The Pentiums

Suspiciously good weather

I thought it was always supposed to rain on Bank Holidays? And yet, we’ve had glorious sunshine and warm temperatures all weekend up where we stay. It’s meant I’ve managed to get very little preparation done for my new job, recruiting for special needs teaching jobs, but I’m pretty sure everyone in the office will be the same by the time we all drag ourselves back into the office on Tuesday morning, hungover, sun burnt and depressed that our four-day weekend is finished… More

The Digital Age Crime

If you wanted to lessen your worldwide roaming prices because, even though you were rich, you wanted better value for money, you’d probably go online and see what was out there, right? Yes, that’d be the most sensible option seeing as we live in an age where anyone from anywhere truly can make it. Likewise, if you were a music producer for TV and film you’d probably be paying attention to the vast number of unsigned but highly energetic musicians More

Violence In Video Games And Why It Isn’t So Bad

I’ve heard it said quite a lot recently that video games are becoming dangerously violent. I’m never quite sure what that phrase actually means. Does it mean “violent enough that people will start acting on what they see in real life” or does it mean “damaging to the mind in an emotional way from seeing so much violence and gore”? More

Five Ways to Prevent a Website Do-Over

Building a website takes time and effort, and you want to make sure you get it right the first time in order to avoid a “do-over”. Here are a few ways to prevent a website do-over.

1. Take the time to determine the purpose of your website. Rather than simply have one because everyone else has one, think deeply about what you want your website to do. Do you want to share information, communicate with clients, or sell products directly on your site? So if your business is plastic packaging then your site should be about that.

2. Determine who will be accessing your website, particularly who your target audience is. This will help you figure out the right look and content that will be most suitable for this target audience.

3. Planning is important. Map out the main content you want to include, and organize it in an easy-to-find way. You may already have a lot of content available that you use in print materials (brochures, publications, portfolios), and may also want to produce new exclusive web content.

4. Browse the web. Before beginning the actual building work on your site, make a note of sites you like on the web. You don’t want to duplicate another website in full, but there will be sites that have elements you admire, which you can refer to when working on your site.

5. Keep your site simple in terms of design and technology. Simple, elegant and classic always trumps trendy. While you should choose a technologically-sophisticated platform that allows you to easily update content (and even make simple design changes like color schemes and navigation elements) in order to keep the site fresh, stay away from flashy technological design elements, like Flash animations. The novelty of Flash wears off and you risk annoying visitors who just want to get straight to the content.

Travel trauma

When did going on holiday become so complicated? When I was a carefree teenager, all I needed was a passport, a few quids worth of the local currency in my back pocket and a bottle of hand wash detergent and I’d be happy to disappear for months at a time. Now, we have to worry about all the different chargers for our array of laptops, iPads, mobiles, Blackberries, music players and games consoles. Then we have to make sure all More

Why Design and Media Professionals Choose Apple

It’s often tough to understand exactly why so very many design, media, and production specialists choose to use Apple computers in their work, and usually in their personal life too. There is a huge fanbase for Apple computers in this market, and they own a really huge percentage of the demographic that has the greatest percentage of disposable income. The fans of Apple’s utter devotion and almost complete brand loyalty often seems cultish to people who just don’t think computers More

The Future of Radio: The Web

I’m currently enjoying a lot of web radio. The radio stations in the U.K. are pretty good, and if you’re in London then it’s quite likely that there is enough on the FM bands to keep you happy with a wide mixture of genres, talk radio, and sports talk. For those of us living a little further afield, we are hardly spoiled for choice. Other than the BBC stations, there is little worth really celebrating.

And don’t even get me More