The Value of Property Management [infographic]
October 18, 2011 Leave a Comment
Building London’s Skyline
September 28, 2011 2 Comments
The Shard (image: Elsie esq.)
In a slight departure from my usual internet related blogs I’m going to answer a question that has been bugging me for ages. It all started when I arrived at Young Group and saw the rather tall residential block The Landmark being built, and now that I see the The Shard on my way to work everyday intrigue has got the better of me. My geek desire to know is often piqued by the strangest of things, and in this case it is to do with the London skyline.
Even in the current recession everywhere you look in London there are huge cranes dotting the skyline. Without these fascinating machines London, and all other big cities, would be strictly low-rise. What strikes me is this; how do you put together a huge crane (some research told me that they are actually called Tower Cranes) and then just as importantly how do you take them down when you’re finished with them? Read more of this post
Tech Tuesday: Google? That’ll Do Nicely Thank You
September 20, 2011 1 Comment
Phone or Wallet?
If you had to choose, which would you rather loose, your phone or your wallet? If you answered phone you may be surprised to learn that as many as 30% would plump for the other. Phones are becoming ever more indispensible to us, I for one would struggle to remember anyone’s names let alone their phone numbers if I lost my phone. The recent rise of the smartphone has firmly entrenched the gadgets in many of our lives.
Just when you thought your phone couldn’t be any more important to you Google launches its Wallet. Google Wallet allows you to pay for goods using your phone, just tap it on the reader and ta-dah – or kerching!
Google is planning to integrate Google Wallet into its other recent launch, Offers, enabling users to keep their e-coupons and money in the same place, making sure you never miss out on a discount or special offer. Very useful.
Could it be Magic?
The system works using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology – not to be confused with the rather excellent KFC (payment via drumstick waving isn’t on the cards any time soon, sadly).
A dedicated chip in the phone stores your details and will only communicate them to a NFC terminal after you have entered your security PIN.
That Sounds Expensive
Google is offering the Wallet for free to both users and merchants. Where most card issuers charge a percentage of the transaction to the merchant Google is instead going to make its money from selling more advertising on the mobile platform. So, no cost to you, but expect a lot of adverts.
Want one?
You can have Google Wallet for free, as long as you live in the USA and have a Google Nexus S phone on the Sprint network. Although this is not the first implementation of NFC, it is still in its relatively early stages and will take sometime to fully roll out across the Globe. Visa has now signed up for Google Wallet and this should speed up the spread but it happened too late for the launch. At the moment it is looking like we could be waving our phones to pay for goods in the UK (and the rest of Europe) at some point in 2012. There is also talk of a special NFC ‘sticker’ that can be attached to the phone to allow any smart phone to use Google Wallet rather than just the Nexus S, as is currently the case.
Hate Waiting!
This may be one of those times when patience is a good idea. Google is not the only player in the game; they just got their boots on first. Apple, Microsoft, O2, PayPal, American Express and RIM are all looking at releasing NFC payment systems in the near future and there is a fair chance that the different systems will not all be compatible with each other. Does anyone out there remember Betamax?!
Here in the UK we have to wait anyway so it would probably be a good idea to see what the others are going to do with NFC. This is one of those occasions where you’ll have to window shop for now, and wait a while before you get your Google Wallet out…
Tech Tuesday: The Future of Money
September 6, 2011 4 Comments
In recent years there has been a growth of alternative cash schemes, for instance with towns and villages instigating a barter system of some kind where work is exchanged for goods and services. This is hardly a leap forward as bartering is as old as human civilisation, and it’s not particularly techy either. So instead, as today is Tech Tuesday, I will be talking about an internet phenomenon called bitcoin. Right now there are people working for bit coins and using their computers to “mine” for them.
So, what are bitcoins? Read more of this post
I Can See Your House from Here – The Case for Mobile
July 19, 2011 2 Comments
To create a mobile version of your website or not to create a mobile version of your site? That is the question.
It could be argued that as mobile devices become more capable the need for a separate site for mobile diminishes, as long as you follow general good practice in the design of your main website it should present no problems to mobile users. While this is broadly true it misses a fundamental point; mobile is NOT the same as desktop.
Long Tailed Search in a Room Full of Rocking Chairs
June 21, 2011 Leave a Comment
Search Engine Optimisation ( SEO)
is a dark art at the best of times, and for many people the first encounter they have with the world of SEO is a speculative phone call from someone claiming to be able to get their website on the front page of Google by noon tomorrow. This is usually not going to be entirely true.
SEO is modifying your presence on the web to maximise your findability on a search engine. This splits into broadly two camps, on-site and off-site SEO.
On-site SEO consists of changes that can be made to your site to try to maximise its search engine exposure; this can be things like ensuring it has a clear structure, making sure that key words are well featured throughout the site, ensuring images have relevant descriptions and that link text is descriptive.
Off-site SEO is trying to get other websites to link to you.
The more relevant sites that link to your site the greater its weight in the eyes of search engines. The more important the site linking to you the more benefit
you get from the link. This benefit is called “Link Juice”.
QR Codes: Moving Past the ‘What?’ to the ‘How?’
June 1, 2011 3 Comments
Scan MeThe barcodes we are used to seeing on our shopping are made up of groups of lines. The information in them is encoded (stored) in the different line widths and spacing, and are known as 1D bar codes.
Only 1 dimension (width) is used to encode data. QR (Quick Response) codes are different because they use 2 dimensions, width and height, and so
are able to store much more information than the traditional bar codes.
In theory any amount of data could be stored in a QR code (even a whole novel), however the more information stored the larger and more complex the QR code needs to be.
Website Design: Intelligent Content Integration
April 26, 2011 1 Comment
PRSupdate is
introducing a new weekly feature – Tech Tuesday. Every Tuesday we will publish an article th at looks at what technology can do to help a business, from the latest in computing news to using social media effectively.
Following on from last week’s article on Cloud Computing, this week Young London’s webmaster talks us through the core reasons for implementing a complete re-design of the site and the process of doing so.
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