Janric Website Design

In hard times such as those that we are experiencing at the moment it is tempting, even essential, to make cut backs. However, there are various areas in which the budgets should not be cut and maybe should even be increased.

One such area is marketing and a useful tool here is B2B Telemarketing. With such techniques, professionals are employed to call potential target businesses, explain the reasons for buying your services and hopefully make some valuable sales for you. These services might be partially or even fully paid for through commissions.

But B2B Telemarketing does not just need to be cold calls. Surveys to test interest in a product or just general raising of product awareness can also be good uses of B2B Telemarketing services.

I haven’t updated these pages for a while with the new sites, so with quite a few just around the corner, time to get back on with the job!

Emaren Holistic Therapies came to us as a referral from another customer, who has had a site live with us for some months now. Helping to promote a new and growing holistic treatment business, it is simply to act as a point of call on the internet so that potential customers can learn more about what is available.

A key request was for plenty of purple to match the material used in the treatment rooms, with cream as a second colour. And that’s what she got!

So you have decided to develop a brand new mobile application. You are at the point of deciding what features to include and realising that some of what you want to offer is only available to those on the recent operating systems. What do you do? Do you develop for the masses, which increases your target audience, or develop for the latest operating systems and produce a really hot app?

If you are developing for Apple then the decision really is taken for you. Currently there is IOS 3 or IOS 4 and the technical capabilities between them aren’t too bad, with Apple forcing users to upgrade as updates are available. However, there is no such compulsion with either Blackberry or Android. In fact, with certain handsets an upgrade is impossible.

So, which way will you err? Looking through the Blackberry stats from May this year, ‘only’ 68% of subscribers are on version 5 or 6. To cover 96% of the subscribers you need to cover from OS 4.5, which is another 5 incremental versions.

However, let’s look at the number of people actually downloading apps. Suddenly, the percentage of subscribers on versions 5 and 6 jumps to 88% when you look at just those actively downloading free apps. Even better, for paid apps this percentage jumps to 94%.

What am I getting at here? Well, whilst it might be tempting to try to support the masses, to produce an app that will be relevant to most handsets, it would appear that the most active markets are those with modern handsets. There could be many reasons for this, from people upgrading so that they can use these features to these people being more likely to be willing to pay out for upgrades and apps.

Whatever the reason might be, the answer seems to be obvious to me. Don’t hold back when developing apps. Go with the latest technologies and produce ‘with it’ apps that take advantage of the latest features. Make your apps appeal to those users who are up to date and let the others catch up. You won’t lose much of your market, but your market will love what you do even more.

When you are setting up your website deciding who will host the website can be a major decision. It is easy enough if you are using a website designer who provides hosting, but what of you are not doing that?

In that case it is essential that you look at what is on offer with different providers and read a selection of the reviews that are available on your potential host. And if you have an opinion on a host, why not help others by leaving your own web hosting review?

And whilst you are at it have a look around for some hosting coupons and see if you can save yourself some cash!

It is certainly not something that I would suggest as a full time solution, but there are definitely times when using your mobile phone as a modem is a good idea.

Why though? If you have an internet browser on your phone, why go to the bother of connecting it to your computer and using it as a modem? There are a few reasons, which include:

1) It can be easier if you are sending lots of emails to type with a proper keyboard.

2) Sometimes the software just doesn’t run on a mobile, for example if you are FTPing files.

3) Convenience of keeping 1 source updated or viewing a bigger screen.

What are the problems? Well first, whilst the phone is in use as a modem you probably can’t take calls. Secondly, if you go outside of your monthly allowance it could be expensive. For me, after my free allowance has expired it is a maximum of £1 per day for data usage, so I am not all that bothered. Much cheaper than an internet cafe for an hour or so!

Why not then just buy a USB dongle? You can do, with the same effect. However, a USB dongle doesn’t use your free allowance; the dongle costs money and may be more costly if it also needs to go into a package.

So, how do you turn your mobile into a modem? If you have an Android then my recommendation is to look for the PdaNet App on the MarketPlace, install that and follow their instructions. I spent two hours trying out different Apps and this was the only one that worked for me, without so called ‘rooting’ the phone.

They have some software you must install on your computer first, so some planning is required, but the entire process must have taken me less than 5 minutes.

Then it is just a matter of turning it on, both on your phone and your machine, and you can then browse the net from your computer. You are limited to 3G speeds, so not a permanent solution, however, having said that if your phone is registered to a WIFI network that your machine can’t access, then this can also be shared this way. Very useful for those certain “free” WIFI spots where you can only register the one device.