Cornish web developers, UKNetWeb, have announced the speaker for their next monthly virtual conference session to be entitled ‘Insight: Convergence’.

South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA), Innovation and Enterprise Convergence Manager, Josie Linton, will take the keynote speech with other members of SWRDA team supporting her at the conference.

The conference will take place online at 12.30pm on Tuesday 7th October. Guests can log in at anytime from 12 noon on the day by following instructions posted on the site http://www.uknetweb.com.

Josie will endeavour to explain how Convergence business support will be implemented; with regards to business support the aims of the funding and how it will affect businesses operating within the county.

The purpose of the Convergence Programmes is to speed up the economic development of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly particularly through investing in: skills and helping people into work; the development of a more knowledge based economy; business productivity and innovation; and in infrastructure for a more modern economy.

The Convergence Programme follows on from the Objective One Programme which closed for investment on the 31st December 2006.

Talking about the conference, UKNetWeb Managing Director, Toby Parkins said,

“We are really excited to have members of the Regional Development agency on hand to explain more about  Convergence funding and what it means for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Our aim with the Insight Sessions is to give businesses access to more detailed information around a specific issue or subject of a topical nature and you can’t get more topical than the plans for Convergence”.

Insight: Convergence will be the second virtual conference organised by UKNetWeb with the previous session, Insight: Recession, featuring a keynote speech from economist and former Finance Cornwall Chief Executive, Lord Teverson.

The sessions usually last around an hour with a transcript of the sessions published online following the event. Anyone interested to learn more, including future speaking opportunities, should contact Aren Grimshaw at UKNetWeb on 01872 555933 or email aren@uknetweb.com.

Notes to Editor:

• For more information on the Convergence Programme visit http://www.objectiveone.com/O1htm/01-convergence/convergence.htm
• For more information on UKNetWeb visit http://www.uknetweb.com
• For information on past UKNetWeb Insight Session please visit http://www.uknetweb.com/blog/tag/insight-sessions/

When we first heard about the dontclick.it project we were excited to see what it had to offer and whether this might just be the start of an entirely new way for websites to work. Driven by my passion (and if I’m honest geeky desire) to search out the best of Web 2.0 projects and emerging internet technologies I first came across dontclick.it through a random Stumble and at first site was pretty impressed.

Not wanting to stop at my own first impressions I felt it was time to let the site do the rounds of the office and see just what the designers, techies and normal polite members of society thought about a site that doesn’t need (or allow) to be clicked.

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John Thornton… resident PHP Programmer and general ‘codehead’ at uknetweb

The user interface is definitely a novel and very innovative one; however this kind of site operation is likely to prevent site visitors suffering from motor control problems or other special needs due to the nature of the programming employed.

The various button control techniques shown, set about destroying some of the only positive arguments for an interface control system of this kind. i.e. that you don’t need to keep clicking or pressing buttons!

The delay while you hover waiting for an action to start makes the site clumsy to use, confusing and slower than clicking. The continuous mouse wiping and waving motion is more likely to cause Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) than a single movement and a click.

In all it’s a great theory which unfortunately lacks any forethought (but it does look lovely).

Score: 2 out of 5 – awarded for innovation and looks.

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Richard Collett… resident CSS expert responsible for making client sites ‘look pretty’.

What an annoying site! OK, so on first impressions it captures every aspect of the Web 2.0 style – bold colours, reflections, crazy page structures and so on but come on is there really any need to remove the click function?

Within minutes of hitting the site I couldn’t help myself, I pressed the button on my mouse, sending me to some strange page of snow that told me I shouldn’t have done that. The site creators just can’t help themselves after all this site is more about standing out from the norm and doing something different rather than anything useful.

My annoyances in the site didn’t stop there. Try using this site with a laptop touchpad, I beg you to!

OK so lets be serious here for a moment. What does this site achieve?

Very little I’m afraid. I have spent my time putting together sites and ensuring ease of use for site visitors but this site is just so confusing. You are never quite sure where you are or where you’re supposed to be going, that’s fine for a crazy test site but it just isn’t applicable to any real world scenarios.

Score: 0 out of 5 – because it’s so god damn annoying!!

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Esther Caulfield…a rose amongst the thorns, she handles all the lines of communication coming into the Engine House.

Ummm. I’m confused why do you want me to go to this site?

Hey, what’s the point of all this.

It just told me to click and now I have been told off for clicking! Oh, how annoying is this!?

I’m bored can I go now… ah, wait a second I’ve just found a giveaway!

Score 1 out of 5 – it has a giveaway!

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So at the end of the day the team here at uknetweb were not impressed by the dontclick.it project giving it a final score of 1 out of 5. Our end message to the developers has to be ‘Why? – If it isn’t broke don’t fix it!’

The general concept is a never ending flash based site featuring hundreds (maybe thousands) of little gadgety things to share, embed or whatever you please. With easy ‘share’ tags on most animations featured, they offer easy forwarding to blog pages, del.icio.us accounts and much more.

This feature rich site fully embraces the web 2.0 principles offering engaging and interactive content that weaves effortlessly into the social bookmarking and online sharing communities.

Well done Orange – I look forward to wasting hours lost talking to little robots, cutting the hair of weird birds or inventing my own brands of ice-cream.

A dedicated user of the Mozilla Firefox system, I had my reservations of moving to yet another browser and all the issues in cross browser compatibility on badly developed sites I was sure to have.

On download, I found a browser well beyond my expectations and one that I believe enhances my online experience and my efficiency in carrying out research and networking online. Using the same image rendering as Firefox (according to my techie friends in the office), I don’t need to worry about any new browser compatibility issues at all.

So why do I recommend Flock?

Flock is, to use their words, ‘The Social Web Browser’. It has built in functions to make your social networking, blogging, RSS feed experience the best it can be.

When I want to see what’s happening on Facebook or Flickr, its all one click away with a simple bar down the side showing my friends pics and status. Notifications of waiting group requests, messages etc are shown at the top of the bar too.

When I want to blog I push the little quill and up pops a little window (I am writing this there now), write my blog and press publish to automatically upload to which ever site I have registered.

Through ‘My World’, a personal home screen a little like the iGoogle set up, I see my favorite sites and RSS feeds all in one place.

I could go on listing all the functions but I will leave you to find out the rest by downloading it and testing it. I am sure it has it’s downfalls too, I just haven’t found them yet. If you want to leave me a comment with positive or negative comments about Flock feel free. Happy Flocking!

Never one to miss an opportunity to test a new web application, I created a group for members of the network and referral organisation, the BNI, and joined a local business network created by friend, Alan Jones, for business people in the South West (UK).

So will sites such as Ning lead to the creation of ‘nethoods’, a trend prediction from Trend Watchers extraordinaire – Trendwatching.com, where smaller networks are likely to focus on small real life suburbs, villages or even streets as people search to merge life on and offline?

If you have your own social network why not include it in a comment on this blog? I have.
Visit BNI

My role within the company is to research emerging technologies, liaise with clients and potential clients, and manage some of the projects coming in.

I have started this blog to share some of our work with the world and help businesses locally or further afield tap into the many new tools emerging on the web. I will post as often as I can with links to great sites, information or tools for those interested in the internet, other emerging technologies or growing their business.I want to start by adding the following slideshow (available for download) which was a presentation we prepared for our local Chamber of Commerce featuring hundreds of embedded links to more info.

I am keen to hear any thoughts you have and welcome anyone to get in touch. You can find me on Skype, Facebook or Plaxo. (Click here for links through ‘About Aren’)

Aren

The business, previously owned and managed by Aren Grimshaw, will be incorporated into uknetweb as it moves to increase links between clients’ online and offline activities.

Uknetweb, Managing Director, Toby Parkins commented, “We have been working successfully with Galileo on a number of projects. This move comes as we work to enhance client relationships and extend partnerships with agencies offering complimentary services.”

“Aren’s experience in running his own business ideally places him to work as a project and account manager. His ability to understand client needs will allow us to ensure the highest online returns as we move forward.”

Galileo’s marketing services will be turned towards the development of more sophisticated web based systems and websites rather than the agency’s former branding and offline marketing work.

The change will take place immediately with Aren joining the team at uknetweb’s offices in The Engine House, Wheal Kitty.

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In tests conducted by St.Agnes based, Uknetweb, serious security flaws were found in 2 out of 3 sites, despite them appearing to have well developed sites with proper safeguards against hackers and other criminals.

This comes at a time when fear of ‘e-crime’ is at an all time high and local online store owners need to be aware that they hold a duty of care over their customer details and their own sensitive customer information.

The site owners, who commissioned Uknetweb to perform the test hacks, were shown how access to their confidential customer details took less than half an hour in each case.

This research achieved similar results to those found by the BBC Nationally in October, where they found online hackers selling ‘how to guides’ and login details for web shops.

The BBC reported a hacker boasting, “I got many shops and tons of daily orders. I hack a shop in 3-4 hours and sell it for $100-500” and thanked “stupid admins” for making basic mistakes which allowed him to break in.

With much internet crime now coming from organised criminal gangs looking to sell this information on at low cost to a range of criminals, business owners need to wise up and ensure they protect themselves and their customers appropriately.

In many cases the original hacker does not use the details, opting instead to sell them on as false identities to be used for acquiring credit and identity documents for resale to unsavoury characters associated with drug trafficking or child pornography.

Managing Director, Toby Parkins said, “Hackers will always get more sophisticated as time goes on; however, in many cases the simplest levels of protection have been ignored.”

“The best way to ensure your own website security is to get a full technical specialist to build your site rather than cheaper off the shelf developers who have only basic knowledge of the coding systems.”

Any company concerned with their own internet security can request a low cost security check from Uknetweb by calling 01872 555933 or visiting www.uknetweb.com

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Local website development company, Uknetweb is celebrating success after one of their sites won a prestigious award at The British Media and Environmental Awards (BEMAS) held recently in Canary Wharf.

The site produced for Environmental campaign charity, Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), beat off strong competition from the Telegraph’s Earth site and Green TV to win the category of Best Website 2007.

Looking for the most effective application of new media, market audience engagement, plus links for the scientific, education and environmental communities, the SAS site was judged top of the class.

Only launched in March this year, the website receives around 30,000 visits per month acting as a window on the organisation’s campaign work and fundraising activities, e-commerce store and information portal.

Uknetweb Managing Director, Toby Parkins, said, “It is great to see one of our clients win this level of recognition. We aim to build all of our client sites for ease of use and customer engagement and this is a strong indicator we are achieving this aim”.

“Over the past 8 years we have been really proud to have helped support the SAS campaign through managing and building three separate sites. It’s awesome to think that the latest website has managed to beat off competition from far higher budget websites and come out on top.”

Surfers Against Sewage, not wanting to miss an opportunity to shame award sponsor, Northumbrian Water, handed out their own golden toilet brush award for in their words, “showing a disregard to the health of the marine environment”.

The winning website can be seen at www.sas.org.uk or as part of the company portfolio on www.uknetweb.com.

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The new site has been built for Redruth based Cornwall Kawasaki Centre and currently holds more than a million motorcycle parts, making the site the most comprehensive web based store for motorcycle parts in the UK.

Uknetweb’s Managing Director, Toby Parkins, commented on the launch, “Many web developers tend to supply off the shelf systems and packages which are not suitable for more sophisticated web based shopping systems. With each of our sites we take time at the beginning to consider the customer’s needs and identify methods for making their shopping experience the very best it can be.”

“In the case of Cornwall Kawasaki Centre we found that many people experienced difficulties in linking diagram numbers with parts numbers and taking this forward in locating the part for sale. We developed a unique system which allows users to view detailed parts diagrams, identify the parts number, and then order the part, all from the one site.”

The plan for the site is to continue adding to the present catalogue with the aim of providing one site for all bike parts and accessories. The site went live on the web at www.cornwallkawasaki.co.uk on Monday and is expected to be a welcome relief to thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts who often need to spend hours searching for parts for their motorcycle and visiting garage after garage in search of them.

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