Older News | Page 02

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  Navigation Trends and Ideas

  2nd April 2008 04:20 by tom

  A websites navigation is one of the most important aspects in it's design. Making a site easy to navigate and intuitive to the user, while at the same time interesting and original is always something to aspire to. This article by smashing magazine gives a nice little overview of some… Read more

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  DreamAds - Taking Adsense to the Next Level

  1st April 2008 09:17 by tom

  Stumbled upon this post on ReadWriteWeb this morning which I found particularly interesting and had me going for a minute! I particularly like the new CPD (cost per Desire) trading model, sounds like they are onto a winner if they manage to get this project up and running! :) Read more

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  The day Google turned the lights out.

  29th March 2008 05:53 by lisa

  Anyone else visit http://www.google.co.uk today and think their monitor was being screwwy? The usually white background was black, with the text in white. Apparently it was all part of Google's attempt to raise the UK public's attention to 'Earth Hour' and attempts at conserving engergy usage. Earth Hour wants people… Read more

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  Technorati Code

  12th March 2008 04:50 by tom

  Check us out on Technorati... Technorati Profile Read more

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  Some Innovative Ideas for Getting Inbound Links to your Website

  10th March 2008 14:39 by tom

  Everyone who has tried to market a website will know how hard it is getting established. Getting those first, all important inbound links to your site can feel like an uphill struggle, especially if you've built 'just another' shopping website. You might think your new site is the best thing… Read more

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  When is a 'bad' logo design actually 'good'?

  6th March 2008 15:05 by tom

  I was just stumbling through the Internet and came across this interesting article about logo design... Is there really such a thing as bad publicity!? Also anyone who thinks the original 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' by Nirvana was a little grungy might appreciate this Tango version - made me smile,… Read more

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  Unleash the CSS - Creating Multiple Skins for your Site

  6th March 2008 11:12 by tom

  How easy is it to change the entire look of your site? If your site is more than 2 years old and the slightest bit complicated I would imagine it's pretty tricky... The days of table based layouts are long behind us. Over the past couple of years we've seen… Read more

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  Facebook and Marmite

  3rd March 2008 10:37 by lisa

  Two videos doing well on YouTube at the moment pretty much sum up the Facebook divide - you either love it or you hate it. I was shocked last weekend when a friend said "I've heard Facebook are going to start charging... that would annoy me, but I'd pay!". After… Read more

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  New Social Shopping Widgets aid Online Promotion

  3rd March 2008 09:39 by tom

  It's an increasingly crowded online marketplace, with everyone competing for the top spots on the search engines, beating each other up with adwords and fighting for all the traffic they can get. You might have the best products in the world, but if nobody knows you exist then it's hard… Read more

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  Facebook on the Decline

  28th February 2008 08:57 by tom

  I was just reading on the fantastic mashable.com how the readership of Facebook has apparently dipped over the past month or so, although some are putting this dip in user numbers down to 'seasonal' factors. There's no denying the impact Facebook has had over here in the UK, everyone's been… Read more

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  MocBook Air

  26th February 2008 04:38 by lisa

  The MocBook Air fits perfectly on any design conscious persons desk. The Air weighs an astonishing 0.0kg and it's sleek design gives it the illusion of being so thin it's invisible to the naked eye. It fits so well into the background you won't even notice it's there. The powerful… Read more

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  Social Bookmark Shopping.. What!?

  25th February 2008 11:49 by tom

  Hands up who's heard of social bookmarking. I expect most people reading this article will have. The concept has been around for an Internet 'eternity' now. I thought everyone in the Facebook generation would be familiar with the idea, but I was speaking to a friend of mine yesterday, happily… Read more

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  Facebook Style Image Grabber

  22nd February 2008 11:57 by tom

  I love the way Facebook works; there are so many subtly clever gizmos that just make the whole experience that little bit smoother and pleasant. One feature I particularly like is the image grabber. For those that don't know, if you enter a URL while writing a private message in… Read more

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  How to Generate an Image Captcha

  19th February 2008 04:44 by tom

  Everyone hates spammers, how they sleep at night I don't know... Maybe they are so rich they can afford to buy those special space age mattresses that mold to fit your shape, or machines that imitate the sound of the ocean! (OK I got that from a film). But one… Read more

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  Give your site an MOT

  18th February 2008 05:12 by tom

  We often have clients asking us to check out their site and see if there are any bits we'd suggest improving or changing, so I thought I'd just list my quick top things to check out for and make sure your site has. This is far from exhaustive so please… Read more

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  Checking your site on Safari

  15th February 2008 05:10 by tom

  There's an increasing number of Mac users who are impossible to ignore. I may even become one myself at some point as they do look pretty nice! If like me you've always coded websites on a PC in the past you might have been forgiven for 'over-looking' the small percentage… Read more

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  What are you listening to right now?

  15th February 2008 04:21 by tom

  If, like me, you get bored of the same old songs being played over and over again on commercial radio, or find Chris Moyles just a little bit too loud on the more delicate of mornings. Then you might have trawled the Internet looking for good and original radio stations.… Read more

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  Stuck for Inspiration?

  12th February 2008 11:08 by tom

  The Internet is just so big, sometimes it's hard to know where to start when you are looking for inspiration or new ideas. Google is an obvious place, but only if you know what you're looking for. It's a great tool for locating information, but what if you just want… Read more

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  WrongWrite.com

  3rd February 2008 18:15 by tom

  18a have recently acquired the site wrongwrite.com - "part education, part therapy. We uncover grammatical and spelling errors on commercial signage and advertising, and share it with our loyal readers". So hop over and check it out - and keep us in mind next time you see a shocking typo… Read more

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  The Original Social Network

  5th January 2008 13:18 by tom

  For anyone who's getting fed up of all those social networking sites out there, take a look at this brand new social network that's taking the world by storm. Check out The Original Social Network Read more

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  The World's 'Local' Bank

  2nd January 2008 10:21 by lisa

  Only a couple of months ago 18a Productions opened a business bank account with HSBC. They seemed as good as anyone else, and we'd heard good reports. And out of the 2 banks only a short walk away, they were the ones who returned our call, unlike Barclays. After a… Read more

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  Shocking Tesco Typo

  2nd January 2008 07:16 by lisa

  From working in PR and updating websites 24/7 (or so it seems sometimes!) I've developed a keen eye for typos. But I don't think it even takes a 'keen' eye to spot this striking blunder on a banner outside a Tesco store in South Somerset! A blunder that's very likely… Read more

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  MSN Messenger Trojan Alarm

  20th November 2007 09:32 by lisa

  We've just heard that a new malware (software designed to infiltrate and/or damage a computer) is spreading like wildfire through MSN Messenger. The Trojan is an IRC bot which sends itself in a .zip file, either as a file including the word 'pics' with a double extension executable (DSC00432.jpg.exe) or… Read more

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  Magical list generator using jquery

  20th November 2007 09:02 by lisa

  Just found this simple but effective javascript code, utilising the invaluable jquery library to create linked select lists. You select the first list and it magically goes off and generates the options in the 2nd and 3rd lists. This in itself isn't anything particularly ground breaking, but this code connects… Read more

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  The Affiliate Marketing Board Game

  15th November 2007 14:10 by tom

  It occurred to me the other day, just how much affiliate marketing is like playing monopoly! It's probably the reason I like it so much. Everyone trying to make it around the board, picking up as many properties as they can, in the hope that some will make decent returns.… Read more

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  Cool CSS Dim Effect

  13th November 2007 18:01 by tom

  I'm always looking for cool new effects to build into our sites. It can be tricky to balance out supporting older browsers and keeping things interesting, not only for our visitors/clients, but also for myself! I've been experimenting with a few cool CSS effects and AJAX widgetty things lately, including… Read more

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  Resources for Web Design (tutorials, tools, code libraries, templates and more)

  7th November 2007 13:32 by tom

  Some great links to resources for design tutorials, inspiration, tools, code libraries, browser bugs, galleries, templates, articles and web forums. http://www.softwaredeveloper.com Read more

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  Future-proof your CSS with Conditional Comments

  5th November 2007 09:09 by tom

  Anyone who has ever made a website, then tried to make it look the same for everyone will have come up against the nightmare that is cross-browser compatibility. Things are no doubt easier than they used to be. Back in the days of ie4/5 and Netscape you practically had to… Read more

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  The Internet is Illegal

  29th October 2007 16:46 by tom

  I've just been sent an interesting article about the, now infamous, tv-links.co.uk website. For those that don't know TV Links provided links to TV shows online and in effect gave people the opportunity to view them. From my understanding they didn't actually host anything themselves, rather just gave people one… Read more

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  a4uexpo Affiliate Marketing Conference 2007

  29th October 2007 10:19 by tom

  If Carlsberg ran conferences they would probably be something like a4uexpo! That was one of the comments I've read today about the a4uexpo affiliate marketing conference held last week at ExCeL London. It was a fantastic event although probably the most exhausting couple of days of my life! Here's a… Read more

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  Why Web2.0 is 90% Rubbish

  22nd October 2007 06:04 by tom

  Whatever happened to editorial control? Since when has every Tom, Dick or Harry been an expert on everything and anything!? Sharing information and ideas is a great thing and the internet has given everyone a voice. Web 2.0 has taken this a step further by taking control away from the… Read more

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  How to work for yourself effectively.

  21st October 2007 15:16 by tom

  Making the most of your time is very important when working for yourself. It's a great feeling to have complete freedom over your working day, but if you're not careful this feeling of freedom can leave you with a lack of purpose or direction. It's hard to stay motivated and… Read more

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  Creating a Google Sitemap

  18th October 2007 06:56 by tom

  When I first heard about Google sitemaps I have to admit, I was a little skeptical. I didn't see why we should have to make Google's life easier. Surely it's Google's job to index our site, not the web developers job to spoon feed it information! Infact if practically any… Read more

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  The coolest thing you'll probably see all day!!!

  18th October 2007 06:10 by tom

  I thought this was very cool, and as it's vagely website related, thought I'd include it here :) Download it here Read more

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  A web design dream come true

  30th August 2007 07:50 by lisa

  Wow! Here's an amazing video by Dr Shai Avidan and Dr Ariel Shamir to support their paper on 'Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing'. It's a few minutes long, but it's worth watching to the end - where they make people disappear! Ooh! To be able to seamlessly extend or… Read more

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  Why you should not get a 15 year old to design your website

  28th August 2007 13:06 by tom

  So many people these days claim to be able to make websites, long gone are the days where it was seen as some kind of clever, voodoo, dark magic. Programs like Dreamweaver and Frontpage have brought web design to the masses. No longer do small companies have to pay thousands… Read more

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  Things every small business should consider before starting a website

  26th August 2007 08:06 by tom

  Everyone wants a website these days, infact you could say that everyone 'needs' a website these days. It's become just about as important as business cards and a yellow pages listing were 15 years ago. But there are quite a few things to consider before thinking that a website will… Read more

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  Top 5 Tips for Good User Interface Design

  24th August 2007 07:15 by tom

  User interface design is critically important when designing good and useable websites. It's often something that's overlooked or taken for granted by the general public as they use a site, but the basic principles are often applied by designers almost without them realising. Good design more often than not goes… Read more

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  An XHTML and CSS-based Form Template

  23rd August 2007 08:41 by tom

  I've always found it a little tricky to write truly valid forms, yet still keeping the layout looking anything half decent. I guess you can hack it around a bit and float div's left and right, but it somehow always seemed a rather long-winded way to go about things. So… Read more

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  Nice and Free CSS Layout Templates

  23rd August 2007 08:29 by tom

  A little thin on the ground with regards to the graphical elements but at first glance looks like a useful wireframe layout guide for building validated CSS based sites. Check out the nice and free CSS layout templates available at mycelly.com Read more

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  AJAX Gizmos and Scripts for your Site

  23rd August 2007 08:11 by tom

  If you want to pimp your site and make it look the business take a look at these great AJAX script resources. AJAX is a bit of a buzzword at the moment which I don't particularly agree with, especially as there are plenty of cool web2.0 effects which might be… Read more

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  The End of the Internet

  23rd August 2007 07:35 by tom

  Well I finally did it! I read everything on the Internet, it took a very long time and many late nights, but I can happily say that I finally feel a sense of closure. Having digested all the billions of opinions, comments and down right nonsense out there. So here… Read more

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  If Blog Comments were a Meeting

  23rd August 2007 03:49 by tom

  If you've ever read a blog or bulletin board online you'll know they are a great source of useful, insightful and interesting comments but you'll also know the majority are just complete rubbish posted by people who wouldn't normally speak their mind quite so bluntly. It's basically an excuse for… Read more

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  An Explanation...

  22nd August 2007 13:23 by tom

  Ok maybe a slightly strange choice of category title, but I needed somewhere in our lovely little blog to share with the world all the amazing new things we discover which just make us go 'WOW'! I've been looking on Ajaxrain.com lately (fantastic site by the way guys) and there… Read more

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  Before Time Began

  22nd August 2007 13:03 by tom

  It occured to me, whilst writing my 'It all starts here' post, that it infact didn't start there at all. Launching our site came after quite a few things, probably the most difficult of which was choosing our name... 18a, has a ring to it I think. Although it does… Read more

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  Post Number 1 - It all starts here...

  22nd August 2007 12:43 by tom

  Well 18a is up and we're ready to rock and roll! It's very exciting, after almost 12 solid hours of code crunching and iStock searching we finally managed to get a pretty slick (if I do say so myself) website online! Having just installed a brand spanking new copy of… Read more