Cubeworks blog – digital opinion & insight

Picture by Giuli-O

If you’ve ever needed a good photograph to illustrate something, you may have been frustrated that the usual stock photo sites have returned just the usual stream of polished, cheesy smiles. A lot of people seem to overlook Flickr as an option, which now contains a fantastic array of over 3 billion images, all uploaded by its users.

Until recently Flickr’s search wasn’t too helpful for browsing large numbers of images. Now Flickr has updated their search and presents the results in a nice grid, perfect for browsing. But can you legally use the images you find for commercial purposes?

Continue reading “HOW TO: Use Flickr for free commercial-use photos”

In this post I’m going to explore the concept of ‘heavy lifting’ and demonstrate how collaborating with 3rd parties can increase user interaction with your site whilst reducing development costs.

Continue reading “Heavy Lifting (save money – don’t reinvent the wheel)”

More and more of our clients at Cubeworks want to understand how they can use social media and especially Twitter. It might not be the right move for their business just yet, but with all the Twitter buzz in the air, they don’t want to be missing out.

Many a social media/web consultant has blogged in recent time about the benefits and pitfalls of Twitter for business, and I had formulated my own thoughts. Well… just as I sat down to finish my post, I discovered Twitter had put me out of my misery with their fantastic, shiny new business guide entitled “Twitter 101“.

Continue reading “Making sense of Twitter for business”

Picture: col_adamson on Flickr

How do you update your website? If you have a content management system, it will probably have some kind of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) text editor built-in that gives you a set of controls something like this:

The basic TinyMCE toolbar

Tools like this are good because they give you a lot of control over what your content looks like, but that control and freedom comes with an important trade-off: Unlike a more restrictive system (think of a stock management system, say), it can’t tell you when something has gone wrong. Content can be formatted in so many ways and still, to the human eye, remain meaningful. Look at the example below:

Continue reading “Seeing meaning with semantic markup”

Here at Cubeworks, things are getting HOT. We feel like Expats in the Far East here in our offices by the seaside, so we have employed a cooling system that is convenient and cheap – the USB fan.

‘Its like being on the beach in New Zealand , with the wind blowing lightly in your face while you watch the calm seas and listen to the distant sounds of sheep. I feel right at home now I have the USB fan.’

Cubeworks endeavors to make its team happy, so they can keep you happy.

Get your own here...

Hello. My name is Iain and I have joined Cubeworks as a Senior Developer.

Why? My entire career to date, has been delivering software that adds real value to its users; something that Cubeworks has also been doing for a long time.

How? My route to the Cubeworks family started 10 years ago.  First in London at a network management software company, then via two of the largest companies on the planet, followed by two smaller Brighton based companies.  Each one was a leader in its field.

So? Cubeworks has worked hard to foster a creative, robust and constantly improving development environment.  As a software professional, that’s something to be cherished and it shines through in the final products.

And? Like Cubeworks, I’m focused on the ALT.NET way of using Microsoft’s .NET framework; utilising the best-of-breed components and practices to maximise the quality of all the software I have a part in creating.

Cool. Yes, I think so too.

Recently here at Cubeworks we have undertaken in-depth website audits for two not-for-profit organisations.

Audits? “Yawn”, I hear you cry!

However, these audits have proven to be invaluable in enabling our clients to assess how their sites are performing against their business goals.

Continue reading “Website audit: How healthy is your website?”

Why should you care about web technologies?

The majority of our clients do not really care what web technologies we use – unless they are technical themselves – and indeed, why should they? We are the technical experts, that’s why they engage us.  Naturally, the most important thing for them is that their website is usable, reliable and enables them to hit (or, even better, exceed) their targets.

Modern websites can be complex beasts, often talking to several other IT systems. Committing to inappropriate technologies usually means an expensive rebuild much sooner than expected, so it’s more vital than ever that the underlying technology is appropriate for the job.

Continue reading “The costly perils of the wrong technologies”

Planning. It’s not fun is it?

According to research by E-Consultancy, one third of the biggest brands selling online in the UK don’t have a detailed digital marketing plan.  Planning can be hard work. You might face: an IT department who thinks digital is their realm, difficulties reporting across your business (tricky, especially if you’re global), or working out how your offline marketing will complement your digital and vice versa. Smaller companies might not have the time or resources, or know who is responsible to put a plan together. And the biggest challenge of all: if everything is going well now, you don’t need a plan. Right?

Having a plan is all about looking into the future. Even if your digital marketing is working well for you now, something 2009 has rudely reminded us of is that nothing is certain. Even in sunnier financial climes, digital technologies will still change. Your competitors will always be attempting to woo your customers, and if you get distracted and lose focus your customers just might start blushing and winking back.

So here are four reasons to have a digital marketing plan, even if things are looking rosy today.

Continue reading “Four reasons to have a digital marketing plan”

Microsoft announced this month that they will be using Windows Update to upgrade Internet Explorer 6 & 7 users to the latest release, IE8. Although Microsoft insist you will still have to opt-in to the upgrade, it will be set as ‘High Priority’ for many users, which effectively means that if you don’t want it you’ll have to opt-out. For the online world, this is a pretty big milestone in browser history: the end of IE6.

Continue reading “Upgrading from Internet Explorer 6, for fun and profit”