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Once again your newsletter is complete with handy tips to infuse your working day. We’ve also got some pictures from the UKFast day at the Ashes for those cricket fans amongst you. As ever, if you have anything you’d like to share, please feel free to get in touch with me at jonathan.bowers@ukfast.net
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August at UKFast
We’ve already had plenty of sporting excitement this month with our foray into the Gentleman’s game. We were joined by a selection of clients on the 4th day of the Ashes at Old Trafford for thrills and spills all day long. Highlights included Shane Warne’s dismissal before his century, Strauss’ resilience to reach his century and the Cardboard cut-out of Freddie Flintoff that Pareto Law’s Andy Sawer got to take home in his taxi! For anyone interested, you can view a selection of the day’s photos at http://images.ukfast.net/cricket/ Back on home ground , we’ve been making a number of pioneering moves this month. Manoc 2 is now fully operational and to mark the momentous occasion we have designed and built brand new server casings. They’re not only more manageable for our engineers, but they work to reduce heat retention within the system further enhancing our robust Network. There’ve also been some strange noises coming from the Research and Development office this month as they have cajoled, trimmed and buffed the Domain Registry system into excellent shape. With new tld’s available by the end of this month, they’re also adding all the second level .com domains. So we’ll have every generic tld variant covered before too long.  We’re thrilled to be announcing the 2005 UKFast Network Awards and with loads of new sites bolstering the fibres, there’s a heck of a lot of talent on board this year. Again, there are 5 categories and you can enter more than one by filling out the required number of forms. We’re looking to find The UKFast Network’s: Best Website functionality Best Website design Best e-commerce site Best Community site Best Internet innovator Naturally you can nominate yourselves, but if as a Reseller you have brought other sites onto our Network, you can put them forward and reap the rewards too! The form is simple, just follow the link – https://secure.resellerarea.co.uk/reseller/networkawards2005.php, log-on to the Reseller area and you’ll go straight to the awards form. Chose the award you’re entering and then fill in a couple of contact details and the URL of the Website involved. Then answer the simple question in about 150 words. Dead easy – and it’s more than worth it for the trophy and the winners logo to adorn your Website. Rules are all on the site, but suffice as to say, you need to be a client to access the reseller area and you can only enter each award once with the same Website, but can put a number of sites up for the same award, or one site up for a number of awards. Complicated? No – it’s dead easy so here’s the link again! https://secure.resellerarea.co.uk/reseller/networkawards2005.php Controlling Pop-Ups and Spyware – for Windows users. If you are getting pop-ups, especially at random when you are not surfing the Web, then you are one of about 500 million people infected with spyware. 
Spyware is software that covertly gathers information about you through your Internet connection without your knowledge. It often searches for Email addresses, passwords and credit card numbers. They get on your computer by being "bundled" with freebies like screen savers, password keeping utilities, music swapping programs and clip-art. Some will stop working when you remove their advertising spyware, and some must be removed themselves before you can remove their spyware. The Solution: 1. Go to Start - Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs and one-at-a-time highlight & remove anything that says: Web Search, Rebates, Browser enhancement, Ebates, Shopper, GAIN, New.net, Moe Money Maker, or IE Enhancement. The list grows more every day, but this will give you a good start. 2. Reboot. It may ask you to reboot after each one but you can wait till the end and do it once. 3. You now need to get a free spyware remover. If your computer has Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP, go to Microsoft.com, download the "Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta." Install it, click File - Update, then run a "FULL" search. Set it to "Remove" or "Quarantine" anything it finds unless you recognize it. It will remove nearly all of the programs causing the pop-ups. The Microsoft one is free, excellent, and is always running to stop more programs from getting in. Vote for UKFast - Once again we are challenging for the Web Host Award and our Linux boys are confident of beating the Windows team. So vote for us and keep your ISP on top.
More from the Optimisation front. Some further tips on the use of keywords and phrases: Ensure that they appear in the following places: 1- At the very top point of the Web page 2- At the very bottom point of the Web page 3- In the Title Tag 4- In the H1 tag 5- In your navigation 
Would your friends rave about you? The word is that www.mysinglefriend.com is set to open up the dating game to a whole new market. When Channel 4 presenter Sarah Beeny and her business partner Amanda Christie came to UKFast with a proposal late in 2004, we knew we’d have to kit them out with some serious bandwidth and server solutions. We’re talking about a rather mischievous, dating site with a refreshing new twist. It is designed It’s perfect for people who find it difficult to throw themselves into the dating game. You sit back while your friends do the bragging for you. It makes the whole experienced shared from the outset. You have your friend with you every step of the way matchmaking you with other singles on the site. Online dating is very topical right now, with tons of sites playing cupid with the nations singles. So is mysinglefriend’s unique selling point enough to carve a niche in the market? Sarah Beeny thinks so. “Loads of us have excellent unattached mates who ought to hear about each other – so mysinglefriend makes that possible by widening that dating circle. Someone else describing and joining you in the process makes for a less scary experience and it certainly allows for a more fun and enlightening read!” And she definitely has a point. Having researched the sites out there I get a real sense of the appeal. It’s a pretty solitary past time. Sure, they might make you feel a part of an exciting community, but when it comes down to it, it has to be much less daunting with a best friend in tow – just at the choosing stage that is! So, if you’re up for it – grab a mate and check out all the singles totally free of charge. Why not put your profile on the site and get choosing? For the first four months you can contact other “fabulous singles” completely free of charge before a membership fee of £20 comes into play. Go on – really test the network!
The WayBack Machine is a very clever gadget from www.archive.org. It allows you to look at how sites have looked through their existence. For instance, above we have the Google site as it looked in December 1998. I’m not at all sure how they do it – but it’s great for work and play. Take a look at how your own site has evolved over the years. What works now that didn’t work then? Have you lost anything from your site that you are reminded of? That’s enough of work – now – to play… Here are a couple more biggies to get you interested.
10. Get your HTML handiwork checked out at http://validator.w3.org/ 9. The best section on www.coolhomepages.com is the design inspiration gallery 8. Claiming to be ‘the largest Web developers site on the Net’ www.w3schools.com is definitely worth a look. 7. A site discussing the craft of Web design – http://www.alistapart.com 6. A doorway to some of the more innovative design sites – http://www.styleboost.com 5. Get your vector images for your Website or for flash design from www.brandsoftheworld.com 4. For all your Flash needs you can rely on www.flashkit.com. The tutorials are well worth your time. 3. The forum on www.moluv.com allows you to get advice from the experts. 2. www.linkdup.com has links updated every day to the best of the Web. 1. If you need good quality images for your site www.istockphoto.com is the affordable place to go with photo’s costing only $1 Final Thought: As ever, I hope the Newsletter has provided a useful insight into UKFast this month. I look forward to speaking to many of you before the May edition.  For more information on the range of UKFast products and services go to http://www.ukfast.net/site/index.php 
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As the season opens, we’re proud to announce that we’ve signed a new 3-year deal to partner Sale Sharks to many more victories. Last year’s European Challenge Cup win is expected to be the start of a string of awards for the North West’s biggest Rugby Union club. Hopefully, many of you can join us to cheer on Charlie Hodgson and the boys.
Preparation is everything and this month sees the launch of a brand new site that promises to test the UKFast Network like few others before. We’re confident we’re ready for it – what about you?
so that each single is recommended and described not by themselves – but by a friend.
Once again I’ve discovered something revolutionary. I won’t harp on about it as you’ll get to know it better just by logging on and having a play.
Sites to inspire Web Designers