Techiedog-blog

As per usual Imran's round up of yesterday's event is pretty comprehensive so why post when I can link ?

Yes, at long last the new Grinn album "Ordinary Day' has been released. It may take some time to make it to a record shop near you, but you can get it right now by ordering from the Grinn online shop . Whats more it will only cost you £6 +P&P. While you are at it, why not order a T-Shirt or one of the previous albums. If you are new to Grinn there is a fantastic online only offer to buy all three albums for just £12 and complete your Grinn back-catalogue in one go.

I've had a lot of queries of late (some prompted by my recent talk ) from people in Web Design companies asking about the future of their industry and what they can do to stay competitive. I initially wrote a long post on this topic, most of it late at night and much of that after several glasses of fine wine and it all became a little rambling. So, at the risk of passing up some consultancy cash*, I deleted that and instead I offer this slightly more succinct and considered Top 5 tips for Web Design Agency survival : 1. Understand what the Web actually is! The Web is moving from a publishing platform to a global computation platform. This means that the Web site is becoming the Web Application. The Web is becoming the medium through which not only humans, but other web sites and other systems will interact with the organization. The notion of the brochureware site will die for all but the very bottom end of the market. 2. Respect your Geeks! Firstly, engineers are not unwashed, ...

The second open coffee in Leeds took place this Tuesday at the new venue; The LoftArt Gallery on the Third floor of Flannels on Vicar Lane - Thanks Justin for the venue, coffee and cakes. Not a bad turn out (max 19 concurrent attendees by my calculations and 21 in total) for the difficult second event and some very animated conversations took place not to mention one or two demos, the venue's free WiFi being a real boon in this respect. (photo from Imran 's Flickr) Imran has posted a more detailed review here so I won't duplicate. Keep your eyes on upcoming for news of the next event.

I've been traveling about for the last few days and with limited connectivity my online time has mostly been spent dealing with email and other coms rather than 'productivity' applications, so when I got back to my desk this morning and opened up Google Docs to check the progress of a collaboration I got a surprise - a brand spanking new interface. (pic from ZDnet review) That is to say that the home/file page has been revamped - the apps themselves remain unaffected. It is an improvement on the previous incarnation. There is more detail in front of the eye and dragging and dropping has been introduced both of which cut down time and effort. However, as a long time heavy Gmail user the file list layout with its new chronology based view, fires my 'inbox recognition neurons' which is confusing as I keep thinking I'm looking at mail. To my mind it all looks a bit cluttered - although the ability to see file name, shares and access date without extra clicking or...

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Thanks to everyone for being such an engaging audience last night - it was a pleasure to talk to you all. If any one has any questions or wants to argue against anything I said feel free to email me or post a comment here. You won't offend me by disagreeing with anything I said, I welcome debate and am not too proud to surrender to a well reasoned argument - debate helps us all understand better. As always with these things there are points I realize I should have made and other things I realize I should have expanded upon but time is always such a limited commodity. If any one can make it to the next Leeds open coffee we can talk further. Thanks for some really interesting questions and conversations after the presentation. As promised, the presentation (as a PDF) can be download from here : Also, below is the reading list I recommend and also the list of Web 2.0 apps that are worth taking a look at to see if they can help you in your business. If you find any others you like, pl...