M2 Designs - Lighting and Lighting Specialists

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

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

• Festivals
• Bands
• Awards Ceremonies
• Car Launches
• Product Launches
• Corporate Events

Balls of various sorts

Balls
Originally uploaded by virtuaffinity.

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

This is a blog entry direct from Flickr.

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

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

Free Website Privacy Policy

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

New Website Launch - Pure France Now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both the above new options require a Google account.

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

Viral Marketing Through Video

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

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

Take a look and tell us what you think,

Search Engine Marketing Video

Windows Vista

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

Is it any good?

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

what is there to shout about?

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

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

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

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

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

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

So will I upgrade to Windows Vista?

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

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