Yesterday Apple released their latest iPhone software update. I wasn’t as quick off the mark as some of my friends so this morning I deliberately ignored Twitter and other social media so I could make my own mind up without being influenced. I don’t like doing major iPhone updates as there hasn’t been an update […]
One of the killer applications on the web over the last few years has been the explosive growth of using online booking. Whilst the Web 1.0 world goes trundling on with (fairly) conventional e-commerce solutions based around catalogues and mail order it seemed for a while that the web was all about B2C consumer shopping. […]
Disclaimer: I, or Connected, do not sell or market any SEO services. Ever. We’ve been around a while, in fact we’ve been around pretty much since the explosion of the Internet in the late 90’s and during that time we’ve seen our fair share of snake oil come and go. There is one subject that […]
There has been a lot of talk recently about privacy and the right of netizens (god, I feel old) to know who has their data, where it is and what is being done with it. Combine this with the growing realisation that for most organisations the secret to success on the web is to get […]
I see today that Apple officially overtook Microsoft in terms of Market Capitalisation. Microsoft may still be twice as profitable but it really does mark Apple’s return to the big time. Remember that the key product in this return, iPod, has only been around for a handful of years. Just goes to show that if […]
I’ve been a huge fan and avid follower of the TED series of talks and articles. I find them highly refreshing in world full of sameness and regurgitated clap-trap and I urge you to find a few minutes a month to browse their excellent site and a great place to start is here with Ken […]
Adobe’s Flash system has been taking a real hammering recently with Apple, Google and Wikipedia effectively scrapping explicit support for the ageing video standard. Steve Jobs was recently moved to publish some notes on the subject to try and help the common man understand why Flash is bad and why open standards such as HTML5 […]
Recently I’ve become a regular user of Gowalla, a location based social networking app which allows you to tell friends where you are via Twitter and Facebook. Using the iPhone GPS, it finds your location and provides you with all the information it has on businesses and attractions (called “spots”) around you, allowing you to […]
Our way of working is far from conventional and with the arrival of the new iPad, our thoughts on how we work are beginning to change further and these thoughts extend out to how we use the web. Mobile browsing has grown fast over the last few years thanks to the wide availability of smartphones […]
For the most part, Connected are an Apple loving company so there was a lot of excitement among us yesterday as we awaited the arrival of Apple’s latest piece of kit. Despite my initial scepticism when it was announced, my opinion quickly changed and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. I had […]
Having successfully created in 2005 a pretty good web framework to deliver high-performance web-strategies one of our recurring issues is managing the longer-term development including the roadmap. This is not about predicting the future, it’s about inventing the future. We made the mistake in 2008 of asking our clients what they wanted and the outcome […]
For years, the best and brightest have hammered on about “key content and CTA must be above the fold”. Certainly, tests we (and others) did in 2005 showed that being above the fold was a good thing. But that’s the game ultimately – things do change and what did or didn’t work in 2005 is […]
One of the best kept secrets of web success, A/B testing, is ever so slowly sneaking out of the closet. In the last week or two we’ve seen Google’s very public A/B test and now Twitter has come out of the closet with a range of sign-up variations being tested. It seems that a new […]
You can’t help but notice the growth of geo-location over the last couple of years and, fundamentally, the approach is absolutely brilliant on one hand and on the other it is bloody awful. When Google, or whoever, correctly identifies your location it helps hugely but so many times it simply gets it wrong. Very wrong. […]
Over the last few years here at Connected we’ve gone through a change in process and attitude to all things digital. What was once stored on one’s own machine is now stored up in the cloud and pretty much nothing is hidden from one another. Part of this move to cloud based computing has included […]
Over the past 15 years we’ve built a great internal library of information, guides and topic helpers and we’re committed to sharing this with the outside world. Starting in April 2010 we’re going to be rolling out our “Quickie Guides” (as they are known internally) onto the site. The subject matter is quite wide, including […]
Cast your minds back almost 10 years, the first generation iPod was only just on the horizon, those Harry Potter kids were unknown and the latest games consoles were Sony Playstation 2 and Nintendo GameCube. This is when Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and began a decade of headaches and wasted hours for developers […]
It appears that the old chestnut of “privacy” and “data protection” might put a bloody great hole in the “Client-side analytics” ship. Specifically our old friend Google Analytics has been declared illegal in Germany. “So what”, I here you cry, “we’re not in Germany”. But we are, sort of, in the Federated European States of […]
Originally from Japan, QR codes are computer readable images that code information such as a URL and allow QR-enabled devices, such as mobile phones, easy and fast access to web-sites. Initially created in 1994 for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR Codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications […]
We’ve recently completed a project in the Healthcare sector yielding a 38% improvement in on-site conversion rate whilst battling a 15% drop in overall traffic. Like many marketing departments, they had a view of what would and what wouldn’t work and for some time now had been following a very traditional but blinkered approach to […]
