Brightfive blog

Power Line Communications - Freedom Digital Networks

Wed, 26 May 2010 15:01:29 +0100

Power line communications company Freedom Digital Networks boast a fantastic product – but what good is a product without customers? To help get their message across online, they turned to York Web Design Company brightfive.

Freedom Digital Networks are one of the UK’s leading power line communications companies.

Freedom Digital Networks (FDN) specialises in designing and deploying high speed data networks that can run over existing electrical wiring – this technology is known as Power Line Communication (PLC) or is often referred to as broadband over powerlines.

This fantastic product offers huge benefits to clients looking to implement network dependent solutions such as broadband and wi-fi networks. The data signal is transmitted along the existing power line network, doing away with the need to lay new cabling.

The range of applications for this technology is potentially limitless – from setting up data networks on ships and in listed buildings, to building CCTV monitoring networks in care homes, and enabling self-metering domestic power systems or smartgrids.

They are experts in their field and can elegantly tailor their product to each unique application, however for FDN the real challenge is getting their message out there. Their Business Development Manager, Mark Lewis comments:

“If more people were aware of how much time, hassle and money they would save by using our PLC solutions as opposed to traditional networking then we would be the first choice every time!”

brightfive have been commissioned to help FDN raise their online profile and target those potential clients in search of the optimal networking solution. Our approach employs a number of methods including competitive intelligence, informed keyword research and conversion rate monitoring.

Our aim is to identify their desired online audience and employ a mix of organic optimisation and well researched paid advertising to drive that demographic through to the FDN site. We expect this highly targeted traffic to convert at above industry norms into well qualified prospects. Through site metrics and devices such A/B testing we constantly monitor site performance to ensure we maximise the number and quality of potential leads.

FDN appreciate that SEO (Search Engine Marketing) is an ongoing partnership that evolves with the changing requirements of your business and the marketplace. brightfive offer retained SEO services that help keep you in touch with your customers and their online behaviours.

To find out more about Freedom Digital Networks visit their website: freedomdigitalnetworks.com.

To find more about brightfive SEO and Web Development Services contact us.

Say Hello To SEO

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:31:43 +0100

brightfive has long understood the value of Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is that dark art that encompasses web design, application development and online marketing and – if done right – can drive qualified customers to your website.

If done wrong, however, it can mean that Google and friends fall rapidly out of love with your website and – like countless others – you are consigned to search oblivion, hidden from all but the most enthusiastic of searchers.

Finding your customers online.

That’s why brightfive have taken time to find the right SEO specialist. Jamie Mills has over 8 years of SEO experience, cutting his teeth in the competitive overseas real estate and retail/ecommerce sectors. Whilst Jamie appreciates a challenge, his approach is distinctly in line with the brightfive ethos:

“Although sometimes tempting you can never really cut corners or use so called ‘black hat’ techniques with client SEO. The short term gain is nearly always outweighed by the long term pain. The best techniques for lasting success and a happy client are those that require good groundwork and patient, diligent strategy implementation – there really are no shortcuts. Besides, I like to sleep at night.”

As well as his years of experience, Jamie also brings unique thinking and a coder’s eye for detail to his approach to SEO projects. Typically Jamie will analyse a company in detail and suggest a number of strategic approaches: from leveraging a company’s unique proposition and information to exploring innovative social media activities to managing a successful and cost effective pay per click campaign on their behalf.

If you are interested in speaking with us or want to know more about any of the following, then get in touch for a no obligation chat –

Increasing web site traffic
Creating an effective online advertising campaign
Increasing website conversion rates
Exploiting social media and other platforms
Increasing your company’s online profile

Call Jamie at brightfive on 01904 691040 or email jamie@brightfive.com

A woman's work is never done, so Katie's back at work...

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:22:26 +0100

I’d like to thank everyone for their lovely cards, gifts and good wishes – we had a bit of a rough ride but it all worked out brilliantly in the end. Tilly is perfect and is the best project I’ve ever worked on!

I’d also like to thank my clients for their understanding when I unexpectedly had to stop working a month before I’d planned to, and my colleagues who stepped in to cover my jobs – thanks go to Tom, Martin and John and a especially Si for their support.

I’m looking forward to working with you all again in 2010.

Katie.

Kellogg's play the social media game brilliantly

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:33:17 +0100

This is doing it well.

Be brave anough to empower an individual, team or department to represent your organisation’s personality.

Use social media to engage with customers both existing and potential.

And if you’ve got time, do something occasionally that gets everyone talking.

http://brandstrategy.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/kelloggs-and-calvin-harris/

Firefox Nightly Gets Fullscreen Video, File Drag and Drop and More

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:14:54 +0100

Development versions of the Firefox web browser have picked up some very interesting features recently. Here you can grab the latest nightly builds for Windows, Mac and Linux

Full screen support for <video> tag

The video playback in Firefox now supports a full screen mode. Just right click on the video. Watch a tour of Firefox in Ogg Theora to test it out.

Pie-chart Progress Indicator

The new pie-chart throbber has been implemented so users don’t have to look in two places to get an idea of how far through loading a page Firefox is. Also means a few more users will be more comfortable turning off the status bar to unclutter the interface even further.

Updated WebGL support for 3D in Firefox

You can view some 3D demos here. You will need to go to ‘about:config’ and set ‘webgl.enabled_for_all_sites’ to true.

about:memory and about:support

Two new about pages have hit the nightlies. One gives you an overview of memory usage:

And the other is going to help people providing support over the internet. It even has a handy ‘Copy to Clipboard’ button:

New CSS background features

-moz-image-rect has been implemented, which allows you to slice a part of an image to use as a repeating background. This gets over the limitations of using sprites to reduce HTTP requests.

You can use it like this: background: -moz-image-rect(url(img.png), top, right, bottom, left)

-moz-background-size has also been recently implemented. This allows you to rescale the background images.

HTML5 File Drag and Drop

Instead of using the clumsy <input type=“file” /> tag, we now have support for picking up a file, and dropping it straight on the browser. Read more about the drag and drop implementation here.

Other notable changes recently:

Mac now has proper full screen support
Opening a new tab from a page will open next to the current tab, instead of right at the end of the tab bar (this was a personal bug bear of mine)
CSS gradient support

brightfive live at the pyramids

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:41:38 +0100

Katie and Martin have just returned from a week in Egypt, working on the prestigious Imagine Cup competition for Microsoft.

The event comprised of three major events – the opening ceremony at the Citadel, the competition stages at the Citystars Intercontinental and the closing ceremony which was held at an outdoor stage at the Giza Pyramids.

The event was a huge success with amazing entries from winning students. We were delighted to be involved in the project and to have the opportunity to work at such an amazing venue.

Nice day for a bright wedding

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:25:13 +0100

On a cold wintery day in December Simon and I invited 90 of our friends and family to join us for a beautiful wedding ceremony and reception in Poppleton, just outside York.

We had an amazing day and would like to thank our friends, colleagues and clients for all the good wishes, cards and gifts we received.

We were incredibly touched that so many people remembered and took the time to get in touch and wish us well.

Charity Update

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:28:54 +0100

brightfive supported two charities in 2008 – Kiva and the Cake Software Foundation.

Kiva is a not-for-profit social venture which allows businesses and individuals to lend to specific entrepreneurs in poor or developing world countries.

In 2008 brightfive lent money to two individuals, Komla Azi and Adewole Bisola. Komla lives in Togo and is a motor mechanic – the money lent to him enabled him to buy important tools for his business. Adewole lives in Nigeria and is a produces Nylon for the local community – the money lent to her enabled her to buy more raw materials and grow her business.

Both Komla and Adewole have been making their loan repayments on time, enabling us to continue to lend to other entrepreneurs.

We are currently deciding where our money will have the most impact and which business to lend to next. For more information on Kiva visit www.kiva.org.

The Cake Software Foundation is a not-for-profit software organisation behind Cake PHP, the programming language we use for the majority of our web applications.

We donated money to Cake Software Foundation to help them continue to develop CakePHP and support its users.

A bright new future at the Eco Business Centre

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:50:48 +0100

We’ve finally moved into our smart new offices at the York Eco Business Centre. The move was surprisingly smooth and we’re up and running in our new home.

After four moves in as many years we’re definitely ready to settle down in this spectacular building.
The building is made entirely of recycled materials from sustainable sources, uses ground-source heating, rainwater recycling and will soon have a huge wind-turbine to provide some of the building’s electrical requirements.

The centre will be home to around 60 young businesses in many different industries – creating a hub of ideas and enthusiasm which makes it a great place to work and an exciting place for us as we continue to grow.

Let us know if you’re in the area and we’ll get the kettle on!

Blarney launch new online store

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:14:56 +0100

With such a busy site (around 20,000 people a month!) it quickly became clear that the online retail opportunities for the Castle could be huge. Working with the chaps at Blarney we built a simple to use online store that should convert some of these visitors to income.

The store features multiple currencies, product variants, categories, stock levels, automatically generates thumbnails and integrates smoothly with PayPal for ease of use and customer reassurance. It also shows a series of featured or promoted products on the website homepage.

If you need a simple to use, simple to setup online store, please give us a shout!

Or you can buy your Exclusive Minature Musical Blarney Castle from shop.blarneycastle.ie ;-)

First look at our new offices

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:45:14 +0100

We had always intended our move to the current office to be temporary until our landlords (York, Selby & Malton Business Advice Centre – www.yorkbac.co.uk) had completed work on their grand plan – a new, purpose built ‘Eco Centre’ on the outskirts of York.

We enjoyed our first site visit last week and we were all hugely impressed with the offices and facilities that to date, we’d only ever seen in plans and visualisations.

The project is aimed at providing accommodation and business services to new and growing small business in York. It has been designed to be great for the environment too – both in its construction and day-to-day operation.

The building is heated and cooled by ground-source heating, stores rainwater for re-use and has a huge wind-turbine to provide some of the building’s electrical requirements.

Other facilities are a café and a communal area, outdoor courtyard, second floor mezzanine and a turfed roof terrace – perfect for those summer afternoons. We just hope the WiFi connection is good up there!

There are lots of workshop and office spaces available and if you are looking for new business premises in a contemporary new environment with business support services give York Business Advice Centre a call on (01904) 731562.

We’ll keep you posted but hope to be moved in the next couple of months.

Kitty Chaise Longue

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:25:59 +0100

Quite possibly the daftest cat related gift I’ve seen.

This was made by brightfive‘s own James Hall as a birthday gift for Katie and is being shown off beautifully by our cat Angelina. The craftsmanship is exquisite, the upholstery is of the highest quality and I’m sure that if we manage to keep it in the family for a couple of generations, it could become quite valuable.

Judge for yourself.

A day at the races...

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:34:20 +0100

It was my 30th birthday last week and although I’m very happy with my lot, I was still a little perturbed to be at this milestone age.

I knew that a new dress, lots of champagne and a day with good friends would be the only way to revive my flagging spirits so a day in the County Stand at York Races was organised.

The brightfive boys joined my friends and I for a lovely day out which saw the sun shine (a little bit), plenty of wins (our ‘good horse names and nice jockey outfits’ betting system was surprisingly effective) and plenty of champagne (thanks to mine and James’ big wins) for all.

As the sun went down after the final race we moved on for dinner followed by a few ‘quiet’ drinks – somehow resulting in us dancing to soft rock in an 80s bar until the early hours.

Don’t we look fancy?

Our alternative new website

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:38:31 +0100

Whilst building our lovely new website we were reminded of how terrible some websites used to be (and still are in some cases).

This inspired James to spend a happy hour making an alternative version of the site, much to our amusement.

Click here to see it in all its beauty (you really need to have your speakers on to fully appreciate it).

If there’s any retro effect that we’ve forgotten let us know and we’ll try to include it.

Indian Elephant extinct

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:37:13 +0100

Sometimes I get home and can’t be bothered to cook. I then start thinking about local eateries and takeouts. I occasionally decide on The Indian Elephant in Thorganby, York. It is (was…) in my opinion the best Indian restaurant I’ve ever eaten at. The food is superb – fresh, tasty and reasonably priced, and the ambience and service is second to none.

Imagine my horror when I polled up the other day to be told the restaurant had closed and was now instead ‘The Jefferson Arms’ serving standard pub fayre.

And most of the menu was off.

And the nice people have gone.

R.I.P. The Indian Elephant in Thorganby.

You saw them here first!

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:27:33 +0100

Simon and Katie from brightfive recently helped organise and produce a fantastic talent show for a local community and leisure centre The Regen Centre in Riccall near York. Called the ‘R Factor’ and loosely based on TV’s ‘X Factor’ we were entertained by singers and dancers from age 5 to 17.

We managed to talk Ian at Blue-I into lending us a big plasma screen, and some vision mixing equipment.

We’d previously created an animated sting and title graphics, and then roped in Peter Frost (my Dad!) to operate one of the two live TV cameras.

Ken Davison from The Riccallish Allsorts (that’s the best Am-Dram outfit name I’ve ever heard) provided a superb stage and operated lighting, and Gary Rowntree kindly supplied the sound equipment and was in charge of the rather complicated music tasks!

The event was capably compered by Steve Larkins and a number of the other Directors also got stuck in on the night.

Everyone had a great evening and we raised bit of money for the centre and an Indian charity.

brightfive 'training' day

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:53:33 +0100

Last Friday we decided to have a bonding day and given how busy we’ve all been, took a day out to play at Alton Towers. Much fun was had by all, especially since we’d told everyone to come in early for a client meeting! It was a great start to the Bank Holiday weekend and a good way for us to say thank you to the chaps for all their hard work.

Roll on the next away day!

brightfive approved as NE supplier of communication services

Tue, 27 May 2008 13:09:24 +0100

We are now fully approved members of the North East England Service Provider Register.

The NEESPR is a regional register of service providers that can provide business development solutions to the North East business community. It’s the only register being used by all Business Link Brokers to impartially source provision for their clients. Use of the NEESPR is also extending to other business support organisations in the region.

It was suggested to us by one of our clients who was hoping to secure funding through the Business Link organisation for a project we are working on together. After submitting the paperwork and references being taken up, our application was successful, and our client was awarded 60% of the cost of the project.

We look forward to generating business from this new avenue. Take a look at their site at www.onebrokerage.co.uk.

An exercise in loneliness

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:19:34 +0100

More Garfield related humour I’m afraid. This time, er, without Garfield in it.

garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com

Quite amusing…

Cat + Theremin

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:05:17 +0100

This is a recipe for hilarity. Check out baffled cat buddy right at the end.