At JC Peters we are a fairly small company, so it is always hard for us to make the time to market our own business. The question is always should we prioritize marketing our own business as high up the ladder as working on existing projects for our clients.  If we don’t market ourselves we find we get too many peaks and troughs, we go through periods of being very busy and when those periods are over we have periods were we are then marketing ourselves.

The obvious answer is probably to expand our marketing side to ensure consistent activity but over the past 18 months, like all businesses we have tried to run ourselves as leanly as possible in order to weather the storm.

Currently the cold market seems to be thawing slightly and clients are wanting to spend again, so we have been very busy with organic work from existing clients.  I think we will probably take the plunge and employ a marketing person to work full time on marketing our web & graphic design services, we will probably look to do this in the new year.

We’ve recently built and set up a number of p.c’s to fulfill an I.T contract for a client of ours.  As part of the software install we have supplied the brand new shiny Windows 7, this was our first experience of Microsoft’s brand new flagship OS.

So…..whats it like?
As hardened Mac users we’re always keen to avoid anything Microsoft.  Our first thoughts were that it is very ‘Mac like’ when it boots, it doesn’t show a load of DOS code as its predecessors always did so well done for that Microsoft!.

It also now has a dock area at the bottom of the screen, which is very useful for quickly opening your fav programs (mmm, where have I seen that before?).  It’s media integration is also really good, it looks very slick.  Page animate nicely into one another it all felt very well balanced and put together.

Its fairly clear to see that Microsoft have been closely watching Apple and their great OS (Snow) Leopard > upon fist glance the new Windows 7 appears to be really good, it looks great, isn’t to processor hungry (unlike the Lead Balloon that was Vista).

So is it really as good as Leopard?
Of course it isn’t!!! – the main problem is that it is still made by Microsoft > and that means badly thought out, not tested properly, impossible to actually do anything other than write a word doc with.  As soon as we try setting up a simple Network then that’s when you see behind the curtain, it is still just like all of it’s predecessors and is unnecessarily long winded in order to perform the simplest of tasks.  It is clunky and worst of all it won’t Network to a Linux based server.

And the moral of the story is………..get a Mac, they work.

Email newsletters, as a web design agency we get a fair few requests for email newsletter design.  As email marketing is much cheaper than traditional print advertising, the recent economic climate has drawn many businesses into looking at more cost effective forms of marketing.

At Jc Peters we have designed and managed quite a few email campaigns on behalf of our clients, they seem to be an excellent way of keeping in touch with regular clients and reaching new ones.

The consensus is that they not only a more cost effective method of marketing (versus Print) but they also are able to provide access to extremely accurate statistics & data on open rates and bounce rates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giEmoZkGPB4

Whilst we are still enjoying our new Camatasia software, we thought we would make a little video of some of our recent web work.  Please follow the link above, we put together a little 5 min vid showcasing some of our recent web designs.

The great thing about Camtasia is that we can make virtual ‘walk-throughs’, meaning that the viewer can see each site in context, with the mouse on screen flicking through the navigation.

We’ve set it to music with the addition of a bangin techno wizzy house type song – we truly are down with the kids.

Check it out, we’re rather pleased with it!!!

We’ve just got our shiny new copy of Camtasia for Mac and it is a great piece of kit.

Camtasia is (in our opinion) the best software for producing on screen walk through video files.  These are a great way of making visual tutorials in how to use a program, application or providing on screen help.  Over the past few years we’ve done a fair few of these for various companies, they seem to be really popular of late.

The only downside was that Camtasia was never available for Mac, as hardened Mac users it was always a major pain to fire up the old p.c’s to produce Camtasia projects, to be plunged back into the bad old days of screen freezes, crashed, long winded proceedures URGHHHH!.

Now we can still use our lovely shiny RELIABLE mac pro’s when producing Camtasia projects.  It works perfectly with the Mac and has loads of really cool editing features.

www.jcpeters.co.uk

For the past few months we have been working on a new product called ‘imail’, imail is a great way to set up your own perosnalised email address without the hassle. for example yourname@yourname.co.uk. We have now launched the website: www.my-imail.co.uk

Historically, if you just needed an email address, you had to set up a Googlemail or Hotmail email account, whilst these are free you are of course advertising another business.  If you are a tradesman for example and have you email address on the side of your van, it is hardly ideal.

The other route was to buy a domain name, pay for a full hosting agreement each month and set it all up yourself.  This is of course not the most cost effective method if all you need is an email address.

With imail you only pay for what you need > an email address.  Packages start from £1.49 per month, you can then select your desired name (yourname@yourname.info).  You susbscribe for as long as you need the address, it is great if you want a business email address – or a family name.

Imail works great with all of the major email client applications, such as Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail.  You also get access to a unique Webmail address, meaning you can log in to your account online for any p.c connected to the net. It also works with any email enabled mobile, suck as Blackberry or iPhone.

Please visit the site to find out more, or to claim your email address: www.my-imail.co.uk.

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So Microsoft are going to launch internet explorer 9, apparently it will ship with the new Windows 7 in three weeks time.  Internet explorer 8 has only been out for a few months, why yet another browser.  Microsoft seem to go through a cycle of releasing lots and lots of half baked products that don’t work properly – rather than the obvious route of make one product, for one application and make it work!.  Do we really need yet another browser?

As a web designer, we have to test each site in every different browser, which in Firefox, Safari & Opera this is never normally an issue.  Then we get to the dreaded I.E test, we test in I.E 5.5 through to 8 (currently), normally we need a different style sheet for every version of I.E, which is a major pain, as without it, sites would look completely different in every different(I.E) web browser.

So now, we have yet another I.E browser to format websites for – no doubt this means yet another bug test and style sheet to add to the list.  Rumor has it that I.E will be using the coding from Mozilla Firefox (one of the best browsers IMHO) – is this a final admission from Microsoft that they cannot write a decent browser?

If it does use the Firefox guts then this would be great > it makes our life much easier.  If it doesn’t then no doubt it will be yet another bug riddled half baked Microsoft product.  Well done Microsoft.

Use a Mac…….don’t over  pollute your lovely Apple machine with dirty Microsoft rubbish!

In any industry there are always a percentage of people that exist purely to rip people off, whether they know it or not.  This small minority of people and businesses are the blight of every sphere of business.  The web design industry is of course no different.

Yesterday I a colleague told me of an experience with another company’s shoddy web design work, the client (site owner) had asked if their site could be repaired as it did not show properly in several of the main web browsers (this is a common issue), the client had paid a considerable four figure sum for what should have been a quality piece of work.

Upon investigation it was discovered that the original site had been designed using iWeb – which is the apple ‘drag & drop’ program for building websites, there is no coding knowledge or any expertise required to use it.  It is designed to be for people that want a quick and easy site and have no prior knowledge of how to write one.  The whole site would have taken an afternoon to piece together using iWeb, whilst this is fine for a ‘quick and dirty’ web solution for people that just require a basic presence, it is truly staggering that someone would see this as a commercial skill that could be invoiced!.