Category Archives: Internet

Internet Related Information

Do You Want Something for Nothing? – Then Freecycle!

10/06/2011 – 1:15 pm

Freecycle LogoThese days times are hard and everybody is looking for any little way they can find that helps.

Freecycling is one of those ways, and there’s a local Freecycle Group right here in Saddleworth

What is Freecycling?

It’s a really great idea to simply put people who want to get rid of things in touch with people who want those things!

There are two aspects:

  1. If somebody doesn’t want something any more
    They advertise it on freecycle and if somebody wants it, they come and collect it

  2. If somebody wants something in particular
    They ask the freecycle members if anyone has got one – if they do, then they collect it

So it sounds a bit like eBay right? – but with one major difference:

It’s all FREE!

(OK, you’ve got petrol costs to go and collect it the item – but it’s local, so it shouldn’t be too far to go!)

As I mentioned before there’s a local group right here in Saddleworth, but there are other groups all over the world, simply find your local group by going to the Freecycle Network web site

Sounds Great, How do I do it?

It’s all been well thought out by the people who set up Freecycle and is very easy:

If you live in Saddleworth, then go to the Freecycle Saddleworth Site, from there go to the Yahoo Group and Sign Up

If you don’t live in Saddleworth, the chances are that there will still be a Freecyle Scheme somewhere near you – Search on the Freecycle Web Site for your nearest group

Then what happens?

Once you’ve gone through the registration process (just be patient, it takes a little effort and time as it’s managed by volunteers, but it’s worth it to get stuff for free!), then you’ll become a member.

From there you’ll start receiving emails from local FreeCycle members, which explain in the subject what it’s all about such as:

  • [SaddleworthFreeCycle] OFFERED: Espresso Maker Diggle
    For somebody offering an item at that location
  • [SaddleworthFreeCycle] TAKEN: Baby Car Seat Delph
    For somebody having an interest in taking that item at that location
  • [SaddleworthFreeCycle] RECEIVED: Baby Car Seat Delph
    To explain the item has now been collected and is no longer available
  • [SaddleworthFreeCycle] WANTED: Gas Cooker
    For somebody wanting an item

It’s easy enough, each Freecycle email has a handy reminder to explain how it works, and the Freecycle web site will show you how it works in much greater detail,

JMB Breadmaker from Freecycle

JMB Breadmaker from Freecycle

What kind of Stuff is on There?

Well, you never know, but much like the lottery, you’ve got to be in it to win it!

 

I’ve recently received a JMB breadmaker, which I’m very pleased with!

Here’s a list of some of the items that have been on Saddleworth Freecycle recently:

Baby Gates, Baby Car Seat, Crockery, Dyson Hoover, Electric Towel Rail, Fridge Freezer, Gas Cooker, Krups Espresso Maker, Laptop PC, Plasterboard, Wooden Futon, Ikea Bedside Lamp, Mountain Bike, Dulux Paint, HDTV, Body Board, Video Recorder, Dial Up Modem, Carpet, Tent, Clothes Rails, Tickets to the Ballet, Gas Cylinders, Stone, Wood, Wall Lights, Curtains, Printer, Roof Bars, Computer Memory, Hamster House, Pedal Bin…and so on!

There’s a wide variety of things on Freecycle and you never know what’s going to appear.

 

What’s the Downside?

The only major downside that I can see is that you’re going to get more emails, as every item has an email for offered taken and received, plus its unlikely that any item offered will have any kind of guarantee – but then you are getting something for nothing!

Plus you’ll need to put in the effort to collect any item that you want.

As somebody offering the item, there’s no guarantees that anybody will want it – but then surely it’s better to try rather than throw it away!
Plus if you’ve seen a recent episode of BBC’s The Apprentice – you may now that sometimes it costs to have some items taken away!

And of course, as a disclaimer:
You should always take care when things involve meeting strangers
Although so far my experience of Saddleworth Freecyclers is that they are lovely folk!

Freecylcing does rely on people being kind enough to offer their items for free - fortunately, there seem to be quite a few people like that round here at the moment

 

If you’ve enjoyed reading this article and found it useful, then perhaps you would like to hear similar tips about useful online resources, local information and information related to Internet and IT, if so, then please subscribe to our newsletter!

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in Saddleworth | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

What’s the Purpose of Your Web Site?

08/06/2011 – 1:41 pm

One of the questions I like to ask my customers is:

“What is the Purpose of Your Web Site?”

It sounds straight forward enough but actually, I tend to find it’s sometimes something that’s not so easily answered, but taking the time to get to the bottom of this matter can really help you achieve the difference between a regular web site and a really great site that works hard for your business.

Some people wrongly assume that online sales is the only way your site can make you money

Whilst online sales shouldn’t be ignored there are other ways that your web site can work hard for your business…

Urban Haze Logo
Ten years ago, most web sites were simply about “Marketing” – if you didn’t have a web site, then your business wasn’t seen as forward thinking.
Most web sites followed the standard format of:

  • Home
  • About
  • Products/Services
  • Contact Us

And perhaps a few additional pages – with some sites including online sales as an expensive add on..

But, it’s not really surprising that in ten years, the web (of all places!) has moved on and had advancements both in technology and usage.  Don’t get me wrong, it is still important that your business can be found online, but now web sites serve so many more purposes as well.

A modern web site should work as hard for your business as an employee would – and rightly so too, after all, you’re paying for it!

E-commerce (online sales) have become more common, more integrated and moved into a more reasonable price bracket for the small business, but online sales may not be appropriate for every business, and it’s important not to get too hung up in thinking that your web site should still work like a ten year old one!

It’s pretty common sense to say that businesses tend to rely on having customers in order to survive and grow

So it’s fair to say that one of the main purposes of a business’s web site should surely be to acquire new customers.

That sounds like common sense too right? – But take a long hard look at your web site, can you honestly say that it has been optimally designed with that in mind?

Many web sites fall foul of this first trap – they’re so busy talking about their products and services (though these are still important things!) – but they’re so busy talking about these things, that they can miss the obvious step of “Now you’ve read how great we are, become one of our customers!”

In Marketing terms we call this CTA – Call To Action

Generally speaking people read from Top to Bottom – so the optimum place for your CTA is at the bottom of your web page, right after you’ve made your main message (take a look at our page footer!)

 

Loyalty

One of the other simple things a web site can do is generate customer loyalty, once they’ve become interested in your business, keep them interested, keep them coming back for more!

Sounds simple right?  But again, take a step back and a long hard look at your web site – is there really a good reason for people to keep coming back?
One of the things that will encourage people to return to your site is if it has something new to offer.

Blogging is just one way of easily getting new information onto your site and give your visitors new information that they crave!
There are plenty of other ways – but I don’t want to give away all our trade secrets at once, so you’ll have to keep coming back if you want more! ;)

 

Other Specific Purposes

Other purposes of a site can depend on the unique nature of any business for example:

  • You may wish to show off a portfolio of your work
  • You may wish to tell people about your successes (to give your business credibility)
  • You may have useful information or advice that you wish to give away (just because you’re feeling generous!)

The important thing is that whatever your business does and whatever the purpose of your web site is, the Internet now offers new ways for your web site can work harder for you.

 

So if you’d like to find out more about how your web site can work harder for your business and make more money for you, then please contact us

You can also sign up for our free Newsletter which will send you more free tips, updates and local information
(see what I did there?!)

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Trade Secrets to Building Outstanding Web Sites

16/05/2011 – 9:00 am

Urban Haze LogoI get asked quite a lot about how to make a web site stand out from the crowd.

As somebody who’s been lucky enough to have had years of experience in Corporate Environments before moving on to start up my own business, I can tell you that there are quite a lot of trade secrets out there to make your site something special that really does stand out from your competition.

And whilst I’ve got a business to run and can’t go giving away all of our trade secrets (!), in a fit of madness I’ve decided to share a few of those secrets to help those people who want to have a go at things themselves…

The first thing to know about having a good web site is:

Content is King

What I mean by that is that you can have the prettiest, most functional web site in the World, but it’s just not going to be used or found if it doesn’t contain any useful information.

This means that the first cold hard fact is that it’s down to you to do the work and create some good content on your own site

Whether it’s text or pictures or some kind of useful information in a database, I’m really happy to say that one of the reasons Urban Haze’s customers have excellent, successful web sites is simply down to the customers’ own expertise in their fields and their willingness and enthusiasm to share that expertise and information through their online presences.

Please take a look at our portfolio if you’d like to see some of the success stories

 

The next thing to know about a good web site is this:

Design Isn’t Everything

Web sites are very personal things, and if you’re writing your own web site, then it’s sometimes very difficult to see the wood for the trees.

By this I mean that it’s very easy to take the look and feel of your site very close to heart and to get so wrapped up in tweaking the design that you never actually have enough time or effort left to be able to produce good content in your site.

Consider for a moment one of the most popular web sites in the World: Google

Have you ever seen a more basic, uglier design?!  It’s a big empty white page with a multi-coloured logo and a big box to type in what you want
….yet it’s one of the most popular sites on the World

Why?
Because (this brings us back to the first point) “content is king” – behind that simple design Google have a spectacular database of information that is so cleverly created to allow you to type whatever you want in that big box, and find high quality search results that are very much related to what you wanted to find.

Now, we can’t all be as successful as Google from the start, but we can learn from their success.

In order to have a good web site, you need to separate your online presence into a few different parts:

  • Content
  • Functionality
  • Design

That doesn’t mean you should ignore design completely, a good simple design will help make your site look attractive and not distract from the content.

If your business has a brand, then consider creating a design for your web site to match that brand

If you don’t have a brand yet, then you may want to create one, alternatively you may choose not to have one so that you’re completely open to have any design on your site, including one of the many thousands of free template designs that are out there

If you need help creating a brand from scratch or a template to match your brand then Urban Haze can help – please contact us for more information

 

At this point I’m going to give away another trade secret…

When building your web site ALWAYS choose a Content Management System

10 years ago, people built web sites using tools like DreamWeaver and FrontPage – and at the time these tools did an excellent job of hiding the HTML code from the person writing the site, so that they could get on with writing good content, then Software would take care of the code for you and publish everything up to the web for you, usually using something like FTP.

All of this meant that you needed to have some technical know-how in order to get your web software up and running on your computer, then it’d do it’s best to hide the code from you and let you get on with creating your web site.

Having said that, it was usually necessary to have enough technical know-how of how web sites worked, and sometimes there was also some painful maintenance of links and templates and things like that that made things a bind and eventually led to stressful late nights and grey hairs!

Of course, 10 years on and the web (unsurprisingly) has had advances in technology itself – perhaps more so than anywhere else, but these advances are not so well known.
(Again I blame my fellow geeks for hiding the technology that actually makes life easier!)

Perhaps one of the biggest advances is something called a “Content Management Systems (CMS)” and whilst us geeks love to give things complicated names and acronyms to scare the bejezus out of people and try to put them off having a go themselves (because we used to have to always pick up the pieces!), the truth is that a CMS  is not a scary thing at all – in fact quite the opposite, they’re designed to make publishing web sites easy, and if you have a go, you’ll find that it doesn’t break and there are no pieces left for the geeks to pick up!

A good CMS will hide the complexities of web publishing from the user, so that they can get on with creating good content, without being disturbed by technicalities

What a CMS does is make a “template” for your web site, and then each time you create content, it uses that template to create a web page with a fixed design around your page.  And there are usually also clever extra bits that look after creating the menus and other things automatically for you.

The important thing to note is that the CMS lets you easily create the content whilst all the technical functionality and design is left within the surrounding CMS template

So this achieves one of the core principles of separating content from design and functionality.

 

Time to give away my next trade secret….

Choose WordPress.org for your Content Management System

WordPress LogoWordPress is a great FREE tool that comes in two flavours:

  1. WordPress.com – where WordPress hosts your site for you
  2. WordPress.org – where you use WordPress on your own site

Now, the second option, WordPress.org is best almost every time because you’re going to want to use www.yourname.com or .co.uk for your site, so that means that you need your own site rather than one that’s part of WordPress.com – which would be http://yourname.wordpress.com – This technique is called a subdomain, and isn’t going to give you your complete branding without including WordPress’s name in your address too.

Unfortunately the second option does need a little bit of technical skill – but the good news is not too much!

You need your own hosting, and there are thousands of hosting providers out there.

In order to run WordPress on your hosting, you need two key things:

  1. PHP hosting
  2. a MySQL Database

Again, these services are provided by many hosts, and I’d recommend looking at 1&1 Linux Hosting who offer a very professional hosting service with a range of packages – which support PHP and MySQL, as well as providing simple management tools to let you order a domain name and point it at your hosting.

Once you’ve got your hosting, you can follow WordPress’s excellent online help and instructions to complete their famous 5 minute installation

I’m going to leave WordPress at this point – you have to do your homework, to be honest, I’ve never managed myself to do this in 5 minutes yet, but have done it in 20!

If you need help with setting up WordPress then Urban Haze is more than willing to help with as much or as little help as you need, please contact us for more details

 

Time to give away my next to last trade secret….

Make Sure Your Site Includes a Blog

Blogging is another one of those words us geeks have invented to make something simple sound complicated!

Blogging is quite simply News

But here’s the thing – your web site may contain say 12 web pages of information about your area of business, but every time you add a single blog, you’ll create another web page.

What this means is that even if you only blog just once a month, in a year you will have DOUBLED the amount of information on your site about your business, and most importantly, you will have DOUBLED the chances of your site being found by search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo

Once again we come back to the first point “Content is King” – the more you blog, the more you’ll write about your area of expertise and the more your site will become an authority on that subject.

Quite simply, the more of an authority you become and the more interest people will take in your site.

 

Here comes my last trade secret….

Your Web Site Alone Does not Make a Successful Online Business

OK so you’ve bought your hosting, built your lovely WordPress site, filled it up with interesting content and have been blogging furiously, but that I’m afraid is not enough!

You Must Do Online Marketing As Well!

You can have the best web site in the world, but if people don’t know about it and can’t find it, you’re wasting your money and efforts.

 

It’s all very well and good having Auntie Vera tell you that your new web site is “Lovely Darling” – but that isn’t necessarily a reflection of your entire audience!

Get some Analytics on your site to help you measure your site – I’d recommend Google Analytics to anyone, they’re quite easy to use and understand, they’ll give you some superb insights into your online presence.

Next get your web site out there in every way you can imagine

  • Make sure all the Major Search Engines Can Find It
  • Tweet about It
  • Facebook about It
  • Join Forums and Groups in your industry and talk about your site
  • Try to get links from other web site (but do NOT buy links!)

Online Marketing is absolutely Key to making your web site a success.

 

Fortunately Urban Haze are experts in Online Marketing, and whilst we’ve run out of generosity for handing out trade secrets in this particular blog post, please stay tuned and consider signing up for our Newsletter if you’d like to find out other trade secrets and more details about some of the things we’ve discussed here.

If you can’t wait, then you can always contact us for more information!

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in Analytics, Marketing, Search Engines, Twitter, Urban Haze | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Urban Haze Hosts Twestival Oldham Online Auction

19/03/2011 – 5:30 pm

Twestival Oldham LogoWe’re really proud to be hosting Twestival Oldham’s amazing Auction for things that money can’t buy.

There are some amazing things to bid on such as:

  • A SIGNED copy of Professor Brian Cox’s Latest Book, Wonders of the Universe
  • A SIGNED Latics Shirt
  • An amazing night in a kitchen with an award winning chef
  • Golf Lessons with a Oldham’s Golf Pro

…and even more other great items too

Please bid generously as every penny raised goes to Oldham Mountain Rescue

So, click on over to the Twestival Oldham Auction Page and place your bid now!

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in Twitter, Urban Haze | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Faulty Samsung Hard Disk

12/03/2011 – 3:34 pm

I’ve got a laptop with a faulty Samsung Hard Disk – so, having just gone through a similar experience with a faulty Seagate disk and been able to easily run the SEATools utility, confirm it was faulty, get an error number from the software and easily get it returned to Seagate and replaced, I thought I’d see if it’s just as easy with the Samsung one.

Samsung UK

At first, I tried the Samsung UK web site Warranty information, and arrived at this page – but then the link for HDD Warranty was broken (sheesh Samsung, come on please!)

So decided to try the more human approach, and rang them on 01932 454358- this had one of those automated switchboards with no option for hard disks, but eventually got through to somebody in the “computing” area who said that I needed to go to the SamsungHDD.com web site

SamsungHDD.com

This web site is much better, Samsung offer their own set of hard disk testing tools called ES Tool which you can download from here

But, unlike Seagate’s offering, Samsung’s ES Tool is not a Windows application – you need to create a bootable disk – either burn a CD or (if you still have one) create a bootable floppy disk – so already, unlike Seagate, not for the feint hearted!

Well, having tried the bootable CD version, I found it just didn’t work, I got the following error

Cannot open CD driver MYDVD.  SHCDX33E cannot load!

Then errors about file not found, then errors about out of memory and finally bad commend or filename.
Most people would probably loose the will to live – but no, not me, I’m a tight fisted Yorkshireman and paid good money for a hard disk that appears to have a 36 month warranty!

So, decided it was time try something else, I had a look at this Samsung Web Page about warranties which tells me lots of things I shouldn’t do, but  for the life of me, I can’t find anything that clearly says what I should do.

I desperation, I clicked the “contact us” link at the top of the page, and sure enough, there was something that said (seemingly rather Japlish!)…

Do not you solve the problems of HDD products yet?

If you select your request type and send e-mail to us,
we will reply to you quickly and accurately.

RMA / Warranty

Sales / Marketing

Sounds Promising, but the RMA/ Warranty goes through to a “E-mail General Support” form.

Returns Form?

I’ve filled in the form (Which was setup for US contact addresses) with a brief message including serial number and suchlike, but there’s nothing anywhere that suggests anything to do with warranties, returns or RMA – but in the end it successfully disappeared off into the web-ether!

So far, Samsung is proving to be WAY more complicated than Seagate’s warranty returns

Having previously worked for a major worldwide Japanese electronics company myself previously, I can sympathise with Samsung a little bit,

It seems that it’s the nature of large companies, particularly Japanese ones to break their business up into individual smaller companies that are responsible for different products, but if they’re not careful then their online presence reflects that and becomes disjointed

And unfortunately that disjointedness extends into their support service, and undoubtedly other parts of the business too

At the end of the day, you simply end up with customers feeling confused and having a poor experience.

Summary

The moral of this story is that a disjoined web presence, for whatever reason, can leave your customers with a bad impression of your company – whether you’re a corporate super-giant or a one man band.  People’s expectations are to be able to easily find what they’re looking for on your web site, it’s worth taking a step back to take a look at your web presence and see if it is fulfilling the main, simple things that people want to do with your company – Find out about your products and services & get in touch to buy something or get help on something they’ve bought.

Urban Haze are specialists in web site usability – put simply we help your customers easily work with your online business.
If you’d like to find out more please contact us

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in IT & Computers | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Personal Hotspot and Vodafone SIM-only Contracts

11/03/2011 – 2:32 pm
iPhone Personal Hotspot (Tethering not enabled)

iPhone Personal Hotspot (Tethering not enabled)

You may have read yesterday’s blogpost about iPhone Personal Hotspot.

This article is more specifically about the iPhone 4 Personal Hotspot on a SIM only Contract.

After yesterday’s first call to Vodafone Customer Services, somebody in the iPhone department told me that it wasn’t possible on an SIM-only contract.

Having said that, I then went through to somebody else in Customer Services who told me that it was possible and would be enabled on my handset for free.  Good Generous Customer Services from Vodafone there, who said they’d also enable 1GB of BT Openzone access as well for free.

However, the following morning my iPhone 4 still had the standard screen saying “Set Up Personal Hotspot”
So, since calls to Vodafone Customer Services are free in the UK (on 191 from your Handset) I decided it was time to give them another call.

Again, I got transferred to somebody on the iPhone Support team – a nice chap called Ahmed who tried very hard to help but said it wasn’t possible on a SIM only contract.  I was rather hard on poor Ahmed, but told him that yesterday I’d been told this service was enabled on my phone, so there were really only two clear options that I could see:

  1. Vodafone provide the Personal Hotspot Service for free as “sold” to me yesterday
  2. Escalate because the contract has been mis-sold

I think anyone else could probably use a similar argument if they were sold an iPhone, in that it may have been sold without limitation of a Personal Hotspot – but please check your contract for details!

iPhone 4 with Personal Hotspot Services

iPhone 4 with Personal Hotspot Services

Anyway, poor Ahmed took this away for an hour and in the end did indeed change my contract to an iPhone contract with all the same services I had before enabled, for the same cost and the same remaining contract length, but discounted to the same price I was paying before, but most importantly now including tethering, which means Personal Hotspot is now working!

I’m told there are three options from Vodafone on Tethering

1) Tethering enabled

2) Tethering plus a small allowance (think it was 600MB?)

3) Tethering plus a larger allowance (think it was 3GB?)

What this says to me is that Vodafone do try hard to look after their customers and with persistence and politeness you can get there in the end.

It does also show that Vodafone (and I suspect most other phone companies like 02, Three, Orange and others) do have some flexibility, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be down to individual cases on how they exercise that flexibility.

Summary

If you never try, you’ll never get anything, this is a good example of how spending the time, making the effort of a few phone calls and just knowing about mis-sold contracts can work in your favour

Postscript

Ahmed did mention that at the end of my contract I’d return to “normal” prices – so to clarify that, it meant that the discounts would no longer apply.

In fairness he has given good notice of that!
But equally in fairness (with exactly the same notice!), I’ve asked that Vodafone contact me before charging me any more for the services they are providing, although Ahmed at first said they weren’t set up to do that, he asked me to put a reminder in my own phone

I did say that whilst that was possible it seemed wrong that Vodafone would put the onus on the customer and would change prices without giving customers reasonable notice along with a reasonable opportunity to cancel their contract – in the end he agreed to make a note of getting in touch to notify me (double win!)

Quick Shameless Plug:

Urban Haze provide Internet, IT and Digital Photography services across the UK, please have a read of our blog and follow us on Twitter, where the iPhone 4, Vodafone, Tethering , Hotspots and other similar subjects are mentioned

Finally – Please Join in!

If you’ve had a similar experience with a UK or International Phone company regarding iPhone Hotspot, please do leave a comment and share the knowledge!

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in Gadgets, iPhone | Tagged , , , , | Comments (5)

Behind the Scenes at Saddleworth Museum

09/03/2011 – 3:35 pm

Old Saddleworth Museum Site

Sometimes this job has some great perks.

Urban Haze is currently creating a new web site for Saddleworth Museum – you can still see the old site (for now) here

Today the Friends of the Museum held one of the their coffee mornings, and it was great to meet up with some of the people who work so hard there as volunteers.

I also got the chance to have a nosey around the museum and get to see a few places that the public don’t normally see, such as having a look at some of the mill machinery up close, and the store room, which is the the most wondrous place, full of shelves and boxes of unusual and old items from all around Saddleworth that haven’t made it out into the main museum exhibitions.

The museum store room is a kind of Aladdin’s Cave for anybody who, like me, would be a fond lover of their garden shed, it’s full of the most amazing things in every corner like old signs, swords and other weapons, fossils, stuffed and preserved animals.  There’s an enormous old Cash Register that’s almost too heavy to move and an old safe that’s been locked for years – if only we could find a local Saddleworth Safe Cracker to find out what’s inside!

Here are some photos that I snapped today around the museum’s hidden places, there will be more to follow and eventually the Museum’s web site will hopefully be able to include a section of photos of items from their archives.

Finally, I want to take a moment to wish the Museum the very best of luck in their application for a National Lottery Grant, it’d be so great to see the museum get the funding that they deserve so that they can continue to preserve and catalog our local history for generations to come.

 

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in Digital Photography, Saddleworth, Uppermill | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

How to Contact Debbie Abrahams MP

09/03/2011 – 2:53 pm

Following a recent post about trying to get in touch with Debbie Abrahams, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, I’ve noticed that this site seems to be getting quite a lot of interest about that subject.

So, I’ve been in touch with the good people at Debbie’s office to let them know that other people are finding it a little difficult to get in touch, and seem to be arriving here looking for more information – so I’ve asked Debbie’s Office for confirmed contact details.

According to Debbie’s Office, part of the problem seems to be that the Labour Party had set up some web presence and email for Debbie for the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-Election, and that might not be getting through to Debbie now, but as it’s still online is causing some confusion.

For the record here are the correct Contact Details confirmed by Debbie Abraham’s Office:

Debbie Abrahams MP

Oldham East and Saddleworth
Lord Chambers
11 Church Lane
Oldham
OL1 3AN

 

Arooj Shah Constituency Secratary/Caseworker

Email: Arooj.shah@parliament.uk
Constituency Office Tel: 0161 624 4248
Fax: 0161 626 8572

 

Email:abrahamsd@parliament.uk
London Office: 0207 219 1041

 

I think it’s likely that the Labour Party also set up Debbie’s Twitter account @Debbie_Abrahams, as that seems to have been inactive since the by-election, and there’s no mention from her office of it.

This does show that it’s important for any organisation or individual to continuously manage their complete web presence, adding new information and removing the older information
see earlier article about Saddleworth Parish Council’s Web Woes for another good example of this

It’s also important to keep on top of Google Search Results (this is what good Search Engine Optimisation is all about) as at the moment, it’s easier to find Urban Haze pages about contacting Debbie Abrahams MP than any other useful relevant contact information.

In fact the previous article about contacting Debbie Abrahams MP has been in the top 10 most popular pages on this site for several months now.

If you’d like help to ensure that your organisation can be easily found on the web, then Urban Haze are experts in Search Engine Optimisation and we specialise in making sure your customers can find you and get in touch with you online, please contact us for more information

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in Local Politics, Search Engines | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Saddleworth Tweetup

03/02/2011 – 9:10 pm

Twitter for iPhoneWell it’s been a busy day on Twitter in Saddleworth today – first of all a great discussion about the relative merits of Blackberry and iPhone, and now interest in a Saddleworth Tweet up

The idea being to get local people on Twitter together for a meet up and jolly good social – probably likely to involve lashings and lashings of ale (hopefully stronger than the ginger stuff!)

Twestival Oldham Logo

Twestival Oldham Logo - Twestival takes place on March 24th 2011

There’s already a local event planned for Twestival Oldham on March 24th, which is a Global Event supporting local Charities.

Twestival Oldham is in aid of Oldham Mountain Rescue

Hope you like the logo (Designed by Urban Haze!)

Hopefully we’ll be able to have a Saddleworth Tweetup some time in the summer – some people have come up with the great idea of a picnic

To keep in touch with what’s going on – search on Twitter for the hashtag #SaddleworthTweetUp and be sure to Tweet your interest using the hashtag.

If you’ve not used Twitter before - take a look at our free 4 page beginners guide to Twitter, it’s really easy to do, lots of fun and a great opportunity to meet some really fab people.

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in Saddleworth, Twitter | Tagged | Comments (3)

Twitter for iPhone Hidden Features

01/02/2011 – 2:00 pm

Twitter for iPhone

Twitter for iPhone

I’ve just found some great new features in Twitter for iPhone that I’m calling “hidden features”

In truth, there’s no magic here – nothing special, just that the really useful features are hidden away, so many people (myself included) may not be aware of them.

For some time I’ve preferred using Twitter for iPhone, but found it really annoying that I couldn’t easily add pictures directly from my phone.  Another niggle was that when adding a link/url there was no way to shorten it.

So I’ve been using Twitterriffic as an alternative app whenenver I’ve wanted to upload an image – and even splashed out on the £2.99 full version to support multiple accounts, when the free Twitter for iPhone supports multiple accounts as standard

As a result, I’m a little gutted to find out that Twitter for iPhone will do all of that straight out of the box, but the least I can do is share this information in the hope that other people don’t make the same mistake as me.

Compose Tweet ScreenTouch Here


The hidden key lies in the little graphic in the lower right corner of the compose message screen, this has the number that counts down showing you the number of characters remaining in your tweet.

The trick is simply this – touch this as though it were a button.

Et Voila!

Twitter for iPhone Hidden Menu

Twitter for iPhone Hidden Menu

An entire new sub-menu is revealed!!

In this menu, you’ll find the following options:

  • Camera – upload pictures directly from your iPhone’s camera
  • Photo Library – upload pictures you’ve taken previously that are in your library
  • Geotag – mark your tweets with a location from your iPhone’s GPS
  • @Usernames – easily look up usernames
  • Hashtags – choose from a list of recently used hashtags
  • Shrink URLs – YES! Just the bonus feature that’s needed!

All in all, these extra features make Twitter for iPhone a really credible App and I think it will now change my Tweeting habits to at least give this App a go and see how I get on with it.

iPhone Usability

One of the greatest strengths of the iPhone is that anyone can just pick one up and start using it – the interface is very intuitive and anyone can immediately feel at home using it.

However, that’s also the iPhone’s greatest weakness – because most people would be so confident using the device, that they’d never get round to reading any instruction manuals, they’d just pick it up and figure out the most important bits that matter to them.

With this in mind it’s really important that Apps on the iPhone are well written and equally intuitive.  This is probably where Twitter for iPhone has let itself down, because the button to reveal this fantastic menu is hidden into the tool that shows you the number of characters left.   To be fair, they have included a little “down arrow” – which some may say obviously alludes to more information.

If Urban Haze were writing this iPhone App, we’d simply have a separate control with an arrow for more information, as at least for me, it’s this “dual use” of character counter and button that leads to the confusion – there’s plenty of real estate to the left of this counter to add an extra small and less confusing control in.

In fairness, if you go onto Twitter’s web site and have a look, you’ll find a wealth of information and documentation of Twitter for iPhone, including details of how to use these menus, as well a even more great tips and tricks – but the people who wrote this app have missed the most important point – the iPhone is so intuitive that hardly anyone these days follows the old instructions to RTFM – Read The Flipping(?) Manual!!!

On the positive side, the great thing about this is that even though I’ve had an iPhone 4 for 6 months now, it still continues to amaze me every day with great little surprises like this, imagine how I’d use it if I really did take the time to read the manual!

Of course, if you’ve read this blogpost, then you’re probably about as likely to have read Twitter for iPhone’s online documentation – but for the odd few that haven’t maybe you can share this with your friends.

If you’d like some help to get more usage out of your gadgets, like somebody to read a massive Japlish(!) instruction manual and translate it into something meaningful to you, or if you’ve got a business and are interested in an iPhone app, then please contact Urban Haze

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By urbanhaze | Also posted in iPhone, Twitter | Tagged , , | Comments (1)