Web design Northern Ireland, Freelance Web Designer in Ireland Website Design

Attractive USB Cables

davidhorn — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:21:37 +0000

It’s not often you see the words ‘attractive’ and ‘cables’ in the same sentence … but, and my wife is going to be pleased with this, there is an alternative to the ugly cable mess of most home office set ups: an attractive mess of cables.

These great looking cables from Eastern Collective remind me of the ropes my dad has a garage full of – ropes for all his sailing gear. They look lovely.

There’s $14 shipping to the UK … but some of their products are available at fab.com where it might be cheaper.

Tick Tock Design

Claiming Google Authorship For Your Blog (or pretty pictures in search results)

davidhorn — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:35:59 +0000

Claiming Google Authorship For Your Blog (or pretty pictures in search results)

If you’ve ever wondered why and how some search results have the author picture next to them, you’re not alone.

Google introduced the concept of Authorship a little while ago as a means of establishing the reliability – or authority – of a content source. If an author writes multiple articles for multiple sources, then they gain authority. If their articles appear consistently in search results – and are clicked – that in turn builds their authority.

It’s a good thing – giving more prominence to authors who are more trustworthy, and just better at generating content – but you need to do a little fiddling with code in order to set it up for your blog.

What you need

To set this up, you’re going to need the following:

a Google Plus+ account
access to make changes to the header of your website

err, that’s it, actually.

What you need to do

So, go to your Google Plus+ account and make a note of your Google+ link … mine looks like this:

https://plus.google.com/105224137510967490959/

You’re then going to need to add a line of code to the section of your website. You’re going to want to add this:

This effectively links the content on your site to your Google+ account. You need to then verify that with google – so head back to your Google+ account and go to your profile page. In the ‘about’ section, on the right hand side, there’s a ‘Links’ box and in that a section marked ‘Contributor to ‘. At the bottom of this box, click ‘edit’ and you can add in the websites which hold your authorship link.

Verifying it with Google

The changes may take a few days to show up in search results – so whilst you wait, it’d be good to know you’ve done everything right. Fortunately, google produce a tool just for that purpose … the enticingly named Structured Data Testing Tool. You can use this to enter the address of a URL you’ve just added the author link to, and check the results. If everything has gone to plan, the results will look something like this:

And that’s it … you’re done! Soon enough, search results will start showing up with your photo in them. Like I say, it’s a good thing for authors and searchers alike. So get to it!

Tick Tock Design

All about the productivity …

davidhorn — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:28:00 +0000

All about the productivity …

Just a quick one … I’ve got stuff to do. But I’m all about the productivity at the moment and wanted to share this great anecdote from Jerry Seinfeld (via lifehacker). Software developer Brad Isaac got some great advice from Jerry Seinfeld:

… He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

I love the visual reminder … and so, my wall now has a big wall calendar on it, with just one red X so far – but, as I continue with my task of writing, I’ll be attempting not to break that chain. Read the whole thing here.

(And whilst we’re on the subject … this post from Nathan Barry has a lot of good content, and a really great free e-book called the Productivity Manifesto)

Tick Tock Design

Notes from a brief business trip

davidhorn — Wed, 08 May 2013 08:30:00 +0000

Notes from a brief business trip

This past week I was away for 2 days on a business trip … the kind where you leave at 4am on a Thursday, and arrive back at about midnight on the Friday. Short, intensive, rewarding and filled with travel. I probably had about 10 hours when I was travelling in one form or another – and I tried my best to use this productively.

Here are some things I learnt in that time:

Reading on my phone:

It is perfectly possible to read an entire e-Book on your phone. That’s quite cool. I have – and always travel with – an Amazon Kindle, which is great. I connect that with my instapaper account and whenever I sync, I get a digest of my entire reading list. Perfect. On this trip though, my kindle was buried at the bottom of my bag, whereas my phone was in my pocket. I had a book on my phone that I wanted to read (on the Kindle App) and so I tucked in. (Outside of my instapaper queue, I also recommend taking a look at Readlists which allows you to create e-books from existing web content you find, as well as creating them from people you can follow)

Photo by yto – http://flic.kr/p/dusMb9

The format was remarkably readable – and whilst this might not be a surprise per se, it is I think quite important. What’s the one device you always have with you? It’s not your laptop or your e-reader. It’s your phone and if people are comfortable using it as a reading device, that has big implications for book publishers and authors.

What’s the ideal length for a book? Does it make a difference whether the book is fiction or non-fiction? How should books be delivered? How do you protect content? My guess is that non-fiction books will be read more often on a phone, that books will get shorter and that they’ll be cheaper to encourage sharing. Perhaps shorter books will be used to increase author reputation so that the author can build a base to better promote other services. I don’t know – but it felt quite important that reading a book on my phone felt so normal.

On a clear, calm day …

… Birmingham airport can actually be quite lovely. You wouldn’t think it was the main airport for England’s second city … it’s small, friendly, with good coffee, and really easy to use (car parks are close, taxi’s are closer, etc.). Handy.

Working in a compressed time frame:

Two of the most productive blocks of time I had on the whole trip were working on the plane. I flew from Belfast to Birmingham (and back, obviously) which – when you allow for the time when you have to shut down your computer – allowed for about 35 minutes work time each way. Knowing that I had only 35 minutes really helped my focus.

This isn’t new – but it was nice to see put it into action. It has been best articulated as a method known as The Pomodoro Technique.

It is a time management method created by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s that helps you accomplish what you want to do by transforming time into a valuable ally. Why is it so popular? Because it is easy to use, and most of all, because it works! – getting started

They have a little introductory video on their website and a free e-book. That time constraint can really help you get things done.

How you travel:

If at all possible, at the end of a long day of meetings … see if you can arrange a lift home in style. This was my ride …

Pretty sweet! I’m doing some work for the company that makes the gear boxes for these beauties (the Morgan 3-Wheeler) and, well, before you can really market something you have to believe in the product … on the upside: incredible fun, looks great; on the downside: midges.

Tick Tock Design

Around the web – April 2013

davidhorn — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:30:00 +0000

Around the web – April 2013

In which there’s a couple of good free resources: guide to google analytics, and a beginners guide to sales, I switch email client (again), and apologise for anything I’ve ever said when I was hungry.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a round up of useful or interesting things I’ve found online; still, there’s no time like the present:

Guide to Google Analytics for eCommerce:

Free (as in £0.00) guide to using Google Analytics on your eCommerce website. Covers basic set up, the most important reports to run and how to get the most out of your dashboard. It’s entry level, for sure – but it’s comprehensive and contains some really useful tips, including setting up conversions, goals and ‘funnel visualisation’.

Beginners guide to sales

In a similar ‘here’s a simple guide to something we all need’ vein. The people who make Stride App (a CRM aimed at micro / small businesses) and Ecquire (which does something similar-ish, I think, but I couldn’t easily discern what from their website and so gave up in frustration) have put together this beginners guide to sales. Again, nothing revolutionary, but a really good grounding in what sales is, how to go about it, and how it’s really the core of everything we do (especially as a micro-business like myself). Good stuff – and had me looking out an article I wrote last year: I am not a web designer.

I’m sorry for what I said when I was hungry

I’ll totally be needing some of these:

The 1-3-5 Rule: making sense of your to-do list

I’m getting to grips with my to-do’s a bit better these days, and this approach has helped. Acknowledging that I can do 1 big thing, 3 medium things, and 5 small things each day. Simple but effective.

On which subject … I’ve taken a new approach to managing my email. Previously, I switched to Sparrow App, (writing about how pleased with myself I was) but development ceased when they sold up to Google a while back. (Good for them, I say … but it left thousands of fee paying devotees somewhat in the lurch). Recently, after a brief flirtation with Postbox, I switched back to good ol’ Mac Mail – thanks in no small part to this article.

I still abhor the idea of using my mail as a storage facility or insurance policy – and so I need to process email efficiently as it comes in. Using a few keyboard shortcuts, mail quickly gets flagged as either needing a reply, needing follow up, and ‘today’ – for task based emails that need to be done, y’know, today. It’s simple but effective, and keeps me out of email as much as possible.

(for gmail users, this great little script from Merlin Mann allows you to compose an email without actually opening your inbox. Distraction free writing). I’m rambling now, but I first came across Merlin in this article from 2005 – Kick Procrastination’s Ass.

Okay, I think that’s it for now.

Tick Tock Design

How LinkedIn Saved My Life

davidhorn — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:30:00 +0000

How LinkedIn Saved My Life

Disclaimer: my life has not actually been saved by LinkedIn. A man called Steve once saved my life by grabbing hold of me just as I was about to walk out in front of a car (thanks Steve!).

A couple of months ago a server I have hosted with MediaTemple fell over. It had been attacked by a fairly persistent hacker – a basic denial of service attack, where heaps of traffic is sent your way in the anticipation that your server will crash and people will not be able to access the websites on that server. From (the ever reliable …) Wikipedia:

an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of efforts to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the Internet

So. Really, I’ve been hosting websites for the better part of 10 years and this is the first time I’ve had such a problem – honestly, I tried to count myself as lucky in that regard. However, when you’re going through it you don’t feel lucky. I had maybe a dozen clients hosted on that server – some in the US, some in Ireland and some in the UK … so I was getting understandably frantic calls from a variety of time zones.

Thankfully, the web host themselves were really helpful – they increased my resources flexibly so that I could at least work on the server whilst we resolved the problem. But the real help came from the LinkedIn community.

The first thing I did was posted a question on LinkedIn to all server managers – asking how best to tell whether the security of the server had been compromised. Then, as a follow up question, how I could detect and prevent such attacks in the future.

Within 20 minutes I had half a dozen really helpful sysadmin’s helping me with the problem – and ended up with a good few software recommendations that I was able to install on the server within an hour or so.

Good stuff. A problem that was really stressful was dealt with calmly by system professionals – using me as their willing conduit! I made some great contacts there and can’t recommend the LinkedIn community enough.

Some of the solutions I looked at (I implemented 2 of these):

DDOS Deflate
ConfigServer Protection Suite
ZB Block – it looks hokey, but it’s a good script!

Tick Tock Design

Kurt Vonnegut’s advice on writing

davidhorn — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Kurt Vonnegut’s advice on writing

I love pretty much all the writing of Kurt Vonnegut; I think he was a tremendous writer who always had something interesting to say. I stumbled across this blog post today which contains much wisdom from the man himself, as concerns writing. Including these gems:

“Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.”

and

“Start as close to the end as possible.”

I particularly like this last one. Too often in stories – or in web projects, come to think of it – there is a ton of stuff you don’t need to get done, that you don’t need to put yourself through. A story has an end point … a bunch of necessary stuff needs to happen to get to that point, but by being strict in determining what is necessary, and what isn’t, you’ll save yourself a lot of heartache.

I’ve a sudden desire to re-read Breakfast of Champions this weekend.

Tick Tock Design

Useful SEO links from my talk in Belfast

davidhorn — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:55:26 +0000

Useful SEO links from my talk in Belfast

Last night I gave a short, one hour look at the crazy world of Search Engine Optimisation to the Belfast Entrepreneurs Network. It was a nice, informal little event that I enjoyed very much. In the talk there were a bunch of links / resources that I brought up that I wanted to collect here – both for attendees and anyone else who might find them useful.

SEOMoz.org

Top of the list – I find these guys to be the most authoritative, insightful and straightforward of all search engine people. They talk sense in plain language and offer great, actionable tips. They’re a software provider – and their SEO software is extremely valuable – but you don’t need to purchase anything to benefit from their vast knowledge. A must read.

The Content Strategy Generator

This is a google doc that you can use to find recent content online that is related to your chosen keywords. Type into a cell on the spreadsheet your keyword, and the spreadsheet searches google news, reddit, twitter, etc. and returns a list of recent stories. Find out what is being talked about in your industry – and use it to fuel ideas for your own content generation. This is a seriously useful tool for anyone regularly generating content (which should be all of us).

Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool

Obvious, but useful. The google keyword tool can help you ascertain competition for your keywords – helping you identify additional keywords you’ve maybe not thought of, as well as helping you determine gaps in your existing keyword strategy. If you can find phrases that are high volume, low competition – you may have identified a gap you can exploit.

Google Trends shows you the search volume for a key term over a period of time. Use it to compare a few different terms to see what’s on the rise, what’s declining – and use that to better determine where to spend your time in content creation.

Link Building

Two good tools for analysing back links – seeing anchor text, linking domains, number of back links, etc – both for you and your competitors: ahrefs.com and opensiteexplorer.org. The second is a tool from SEOMoz.org. They both give you a certain amount of info for free – but to get the full weight of knowledge, you need to pay. Have a look though – if you’re thinking of spending good time and money on SEO, I’d recommend these tools.

From the horses mouth

Matt Cutts is the friendly face of google search help for web masters … the video I mentioned in my presentation – where Matt talks about social signals being used in Google search – is this one. For 3 minutes, it’s worth a look. He has a YouTube channel here which is useful if you’ve ever wondered how google does something, or why they do something … he answers good questions each week on what signals google is using, how it reacts to certain situations, and so on. Useful stuff.

And actually, I’ve just spent 10 minutes watching this: SEO for startups which would be useful for everyone in the room last night!

So, that’s it – hope that the presentation was useful. If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Tick Tock Design

The Cheese Hub – site launch

davidhorn — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:11:28 +0000

The Cheese Hub – site launch

Cheese and websites … two of my favourite things, and brought together so wonderfully with this deceptively simple little ecommerce project: The Cheese Hub.

They’re business based in Leitrim that have some lovely looking hampers and a really interesting business in cheese maturation for local producers.

Shelves and shelves of maturing cheese line their walls – a great way to support local businesses who might be wanting to diversify their farm-based income. Those producers can now outsource the labour intensive and space demanding ripening, maturing, cutting and packaging functions of the operation. Good stuff. (I’m hoping I’m saying all the right things here and that maybe a little cheese might come my way this Christmas …)

Check out the site – both on your computer, and your hand held device of choice.

Tick Tock Design

Internet Explorer 10 nearly released. The web breathes slightly easier.

davidhorn — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Internet Explorer 10 nearly released. The web breathes slightly easier.

The word on the browser street is that IE10 is going to be a doozy. In terms of it’s support for HTML5 and CSS3 (the stuff that makes modern websites), it promises to finally bring the IE family up to a level with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Allegedly. IE9 was a good step in the right direction for Microsoft. IE10 should be a huge leap.

But it’s not here yet. October 26th saw the release of Windows 8, the new Microsoft Operating System that – confusingly – comes in two versions: one for tablets (specifically, Microsoft’s own new tablet – The Surface) and one for the desktop. IE10 serves them both, but the release of the browser itself has been delayed.

(If you’re into this sort of thing, here’s a 14 page review of Windows 8).

What does IE10 mean for consumers?

Well, it should mean faster browsing, more secure browsing – and a more robust mobile experience. Despite some quirks with something Microsoft call ‘Snap Mode’, IE10 should provide a more reliable interpretation of media queries (one of the building blocks for responsive web design).

What it might also mean is that people stop using IE8. IE9 is already 19 months old. IE8 was released in March 2009. Three and a half years ago. Come on people, time to drop it. IE8 is the last IE browser that really sucked, and with the launch of IE10 I expect a bunch of big web services to announce they’re no longer supporting IE8. (Google has already done so, and the jQuery team will likely follow).

Still, all that said, IE10 will not be available to the majority of Windows users for some time yet. Windows 7 holds approximately 53% of the OS market. XP a little over 25%. Dropping IE8 altogether is probably premature – unless you’re google and can just do whatever you please – but it’s on the way. And then we can all breathe a little easier.

Useful Links, if you’re into the techy / web design stuff:

Tick Tock Design

Web design Northern Ireland, Freelance Web Designer in Ireland Website Design

Attractive USB Cables

Claiming Google Authorship For Your Blog (or pretty pictures in search results)

What you need

What you need to do

Verifying it with Google

Liked this? Try these ...

All about the productivity …

Liked this? Try these ...

Notes from a brief business trip

Liked this? Try these ...

Around the web – April 2013

Guide to Google Analytics for eCommerce:

Beginners guide to sales

I’m sorry for what I said when I was hungry

The 1-3-5 Rule: making sense of your to-do list

Liked this? Try these ...

How LinkedIn Saved My Life

Liked this? Try these ...

Kurt Vonnegut’s advice on writing

Liked this? Try these ...

Useful SEO links from my talk in Belfast

SEOMoz.org

The Content Strategy Generator

More Content Ideas

Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool

Link Building

From the horses mouth

Liked this? Try these ...

The Cheese Hub – site launch

Liked this? Try these ...

Internet Explorer 10 nearly released. The web breathes slightly easier.

What does IE10 mean for consumers?

Liked this? Try these ...