Clarihon blog

• Welcome to Clarihon Web Service’s blog

Our latest web site has just gone live.

MIH Centre are leading innovation consultants to major businesses that need to develop new products or services.

The company was started by Tim Nicol, an ex-senior manager in marketing at Mars/Masterfoods. He saw first-hand the difficulties many large companies have with the creation and further development of products and services. They have now helped businesses around the world including BP, Diageo, Nestle, Sony and many other household names.

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Our Internet viewing habits are of great interest to retailers and other groups so there’s been an increase in the use of tracking tools by web sites. This is usually via ‘cookies’ and the EU are now attempting to regulate how they are used through legislation.

Cookies are text files that are stored on a computer and can be used to authenticate a person, store their preferences or much more.

They also drive the biggest industry on the web – advertising.  These cookies enable advertisers to track websites visited and then present that person with tailored content and adverts – known as ‘behavioural advertising’.  It is this aspect that has caused the privacy concerns about cookies.

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It is worth mentioning that the remit of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) was broadened earlier this year to include online marketing communications – there was a widespread media campaign at the time to alert people to the changes.  Any paid-for listings and pop-up adverts were already covered, but the ASA code has now been extended to marketing communications on websites and other non-paid for online space.  So basically if you have something to sell – either a product or service – and you have a website to showcase it, then making any false claims runs the risk of falling foul of the authorities.

This change then affects how some people have done organic (not paid-for) search engine optimisation (SEO) in the past.  There has always been ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’ SEO but not only will Google penalise ‘black hat’ methods, this revised ASA code may mean that some of these practices are now illegal. The CAP code opening paragraph states that “the central principle for all marketing communications is that they should be legal,
decent, honest and truthful.  So websites really do need to do ‘what they say on the tin’.

More detailed information is available on the Committee of Advertising Practice website.

One of our latest clients is SJYSolar. They’re an off-shoot of the established electrical engineers in Launceston, SJY Electrical.

Run by Steve & Sarah Yeo they’ve developed an excellent reputation for their electrical work. It was a natural progression to add the installation of solar panels for generation of electricity to their portfolio. Providing both domestic and commercial support, mainly in Cornwall & Devon, they would be an excellent choice for those looking to cut their electricity bills.

We were recommended to them by a long-standing business contact, for whom they’ve done electrical work. After an initial meeting we were soon asked to provide a specification for a new solar web site.

Throughout the design, content generation and site build stages we had regular conversations with Sarah & Mark, their lead installer. On Thursday 26th May the site went live – just as Steve & Sarah were beginning an advertising push.

The site has been well-received and work is ongoing to add further information and get the pages ranked on Google – as the pressure of Sarah’s increased workload allows!

www.sjysolar.co.uk

OK, we like playing around with new technology here at Clarihon, so we decided to buy a tablet which for one thing, will enable us to see how any new sites we develop will appear.

Before doing any homework, we first thought that we would buy an iPAd, after all that seemed to be the one that was getting all the media coverage.  A downside of the iPad is the fact that it does not support Flash, so some sites will not appear at all and elements of others won’t.  So far on the Asus we have not encountered any problems when viewing sites that include Flash.

Most other tablets are now based on Android which is used for more and more smartphones so this seemed to be the sensible way to go.  There is plenty of choice out there (a few of them are listed here), but the one that seemed to feature well in any review was the Asus EEE, it also comes with a keyboard so can be transformed easily from a tablet to a netbook.

After a bit of trial and error we managed to get it hooked up via WiFi, this was not a fault of how to set it up on the Asus just there not being a particularly good signal.  The screen is clear and bright and it’s very easy to navigate.  The keyboard is also good to use, though the mouse is very sensitive so it takes a bit more control than the touch pad on a conventional laptop.  The keyboard also has 2 USB ports whereas the tablet itself just has a micro HDMI slot.  It will read Office documents  and they are editable; the Powerpoint didn’t transfer perfectly but this happens anyway with Powerpoint!  There are 2  cameras, the rear one can be used at 1, 2, 3 or 5mp, with options for normal (colour), sepia, black and white or negative images and an 8x zoom, also a video option.  There is also an in-built webcam.  Kindle is also loaded so you can read any books you want when you’ve had enough of web browsing!

Verdict overall:  we are very pleased with our new toy so far and it is as good as the reviews say.  If we find any real problems with it then we’ll report back here.