Areatrade
Our thoughts, rants and inside knowlege of web design & development!
Our thoughts, rants and inside knowlege of web design & development!
Dec 17th
Popular music discovery service The Hype Machine has rolled out a major upgrade to its website interface. The Hype Machine is a service with a social media element which aggregates posts from music blogs across the internet and allows users to listen to them and ‘like’ them. The most ‘liked’ songs posted in the last three days show up in the Hype Machine chart, allowing users to get a great overview of what’s popular online at that very moment.
The website previously relied on Flash technology to play music to users, but has now switched to the up and coming standard ‘HTML5′. This allows the website to be used on many of the latest smartphones and tablets, including the iPhone, iPod touch [update: iPhone/iPod touch support is not confirmed by Hype Machine and users are reporting issues with it] iPad, and Android phones and tablets. The website certainly seems to be running much more efficiently after the re-design.
Other improvements include the consolidation of songs posted on multiple blogs into one entry. Instead of seeing the same song from three different blogs as three rows in the playlist, you now see only one, allowing the user to better judge the popularity of the song.
The More >
Dec 8th
CEO of the location based social network Foursquare has announced at the Le Web conference that Foursquare is hitting new heights, quoting the following figures:
These figures are impressive and will be a valuable tool in convincing businesses to utilise the marketing tools Foursquare offers at a local level. You can link special offers to your business to keep customers coming back, including offers for the ‘mayor’, which is the user who has visited the location the greatest number of times in the last two months. The competition is a fun and potent attraction for repeat visits on the customer’s part.
Dec 8th
You may have been following the UK tuition fees debate with some interest in the news, and seen how previously apathetic students have sprung into organised protests and occupations with surprising speed and ease. This is a great example of the role of social media in a practical context. Let’s take a look at how social networking has been used, and how it is relevant to the commercial world.
How do you know if anybody is coming to a protest? How do you know where to meet? The popular social network Facebook has been used extensively to organise protests across the country. Facebook ‘events’ have been set up with a wealth of information on dates, times, locations and attendees to organise their exploits. However, event pages are only useful up until that event starts. Which leads us to…
So when the march has started, how do such a large mass of people communicate? Twitter is the popular micro-blogging platform used by celebrities, politicians, businesses, charities, activists and everyday people – including students. When police attempted to use their controversial ‘kettling’ tactic a multitude of warnings would appear instantly on the site warning other protestors to change route. Occupations and sit ins have More >
Dec 6th
The popular mixed media blogging service Tumblr has been down for over 15 hours, with no access to its homepage, user blogs, or the ‘dashboard’ where users can make posts. As a young service some troubles are to be expected, and Twitter users will be familiar with the ‘fail whale’ which commonly occurred in its early days. However a downtime which is approaching 20 hours as I write this could prove catastrophic for the company, as companies will shy away from unreliable services.
Do you have a Tumblr account? How do you feel about this extended downtime? Rant or comment freely in the section below!
Dec 6th
Facebook have started to roll out a new profile page design to its users. Every user has a profile which acts as a hub for their photos, videos, status updates, links they have shared and items that their friends post on their ‘Wall’. The new design rearranges the profile into sections which can be accessed from a menu on the left rather than the previous tabbed interface on the top. Recently tagged photos of the user are shown across the top to make the profile current and add customisation. You can now add even more information to your profile including philosophical views such as religion, people you find inspirational, political views, your favourite quotes, and detailed descriptions of each of these beliefs. You can also add sports you enjoy, and tag friends who you like to do these sports with. The same applies to your favourite ‘activities’. You can now add multiple schools and universities, and tag friends from these places. You can tag friends at your workplaces too, and break down your work and education into individual projects that you have worked on and classes you took, and once again, tag your friends and colleagues.
See the screenshots and a More >
Dec 1st
We are proud to launch this website design project for the North London Builders DCL – Direct Construction Ltd. The initial brief was to design the company logo / branding.
Once branding was complete we moved our focus onto the website design. We took the time to understand the clients services and planned the website content around this information, we provided 5 bespoke home page designs and this was the outcome. The website design is built inside the WordPress platform which means the blog was seemlessly integrated and future social media interaction will be simple and cost effective to implement.
Dec 1st
Business oriented social network giant LinkedIn has recently launched a share button which gives users a way to spread thier content throughout their professional network.
There are 3 options of the share button available which can be easily added to your website or blog – as follows:
1. vertical:
2. horizontal with counter:
3. horizontal without counter.
LinkedIns latest updates combined with the additional sharing options released back in April, link attaching, status updates, ability to re-share links as well as edit and delete posts brings it inline with social media giant Facebook.
The share button competition is strong with Facebook, Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon and countless others, do you think LinkedIn has a place in this market and which is your preference?
Dec 1st
Flock was first released in 2005 and is known for its social networking elements, for years the browser was based on the GECKO rendering engine, same as Firefox. In June it has swopped over to use Googles Chromium Engine in an attempt re-invent itself.
With the financial backing of Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape they have created the future of browsing and have been quick to react to the launch of RockMelt a start up looking for a piece of the social browsing market. Albiet a little cumbersome and not nearly as polished as Flock, it has ruffled a few feathers, competition is good.
See the into for Flock – better still download it – its free and take it for a spin.
Let us know what you think.
Dec 1st
The search engine giant Google has recently released the latest version of Google Earth. Here are a quick run down of the new features.
Integrated Street View Street view is now fully integrated into this version update, it means you can go from orbiting the Earth to standing in your road.
3D Trees Google Earth has had 3D buildings for some time they have now introduced 3D to give the background a little more content.
Better Historical Data You can now go back into time, the oldest time available will show in the status bar at the bottom, this wil let you see places before Earthquakes and in some cases historical events such as London in 1945.
Watch the video – its all getting pretty amazing.
Dec 1st
Sound & vision would like to advise all who will listen about the benefits of a well organised Google Pay Per click advertising campaign. Just 2 years ago (We) savavs used to spend £150-£170 pounds per month on newspaper ads. The ad was the size of a stamp and it would bring leads worth less than £100.
We have since re-directed this budget into Google’s PPC ad’s system and we have been really impressed with the results.
I personally like the way all feedback data is presented through the Analytics reports. Areatrade gave a structured breakdown of all keyword and campaign traffic and show us specifically where our leads are coming form.
Since starting our ppc campaign with Areatrade, Savavs have been really impressed with the amount of qualified enquiries that have lead to real money changing hands coming directly from our ppc campaign.
Brad bishop @ Areatrade has been a huge source of information and given great guidance regarding our online presence. PPC ads have brought us the customers we were looking for, and with the guidance of Brad we have managed to convert more leads into sales than any other form of advertising we‘ve tried.
We also love coming to the Areatrade offices More >