This article I written originally for the Insight Guide – A monthly Lifestyle Magazine for readers in Brighton and surrounding areas. The article gives newcomers to mobile internet a reason to take its future seriously and look ahead to what’s coming soon on the mobile platform.

There is only one web, the principle of making the same information and services to users regardless of the way they access it. No doubt about it, the number of mobile devices we choose to interact with websites and online applications is increasing, comared to just desktop computers. Mobile will revolutionise they way we gather and intereact with information in the next 2 years, and this is using the mobile in your pocket, not just the iPhone.
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The latest event from Carsonified is The Future of Web Design, which was held in London this week. These are the notes from some of the speakers presentations.

The theme for the event focused on creative approaches for design:
The main ways for the speakers we by ‘changing your perspectives’ and ‘asking and collaborating with other people for ideas’.

Inspiration vs duplication – Often leads to designs being directly copied as its easier, but leads to abuse. How do we go about doing the right thing? By looking for elements that solve problems in intersting ways.

Inspiration. Takes practice and is never ending process. Lead to wealth of ideas that you can apply to web design

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So, the Annual Geekfest in Austin Texas is almost upon us.

Just one look at the events calendar is enough to make any person nervous, with the amount of world renowned speakers and also some homegrown talent going over to share knowledge, hang out with friends and make new aquaintances.

How to maximise everyones time at SxSW08

This is how I can see the event working. After the initial check in for flight, and at the hotel. All delegates are required to register. This will be a good initial check to get a vibe for just how friendly and excitable everyone will be about the week ahead. Hopefully to spot some of the Brightoninan’s that will also be there.

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We launched the Concordia International Volunteers in August.

Since then we have been getting great feedback from the charity based in Portslade.

Programme Manager, Fiona Taylor says:

The number of bookings has far exceeded out targets for this year, and it’s all thanks to the site review Callender Creates carried out, they executed the findings in the design and structure of the new site. Very Exciting.. We are just watching the traffic grow each month!

Site redesigns that are done well, are often regarded as switching a switch and letting all the visitors who could not understand the way to navigate around a site, and get the information they require.

In this instance, this has led to:

• Increase in number of bookings
• Increase in seo and accessibility
• With database work planned soon, to make searching and booking even easier online

We have used Google analytics and Crazy Egg to demonstrate to the client the actions and visitor journey on the site. We have explained also the way the pages are written can determine which pages the visitor clicks onto.

Check out the site at www.concordia-iye.org.uk

We often use the content in the following post, when explaining designs and layouts to clients who. We make it easy to understand why homepages and doorway pages are so important for new visitors to your site.

Probably the most important one being “You have less than 5 seconds to catch your customers attention.” If the design or interface of the web site or application confuses you will repeatedly lose valuable customers.

A company’s homepage is its face to the world and the starting point for most user visits. Improving your homepage multiplies the entire website’s business value, so following key guidelines for homepage usability is well worth the investment..
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Today we opened up our meeting room and welcomed Concordia International Volunteers.

The Concordia staff and volunteers were able to do presentations and catch up on each others work and also look towards their future based on their current strategies. Callender Creates were also on hand to act as consultants for future ecommerce work planned for the Concordia web site.

Fiona Taylor, Manager, said “we appreciate that the team at Callender Creates are very busy, so we value the time and the opportunity to use the meeting room for our ‘away day’ meeting’.

Concordia offers more than 1600 international volunteer projects every year, in the UK and overseas.
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This is happening more an more often, sites from small businesses to large social networking portals.

Examples of recently hacked sites:

www.cssremix.com
www.designerstalk.com

Also a client had his site hacked by an employee who held the site to ransom.
The host, 123reg and the police were involved and both parties took the situation very seriously.

Most importantly, make sure your domain is LOCKED!
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