Importance of an Online Presence

Business is changing and so is how customers find you. There is still the old favourites word of mouth and local adverts. Now though there is online and social media. How many people Google you, check your Twitter account or your Facebook page before contacting you. This is where the problems arise, if they can't find a website or even a Twitter account or Facebook page that can put people off using your business. I'm as guilty as anyone, if I'm looking for a service I'll check their website first, if they don't have one i'll move on to the next. Twitter and Facebook have made this even worse because now you can see what happens on a daily basis and use this to judge the company. A website has become a must for every business, no matter whether your big or small. Its usually the first contact a customer has with you. I could go on and on about how a...
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iAds

I recently released a free app Everything F1 which I included iAds as a way to pay for the development costs. I noticed a couple of things during the develop of the app. Here’s a little bit of background for anyone new to this, iAd’s is provided by Apple and as part of there review process that all apps go through they have some rules. Pictures can’t show test ads and your app should not show a blank ad it should disappear if the ads aren’t displayed. To help you with this they put a couple of methods in the delegate the main one is -(void)bannerView:(ADBannerView *)banner didFailToReceiveAdWithError:(NSError *)error   This method is called when ever an ad is not present show you know to hide the banner. What I discovered was that sometimes this method gets called even when an ad is present, so on my app i added an if statement to say if the error was null ignore the method. This seems to...
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Inspire a generation of developers

London 2012 has been a big part of the summer in the UK. The Olympics inspired sport for all ages and the large number of bikes on the road suggest Wiggins, Cavendish and Froome have done a good job. After the Olympics came the Paralympics and its was big, bigger than any before and this brought about a change in the way we see disabilities and the people that cope with them. I went and watched the Paralympics in the stadium and it was brilliant. I saw blind people doing the triple jump and it was amazing. There were several blind events that I watched on TV most had guides for running or directing them on the jump. The relationship between the guide and competitor was amazing. In the running they were so together and worked as if they were one person. My wife said the guide must get huge job satisfaction from helping someone follow their dream, and I...
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Web App versus Mobile App

You may be asking whats the difference between them, well depending on who you talk to a lot. If you ask a developer you may get lectured on which one is better. I’m going to break this down in to the pros and cons of each.   Web App A Web App is an website created using a special set of constraints or a particular framework. One of the most common frameworks is JQuery which I use, this provides certain parts which can be used with in the App. The main purpose is to make the information provided easy to use on a touch screen device while also adjusting to suit the different screen sizes. The Web App is hosted on a server like a website.   Pros Easy to update content Cheaper to build Works across a large number of devices Provides your information at the best size for the device   Cons Doesn’t work if no internet connection Poor internet can mean the app is slow or unusable Very little access to...
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