 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||
|
Lawrence Jones and I stayed down in London after the exhibition to sponsor a conference on Delivering the New PR, which was also a real eye opener. The middle of the month saw the World Wide Web conference in Edinburgh with many of the web’s top drawer discussing the opportunities the future presents. I’ll bring you the highlights in the Hot Topic. And right at the end of the month we are thrilled to report that Sale Sharks have made history by becoming the first Rugby Union team to win the league and then the play offs becoming Champions of the Premiership! We’re now looking forward to June and preparing a tremendous summer for the Network. The UKFast Internet Awards will be getting under way next month, but before we get there, lets take a look at May in a bit more detail. |
|||||||
|
May @ UKFast - A month of developments
Strengthening relationships Next week, as part of this schedule, Lawrence Jones is talking in Manchester, alongside representatives from Yahoo and Hitwise about ‘Optimising Your Online Presence.’ If you are interested in finding out more about this, take a look at the flyer on our website. The event is on Wednesday June 7 at 6pm. The venue is Cube on Portland Street. I hope to see some of you there. Improving the Network The new client area focuses on convenience and uniformity. The tabbed navigation across the top splits it into 3 distinct areas: ‘My Account’, ‘Services’ and ‘Support.’ Some of the inspiration has been drawn from the Google control panel. Each section has further navigation on the left. A couple of favourites within the new system include the triple search function in the Domain section and the MRTG / PPS stats for server clients. In damp, drizzly conditions, every one of the Sale team made a telling contribution, none moreso than UKFast’s Charlie Hodgson who was awarded Man of the Match. The Tigers fought hard but, by the end, had been forced into a series of basic errors and their infringements were punished by the World-class Hodgson, whose boot accounted for 23 of the Sharks 45 points.
Check out the Sharks Site for a full report.
 Generate useful gibberish!
It’s the Gibberish Generator. It has 6 levels of gibberish so you input any text – or even use one of the sample texts defaulted in and it creates a multitude of text that you can use to lay out webpages and populate sample databases with. It’s not only practical, but very original too. Hope you enjoy it. Vote for UKFast
Trade Shows in a virtual world – part 2 The big news is that while the Internet occupies a seemingly virtual space it remains about real people. At Internet World I did two podcasts interviewing exhibitors, organisers and IT professionals and the same message came through again and again. “It’s nice to do business face-to-face.” So we know why people want to be there – how did we grab their attention?
One other exhibitor worth mentioning is Streetmap.biz. They chose to draw crowds by employing Britain’s ‘Master of Illusion’ David Penn, who designed a series of shows based around the core messages that Streetmap wanted to deliver. You can find out more about this, by downloading the second UKFast Podcast at Internet world from our podcast page. Spotlight on the Client – Why you need String! Retail on the Internet is more and more consumer led and companies both traditional and of online origin are finding that in order to sell products they have to work harder to build relations with customers than ever before. When you couple this with growing ethical concern over natural products and their origins, you have a definite need for String. Gloucestershire based Historic Futures has developed String, which is the world’s leading supply-chain traceability service. It’s a service that has been taken up by manufacturers and retailers alike to provide complete product traceability, from finished item all the way back to the raw materials. When I first spoke with Simon Warrick, CTO at Historic Futures, he explained the system by sending me a list of ingredients for a curry he had made. The information was integrated into Google Maps and quite literally mapped the journey of each ingredient. From the fields in India where cumin seeds are grown, the factories they are sent to – the route they travel to the UK, the warehouse they arrive in to the shops they are bought from. This might seem like overkill, but for many, it’s exactly what is needed to regain trust and build a reputation as a transparent organisation. This is no doubt why the likes on Nike and Wal Mart have sponsored the Organic Exchange project that Historic Futures partners with in order to bring us information about the origins of clothing. Simon Warrick believes that companies who prove their products are of the best origins and standards, those who are openly accountable for their products, will drive the market and force people who claim the ‘organic’ label to prove it. A crucial dimension in a society where trust in organisations is at an all time low. When you think about it – the technology can be applied to pretty much anything. Wherever there is a supply chain, String can be employed to reveal it. To find out more about String and the Historic Futures industry partners, take a look at the website and follow the demos from the homepage.
Last week saw the annual World Wide Web conference, this time held in Scotland’s royal city – Edinburgh. I thought it might be useful to bring you some of the highlights so that we can all stay in the loop on the biggest advancements of our industry. The four day event took the opportunity to delve into a different aspect of the web each day. I’m going to take a top pick from each of these, starting with Sir David Brown, chairman of Motorola, delivering the keynote speech on day one. It’s interesting to see Tim Berners-Lee introducing the keynote. Berners-Lee was fairly outspoken about the negative aspects of the .mobi domain, last year, so I wonder how he felt about Sir David’s talk, which gave light to one of the webs strongest directions – the mobile device market.
Thursday’s focus was split with one topic of the day being web security. Mike Davies of Verisign gave an interesting presentation that brought home the effects of cyber crime. Statistics such as; 9715 new phishing sites in January 2006, hijacking over 100 established brands, have resulted in 90% of us being fooled at one time or another. This has led to mass distrust, with 84% of businesses believing that more needs to be done to protect them and 24% choosing not to purchase online. An unhappy situation indeed. The whole industry is looking at online security and UKFast is in talks with a number of top companies including Versign to make sure that we are providing the most secure solutions possible.
Not one European country appears in the top ten software pirating Nations. The Asians and Africans unsurprisingly dominate the list. The top offender, Vietnam pirates 90% of its software. In contrast the lowest nation in the survey, the US, suffers 21%. However, considering the cost to the economy of the piracy, presents a different story, flipping the US to the top of the list. Here are the top ten countries with the greatest dollar value of pirated software. 10. Brazil $ 766 A quick note from the sponsor!! Having been with the Sharks now for 6 seasons, we have seen the quality of both the Rugby and the hospitality improve year on year and now the Sharks are Premiership Champions, our table at the Rugby has never been more sought after. As part of our new sponsorship deal with the club we have arranged some extra tickets for each game in order to keep up with demand from your good selves. Best wishes,
For more information on the range of UKFast products and services go to http://www.ukfast.net/index.html 
|
|||||||
From start to finish, May has been about development: Development of the network, of new and existing relationships and of stronger communications.
Celebrating success 
A group of us led by Lawrence Jones were at Twickenham to support the Sharks. Charlie proved once again his ability as not only a great kicker, but a world class fly half and we’d like to congratulate the whole team, who played a solid game that Leicester couldn’t penetrate.
For all those designers and programmers who need to dummy up web pages for clients, there’s a new alternative to the Lorem Ipsum copy of old. While Lorem Ipsum has been the print setting type since the fifteen hundreds, we think that Keith Enevoldsen’s Think Zone has come up with a great fun alternative.
We employed a four fold strategy. The first was the look and shape of the stand. Designed with an elliptical base in the middle, the UKFast stand was the only one at the exhibition allowing access from all four corners. We enhanced this by peopling it with welcoming and knowledgeable representatives. 
In addition, we set up a Podcasting studio and drew crowds to various interviews. Over all, the key word was ‘action’ and we managed to keep things happening from start to finish every day. We also had some excellent branded giveaways including 512mb flash drives.
Last week on the UKFast blog I mentioned a new semantic web search engine that is still in development called 
- Software pirates – the costly Nations
