Areatrade
Our thoughts, rants and inside knowlege of web design & development!
Our thoughts, rants and inside knowlege of web design & development!
Nov 30th
The controversial international whistleblower website WikiLeaks has been suffering large scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks as it releases controversial leaks pertaining to American military and embassy communications around the world.
A DDoS attack involves attacking a web server so as to make the website or application it provides inaccessible. This is usually done by directing a large amount of traffic towards it, such that the server becomes saturated and unable to respond to legitimate web requests.
WikiLeaks has posted on it’s social networking profile on Twitter that the “DDOS attack [is] now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second.” A hacker called ‘the Jester’ has claimed responsibility for a previous attack on Sunday, though it is doubtful that these large scale attacks are the work of one person. There is also a strong possibility that governmental forces are at work in the background. This comes to light as the UK and US make defences against ‘cyber warfare’ a high priority.
Areatrade work hard to ensure that the servers holding your website are secure against such attacks and from vulnerabilities. What do you think about the changing face of the web and the growing importance of cyber security? Let us know in the comments below.
More >Nov 30th
We are pround to launch this website design for a creative print and design studio in Cuffley. The website design brief was very specific and required something a little different. The developed a bespoke platform and integrated some really nice JQuery elements to provide the slide effects. Simple yet effective. See it here.
If you need any help with your ecommerce web design or website design set up and online promotion please contact us today.
Nov 26th
The WordPress mobile app has been updated which has seen huge bug fixes and the following new features:
- Video: record video inside the app and post direct. - Local Drafts: saves all post locally before being puclished or saved online. - Autosaves: Allows you to revert back to older verions of a post. - Set Up Process: Allows WordPress.com users a quick way to add their blogs, and WordPress.org users a more streamlined experience when adding their sites - Media Library: New media library.
Let us know if these updates help improve your website design or Ecommerce Web Design wordpress platform.
Nov 24th
Twitter is set to launch an analytic tool to help users to track the popularity of their Tweets, number of retweets and the number of replies each post recieved. This tool is a fantastic tool which will make marketers jump for joy especially when reports say it will be FREE?
Surely Twitter could have cashed in on this one?
Let us know if you would have paid for this kind of service?
Nov 24th
Small businesses are expected to continue to invest larger shares of their advertising budgets in the favour of websites over other forms of advertising according to a recent survey undertaken by Zoomerang and Growbiz Media. This shows that smal businesses will continue to push their websites aswell as direct mail, e-mail marketing, social media and print advertising.
Website Design and Ecommerce Web Design have contributed to the rise above all other advertising forms as more companies understand that the future of their business is linked to the quality of their website. It is estimated that 39% of all small businesses with fewer than 1000 staff are spending around 20% of their budgets in favour of their website and 17% of all small business plan to increase their web spenditure throughout 2011. In comparison 15% reported they will increase their email marketing budgets and 13% their social media investment.
Amazingly only 54% said they had a website design and only 13% had a website blog. Looking into the website features the majority (80%) of websites contained general business information, 45% customer service, 35% lead generration and 30% had an Ecommerce Web Design element.
This shows there is huge room for improvement amongst small business owners to More >
Nov 18th
As part of the recently unveiled redesign of the Myspace social networking and ‘entertainment discovery’ website, a deep integration with Facebook has been revealed. The integration will allow new and existing users to pull in their profile information and ‘social graph’, linking their Myspace profiles to artists and bands they have listed on their Facebook profile.
The ‘beta’ version of the new site is now available at www.myspace.com, but from my own testing it seems that the Facebook integration is not functioning as announced at this time. Nevertheless, the new features sound very promising. See a video about the new features after the break. Also, try hovering over their logo on the new website – it’s a nice design touch!
Nov 17th
Search engine and online service provider Google has fallen into disputes with social network Facebook over ‘data portability’. Google has blocked access to its Contacts service from Facebook, citing poor standards in data sharing on Facebook’s part as the cause. Facebook allowed users to access their contacts list from Google’s Gmail service to find friends who are also using the social networking site. Google has criticised Facebook for making the export of its own contact data extremely difficult whilst taking advantage of the superior export facilities offered by other services. (more…)
Nov 15th
Martin Clarke, the Daily Mail executive allocated the role of running the newspaper’s website, Mail Online, has revealed at the Society of Editors conference in Glasgow that 10% of traffic to the website originates from the social network Facebook, and referred to it as a ‘gigantic free marketing engine’. The 10% figure is beaten only by Google, as one would expect.
The journalism industry is currently split on the best model for online news – News International has recently erected a paywall around their Times Online and News of the World websites, and is intending to do the same for The Sun. The issue with forcing users to pay to view content is, of course, that the ‘shareability’ factor decreases dramatically – your friends are unlikely to sign up to a newspaper subscription just to read an article you posted on their Wall.
Regardless of the tough decisions that the newspaper industry faces, it is becoming increasingly apparent that social media has a massive role in online promotion. A well organised social media strategy could increase traffic to your site dramatically. Analytics data also takes an important role in discerning the sources of traffic to More >
Nov 12th
The internet is abuzz with rumours that Facebook is about to launch a new email service that will be heavily tied in with Facebook’s current social networking features. Tentatively named ‘Project Titan’, it is speculated that the service will provide Facebook users with their own personal ‘@facebook.com’ email addresses. Facebook do seem to be unveiling a lot of new features after their ‘Summer Lockdown’ in which engineers at the company were directed to work feverishly on new and existing products offered by Facebook.
What do you think about this ‘Facebook Mail’ concept? Would it be a fantastically convenient option, or do you feel like the social media giant is intruding too far? Which email service do you use at the moment? Would you leave for a Facebook version? Tell all in the comments section!
Nov 5th
Apple’s new ‘Ping’ social and music discovery network has only added two thousand artists in the two months since it went live, Mashable reports, despite garnering a massive user base numbering in the millions. The usefulness of the social network is questionable when there is a distinct lack of bands and artists for users to interact with.
According to Jeff Price, the founder of music distributor TuneCore, Apple has a rigorous sign up process for artists, so that artist profiles that are created belong to the real artist only. This quality control process is designed to avoid the pitfalls of websites like the soon-to-be relaunched Myspace, where users make unofficial artist pages making discovery and interaction with the actual artist very difficult.
However, the application process itself involves music distributors like TuneCore and CDBaby, and can take some time. Many artists were in fact completely confused as to how to apply for a profile in the first place, prompting Apple to release a submission guide.
Have you tried out Apple’s new service? How did you find it? Send a few comments our way!