When it comes to music I get a bit fascistic - the music I like is better than the music you like, you are wrong and you should like what I like. Ok that's an exaggeration but not a million miles from the truth..
Last night I watched Glastonbury on TV and attempted some live on iPlayer but suffered an annoying buffering problem on that. Glasto has changed so much. It used be very much an alternative festival but now is just a big corporate jamboree with £5k+ to stay in a yurt. The audience is typically my age, because many young folk can't afford it, and the music has gone more mainstream. Don't get me wrong, I rather like the Rolling Stones but they're not who I would have wanted headlining. I like the widening of the music type, Dizzy Rascal looked and sounded great for instance, but it was always something of an alternative festival with little of the music being mainstream and the balance has changed.
Some of the bands who I really loved have become, in my opinion, rather boring, middle of the road and up their own arses. (Yes I do mean you Arctic Monkeys, I know you can play but can only assume "Fake Tales of San Francisco" was played ironically to match Alex's fake accent.) Nothing new there though.
Many of the "Indie" bands are just cloned Indie-pop bands that are merely interchangeable as this has become a popular genre. Again nothing new as something similar has happened through the ages.
I can only agree with Gazette sports journo Anthony Vickers on Twitter yesterday evening, a man who I knew well in my late teens and who had a tremendous collection of punk and alternative music - "did we fight the punk wars for this?"
Having now got my rant off my chest there were some gems. I'd never heard or seen Goat before and this bunch of Swedish mental people (or so it seemed) sounded and looked brilliant, Portishead were great as always and my faves The Horrors were sounding good on iPlayer until I gave up due to buffering problems.
I know I'm old as I now sound like my Dad - music's not been the same since Glen Miller died.
So what have we been up to work-wise? Much of the week has been spent on a project that we're white-labelling so I can't really say much. We're also working on developing the Rock and Rollabilia website and some materials for Serco which I'll finish off today.
Over June we have had a charity month where 20% of the value of new contracts (pre-VAT) will be donated to Teesside Hospice once we have been paid. This is just for new contracts signed up for this month and doesn't include renewal contracts such as hosting, SEO and the like. The figure we shall be donating stands at £1269. There's still a couple of days left so if you want a website sign up today!
But for now it's the Lions build up and everything stops for a tense rugby match including looking out for Richardson Removals head honcho and fellow semi-blind fat bloke, John B, at the match - lucky bugger.
Saturday, 29 June 2013
Sunday, 23 June 2013
Baronesses, Broadcasting & Business Plans
So what have we been up to at Tad Web Solutions over the last couple of weeks? Well along with the usual meetings, networking, web design, SEO and the like there's been a few less "ordinary" events.
On Thursday 13th we had two important visitors. First in was Simon, the MD of the Agile Group, for a meeting and we are building a good working relationship his company which is significantly larger than ours. We were then interrupted mid-meeting by Baroness Hanham, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government. We have a few great photos on Facebook with many thanks to Hickson Photography for taking them and sending them to us. Myself and Simon didn't even know the first one was being taken but looks more like a typical, posed, website stock photo under the "business" tag than any I've ever seen.
In the last week Matt has been in the office as it's Volunteering Week at College and as we run the Palace FM web presence for free and are having a charity month where we donate 20% of the value of new contracts to Teesside Hospice Matt helped us with that. On Monday he did an interview on the Raw pm show on Palace FM giving his views on the brilliant Palace Hub Gallery. I challenged him to use the word juxtaposition in his interview which he managed with great professionalism. The following day I filled in on the Business Brunch show on Palace FM as a late fill in for a no-show guest. Carl who hosts the show is a top bloke with a strong (or so it sounds to us Teessiders) West Country accent so Matt challenged me to get a pirate reference in - we are both fan of Chris Pakham's use of song titles on Springwatch. Luckily I managed to get in "crow's nest" in my interview on my web design business.
As I have mentioned one gallery I really need to mention another. The Python Gallery in Middlesbrough (at the back of the Bongo) has just opened an exhibition by Ian "Lucky" Luck of Rock and Rollabilia called Groundbreakers and Earthshakers. Anyone who is into real music rather than the drivel of X-factor, The Voice, etc. and wants to see the great history of music on Teesside should get along to the exhibition and visit the shop in the Redcar Beacon. I went to the private viewing of the exhibition on Friday and loved it.
And what of the business plans? Redcar and Cleveland Council are great at helping small businesses looking to grow and we have had Stephen Gibson of the BE Group working with us over a couple of months to help us work out what we are doing, where we want to be, what we need to do and change to get there, etc. Whilst I like Stephen I have to say I would have preferred THE Steve Gibson but he probably doesn't have the time. We aim to concentrate a lot of effort on growing our more complex, data driven web work including web based applications and use my expertise in database design and systems design and programming to develop a base of larger and more prestigious clients. We recently have moved into this market and should shortly have an opportunity to get some publicity to back this up. Stephen has been a great help in developing the plan and the underlying systems to make this happen. Thanks Stephen.
On Thursday 13th we had two important visitors. First in was Simon, the MD of the Agile Group, for a meeting and we are building a good working relationship his company which is significantly larger than ours. We were then interrupted mid-meeting by Baroness Hanham, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government. We have a few great photos on Facebook with many thanks to Hickson Photography for taking them and sending them to us. Myself and Simon didn't even know the first one was being taken but looks more like a typical, posed, website stock photo under the "business" tag than any I've ever seen.
In the last week Matt has been in the office as it's Volunteering Week at College and as we run the Palace FM web presence for free and are having a charity month where we donate 20% of the value of new contracts to Teesside Hospice Matt helped us with that. On Monday he did an interview on the Raw pm show on Palace FM giving his views on the brilliant Palace Hub Gallery. I challenged him to use the word juxtaposition in his interview which he managed with great professionalism. The following day I filled in on the Business Brunch show on Palace FM as a late fill in for a no-show guest. Carl who hosts the show is a top bloke with a strong (or so it sounds to us Teessiders) West Country accent so Matt challenged me to get a pirate reference in - we are both fan of Chris Pakham's use of song titles on Springwatch. Luckily I managed to get in "crow's nest" in my interview on my web design business.
As I have mentioned one gallery I really need to mention another. The Python Gallery in Middlesbrough (at the back of the Bongo) has just opened an exhibition by Ian "Lucky" Luck of Rock and Rollabilia called Groundbreakers and Earthshakers. Anyone who is into real music rather than the drivel of X-factor, The Voice, etc. and wants to see the great history of music on Teesside should get along to the exhibition and visit the shop in the Redcar Beacon. I went to the private viewing of the exhibition on Friday and loved it.
And what of the business plans? Redcar and Cleveland Council are great at helping small businesses looking to grow and we have had Stephen Gibson of the BE Group working with us over a couple of months to help us work out what we are doing, where we want to be, what we need to do and change to get there, etc. Whilst I like Stephen I have to say I would have preferred THE Steve Gibson but he probably doesn't have the time. We aim to concentrate a lot of effort on growing our more complex, data driven web work including web based applications and use my expertise in database design and systems design and programming to develop a base of larger and more prestigious clients. We recently have moved into this market and should shortly have an opportunity to get some publicity to back this up. Stephen has been a great help in developing the plan and the underlying systems to make this happen. Thanks Stephen.
Sunday, 16 June 2013
It's Fathers Day ...
... so I'm having a day off from blogging. There'll be proper post next week - probably (Lions 1st test, on TV obviously, and off to see John Otway in Saltburn next weekend).
Sunday, 9 June 2013
Social Media Marketing - Does It Work?
We've come across opinions from both ends of the spectrum on this.
At one end there is the traditional marketer who says "where are the sales?" and "what's the ROI?" and espouses the view that social media is a fad for business and a waste of time.
At the other end there's the evangelist who says you only need social media for marketing and nothing else.
So what is my view? It's somewhere between the two. Social media is a very important part of marketing but works in a different way to traditional marketing. It is about building relationship and is a long game not a quick sale. I do however believe that certain businesses can successfully market through social media only.
How do we do it? Well, we concentrate on Twitter as the primary social media channel for business. We have a company account (@TadWebSolutions), which tends to be a little more straight and business oriented, and our own staff company accounts (@IanE1111 me, @tees_web Peter) which are a bit more business and personal views mixed in together. The personal side is encouraged, after all we are people working in a business. We also run #ClevelandHour from 10-11 a.m. on Twitter via the @ClevelandHour account with the aim of promoting local business which does include our competitors.
We also use LinkedIn, Facebook (www.facebook.com/TadWebSolutions), Google+ (which seems to have changed our location to Johannesburg?????), Pinterest and of course Blogger.
What is the best approach for a business? The answer is it depends upon your business. There are guidelines to follow but the exact approach to take depends on what you do and what you would like to achieve. We can help you with that if you need some advice and support in developing a social media strategy.
Do we get business from our social media channels? Yes. Direct requests from new connections are rare but do occasionally happen but that is not the point. Referrals from businesses we have built up relationships with via social media are much more common as is work directly from businesses we have built a relationship with (as is passing work their way as well). That doesn't mean follow someone on Twitter and get a big contract. It means build relationships with people, sometimes offline as they grow, and opportunities arise to help each other, pass work to each other and collaborate on projects.
If you're looking for a little more detail and some guidelines on using Twitter in particular then take a look at the blog of our friends at i2i Business Solutions - sound advice.
So if you're not yet using social media for your business then give it a go and if you need some help then give us a call.
At one end there is the traditional marketer who says "where are the sales?" and "what's the ROI?" and espouses the view that social media is a fad for business and a waste of time.
At the other end there's the evangelist who says you only need social media for marketing and nothing else.
So what is my view? It's somewhere between the two. Social media is a very important part of marketing but works in a different way to traditional marketing. It is about building relationship and is a long game not a quick sale. I do however believe that certain businesses can successfully market through social media only.
How do we do it? Well, we concentrate on Twitter as the primary social media channel for business. We have a company account (@TadWebSolutions), which tends to be a little more straight and business oriented, and our own staff company accounts (@IanE1111 me, @tees_web Peter) which are a bit more business and personal views mixed in together. The personal side is encouraged, after all we are people working in a business. We also run #ClevelandHour from 10-11 a.m. on Twitter via the @ClevelandHour account with the aim of promoting local business which does include our competitors.
We also use LinkedIn, Facebook (www.facebook.com/TadWebSolutions), Google+ (which seems to have changed our location to Johannesburg?????), Pinterest and of course Blogger.
What is the best approach for a business? The answer is it depends upon your business. There are guidelines to follow but the exact approach to take depends on what you do and what you would like to achieve. We can help you with that if you need some advice and support in developing a social media strategy.
Do we get business from our social media channels? Yes. Direct requests from new connections are rare but do occasionally happen but that is not the point. Referrals from businesses we have built up relationships with via social media are much more common as is work directly from businesses we have built a relationship with (as is passing work their way as well). That doesn't mean follow someone on Twitter and get a big contract. It means build relationships with people, sometimes offline as they grow, and opportunities arise to help each other, pass work to each other and collaborate on projects.
If you're looking for a little more detail and some guidelines on using Twitter in particular then take a look at the blog of our friends at i2i Business Solutions - sound advice.
So if you're not yet using social media for your business then give it a go and if you need some help then give us a call.
Sunday, 2 June 2013
Where is My Domain?
Last weekend was the cut off date where our old servers who will shortly be off to server heaven, they have been good to us so we're sure it's heaven. Last weekend saw a large chunk of time devoted to transferring files, reconfiguring config files so that database connections work and testing sites on the new hardware. All fairly standard stuff.
But there are still a few issues. When we create a website for a client in most cases we host the website. In most cases we also provide the client's domain and host the site for 1 year as part of the package. We purchase the domain from our standard registrar and register it in our client's name so that they are the owners but we have easy access to do any DNS jiggery pokery that is required. That's the way we like it as it makes our life easier and we guarantee that if clients wish to take the domain elsewhere we will immediately do the necessary at our end to make this happen, after all it's their domain not ours, if they have paid their invoices of course :).
The server transfer flagged up one major issue. We have clients who look after their own domains, even though we do the hosting, and they needed to change the nameservers to our new ones or give us access so we can do it for them. In very simplified form you can think of nameservers as the address book of the Internet, they tell someone searching for a domain where they live so a browser sends requests to the right server - apologies to students of computing as I know this is not entirely accurate. If those weren't changed then a search for yoursite.co.uk would go to a server that was no longer there - so no website to see. Problem is some of our clients had no idea where they have their domain registered and/or how to login to their domain control panel. We still have 4 clients in that boat and even though we have told them who the domain is registered with, there's nothing we can do until they request a login.
Luckily so far our old server management company 34sp.com have not switched off the old server even though it should have died by now so the sites are still live but we know that will change very shortly and are fearful that our clients will have no website for a time. Please get a move on with the login requests!!
But there are still a few issues. When we create a website for a client in most cases we host the website. In most cases we also provide the client's domain and host the site for 1 year as part of the package. We purchase the domain from our standard registrar and register it in our client's name so that they are the owners but we have easy access to do any DNS jiggery pokery that is required. That's the way we like it as it makes our life easier and we guarantee that if clients wish to take the domain elsewhere we will immediately do the necessary at our end to make this happen, after all it's their domain not ours, if they have paid their invoices of course :).
The server transfer flagged up one major issue. We have clients who look after their own domains, even though we do the hosting, and they needed to change the nameservers to our new ones or give us access so we can do it for them. In very simplified form you can think of nameservers as the address book of the Internet, they tell someone searching for a domain where they live so a browser sends requests to the right server - apologies to students of computing as I know this is not entirely accurate. If those weren't changed then a search for yoursite.co.uk would go to a server that was no longer there - so no website to see. Problem is some of our clients had no idea where they have their domain registered and/or how to login to their domain control panel. We still have 4 clients in that boat and even though we have told them who the domain is registered with, there's nothing we can do until they request a login.
Luckily so far our old server management company 34sp.com have not switched off the old server even though it should have died by now so the sites are still live but we know that will change very shortly and are fearful that our clients will have no website for a time. Please get a move on with the login requests!!
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