Today we’ve launched our new website.
The old design was just a stop gap so that we had a presence on the web, but wasn’t anything to write home about. So it’s quite an exciting thing for us to have our new one up.
I decided not to use flash, as I really want this website to look the best it can to all our visitors, so I’ve tried to create something really quite original within the
boundaries of CSS.
I’ve got a lot of my inspiration for the new site from a collection of ribbons I’ve been gathering over the past few months, all different shades of pink and red and different opacities, so they layer wonderfully. Also I’ve been thinking a lot lately about neon lighting tubes and the way they seem to give everything around them a coloured glow, they can be such a portent of excitement.
I’ve used some effects on our logo so that it really stands out and seems to glow, hopefully I’ve managed to convey some of the neon excitement with this.
The other main challenge, apart from design, was Information architecture; making sure the content got our message across without being endless. I’ve stripped all unnecessary words away and left bite-sized information chunks, it makes it easy for the reader to select what they want to read.
I’m sure they’ll be lots of little tweaks in the weeks to come, a pixel here or there can make a lot of difference, you know!
The new orkney.com business directory is now live. It is a super resource to find out about local businesses, including ones that don’t have a website.
The directory not only puts local people in contact with one another. It is THE portal for those wishing to relocate to Orkney and find out what is here.
Orkney.com business directory has an interactive search system. You can find a business through searching for a type, such as ‘builder’ or a location, such as ‘Harray’.
The business directory is also a great resource for local businesses, who can customise their entry with photos, logos and as much information about their business as they like.
Links to email addresses and business websites drives visitors to more information and showcases the services of the directory subscriber.
Adding a business entry is really easy simply sign up here. And it’s all free.
Watch the orkney.com website for more exciting developments soon.
We are excited to share with everyone the great news that the new orkney.com website is now live and ready for all to view at www.orkney.com
The whole project team has worked hard to create an outstanding website that will be a great resource for anyone interested in Orkney, we have also focused on making this website appealing and easy to use for as a wide user base as possible.
The other exciting news is that the orkney.com email addresses are going to be available again and this time for free! Get your address on May 26th at noon by signing up at orkney.com
The new orkney.com website is now fully complete with the new business directory and ready to go live. Unfortunately as the website is partly funded by HIE and partly by OIC we now have to wait until after the Scottish election. Make a note in your diary, the site will be live for all to see on May 5th.
For a seriously well designed web experience take a look at this site benthebodyguard.com.
Apart from the well crafted graphics, which keep you interested for a good few visits, the website is put together superbly.
The design tells a story without typical navigation structures. It uses prompts to make you scroll and the character talks to you as you see various animations with different characters as you scroll down the page.
The whole experience is really well considered, from the look and feel to the tone of the character, guiding you to the end goal of registering your email address with the website.
And it was all done without using flash.
We’ve been busy working on some nice updates to the Kirkwall hotel website.
They have a great new bar and wanted to feature this on their website.
It is always a popular spot so we’ve added in an online gallery for staff to share photos of all the parties that go on. We’ve linked in with their popular Facebook profile and given the bar a CMS events area to keep folk informed about interesting events coming up.
Check out the improved website here
http://www.kirkwallhotel.com/bar.html
And if you’re in Kirkwall remember to check out the bar itself!
Exciting news! If you are a developer and you want to change the colours used on a google map, you can now do it! You may be already know that google announced this back in May, but that was only for the v3 javascript api, you can now do it in flash! That opens up a whole new avenue of adventure.
For more information about styling maps in javascript take a look at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/overlays.html#StyledMaps
Google maps api for flash can be found at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/flash/
There is a nice tool that builds out the configuration in a graphical way, saving a lot of time http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/wizard/index.html
One of the most common tasks that a webmaster (are they still called that?) has to perform is putting security on to their site. If you are running an application it most probably has authentication built in, but you may simple have a bunch of pages that you want to protect quickly.
There is a technology that can help you with this, it has been around for a very long time, is not massively secure, but will do where you just want to keep casual snoopers from looking at something, you should not use it to protect your top secret information.
Basic authentication on apache using .htaccess files is quick and easy to setup and can be used to protect an entire website, or just one directory.
I will now give you some simple step by step instructions on how to password protect a directory on your website. I am assuming that you are using apache 2, are logged into your linux box shell prompt and know how to do basic file operations and navigate around the server.
1. create the .htaccess file – the .htaccess file is a file that you place into a directory on your website and acts like an extension to the main apache configuration file, create a new .htaccess file with the following content
AuthUserFile /home/websites/private/.htpasswd
AuthName "my private content"
AuthType Basic
Require valid-user
2. next you need to create the password file referenced in the .htaccess file, this file can be anywhere, but should not be accessible by everyone, especially from the web. To create the file and add a user run the following command from the /home/websites/private directory
htpasswd -c .htpasswd myuser
you will be prompted for the password for myuser, then the .htpasswd file will be created.
Thats it, you have now setup a simple password on a directory on your web server. Keep in mind this is old technology and is not very secure and does not even allow users to change for remember their passwords. Having said that there will be plenty of applications where you use this due to its simplicity.
We have been busily working away on some really clever code. We have created a system that can listen to the TV channel that you are watching and then determine which channel you are watching!
I hear you ask: ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Well, we were commissioned by TVMoment, a startup company based in San Francisco to build a component for their new website. The website allows people to chat about content, in this case content on TV with a two screen experience (TV and computer).
The idea is that you sit with your computer, or mobile device on your lap while watching TV. If you decide you want to chat with other people online about the programme you are watching, you visit the TVMoment website. Instead of having to select the channel that you are watching, the component will take the audio from your computer microphone and match this to the audio on TV channels in your area (determined by your ip address). You will then be taken to a chat room for the channel that you are watching.
For those of you who want to know a little more about the technology, here is a quick summary. We built a flash component that is loaded into the webpage, this then takes control of the microphone on your computer (after getting permission) and starts streaming the audio from your computer to a backend wowza flash server. Once the audio is received it is converted for speex to wav and a fast fourier transformation (FFT) is performed on the audio.
Once we have the FFT for the audio we match this against a rolling sample of FFT data collected form live TV broadcasts and determine the channel that is being watched.
There were many challenges in building the system, mostly around timing and the massive volume of data that needs to be processed. But with some clever optimisations and intelligent analysis of the matching results we have been able to achieve a good success rate.
TVMoment is currently in beta, but you can go to the website and login using your facebook account – the channels that audio is being captured for are all in the US, so if you are not there you will not get a match. TVMoment.com
We are pleased to have now completed our work to relaunch the kingcnut on line store. KingCnut produce an exciting range of clothing on the King Cnut theme, this includes T-Shrits, baseball caps and other casual clothing.
When we became involved with the website there was already an online store in place and a bespoke cms system. The site had grown organically over several years and had become difficult to maintain. We implemented a new site based on open cart – an open source shopping cart solution. This has given far superior functionality to the site administrators as well as enabling customers to have a better shopping experience.
Previously the only way you could make a purchase from King Cnut was to use paypal or mail in a cheque. We have now implemented secure shopping via credit card, having organised a new merchant account for the website.
We replaced the legacy CMS system with a simple to use and maintain set of pages with the open cart system, thus massively simplifying the management of the site.
If you would like a nice new t-shirt, why not check out KingCnut.com