Clicknetworks - IT Support Glasgow, Scotland

A Fresh Approach to Bridal Shop Software

2010-11-08T03:49:00.000-08:00

BRIMAS software improves bridal shop efficiency by reducing administrative tasks, eliminating waste and maximising sales and marketing opportunities.

UK IT support company, Clicknetworks is to officially launch in March 2011, the World’s first platform independent browser based software, to help bridal shop owners manage their business more efficiently and retain more customer’s by adding value to their sales.

The new software called BRIMAS (Bridal Retail Information Management and Accounting System) enables owners to manage their shop anytime, from anywhere by centralising the vast majority of wedding shop processes into one single online software system and database.

BRIMAS combines the central features of a Point of Sale (POS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), stock inventory, diary planner and accounts management system into the one program, aiming to deliver significant time and cost savings to the bridal shop owner.

“By integrating features found in many different programs and by eliminating manual tasks and time consuming paperwork, Brimas not only reduces costs on software, hardware, stationary and accountancy fees, it also gives shop owners the freedom to spend more time concentrating on the creative parts of their business rather than the mundane administrative tasks”, said BRIMAS Business Manager, John Mahaffy.

The software is designed specifically for bridal industries and was developed in the UK over a two year period working in close consultation with bridal retailers and suppliers to create a product that meets the needs and expectations of modern bridal shops and boutiques.

Mr Mahaffy said, “Bridal shops today are faced with a number of technology and software options to enhance their business, however very few are designed to meet the specific needs of bridal retailers”.

“While most bridal software packages focus solely on organising your business, BRIMAS takes it to the next level by helping you build a profitable and scalable business by streamlining customer development and automating marketing practices”.

“After the first day of listening to shop owners it became clear that many of them were struggling to effectively use technology and the internet to build their sales and run their business more efficiently”

“We recognised early on the importance of providing software that does not box clients in or force them down a particular process. Each and every shop is different and unique but they all share some core processes”, said Mr Mahaffy.

The sale of a wedding dress can involve several different stages and appointments.

BRIMAS caters for this unique type of sale by offering a multi-stage approach to the process.

This accommodates for the 'stop and start' nature of wedding sales whilst keeping overall control.

Various stages of the sales process which BRIMAS tracks through to completion:

Gather initial customer/wedding information quickly
Browse and shortlist products anytime
Finalise dress selection
Record customer measurements
Order dress and accessories
Manage appointments
Print and electronically store contracts and invoices
Manage fittings and amendments

The BRIMAS system includes various tools to aid with bridal shop management.

The system is capable of tracking and storing a wide range of data which is then made available to a manager for marketing campaigns and financial control.

A reporting suite featuring interactive charts and graphs makes it easy for shop owners to understand their business at a glance including key metric sales data such as:

Best selling dresses
Best selling accessories
Most shortlisted dresses
Most shortlisted accessories

“BRIMAS makes it easy for bridal shops to increase sales by selling a better experience to their customers than their competition can provide”, said Mr Mahaffy.

To access BRIMAS all you need is an internet connection and a web enabled device, this means the system can help bridal shops fit their business around the customer’s lifestyle.

For example, BRIMAS makes it possible for staff to conduct a sales consultation and measurements within the privacy of the customer’s home and outside of core opening hours.

“Creating a personalised experience, especially for brides with special needs is essential when you have customers contemplating a huge purchase. The more proactive a retailer is, the more likely it will be to pull in the right customers”, said Mr Mahaffy.

BRIMAS also makes it easy for shops to proactively take more appointments from their website to retain more customers.

BRIMAS reinforces the bridal shop’s reputation for excellent customer service by offering customers the opportunity to book appointments online through the booking function.

The “Book an Appointment” web lead facility enables shops to conduct an initial consultation gathering the important details prior to the customer visiting the shop. This allows shop owners to order stock, prepare and control first impressions before the customer enters the shop.

A key requirement in the design and development of BRIMAS was to make the interface easy to use and as intuitive as possible, so that shop owners would not have to spend large amounts of time and money on training staff to use the system.

BRIMAS has been designed with a friendly touch-screen interface that can be run from any web-enabled device, including PCs, Macs, tablet PCs and mobile phones.

To ensure that Brimas meet their customer’s expectations, they employ their own full-time technical support, customer service, and software development teams here in the UK.

The company is currently seeking UK bridal shops to participate in the Beta testing phase of the product before its official launch in March 2011. For more information and to register your interest in participating in the Beta Testing program please visit: http://www.brimas.co.uk/register/

Ends

Notes to editors

BRIMAS is an online Bridal Retail Information Management and Accounting System developed by Clicknetworks Ltd based in Glasgow, United Kingdom. The system has been developed over a two year period following a close consultation with bridal retailers and suppliers. The online software is fast, secure and easy to use, and no computer skills are necessary. Affordable for shops of all sizes, and available from £35 per month, the system requires no expensive set-up or hardware costs and allows the shop owner, to manage their shop anytime, anywhere.

Website: http://www.brimas.co.uk

Email: info@brimas.co.uk
Clicknetworks Ltd was formed in 2005 by a team of IT professionals from a variety of professional backgrounds who came together to provide a complete end to end IT support, services and solutions to the business community. Based in Glasgow, the company has grown over time purely by customer recommendation to

Website: http://www.clicknetworks.co.uk

Email: info@clicknetworks.co.uk
For more information please contact: John Mahaffy, Brimas Business Development Manager, Clicknetworks Ltd. Phone: +44 (0)141 530 9116 or email: john@clicknetworks.co.uk

BRIMAS - Bridal Shop Software Launched

2010-09-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

Clicknetworks recently launched a new product for the UK Bridal Industry at the British Bridal Exhibition in Harrowgate between the 12th and 14th of September. The Bridal Shop Software called BRIMAS (Bridal Retail Information Management and Accounting System) has been developed over a two year period following a close consultation with bridal retailers and suppliers. The online wedding and bridal software is fast, secure and easy to use with no computer skills necessary! Affordable for shops of all sizes, requires no expensive set-up or hardware costs and allows you, the shop owner, to manage your shop anytime, anywhere on any platform or device (i-pads, i-phones, touchscreens, blackberrys etc). For more information visit the BRIMAS Bridal Shop Software - Beta Preview Website.

Clicknetworks invests in fibre optic & high performance virtual machine cluster

2010-06-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

Clicknetworks has announced its plan to build an ultra high-speed fibre optic broadband network.

The investment in the new technology infrastructure comes just shortly after the company announced they were to move all of their client’s data to a high performance virtual machine cluster.

The virtual machine cluster is reported to run on a 2 terabyte iSCSI SAN custom built by the Clicknetworks Computer Engineering team.

“The high performance virtual machine cluster will enable higher availability and greater density for our managed data. This means our hosted websites will be faster and our client’s data will be faster to access as well as providing a faster and more reliable backup”, said Craig Smith Systems Architect for Clicknetworks.

Clicknetworks software development team are currently developing a number of cloud based applications where high loads and high demand are anticipated. It is hoped that the new investment in information technology will enable Clicknetworks to support that future demand as well as enable their business clients to capitalise and use a technology framework usually reserved for large corporations and scientific / educational institutions.

“If we take a look at the big players like Microsoft and Google as well as look at current industry trends and the popularity of many cutting edge online applications that are based on subscription services, it is clear to us that the future of IT exists in the cloud. Software as a service is something we are going to see become common place in the not too distant future”, said Andrew Beattie, Digital Strategist at Clicknetworks Ltd.

Enhance your website through Microformats & Google Rich Snippets

2010-05-28T04:30:00.000-07:00

Microformats and rich snippets allow you to enhance your website in the SERP's (search engine result pages) and indirectly increase your clickthru rates and visitor traffic. Over the past year, search engines such as Google have started using Microformats to enhance their search results for users. Let’s look at how this can work with reviews, people and events.

Reviews

You may have noticed in Google's search results product reviews appearing before the rest of the search result listings. Sometimes these reviews feature star ratings. Google calls such listings ‘rich snippets’, which are most often based on the hReview microformat standard. If you have product reviews on your website, hReview gives you the opportunity to mark up single user-generated reviews and an overall score of multiple reviews. In the image above, reviewer name and date of review can also be included in the search result.

More information on how Google uses the hReview microformat

People

If you have searched for a collegue or friend in Google before you may have noticed that sometimes their name, location and job title is in the SERP's. These results are rich snippets that Google uses based on the hCard microformat standard.

hCard is dedicated to marking up data that describes contact and social networking information. hCard can describe names, job titles, locations and the name a person is associated with.

More information on using the hCard microformat from Google

Events

Some website's like The List, have event information displayed in Google's SERP's. This is because they have marked up their events data using the hEvent microformat standard. hEvent describes information such as event location, start date and time, and event name.

More information on using the hEvent microformat from Google

Benefits of Microformats

Microformats benefit the search engines in that it enables them to understand the data they collect more semantically and to easilly extract this data and incorporate and syndicate it across other contexts and mediums. This means they are able to deliver more relevant and timely results faster and easier to the end user.

Microformats also enable website's to distribute their content more effectively and thus indirectly gather more visitors through increased click-thrus to that data. If you are a website with lots of information on reviews, people or events then you should consider investing the time to convert your existing data to a microformat that will have a real effect on the bottom line of your business and give you a major advantage over you competitors in the SERP's.

Google do not accept all website's that have rich snippet microformat data, but are instead reviewing sites on a case by case basis. To be included in Google's rich snippet SERP, they recommend webmaster's submit their website's for review through this form.

If you would like to find out how Clicknetworks can help your company or organisation enchance its online presence and gain more traffic through microformats and rich snippets then simply contact us.

Google Caffeine and its impact on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

2010-05-13T02:54:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of buzz recently in the blogosphere about Google's new planned search architecture update codenamed "Caffeine". This new architecture has been designed to return results faster and to better deal with rapidly updated information from social media services including Facebook and Twitter. Google claims that the new search tool will improve the speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google search.

In the latter half of last year developers were given a preview opportunity to test out the new search architecture in the Google Caffeine Sandbox. Our initial testing showed that the new search update was very quick returning results in around half the time of the current setup. Other differences we noted was the impact upon search engine optimisation which seems to focus more on heavier keyword weighting and the importance of the domain's age.

So when is Google Caffeine going live?

There is a lot of speculation on blogs that Google Caffeine is live on around 80% of data centres. Unfortunately, there has been no official confirmation from Google yet that the new service is live, however some users will note a different Google search and results interface and some website owners will notice a shuffle in their rankings.

Ensuring your website does not lose its current ranking

We suggest that website owners and SEO specialists should take notice of Google’s rules in Webmaster Central to ensure they do not lose their rankings in the search results for major keywords. More specifically we suggest the following:

1. Do not copy other website’s copy. Google now checks for duplicate content and will penalise site’s with similar text content. Obviously, the website that has been online the most will contain the original content and won’t be penalised.

2. Do not duplicate the same content over and over again through doorway pages on the same domain. Your website may be flagged for duplicate content and you might lose significant positions for all your major keywords.

3. Do not hide keyword text or provide different results for Google other than what a normal user would see. Google has made it algorithm more sophisticated recently to catch out people who abuse the system. Exceptions to this rule can include tabbed content. As long as the content can be opened and closed by a user script this should not be a problem.

4. Do not link to suspected link farms or site’s which seem to be setup only for the purpose of obtaining a better Page Rank.

5. Do not Spam the Open Directory or Yahoo Directory with multiple listings for the same URL. Google does take into consideration whether a site is indexed with ODP and Yahoo and awards a higher weight for sites that have been included. Yahoo informs us that they are currently in the process of weeding out and penalising sites that have attempted to bypass their one URL policy. Those websites that have multiple listings in Yahoo may very soon find out that there domain has been permanently banned.

We advise all our clients to play by the rules. Yes there are unscrupulous SEO companies out there that will perform black hat techniques to get their client’s website to the top of Google, but for how long will their shady techniques last? I suspect not long as the major search companies perform ever more sophisticated checks to ensure the quality of their indexes. Matt Cutt’s from Google tells us that the single most important thing for webmasters to ensure good future rankings for their website in Google, is to provide high quality original and engaging content for their key audience. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

Epilepsy Scotland's 2010 WAGS Dinner

2010-05-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

Clicknetworks were proud to sponsor Epilepsy Scotlands 2010 WAGS Dinner at the marriot hotel Glasgow, Friday 29th april.

This years event was extremely well attended, Guests were entertained by Still Game Host – Sanjeev Kohli, along with Guest Speakers former Rangers Player Kevin Drinkell, Radio Clydes Lorraine Herbison, Well Known Ayrshire Speaker, Hugh Drennan and Slvia Kelly.

One of the main Prizes on the Night was the Chance to win a new Apple IPAD, by purchasing a key for the safe, over 120 keys were sold on the night and 1 lucky winner will soon be the proud owner of the new IPAD.

Mind Mapping - migrating your thoughts from mind to desktop

2010-04-28T01:18:00.000-07:00

As a software development company, we will often get provided with very open-ended tasks that tend to require some good old common sense and organisation in order to develop the ideas from concept to .NET Application.

Whilst some people may be better organised through writing extensive documents and papers and others prefer an audible (sound of their own voice) approach; personally I am strongly of the visual type. I understand concepts and ideas best when I can see them laid out in front of me using short "to the point" language and with necessary connections drawn out and connected. One powerful way for someone like me to organise and connect ideas together is by developing personal mind maps.

If you've never created a mind map before, why not give it a try when planning your next project or meeting! It's much faster and easier than you may think and is certainly worth every highly organised minute!

While many other pieces of software exist to help you in migrating your floating thoughts from mind to desktop screen, if you're not ready to invest in power commercial products such as MindGenius (http://www.mindgenius.com) or Inspiration (http://www.inspiration.com) then my personal recommendation is to give FreeMind a go!

Available from http://freemind.sourceforge.net/ , FreeMind is a handy open-source mind mapping tool that allows you to develop mind maps from the smallest basic layout of your big ideas to the grandest designs of complex *interactive* maps. See their website for some fairly extensive examples!

With great little built-in icons and handy "snap-to" movement, FreeMind lets you get the job done quickly with minimal fuss and learning curve! When your ready you can export your MindMaps to a variety of formats including PDF, XHTML (with Flash for interactivity!) as well as SVG, JPEG and many other commonly used formats.

If you do eventually feel like moving up to more powerful software the format of FreeMind's files is all in XML allowing you to import your existing FreeMind mind maps with minimal bother - so provides a perfect starting point for anyone who would like to give mind mapping a go.

Emergency 24hr IT Support Line for Adventi Customers

2010-04-20T01:47:00.000-07:00

Clicknetworks has today launched an emergency support line for free advice to customers of Adventi IT, who has recently gone into administration.

Established in 2002, Adventi had been regarded as one of the fastest-growing technology firms in the UK but cash flow problems have forced their board to put the company into administration.

In an effort to help current Adventi customers today, Clicknetworks Ltd has setup a 24 hour support line whereby Adventi customers can call to receive advice on how to keep their vital business IT infrastructure running and their businesss moving forward.

"We were very sad to hear about what has happened to Adventi and their customers, especially with people losing their jobs. However, Clicknetworks is in a good position to help Adventi customers in this emergency situation, as 60% of our client base are former Adventi customers", said Clicknetworks Managing Director Mark Mahaffy.

If you are an Adventi customers and are unable to get support from them then please feel free to get in touch with us here at Clicknetworks Ltd. We can provide a wide range of support options for you whether they be just for the short term or in the long run.

Call the support line on: 0141 530 9116.

HTML5 for today right now - It's a DOM thing ok!

2010-04-16T03:45:00.001-07:00

Last week I brought up the question of whether it was ok to start developing and authoring sites in the still being devised markup language of HTML5. Today I will talk about which tags you can start using now in your web apps to future proof them for the future.

The vision and aim of HTML5 as mentioned in my last post is an attempt to make structured data more semantic (carry more inherent meaning inside of it) which will allow more advanced processing of the data than is currently possible with other doc types such as HTML4 and XHTML.

Apparently, when developing the HTML 5 spec, the editor, Ian Hickson of Google, analyzed over a billion web pages to find out how authors were actually using these elements. He discovered that in the top 20 class names used in the markup for this huge set of data were classes for common requirements: footer, header, nav, menu, content, and main.

So the foundation of the HTML5 markup spec consists of the following new tags which allow us to markup our website or blog in more meaningful ways:

header

footer

section

aside

article

Now even though not every browser supports these tags at the moment, there is no reason why you can't start using them now to future proof your documents for the next wave of development. Whilst Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera provide limited support, again Internet Explorer provides almost nothing (no surprises there from Microsoft).

So the way to get IE8, IE7 and possibly IE6 to start recognising and parsing these tags and therefore enable the ability to style them via CSS, is to introduce the tags into the DOM via the use of a tiny and non-intrusive linked javascript. Then we can add style rules—floating, background colors, margins. This one line piece of code introduces the following tags into the DOM: abbr, article, aside, audio, bb, canvas, datagrid, datalist, details, dialog, eventsource, figure, footer, header, hgroup, mark, menu, meter, nav, output, progress, section, time, video.. Once in IE's DOM the browser recognises them which allows you to style them even though actual functionality for that element and attribute may not work, which means that you can start developing for the other browsers and at the same time enable backwards compatibility for IE as well as forwards compatibility for IE9 which apparently is being shipped with some support for HTML5. For more information, discussion and comments about this HTML5 DOM script please see: http://remysharp.com/2009/01/07/html5-enabling-script/

Alternatively you can use a script in the head of your document which enables you to call only those tags you wish to use:

So start authoring your docs in HTML5 today and future proof your sites whilst getting ahead of the competition. Although there is no evidence as yet that Google is making any meaningful sense out of the new tags, there is ample evidence to suggest it is wise to be prepared for the change in the algorithim when it happens for SEO purposes.

Next week I will go into more detail about HTML5 and even introduce some new ideas about how you can use Microformats and rich snippets to enhance your website, synidcate its content and improve your ranking and overall brand in Google and Google Maps all at once and at the same time.

HTML5 - Is it time to start developing websites this way?

2010-04-08T04:34:00.000-07:00

HTML5 is being developed as the next major revision of HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the core markup language of the World Wide Web.

HTML5 is the proposed next standard for HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0. It aims to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Apache Pivot, and Sun JavaFX.

The First Public Working Draft of HTML5 was completed in 2008 and will reach W3C Recommendation by late 2010.

Although the final specification is not to reach W3C Candidate Recommendation till 2012, many parts of the specification are stable and may be implemented in browsers.

So is it time to start developing websites and applications in HTML5?

Yes and no. Yes, you can start developing using the features already supported by the major browsers. No, you should not use HTML5 experimental features on any client projects where you must have an absolute 100% accessibility compliance.

In my next post I will talk about the major features in HTML5 and CSS3 that you can use now, and have vendor support across all major browsers.

IE9 Platform Preview - SVG, HTML 5, CSS3; looks like pigs do fly

2010-03-17T04:25:00.000-07:00

Microsoft released a preview of their next browser at the MIX conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Although it can only muster a 55/100 score in the ACID tests I must say I'm impressed with Microsoft's progress to put right years of piss-poor browser releases. The JavaScript engine is fairly sprightly too beating Firefox 3.6 on the SunSpider benchmark.

CSS3 support is there but without too much digging I don't know if this is an MS implementation or if they have followed standards (suggestions on a postcard please) but given the commitment to SVG, which is a direct competitor/replacement to Silverlight and Flash it's likely the browser devs are actually listening to users.

On the edge of the blade side of things we see the IE engine using the Direct2D API's to offload graphical processing tasks to a compatible GPU; a nice touch. They have also added some neat new DOM events and objects and support for a multitude of HTML 5 goodness although we don't currently have evidence of the <canvas> tag support everyone is looking for, here's hoping eh?

If you want to give the preview a shot and check out the differences between it and MS's old browser engines (IE6 - 8) then click below:

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/info/ThankYou/Default.html

If not then, like me, you already have a better, more compliant browser which you are probably using to read this. But still, kudos to MS and the IE team, keep up the good work.

RE: Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users

2010-03-10T01:46:00.000-08:00

The BBC's released an article last night entitled: "Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users"

Read it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8557144.stm

This article seems to have caused a lot of excess worry and confusion for people still using Windows XP. So allow me to briefly put your mind at ease.

What does this actually mean for Windows XP users?

First of all, you do not need to worry about any of this until you have to buy a new hard drive. Nothing will change on your existing computer.

If you are about to buy a new hard drive; There are very few of these "Advanced Format" hard drives out at the moment - and all of them have a "switch" (jumper at the back of the drive) which allows you to run the drive "in compatibility mode" (the original 512-byte format) which will work happily with Windows XP.

In the near future (2-3 years) there is nothing to worry about, hard drive manufacturers should provide this "compatibility mode".

In future (more than 4-5 years time), hard drive manufacturers may begin expecting customers to have an operating system (such as Windows 7) that can support this new format.

As futher reading, I'd highly recommend this HotHardware article for a good introduction to the new Advanced Format:

Exploring WD's Advanced Format HD Technology
http://hothardware.com/Articles/WDs-1TB-Caviar-Green-w-Advanced-Format-Windows-XP-Users-Pay-Attention/

Converting DVDs for YouTube – apply the HandBrake!

2010-03-04T05:40:00.001-08:00

Our client Epilepsy Scotland has recently announced a new educational DVD "Taking the Tablets" created in partnership between five UK epilepsy charities (Epilepsy Action, Epilepsy Bereaved, Epilepsy Scotland, the National Society for Epilepsy and the National Centre for Young People with Epilepsy).

As part of it's promotion Epilepsy Scotland asked us if there was any way we may be able to provide their video online for people who live with epilepsy who may be considering anti-epileptic drug treatment so that they can be better informed whilst making their decision.

The most cost-effective options were to use either one of the charities' existing web hosting space or a public video sharing website. As this video was created equally between all the charities a neutral-territory option was preferred, so it was decided that YouTube would be the ideal host for the video as this mitigated any individual responsibility for the video's hosting.

The job set out for us at ClickNetworks was therefore to provide the DVD in a format compatible with YouTube and to upload the video for the world to see.

Whilst the YouTube website states it “accepts a wide range of video formats”, it goes on to say they have specific “recommended video file formats” in order optimally convert the videos into their own Flash Video format.

YouTube distinctly discourages any changes to the resolution, bit rate or frame rate of your existing video so it can be presented in as much of its original glory as possible, the recommended codec was H.264 or MPEG-2 within an MPEG-4 container.

After searching through countless “shareware” “one-click” solutions that provide DVD to MPEG-4 conversion, we finally stumbled across HandBrake – an open source, multiplatform (yes, that’s Mac OS, Windows and Linux) video transcoder.

Available from http://www.handbrake.fr this wonderful software provided an easy to use GUI that allowed us to convert nearly any file format (as well as the DVD itself) into either the MPEG4 or H.264 format with a multitude of different options. After closely following YouTube’s recommended guidelines and adjusting the options on HandBrake’s easy to use interface – the final result was perfect.

The “Taking the Tablets” DVD was in its entirety, approx. 24 minutes long. As YouTube limits you to a 10 minute maximum, we had to split the video into it’s separate chapters. HandBrake provides this option straight from it’s main screen which made the task quick and painless.
The handy queuing option also allowed the whole job to be setup and then left to run in the background while we got on with other jobs.

Our hats go off to the HandBrake developers for making a great efficient application that gets the job done.

So, if you need to get your band’s new music video (provided to you on a cumbersome DVD) or you have an existing video that just won’t upload to YouTube nicely, HandBrake could certainly be a great helping hand in getting your content onto the web.

Browser Wars - The European Commission Strikes Back

2010-03-02T03:04:00.000-08:00

From today, if your a UK or European user of a Windows machine you may be asked if you would like to switch to another browser. Microsoft is to release a software update via its Windows security patches website prompting users to select a default browser for their desktop.

Microsoft has made the update for XP, Vista and Windows 7 users. Users of Firefox, Safari, Chrome Opera and other alternative browsers will apparently not receive the prompt.

Only those users who have IE set as their default browser will get the pop-up window outlining the alternative choices available for installation. The prompt window is the result of a deal Microsoft cut with the European Commission after its antitrust investigation.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer already has a 60% share in the world browser market so it remains to be seen how effective the new patch will be in providing an opportunity to Redmond's growing list of competitors.

Developers get new office premises

2010-02-23T07:36:00.000-08:00

The Clicknetworks development team has moved next door into larger office premises. The move coincides with the rapid expansion of services and products that are planned to be delivered and developed in 2010.

Microsoft IE6's days are numbered

2010-02-04T06:55:00.000-08:00

Last week we heard news that it was an exploit vulnerability in IE6 that eventually led hackers to find a way to hack into Google. In response the French and German governments made public announcements urging all citizens to upgrade their browsers to newer versions. An increase in new downloads for Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome may have been related to this annoucement.

Just a few days ago it was revealed that Google would no longer be supporting IE6 for its Google Docs and Google Sites services, with other features such as Gmail dropping IE6 support later this year. There are even Facebook groups dedicated to IE6's destruction.

More recent news confirms that nearly 5,000 people have signed an online petition urging government departments to dump Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), which is widely used by UK government departments including:

Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

(source: v3.co.uk)

Here at Clicknetworks IE6 has caused many a headache for us when developing web applications with advanced client side scripting capabilities using libraries such as jQuery etc.

Every application developer who has been in this game, knows how disheartening it is to develop an app, which works perfectly in all browsers only then to get messed up and develop bugs when displayed in IE6.

We are only to happy to see IE6 relegated to the dustbin of browsing history...and it could not happen soon enough for us.

Wedding Reception

2010-01-25T02:45:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Mark and Jen who tied the knot recently on Christmas eve on the top Mt Whislter in Canada. The reception was held on Saturday at the Western Hotel in Ayrshire within the grounds of the Ayr racecourse.

Around 80 people, mostly Mark and Jen's family and friends from Northern Ireland and Scotland along with the full Clicknetworks team attended the event.

The interior main ballroom was immaculately decorated with candles, chandeliers and featured ambient lighting with DJ Stewart carefully crafting tunes for the lassies to dance the night away.

Food consisted of buffet nibbles and a stunning array of cupcakes provided by Steph.

All in all it was a great night of fun, family, friendship and laughter.

Many thanks go out to Mark and Jen whose kindness and generosity ensured that everyone had a good time at this highly entertaining event.

Welcome

2010-01-25T02:36:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the Clicknetworks blog, where you can keep up to date with what's happening within the world of IT along with personal comments from the Clicknetworks team in East Kilbride, Scotland.

The aim of this blog is to post and share knowledge about IT Support in Glasgow and new web technologies and software application development. We hope to feature handy helpful tips for small businesses and inspiring others into action.

Stay tuned for more updates as they come.