hours. You’re afraid to mark all as read in case you miss something juicy so it never really get’s covered.

So what should you do? Well, I for one need to make a decision. The number of feeds I am subscribed to which are really a waste of time is silly. The number of feeds that reference other feeds that I am also subscribed to is also crazy. I need to weed it out, get rid of the bad, lazy posts and keep those I’m truly interested in. It’s a matter of prioritising and giving importance to those blogs that are really worth my while. I’d also recommend that if you’re like me, there’s no harm in clicking “Mark all as read” every once and a while. Chances are, you’ll miss nothing and just think, there was a time when you weren’t subscribed to that blog and it didn’t affect your life by not knowing about it. If it’s really important, someone will have read it and it will be discussed ad nauseum on many other blogs over time.

As for writing my own blog posts, that’s up to me. I need to make time to do so. It’s just unfortunate I haven’t had much of that lately, but hopefully I’ll be able to contribute more soon.

1. Me at the zoo ( 5 Years ago)

2. Evolution of Dance ( 4 Years ago )

3. Where the Hell was matt ( 3 Years ago)

4. Maze prank ( 2 Years ago )

5. Kangeroo by Remi Gaillard ( 1 Year ago)

So Congrats YouTube with the 5 years of entertaining us… ( and scaring little girls)

1. The voucher is valid until the 31st of May after that the value will go down to 30 euro and will only be valid for 1 month more. This urgency factor is very smart marketing of course since it means I need to start using it in the next 10 days.

2. It is only valid for new customers

3. You need to provided your credit card and billing information

4. They charge you an activation fee of 10 euro !! ( it’s only 5 euro but you need to deposit a minimum of 10 euro)

So Google is busy getting the Irish businesses interested in PPC with freebies, now you can activate the card and take advantage of this offer but just a tip: Do some research in what you will be promoting using PPC since 50 euros are spend fast online and even though you might see an increase in visitors make sure to keep an eye on the bounch rate of these visits as well !!

The contents of this blog reflect the statistics gathered from Google Insight Search who is responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein.Pressing any of the trending keywords will open up Google Insights for Search where you can further analyze the data

Worldwide:

Ireland:

UK:

]]> http://blog.arekibo.com/wednesday-the-trends-for-this-week-19052010/feed/ 0 http://blog.arekibo.com/html-5-vs-flash-and-a-bit-of-silverlight/ http://blog.arekibo.com/html-5-vs-flash-and-a-bit-of-silverlight/#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 14:24:05 +0000 Antonie Geerts http://blog.arekibo.com/?p=2098 The buzz word these days in web design and development is that of HTML5 so what is the buzz about ? Will it replace Flash ? Will it kill the Microsoft puppy silverlight ?

HTML5 has become big with Google, they embraced the technology fully in their Chrome Browser and within their websites and since the beginning of this year even YouTube went HTML5. With the iPhone not supporting flash either (and no plans of ever supporting it in the future) you would think that flash being send packing.

The best way to monitor how the technologies are evolving is by checking how popular they are on the web in terms of search volume that is why I did a compare between the 3 technologies.

Flash(blue) vs html 5(red) vs Silverlight(yellow)

Taking a look at the graph you might see a surprising result, even though HTML 5 and Silver light are on the rise comparing to the volume with Flash it seems there is a long way to go before it gets replaced with any other technologies.

It actually reminds me a lot of the browser wars where Internet Explorer had the larger part of the market and slowly but steadily Firefox, Chrome and Safari came in to take some pieces of the pie.  The difference between the browser wars and this flash one is that the users had good reason to switch to another browser, mainly because IE had some major holes in it and speed issues. Flash on the other hand doesn’t have the users complaining that much because it generally works, even though it might be slow to load and the files can become huge from a users view it works.

HTML5 and Silverlight might be a lot quicker and easier for the developers as long as most of the developers haven’t learn HTML5 or Silverlight yet and as long as the direct users aren’t complaining I don’t see flash disappearing anytime soon..

HTML 5(blue) Vs Silverlight(Red)

Update: Ian Devlin added a nice post in regards to embedding video using HTML 5. Find it here

Archie (1990):

So all the way back in 1993 and most websites were just little college projects, but as colleges grew so did the amount of sites. Archie (which was short for Archive) was the first search engine.

Lycos:

In July 2004 another college started building a search engine this time it was Lycos designed and build mainly by Michale Mauldin and he still remains to be the chief scientist at Lycos Inc.

Yahoo!

Getting Into Search Yahoo started up back in 1994 and although they actually outsourced there search function initially around the year 2000 they realized the value of it and started bringing it back in house

AltaVista:

Altavista was actually one of my personal favorites before Google took over the market; it was fast and had plenty of very accurate results. Then it got bought up by some of the bigger players ( First Overture bought it and then Yahoo bought Overture) so it kind of evolved in to the Yahoo Search of today

Google

The monster that we know today was actually a Pet for sale back in the day when Larry and Sergey created it. But the corporations weren’t interested and Google decided to start doing it on their own. So in 1998 Google was launched.

I was able to create this blog Thanks to the help of http://www.searchenginehistory.com/

So check it out if you want to know more about it

Update: Can’t believe we forgot HotBot. The fore-runner to Google and the crown jewel of late 90’s search engines. The world was it’s oyster and it’s search algorithms could do no wrong… And then Google came along and burst that bubble! Ironically, still running, but these days it’s a front-end for Yahoo, MSN and Lycos. Still, the memories..!

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

A great site for questions are the google help forums which can be found here
Also Youtube contains some very good Google Tutorials and Instructions which can be found here

But if you still can’t find the answer your looking for why not try asking Matt Cutts a question… If the question is good he will answer it on the Google Youtube channel and atleast you will get the information from a reliable source.. So why not go here and ask Google what they can do for you !

Here are some Answers given previously

The contents of this blog reflect the statistics gathered from Google Insight Search who is responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein.Pressing any of the trending keywords will open up Google Insights for Search where you can further analyze the data

Worldwide:

1. election 2010 +600%

2. mothers day cards +600%

3. bbc news +150%

4. mothers day +130%

5. f1 +90%

Ireland:

1. gerry ryan funeral +850%

2. dublin airport departures +250%

3. volcanic ash +250%

4. iaa +190%

5. 2fm live +130%

UK:

1. election results 2010 Breakout

2. election results +3,600%

3. election news +1,300%

4. bbc election 2010 +950%

5. bbc election +800%

]]> http://blog.arekibo.com/wednesday-the-trends-for-this-week-12052010/feed/ 0 http://blog.arekibo.com/is-google-out-to-get-facebook/ http://blog.arekibo.com/is-google-out-to-get-facebook/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 15:37:14 +0000 Helen Nix http://blog.arekibo.com/?p=2067 I came across an interesting post on search engine land today that suggests / queries (rather tongue in cheek)  is Google out to get Facebook..

The author stumbled upon the phenomenon when typing “how do I…” into Google and got prompted with a number of options which included – “How do I delete my Facebook account” He was curious was this happening on Bing and yahoo also and looked into but it wasn’t happening there….

He ran a Google trends report and noticed it was a rising trend.

He points out also that both Bing and Microsoft had predictive search results for deleting the others accounts i.e. Bing – “How do I delete yahoo account?” and Yahoo – “How do I delete my hotmail account?”

Out of curiosity I ran a Google Insight Report for Ireland but nothing showed up…maybe we know how to do this or just haven’t fallen out of love with Facebook yet… will keep an eye on this…

Let’s start with number 1

1# Localized search has changed

Now when going to your local google.ie or google.nl etc you will not have the direct choice to search irish or dutch results directly. Instead the search engine will determine this for you, but after the search results are displayed you will find the option to search locally in the left hand side of the google page.

2# More recent search results are easier now

The one thing that bugged me with Google Search was that often the results were very outdated. You would look at information that was old and maybe back in the day it was very relevant and hot, now it should be considered out dated information which is still ranked in the top 5 of your search results. Why not press the “Past Week” button, not only will this provided you very recent information it also expands on the option allowing you to select even the Latest “results”

3# Video’s from not just Youtube

When the statistics showed that YouTube was the number 2 search engine Google decided to add the video search on its main search engine as well. This great addition of the Video Tab (Left top corner) will allow you to search video sites, not just the standard Google Video and YouTube but any video site that wants to submit its video’s can be found there.

4# Making you do market research easier.

The wonder wheel has been around for a while now but Google decided to showcase it directly on the search page as an option. If you want to find out what is the relevance of certain keywords you can click the wonder wheel and it will create a neat little graphic with all the relevant keywords. This is great for market researching your Keywords.

5# Books

Google has invested a huge amount of money in scanning books and making them available and although the dangers of having a single company managing all our literature might be scary it is also a great single resource. Like Alexandria’s Library you will find an large selection of books on any topic. Now let’s just hope it stays free.

You may have noticed that Youtube have been rolling out some changes to their user interface lately. Yesterday saw the launch of the ‘centrepiece’ of the design revamp: the new video player.

Use the links below to see the changes for yourself. The new player makes use of on rollover hide and reveal effects to srip the controls to the bare minimum. The ‘next video’ button, which I for one have never clicked before, has been ditched. The new design also goes some way the improving the volume control which I have always found cumbersome. The simple change from a vertical to a horizontal slider seem to make a big difference. We would however have some reservations about the auto hide effect on the video timeline bar.

Making a key control element such as the slider toggle disappear may be a step to far in simplifying the interface and may baffle poor Joe Bloggs.

Overall thought we think the guys at Youtube have pretty much nailed this one on the head.

New Player: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsJpUCWfyPE
Old Player: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phWtHUMPGR8

In 2007 there was full ban on tobbacco advertising in F1 but since then Ferrari have continued the paint their cars with dubious barcode patterns that clealy resemble the Marlboro logo. It’s surprising really that it’s taken this long for the team to be called into question and the statement from Ferrari in response is also pretty smug. Their statement completly denies the Marlboro ‘barcode’ theory and tries to divert the argument towards the the colour of the car itself, an argument they can easily win as Ferrari red is Ferrari red.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out as in our opinion Ferrari don’t have a leg to stand on.

Find out more and see the picture:  http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/83194

It’s worth checking out, i think it will make you smile.

That’s it. Short and sweet

The most common grammatical mistakes that everyone makes, at least once a week, are the simple ones such as typing the address of your favourite website or performing a search on the web. Instead of Google.com you might just forget the ‘e’ and end up visiting googl.com. Or when your youtube.com is mis-spelled as youtubr.com which directs you to a completely different page.

All these mistakes are recorded web traffic and often enough those misspelled pages will give you a holding portal with links to other websites and lots of Google ads.  This brings the value of those holding or portal pages even though most will become black listed in the search results.

Another form of bad grammar is illustrated within search phrases. The so called “Do you mean” function, has a positive and a negative effect. On the positive side you will be redirected to the correct term and will be given the relevant search results based on the corrected term but on the flip side those spelling errors can be seen as a niche keyword which would give it some value when using it to optimize your webpage.  When you look at Google’s Keyword tool for example you can see some clear spelling errors that are commonly used on the web and contain a large volume of traffic.

So, as language and grammar evolve so too does your website. Maybe in a couple of years you might need to introduce meta data that stipulates the correct content, etc….. i.e.

<meta name=”keywords” content=”omg, amzing page,lol site, kewl site”>

Arekibo continues its partnership with the CRO with a redesign and development of the CRO website.

Having been commissioned to integrate a new content management system into the existing website in 2007, the website came up for tender again. Arekibo were successful in retaining the project and were commissioned to upgrade the CMS and to develop a new look and feel for the website.

A key component of this project was the development of a new information architecture, ensuring that the new website navigation was optimised for ease of use and to compliment the new design.

The Services provided included: Web Design and Development, Information Architecture, Online Branding, Usability review.

Visit the new website  – http://www.cro.ie

Arekibo have designed and developed the new website for Sturdy Products ltd.

Sturdy Products are one of Ireland’s leading rotational moulding specialists. Arekibo were commissioned to develop a new website for Sturdy Products and to help them develop their online presence.
A key feature of the new website is the online product catalogue which enables the Sturdy Products team to manage their vast range of products online. Each product has a technical data sheet associated with it.

Sturdy Products have an array of products and services  including excellent products for home and garden, farm and equestrian, construction projects, environmental and waste management . These products include oil tanks, water tanks, wheelie bins, and some brilliant rain water harvesting systems and don’t forget the rainsaver water butt that every household should have.

The Services Provided included: Web Design, Information Architecture, Online Branding, SEO Content Review.

Visit the new website  – http://www.sturdyproducts.com or go directly to their products section.

1. Arekibo (2002)

2.RTE (1996)

3.Boards(2000)

4.Google.ie(2002 Worldcup edition)

5.Revenue.ie (1996)

How many ways can you say hello on a post-it? This website - http://www.thehelloproject.com has the answer! There are an impressive array of designs which can be browsed through.

The creators of the website are currently running a competition called ‘THP Alpaca Challenge’ – you must include ‘hello’ on your design but Alpaca’s are the theme. Best of luck if you enter! The deadline for entries is tomorrow Friday 26th March.

The problem when it comes to DNS is that they are replicated across the globe, each internet provider and most companies will have their own DNS Server so when you type in www.arekibo.com it will translate to 80.93.18.114 every where on the planet.

This Wikipedia issue made me wonder about what would break the internet completely so here is my top 3 of internet disasters.

1. The Major Internet lines are cut

All internet traffic is going through cables from your home to your Internet provider and from your internet provider to a main hub and from a main hub over any of the main traffic lines (see image).
Worse case scenario would be that the majority of the lines between Japan and the US and between Europe and the US would get cut. This would result in the entire web to go down and it is not only because the main lines are gone , its because all internet traffic will try to find an alternative route which will cause overloading of the remaining lines as well… Major black out ! Back to the board games

2. Root DNS Servers (or top level DNS Servers) are hacked

As in the Wikipedia case, DNS was the major issue. Now in the introduction of this blog I explained a bit about how all DNS Servers are replicating with each other so that websites can be resolved to the same ip-address anywhere in the world.  But there needs to be a master DNS and the internet has 13 clusters of these top level DNS servers. So if in a worse case scenario all 13 clusters  would be hacked or broken then the whole internet is affected since all other DNS Servers would just replicated the information given by the top level DNS Servers.

3. A Major DDOS Virus

DDOS or Denial of Servers attacks are actually very simple internet loading processes, so for example when you type in www.arekibo.com in your web browser you make a single network query. A DDOS attack would try to load in as many queries as possible and will not stop doing this. So if you have a worm virus that would infect every computer connected to the internet it will cause major traffic on those overseas lines and all those DNS Servers and Webservers that the internet uses would become “Unavailable”. There is a maximum of traffic the internet can handle and a Major DDOS virus would certainly exceed it.

Any questions / Comments are more then welcome !

Antonie

Just a little update: Now Youtube.com is down globally… this is either due to number 2 or 3 of the doom list !

1. Raft Wars, (Addiction level : High )

The game is simple, you are a baby on a boat with friends and you have to battle pirates and other enemy’s. The game became so popular that a lot of spammers to it on them selves to create a Raft Wars 2 version (which ofcourse was still RW1 but it generated traffic)

Try it out here

2. Bubble Spinner, (Addiction level : Medium)

Hitting bubbles with the same color will make them disappear, that is the basic goal of the game but tricky  it is..

Try it out here

3. Apple Shooter, (Addiction Level : Medium )

A fun and simple game, your goal is to shoot an apple of a guys head in this 15 round game. Each round the guy moves a bit further away which makes it harder

Try it our here

4. Portal, (Addiction Level : Medium)

When Valve (the games that gave you half-life) came out with the Portal series it took only a couple of weeks for the first flash versions came out.. This is one of the best versions.

Try it out here

5. Grid16, (Addication Level : High )

This oldie is hard, and because its so hard it is addictive. They are 16 different games in one and they all have a simple challenge to complete. It is great fun but oh so difficult.

Try it out here

So this was the Retro Friday for this week, see you next friday !

Cut up a set of photoshop documents, write the markup and launch a website. At 4pm. On a Friday evening.

Needless to say, my naivity in this matter and willingness to do a good job had me in the office until very very late that Friday evening. It was all pre-CSS so it was a tabled image dump of the PSD’s. Very in-accessible, very un-usable and guaranteed to fail every user test on the planet.  You pay peanuts… That was before we really thought about these things in real depth and detail and way before I heard of the terms UX and Information Architecture.

Nishant Kothary over at Mix (http://visitmix.com) has written an article about the process of re-developing and redesigning the Mix website called “The Anatomy of Web Design”. While quite long (but necessarily so), it is imperative that anyone in the design and development arena read this article and take away from it the thought and process that is truly required to achieve a design such as theirs. From a client perspective, this article will help to inform you as to the process it takes to produce a website and will hopefully educate you as to what is involved. I found the diagrams at the end of the article illustrating the time spent on different tasks and how they crossover and flow within and because of each other, most useful. It shows that there is no point in a good design where the control of the design/development is relinquished. Everything is relative. And everything is important; the research, the discovery phase, the IA, the visual design, it’s all related and all important, all the time.

If I had a cent for every time I’ve heard:

• Sure you’ll knock that out in an hour!
• My son/nephew/daughter-in-law/sister did IT in college, I could get them to do it cheaper!
• How did that take a week!?
• You’re over priced

Then I can guarantee you, I would have stopped working a long time ago. Developers need to understand that design is important to the process. Designers need to understand why the development is important to the process. Clients need to understand the effort required to produce quality designs. Clients also need to realise that website design is not a hobby. If you want a job done, you expect that paying professionals gets you the best that your money can buy. There’s no point in cutting corners or skimping on costs. This is what it takes to get the best advice and best service. At Arekibo, this is a philosophy that we have always tried to employ. We understand that clients don’t always have the budget, but we will always encourage them to strive for the best result. We work with what they want and help them resolve their vision into a final product and design. And we push each other to make sure that we are producing the best quality work we can, often discussing and always challenging. Nothing gets done without a good reason. This is why they have hired us. We’re not going to apologise for being this good.

The buzzwords viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.[1] Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.

So here are 5 great viral marketing examples from low to high budget.

Mattress Domino’s

Kobe’s car jump

Ray ban’s jumping sun glasses

Volkswagen

Heineken

Any idea what I am talking about yet ? Well let me tell you : Many web designers and web design companies tend to add a little footer to the web pages they design for their clients which links back to the web designers page. So if you have designed 500 different websites you will now have 500 inbound links to your website BUT because of the Google algorithm alarm bells will go off because the content of those 500 different websites will have nothing to do with your website and hence count as “bad” inbound links.

I decided to investigate the issue further to see if my theory is correct and although the internet is huge and all knowing this answer seemed to have eloped the mighty web so I posted my question on the Google Webmasters Forum. Many answers were giving but all of them seemed to be “not sure” and doubtful and since Google will never admit or disclose information about the effects its search algorithm has on websites I had to accept some solutions and workarounds.

So if you want to know more about this , why not get in touch with us and we will discuss what is best for your company !

When Steve Jobs announced the iPad in his (rather underwhelming) January keynote, I watched with my wife and we agreed that while it was a nice to have and nice to hold item, it really served no other purpose than to give someone who needed only Internet and email, access to those facilities without having to spring for a netbook or laptop.  I can see the attraction, the beautiful form factor, the great design, but isn’t it really just a big iPhone? It’s certainly more self contained than a netbook. On the other hand, the more we agreed that was what it was for, the more we agreed it would suit my wife’s requirement for Internet and email access. So a week after the announcement, we put her name on the waiting list in an Apple reseller here in Dublin (we don’t have Apple Stores, only resellers); hence the little lie.

In February, Barcelona hosted the World Mobile Congress and while watching the news feeds and blog posts coming from there on Engadget, Boy Genius Report and Wired, it became obvious that the next big player in the mobile world is Android, Google’s own mobile operating system which is a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone OS. A brief conversation with a mate working in the telecoms industry confirmed what I suspected and within a week, I had two HTC Heros purchased.

So the big question here is why? Why did I take this very sudden step in the other direction? And what of the pre-ordered iPad? The very simple answer is lock-in.

Apple are the only producers of the iPhone and iPad and are the only producers of the iPhone/iPad OS that runs on it. It will only ever be Apple. We will never see a Samsung phone running the iPhone OS. Sure, the App Store is huge, but Android’s only getting started. While Apple talk about the billionth app downloaded, they hide the fact that there’s only 150,000 applications available in total (and this has recently been reduced due to the clean up on the App Store of “morally offensive” material). Likewise, there are only 6,500 Android applications, but expect this to grow and grow exponentially based on the fact that Android is the exact opposite of iPhone OS; it’s not tied to one particular brand, phone or platform. Ninty percent of phones released at the MWC were Android driven. There are a number of other perks too from a developer’s perspective. Apple charge $99 per year for developers to produce apps. They also take apps through a (sometimes overly) rigorous acceptance process before allowing it to be available on the App Store. Google charge a $25 one off fee as a developer and allow any app to be submitted to the Android Market. The percentages both companies take are the same, but at the end of the day, while I still love Apple, Android makes life easier.

I’ve lost a lot of “Google Love” of late with their imposition of Buzz on me, and Android is no-where near perfect. But I have the Android SDK on my MacBook, an Eclipse plugin and I’ve already started happily building mini-apps on my new HTC Hero. It’s a learning curve, but I’m enjoying it. Best of all, it hasn’t cost me a penny.

And my wife has access to the Internet and email… all her own new Hero. Everyone’s a winner.

Jet Set Willy on MSX

The game was launched on the MSX system and it was one of my first addictions in gaming. The graphics and game play were amazing for its time and the game was  very difficult (something that lacks in most modern games).

Other great games on the MSX where Metal Gear solid I & II and TwinBee

The Commodore 64

As the C64 arrived on the games market it did so with a bang of great games i could have picked some of my favorite ones but to be honest the below video does the C64 a lot more justice.

Super Mario Brothers on the NES and SNES )

Any list you find on the web in relation to games or console will contain a mention of super Mario brothers and this is just because it was and still is a great game. The evolution of the Mario series has been amazing but the one game in the series that had the largest impact in the game was (for me) Super Mario 3.

Half life on PC

As you might have noticed I took a major leap in the years and not even mentioning some of the amazing PC games that came out on PC like the Adventure games of Sierra and LucasArt (Police Quest , Kings Quest , Leisure suit larry, Monkey Island, Indiana Jones) nor did I mention the great thrillers like 7th Guest or 11th Hour or the shooters like Doom and Quake.

No, for me Half Life was a moment to behold because this game was a real leap from the convential PC games that were around at that time. The gripping story line and the amazing graphics made this game one of my favorites making me play and finish the game multiple times.

You can watch the entire game being finished in 30 minutes..

Gears of War on X-Box 360

The newest game in our list arrived here because of the innovations it brought to the 360 console. Not only were the graphics amazing (especially on a HD TV) it also brought a whole different style of playing First Person Shooters. The game and story would really grip you and the addition online game play would really make you spend hours and hours with ease. A number one relation breaker  on its release here is Gears of War

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

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)