techknowledge

On Saturday 4th September, three swimmers gathered at the water’s edge in Portsmouth ready to swim across the Solent to the Isle of Wight.

Perdita Hunt, the Director of the Watts Gallery wanted to help raise money for the ‘Hope Appeal’ – and swimming to the Isle of Wight seemed like a fitting challenge.  But, to make it happen, she needed some help – so, on a chilly winter’s evening in January she got talking with Sue McLagan of Wight Charters and the plan was hatched.

“From the moment of our discussions in January, I knew that we were on.  It was … Continue Reading

Well, here we are on Friday, eagerly watching the weather forecasts for this weekend’s immense challenge of swimming the Solent.

 Sunday is definitely off because of high winds – so we’ve moved the swim to Saturday.  It still looks like it’s going to be rough seas though.

 Sarah is excited and ready for the challenge.  She’s got a little over 2.5 miles to swim in Force3/4 conditions across one of the busiest stretches of water before she reaches the Isle of Wight.  Steve will be in a Surf Kayak alongside her – … Continue Reading

Our Business Continuity plans have received lots of exercise this year – far more so than I ever imagined.  So what can we learn from our experiences?

Firstly, people tend to think of Business Continuity as a fancy word for ‘backup’ – but we’ve not had to refer to our backup once this year.

I’m currently writing this blog whilst listening to the workmen outside my office window digging away at the pavement.  The Electricity supply to our building failed on Friday, and the Electricity Board have been digging up the streets to get everything repaired.

It’s not a major disruption, but we kind … Continue Reading

Sarah is undertaking a new challenge to raise money for Watts Gallery, Hope Emergency Appeal and the RNLI. She will be swimming the Solent from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight with Perdita Hunt, Director of the Watts Gallery and a small team over the weekend of the 4-6 September, weather allowing.

Sarah will have to swim this busy stretch of water dodging small boats, large ships and jellyfish – but she’s got a bright orange swim hat to keep her safe!

The swim is … Continue Reading

I heard this quote the other day.  It’s from Robert Stephens, the founder of Geek Squad – but, the sentiment is something that we can all benefit from.

In business, we all have a product to sell.  How we get our customers to understand that product is the challenge that we all face.

Often, we focus on the traditional marketing route of explaining the benefits of our product (whilst avoiding talking about the features). 

We look to explain how our customers’ lives will be better if they bought our product. 

We look to try and understand that a customer only buys an electric drill … Continue Reading

The importance of Online Shopping continues to grow.  42.6% of UK Consumers are buying online at least once a week, with the average online spend per shopper of £71 per month.

Whether you sell via the web or not, understanding how people buy these days is very important.  30% of consumers will research products and prices online before completing the purchase at their local store, whilst 26% of people do the opposite and go home to buy online after seeing the product that they want in store.

These figures are from a recent survey of 2,000 UK Shoppers by eCommera.

Price was the … Continue Reading

The Mobile Phone industry appears to be in shake-up mode.  Unlimited Data tariffs have fallen by the wayside, Apple have released the iPhone 4 that drops calls if you hold it wrongly, the Google Android phone is selling fast, the Sunday Times doesn’t include Windows Mobile in its list of top 5 Mobile Phone Operating systems, tablet devices are appearing on the market and Steve’s fed up with it all.
HTC Desire
A few months ago, we got an HTC Desire, running on Google Android, to see how it behaved.  This is the phone that most consumer magazines cite as being the … Continue Reading

During the course of this week, projectfive will be migrating our email to the latest Microsoft Exchange 2010 solution.

We’ve been providing hosted Exchange services to local businesses for the last 8 years, and the migration to Exchange 2010 represents another step forwards for us.

Exchange 2010 builds on the good work done with our current Exchange 2007 platform – so we’ve got the usual integration with the iPhone, synchronisation across multiple PCs, Calendar and Contacts sharing, Remote Access,  and the luxury of having immediate Business Continuity available.

And then we’re looking forward to reaping some of the benefits of having up to … Continue Reading

projectfive are ready for our first Business Exhibition of 2010 and we’re looking forward to meeting lots of local businesses.

We’ve tried to tell a few people that we’ll be taking a new approach this time and trying to be ‘low key’ – but nobody will believe us.  I guess they know us too well!

So, despite what we say, you will be able to spot us – we’re the first stand you’ll see when you come into the Exhibition Hall, and we’ll be sporting our usual bright orange colours.

Wednesday 3rd March is the date and Bracknell is the location. 

We won’t be … Continue Reading

 I know it’s now February, and that the thought of reading an article on Christmas Cards may not be appealing – but there’s some useful discussion happening on this subject.  So, read on…

 I’d like to thank everyone for the feedback on the Christmas Card conundrum that I discussed in January’s techbytes.  It seems as though I was not the only one who’d spent time thinking about the effect that sending Christmas Cards has – it’s been on your minds for a few years now, it seems.

 So, before I share some of the views of other techbytes readers, a quick … Continue Reading