Apparently according to a report by O2, 9 out of 10 people who took part in their six-month trial were happy to pay for stuff using their mobile phone, instead of the traditional credit card. The technology, called field communications technology or NFC for short, works by waving or touching a mobile phone against a reader.

The technology has been tested widely across Europe and has infact apparently been in use in Japan for years now, although the take up over there accounted for less than 1% of all retail sales in 2006.

Unfortunately though the takeup here might be quite slow though due to the number of people involved in actually making it happen, and the length of time it would take to re-coup the costs and make it a worthwhile replacement for a traditional credit card transaction.

One very neat application for the technology would be paying at parking meters. You could then be sent a text message when your parking was running out. A very handy feature, although I’m sure it wouldn’t be too popular with the NCP tax collectors!

You can read the full article on the Reuters website here.

So the inevitable has happened - Google have built their first browser, set to take on Microsoft and leave Internet Explorer as a distant memory.News of today’s launch was ‘leaked’ to Google Blog-oscoped (the blog by Philipp Lenssen - which is currently down, probably due to having been visited just a bit over the last 24 hours!) via a 28 page comic book style introduction.

Google say they “hit “send” a bit early” and so have now made the comic available to one and all here.

According to The Times Online, Google Chrome will “feature a new format for tabs, the ability to view web pages as thumbnails and better features on the address bar.”

Well I for one will be having a play shortly, and will let you know my vote…

Update 11.51am Tuesday 2nd September 2008

Phew -  whoever said that comic was 28 pages long was wrong - it’s over 30 and there is some serious stuff in there! Basically Google have completely rewritten web browsers as we know them! With each tab having it’s own controls and being quite independent. This gives advantages such as each being able to do it’s own thing at one, and if one crashes the others aren’t effected. They’ve also worked on V8 - to enable fast and efficient use of Javascript in web based applications.

Anywho - Google Chrome is going to be made available any minute now… or at any point during today anyway… just watch this space…

Wednesday 3rd Septemner 2008

Well I waited and waited yesterday until I had to go out - but I now this morning have Google Chrome running on my pc. And so far so good!It’s identifying my most commonly visited pages so that when I open a new tab I can just pick one of them if I wish. I can even slide each tab around to reorder them if I want. One of Google’s major claims is that the browser makes much better use of available memory - so time will tell on that one.

News reports (on TV last night and across the web) are saying this is Google challenging Microsoft. I think it’s more likely to be a challenge to Firefox - which is a shame, seeings they’ve worked well together for a while now (and I can already see Firefox 3 features in Chrome). I recently got a new PC (and am not finding vista as bad as I thought I might!) and it came with Google Desktop installed. So are Microsoft going to keep that allegiance with Google now? Apparently Google were always worried that Microsoft might bring out their own search engine and drive their users straight to it through IE and away from Google.

Whilst Jo Public seem to have an amazing dependence on Google (I am shocked by the amount of web users who believe the Google search box is the only way to access any website), they are also scared of ‘downloading’ anything. Or don’t see a change as necessary. We can see this from the number of existing IE6 users. I’ve got a laptop with IE6 on it that we keep for testing - but even I have to be careful not to accept the IE7 update that Microsoft keep offering. And yet, somehow, so many people do still resist it! So I’m really not sure what will win out - the Google brand, or the lazy and cautious public.

Also - does anyone actually  believe that Google ‘accidentally’ sent that email early?! The Google exec on the news last night, sheepishly explaining their school-boy error (”well we are only 10 years old, so we are a school boy”) did little to sway my thoughts about a pr stunt. 

Meanwhile, what will become of Firefox? The developers favourite. Whilst I’m sat here trying out Chrome (and also - I really don’t like the name!) I do feel pangs of guilt about my former favourite shortcut sitting unused on my desktop - my computer’s hardly ever on without Firefox being open. I feel Firefox - perhaps along with Safari a while ago - set the tone that IE wasn’t up to the job in todays world (in many cases). So I hope they continue to prosper and Google doesn’t take their recent world record title (most downloads in one day) away from them too soon!

I have 2 clients at the moment who both have .com domains registered with budget - and in one instance, extremely well known - hosting companies / domain registrars. All each of them need is that .com redirected to their website that is running on the .co.uk.

I do not believe how difficult that is proving to be!

The first company don’t respond to emails, and if you ring either say a) they’ll call you back in 10 minutes, never to be heard from again, or b) they’ll do it right away and 2 days later still haven’t.
The 2nd - and well known, search-engine-topping - company are sending my client (and myself) round and round in circles by a) telling her she can access her domain control panel through her old account but then not having the domain listed there, and b) telling her via a support ticket she will be emailed the correct login details, just to be emailed a message saying ‘please log in here… we look forward to your business!’ without a username or password in sight. And when I just rang them I was informed ‘we are a budget hosting company and so we don’t offer telephone support’. Well if you don’t, you should make up for it in other ways!

We always urge our clients to come to us when we have a problem or a query, and not be embarrassed or self-conscious to pick up the phone and just have something explained/looked into.

2 weeks ago I lost hours and hours trying to get a .co.nz redirected, with the New Zealand registrars eventually claiming it couldn’t be done because my client didn’t have a dedicated IP address! Each response though had a different answer, addressing different issues! If companies would just read support questions properly they’d probably half their work load and double their customer satisfaction!

So - don’t go with a company who don’t offer customer support, and don’t think that the cheapest option is always the best! In the case of hosting it’s often cheaper for a reason - that reason being no one to help you when you hit a problem.

Outsourcing to India is nothing new. But today alone we’ve been cold called by 3 companies, all based in India, wanting us to outsource technical development. I’m not sure if this is good news or not really, but I do know it’s very annoying to have the same conversation over and over again! The only experience I’ve had of outsourcing to India didn’t go particularly well, so while I understand all the benefits (which I’m also continually being reminded by sales people on the phone), I’m still very reticent about the idea. That combined with my own frustrating experiences of dealing with some of the large outsourced support centres used by the likes of BT and Dell.

One thing I do find interesting is the increasing use of extremely English sounding names in the approach emails though, perhaps an attempt to sound less foreign and scary to little UK companies who might be put off by dealing with a foreign person. I’ve even had an email this week from an Indian company that are visiting the UK in the next couple of weeks and want to meet up with us to learn about “our unique India-Based Managed Service Proposition, the Virtual Offshore Development Centre”.

So Indian companies really seem to be upping the offensive… Should we, as a UK based services industry, be worried? Or should we be embracing this new pool of affordable talent and just let them do all the work?

Personally I think the time taken up today alone, trying to get off the phone to cold callers and deleting emails I don’t have time to read, puts me off the whole idea completely. But then perhaps if I outsourced all my work I’d have all the time in the world!

Probably the most commonly requested requirement for a website is the ability for the client to add and edit pages. It sounds such a simple requirement, but in reality it’s really tricky to get the balance right between functionality, flexibility and the level of technical skills required.

There are literally hundreds, probably thousands of CMS platforms out there. Some are very generic such as Drupal and Joomla, and can be molded into practically any kind of site.

Both Drupal and Joomla are open source applications, built by an army of mostly unpaid contributors who continuously update the codebase, adding new features and extra functionality. These applications are great in many ways, but personally, from a coding point of view I find them far too generic and bloated for most situations. While they do provide pretty much everything under the sun in terms of functionality, they include this at the sacrifice of usability. In some ways they are almost too clever for their own good and can be taken straight out of the box and setup by anyone with enough patience to learn how everything works.

There are other content management systems out there which are more job specific, and in some ways I think this approach makes them actually more usable. We’ve created several websites based around the Wordpress blogging platform. I love Wordpress, it’s a highly supported package and you can have a new blog up in a matter of minutes. This blog you are reading right now is powered by Wordpress. Plugins are freely available and themes applied quickly and easily giving you a brand new website in no time at all. I actually prefer using Wordpress as a platform for certain types of websites as it just about gets the balance right between functionality and usability, but even then I don’t think it’s perfect.

As a web developer who builds websites for a living it’s very difficult to put myself in the place of the average small business owner. Unlike us they live and work in the ‘real world’. Logging into and updating a website is something that needs to be so simple, quick and intuitive that forgetting how to do it just isn’t a question, because it’s so obvious.

My hunt for the perfect CMS has led me down many paths over the years, but perhaps inevitably it’s my love of coding and building applications that has resulted in the development of our own solution, SimpleCMS.

SimpleCMS Unique Selling Points (USPs)

• Admin can view the website they want to update rather than having to use a separate admin interface.
• Updating pages is as easy as clicking an ‘edit’ button whilst viewing the page in question.
• Add pages is as easy as selecting ‘add page’, selecting if it’s a top level or sub page, giving it a title and entering the content.
• No restriction on the page type or content. Your page can be anything you like, it’s up to you. You aren’t restricted by any particular format or content type. Although all default styles are controlled by the globally defined style sheet.
• Pages instantly appear in the menu for the rest of the world to see. There’s nothing complicated or confusing to worry about.

SimpleCMS Is Ideal for

• Small business brochure or content websites that follow a basic page/sub page format, and need to be quick and easy to update.

SimpleCMS Isn’t

• In any way confusing or complicated to use
• Going to be the perfect solution for more complicated websites, ecommerce stores or social networking websites.

I think if you try to make a piece of software all things to all people it will inevitably end up being overly complicated and confusing and there’s just no need. If you keep it simple, quick and easy you can take the pain out of updating a website.

If you’re interested in having a play with SimpleCMS take a look at the demo website and have a play. I’m sure you’ll find it really quick and easy to update the pages. Don’t worry if you mess up the site by editing and deleting pages. It will reset itself every hour on the hour, so go for it, just don’t write anything rude please! Anyone found spamming will be hunted down, so play nice please.

If you have any suggestions send them this way.

Bookmarks are very handy for remembering sites you like, but wouldn’t it be really neat to let your users create a proper icon on their desktop that links directly through to your website? Or even a link in the Quick Launch bar right next to the start button. Using Gears this is now totally possible as this tutorial now explains.

I’d be very interested to hear how you get on with this, what you think of Gears - both the idea and the actual reality of what Google has developed, and if you can think of any other alternative approaches for doing the same thing.

We were extremely proud to be commissioned to build the website for the StreetChance supported by Barclays Spaces for Sports campaign recently; a partnership between Chance to shine, Barclays Spaces for Sports, Cricket for Change, Positive Futures and the Metropolitan Police Service. The initiative is a three year project, initially being delivered across ten London boroughs, using cricket to engage young people in areas affected by youth crime and anti-social behaviour.

But such a project means a press launch! At which time the website had to go live! So it was quite a nerve wracking few minutes as the seconds counted down to 10.00am on the morning in question. Everything was already to go - a simple ftp file-rename and it was all there… but I had visions of everyone at the official launch in London having their watches set a few minutes early, and turning to display the website to the national press… just to be greeted with a holding page.

But luckily that wasn’t the case at all! And since the launch the initiative and the website have received great feedback and compliments!

The entire site was put together in just under a week - which when images and content has to be sourced too, is quite a feat. Luckily the clients appreciated the tight deadline and the designers turned a great design around extremely quickly, giving us time to code it nice and neatly!

Our friends over at Wibfilm are leaving this Saturday to start their ambitious cycle ride round the coast of Ireland and in the process no doubt testing the theory that you can live off Guinness for 2 weeks!

The trip will be starting on the 11th of August 2008 and should take 14 days with on average of 87 miles a day, our intrepid explorers will be loading up their bicycles and doing their best to stay off the Guinness, whilst trying to raise the princely sum of £1500 for charity (NSPCC).

We think this sounds like a great trip and wish them all the best. If you’d like to show your support and help them reach their target, visit their sponsorship page here:
www.justgiving.com/theIrishring

Good luck guys, just remember to keep on pedalin’!

Wow! I absolutely love these new DELL computers! And I defy anyone not to think they look stunning and crave one for their desk!

Dell claim it’s their greenest, most “power-efficient consumer desktop”, as it uses 70% less power than a regular desktop and has an 87% efficient power supply. Meanwhile the packaging is made of 95% recyclable materials.

The one problem I can see though, is choosing between the 6 colour cases and the bamboo one…

Get yours here.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Friends Reunited had announced their site is now free for users - in an attempt to catch up with Facebook I presumed.

Well I’ve just seen a TV ad for the ‘new Friends Reunited’ website on ITV! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this may be a first? A community site advertising on TV? Comparison sites have been doing it for ages, because there’s direct revenue available from visitors. However with community websites, whilst visitors = popularity = advertising revenue, there’s not the same direct correlation of clicks = pennies.

So are we in the middle of a user war between yesterday’s favourite site and the phenomenon that is Facebook? Or is there no war, and just desperation on the part of FR?

Personally I think, whilst they may be able to pull back some market share, they’ve left their comeback a bit late - about 12 - 18 months too late. Every day people from classes at school are sending me friend requests on FB. Even when I think ‘that’s it, surely there’s no one else from school that’s yet to join here’ someone else will pop up. Meanwhile I’ve had about one message sent to me on FR ever. So I think FB is the place to find old friends, whilst socialising with your current ones - 2 birds with one stone (although FB messages annoy me - send me an email! Then I can ‘reply to all’ without having to log in anywhere). A quick look at the new FR home page shows quick links to ‘RAF friends’ and ‘Navy friends’, which is instantly a way to appeal to a large number of people… but I bet these people have communities on FB already.

One point that must be mentioned that whilst FR are running an ad campaign on ITV - they are owned by the TV station - so I bet they got a good rate