Office Hours

London Office

Our London office hours over the holidays are:

Closing on Thursday 22nd December at 5pm

Re-opening on Tuesday 3rd January at 9am

Head Office – Cornwall

Our Head Office in Cornwall usually closes between Christmas and New Year, and this year we close at 5pm on Friday 23rd December, then from the 28th – 30th we will be operating with a small team where we will be available to deal with any emergencies.  We’re back to full power on January 3rd at 9am.

If you have any serious website problems over this period, please use the following email address to contact us:

Christmas related emergencies relating to Turkeys, sprouts or other culinary disasters are best directed to here:

www.britishturkey.co.uk ………………….They have a Turkey hotline!

As anyone who has had the pleasure of meeting or dealing with our Support Manager Tim, you’ll know what a genuinely nice guy he is, and recently the SD team discovered that this does in fact also run in the family!

Tim and Bev's wedding day 1986

Tim and Bev decided to renew their vows (very Holywood Tim!) to celebrate their anniversary,  in the same church they were married in 25 years ago in Falmouth. The bride looked absolutely stunning and our Tim was grinning from ear to ear as he walked her down the aisle to re-pledge his commitment to Bev and their three boys.

I’m keen to mention at this point that I do belive that I was the only one singing in the SD pew, so I was either so bad I drowned out everyne else (highly possibile), or I was in fact the only one singing… (also highly possible).

The Bride and Groom left the church in style, in a beautiful classic old Beauford with a glass of bubbly in hand, and with onlookers stopping to take photo’s..

We moved on to the Porthminster Hotel for the reception, the sun shone, the Pimms was poured and needless to say, we had a fabulous time.  Tim and Bev did the traditional first dance and I can honestly say that to see a couple still that into each other after 25 years of marriage, was not only something I don’t think I have ever seen before, but also, incredibly moving….. ahhh

Tim’s wife Bev had spent such a  long time arranging and planning this event (with the help of  Tim and the Boys of course). The attention to detail to ensure that their guests were well catered for meant that literally eveything was thought of and the room and tables looked almost as stunning as Bev did!

Tim and Bev renew their vows 2011

Tim and Bev’s Three sons also did readings in the church and considering they were mostly love related readings, they were amazing and must of made their parents incredibly proud, not one  fake vomit in sight!

Anyway, enough gushing already ……..

Congratulations to Tim and Bev!

Thank you both for letting us share your special day, and here’s to many more anniversaries to come!

This month saw the launch of the European woodfuel project, the Forest Programme, a pan-European project focused on working with business in the biomass heating supply chain to develop a more profitable and successful business sector.

Project Objectives

The project is supported by the Intelligent Energy Europe Programme (IEE) and working across seven European regions, it aims to share and develop business experiences , learning from the success of markets in Sweden and Austria and sharing this with less developed markets in Poland, Spain, Ireland, Italy and the UK.

 In order to disseminate all of this information, a website and community site was required in a bid to provide an accessible means of communicating to the target audience, as well as providing an online community platform to encourage people involved in the sector to communicate, develop new conatcts and share knowldge and experience.

Website Design and development

One of the key objectives in terms of design, was to create a look and feel that would appeal to a european audience, with focus on offering a selection of translated content through the key messages for non english speaking partners and website visitors. We created partner pages for all of the programmes partners and these pages are also translated in their native language as well as in English with links to the partners own websites.

The site features latest news features, various tools and an events calender and giving our clinets full control to update the site, its constantly updated and fresh.

Community Feature

Another phase of this project was to build an online community to enable users to join up and start interacting with each other. We built this using the BuddyPress platform thus providing  full community features including:

• Profile creation
• Online networking
• Personal messaging
• The ability to create  groups and forums
• The ability to post updates
• File sharing

The community is due to launch very soon,  we are in the testing phase right now, we’ll keep you updated! but for now, here’s a sneak preview:

To continue the global domination of Slightly Different, our erstwhile colleague Steve Hanson has donned his arctic woollens and as you read this is probably trudging his way through a blizzard in the snowy wastes of Northern England.

A native of Huddersfield, which is the other side of the world from Cornwall, Steve migrated down South but after a couple of years just couldn’t get to grips with the near tropical Cornish weather, warm seas lapping onto soft sandy beaches, coral reefs teeming with brightly coloured fish, maidens bearing flower garlands, and … (Stop this – Steve was in Cornwall, not Hawaii – Ed.). The upshot is that we’ve sent him back up North on a mission – to establish a third Slightly Different studio, known as SD North, by the end of this month.

Based on the success of our London studio which is proving to be extremely popular with our more central clients, and following a similar expansion plan, we’re now building a critical mass of business in the far North and Scotland, such that we’ve accelerated our plans to establish a presence in this area.

This will be of significant benefit for clients such as Chisholm Hunter who are one of the most established high quality jewellery retailers in both this region and throughout Scotland. We’ve not only developed their website complete with an advanced product management system, but also run their online marketing campaign, and we even designed some in-store promotional displays for their ‘Grow Your Diamond’ campaign which attracted considerable attention and new business for the stores. Having a local presence will help to reduce our carbon emissions, and will also enable us to meet and share ideas more often, with the aim that everyone will be a winner.

This latest news will also appeal to our overseas clients in Ireland with business operations in Manchester and Liverpool, enabling meetings to be held more frequently, and will also serve to attract a new range of clients from around the region who like to work with their suppliers on a face to face basis.

We’ll keep you posted with more details, but as the great man William Shakespeare said “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day.” Time waits for no one. If you’ve got plans to do something with your business, don’t put them off because of what you may or may not hear on the news. Call us at our London office on 020 3008 8045 or  our Head Office in Cornwall on 01326 372416  and we’ll help to put you in front of your new customers today.

Make it count. Be Slightly Different.

Kathryn Timmins, SD Accounts

So, here we are again, another new family member at SD for us to introduce  to you, Kathryn Timmins, our latest addition (there’s a clue there..) I had a bit of a natter/interogation with our Kathryn recently, and here’s whats she had to say…

So Kathryn, can you tell any of our clients who haven’t yet had the pleasure,what is your role at SD?

I’m the Office Manager so I support the general office, admin and HR function and look after the books!

Aha, the invoice lady!…. and I hear it on the grapevine that you have passed yet another exam recently, what was that all about?

I’m just about to complete the second year of the AAT so a few exams coming up.  I’ve recently taken the Indirect Tax (VAT) exam and thankfully passed it!

Congratulations from the whole team on that again by the way! On that subject,  we’ve seen VAT change again this year, So what else is new in terms of accounting these days then? 

 It’s all pretty new to me to be honest and my course runs at such a fast pace that every week I learn something different. 

Most of our clients will have spoken to you or received an invoice from you by now, do you have any advice to offer in terms of invoice or account queries? 

Just if people have queries please ring and let me know – it’s easier to do something about it if I’m told in the first place!

So what is it about numbers that gets you all fired up? 

Not sure – Maths has always been my worst subject so I suppose I get a sense of achievement in getting things to balance.

What’s the most challenging bit?

Thinking of answers for newsletter interviews!

Yes, sorry Kathryn, it’s sort of like an initiation thing……How are you finding the general hubbub of head office?

It’s a really hardworking office and everyone has been welcoming and friendly.  I even find myself ’bopping’ away to the music (sometimes!) 

Yes, and I know exactly what you mean about “sometimes” too! So, I always ask,  what do you get up to when your not counting beans and stuff? 

When I’m not studying or running around after my three year old, I sometimes find time to go for a run and I’ve been doing Zumba for a while which is great fun, although I have no coordination!

Zumba! excellent, do you think the team would benefit from a session of two? …… hmmm yes, maybe not……Anyway, I understand you join the ranks at SD of the working mum, how do you find that balance? 

I think I’ve got the balance about right although every morning, I always find myself running around frantically trying to get to work on time.  There’s always a Marmite disaster or other emergency just as we’re about to pile out of the door.

Yep I reckon kids think that Marmite helps to create more interest on what they see as  a boring white shirt! So, ok the burning question then, if you could invite anyone to your dream dinner party, who’d be on the list?

James Martin (to cook), Dara O’Briain and Prince Harry (entertainment), Norah Jones (music) and Phil from Eastenders.

Wow, now there’s a dinner party I’d like to be at, what a combination, like it!  Ok, last one I promise, so even more important than all the other questions.. what’s your favourite cake? 

Banoffee pie – is that a cake?!

I don’t think it matters because Banoffee Pie absolutey rocks..

Andrew Liverod, SD Developer

In this series of articles I’ll try to examine what a new developer needs to know in order to either learn web development or start their first job in the industry. So to start here is the ten commandments of web development; at least according to me (it would be nice if they occasionally referred to me as God at work but I’m sure it’s just because they realise I’m an atheist and would be offended – at least that’s what I keep telling myself). Here we go…

1) Commit to subversion (or whatever version control system you use) at least once a day, at the end of the day.

Version control is vital to the operation of a company, for example, what happens if you are off sick did you commit your latest changes to that important project that launches today? Plus the drive that holds the code repositories is usually backed up each night (they are backed up aren’t they?), unlike your c: drive.

2) Comment your code. If someone else needs to take over your project there’s nothing worse than code that makes no sense. Try to comment the beginning of functions, classes, conditionals and loops. I’m well aware that perfect code should technically be self-documenting – but good commenting is your safety net when perfection eludes you!

3) Keep your functions short. If a function does more than one thing then spilt it into two functions. Simple really. In all your code think concise but legible.

4) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours ox. Um… Do not over nest! If there is one way to make code illegible (apart from the ternary operator) it’s multi-nested conditionals: if () { if () {if () { if () {. It makes your head spin and makes the code much harder to maintain.

5) Learn regular expressions. I know at first sight they look gibberish but trust me they make life so much easier.

6) Check the documentation. I’m always amazed how many functions that I’ve written already exist in the chosen language! PHP seems to be notorious for this (as well as transposing the arguments of similar functions).

7) Don’t reinvent the wheel but don’t stop improving its roundness. I hope that makes some sort of sense. Why write code that already exists somewhere. Unfortunately, some code leaves a lot to be desired, so take the code, study it and amend it to be more efficient, more elegant or to make the coffee for you as well and returning a white noise generated random number.

Use the right tools for the right job. Don’t just dismiss a language or a technology out of some code monkey bigotry.  Flashy stuff is good sometimes.

9) Get used to changing projects several times a day. I started out in application development where one project could take a several years. Lets say it was a little shock to discover that I’d need to work on several projects at the same time as well as work orders and bug fixing. It’s hard at first but gets easier especially if you organise. Write a list each day and be prepared to change it.

10) Learn to make the tea. For some weird reason a company seems to run on tea and coffee and if the company runs out then they may as well just call in the receivers. Or be like me and not drink tea or coffee and stick to water. Much safer than trying to remember 15 people’s beverage likes and dislikes, and I don’t have to wash up afterwards.

To finish I’d like to make a personal 11th commandment. Please stop using ternary operators where a simple, normal, readable, ‘if’ statement will suffice. It’s a bit like reading a Tom Clancy and discovering a bit of Chaucer thrown into the prose for no reason. It does not scan!

{ed: I am deeply offended by this unjustified attack on the ternary op. This op. is like discovering the words of Jane Austen within a review of Pride and Prejudice. I won’t push this point too far though – as I might start a civil war amongst the SD technical team!}

These three companies are technology companies, and while this type of branding is widespread in the technology sector with arguably the most well known one being the Microsoft Windows startup musical note sequence, it is widely used in many other areas as well.

It could just be a spoken phrase such as the whispered Mazda “Zoom Zoom” or even a foreign language phrase like Audi’s “Vorsprung Durch Technik” – you don’t even need to know what this means for it to sound like they know what they’re doing. [For those who are interested it means "Progress Through Technology" - Ed].

You may not even realise this is happening, but the sound you hear in an advertisement is just as much part of the message as what they are actually saying, and it works on a different part of your brain to convince you that this is the product for you. Advertisers recognise that you aren’t going to be in front of a television all the time, and they do this so that even if you may not be able to hear what is being said because you popped out during the adverts to make a cup of tea, you can still pick up the sound of the Asda tune from the other room.

Some advertisers take it to the next level though, and embed a piece of music into their brand identity. One of the best examples of this in the UK was made in 1973 and has blighted Dvorak’s 9th symphony ever since.

Incidentally, this was directed by Ridley Scott who went on to make Alien six years later.

There are many other examples, but for my money I particularly liked this one. You may not know Perez Prez Prado’s “Guaglione”, but this was quite a sensation when it aired and today would have been a viral internet phenomenon. I don’t expect you to remember the name of the song like I do, but you may have seen this before:

Even though the song had long since been forgotten from its release in 1960, the advert caused it to be re-released in 1995 due to popular demand, which was fabulous promotion for Guinness as every time the song was heard, the television advertisement popped into people’s minds. Similarly, Levi 501s caused a sensation with this in the mid 1980s:

The next time you watch or hear an advertisement, listen out for the sonic branding. It will be there.

Be Slightly Different.

Legislation

The official ICO guidance on cookies issued only on 9th May which came into effect on 25th May. This legislation had not passed into UK law at the time of writing (07/06/2011) due to the usual public sector delays;

In essence then, the visitor to any EU based website must be alerted to every cookie being installed on their computer and given the opportunity to refuse it;

It is still unclear whether this legislation applies to non-EU websites hosted in the EU, EU based companies whose websites are hosted outside, non-EU companies providing EU specific content when hosted outside of the EU etc….
Despite becoming an EU Directive in November 2009 for EU-wide legislative effect from 25th May 2011, the UK has given a 12 month ‘grace period’ for websites to fully comply, provided they are working towards and not lying about how cookies are actually used;

The Issue

There are broadly 2 types of cookies -
1st party ccokies – these are set by the site itself used to count site visitors, remember you e.g. what’s still in your Amazon cart from last week, create a shopping basket, recognise you having logged in to say Facebook, Hotmail etc. – and so these are all legitimate and ‘friendly’ and the cookie itself is not used by any other site;
( We would include Google Analytics as 1st party cookie as is site specific)

3rd party cookies – these are then added as well when you visit a site e.g. Hotmail, Youtube, download sites and many many others, when a tracking cookie ‘crosses’ sites so ‘stores’ where you have been and what you have done;
It’s no coincidence why Hotmail, Youtube, serve up car insurance ads after you have gone to a comparison site, or broadband ads appear when you have tested your broadband speed online;

That’s why those advertising there pay good money to the hosting sites as it is very targeted time sensitive advertising – it’s very big business and global;

These 3rd party cookies track you and build up personal ‘marketing’ data over a very long period and are the intended target of the legislation as most people regard this as a privacy matter;

Browsers do not currently distinguish between 1st and 3rd party, hence the legislation, but with Google Chrome commited to launching a new version every 6 weeks, and others following their lead, who knows;

Importantly it was only in May 2011 that the UK have re-interpreted the EU Directive as meaning each website must permit the user and not rely on the browser to decide whether to accept cookies each and every time they are set;
To get a flavour of what this means, use the Tools option of your browser to alert you whevever a cookie is set and after 10 minutes looking at the popular sites you will have turned all cookies off;

The qualified exception to the above is that where a cookie is essential to the site functionality e.g. saving an item to a shopping cart, or logging in to a restricted area, then 1st party cookies are permitted, but your privacy policy must state this, and if cookies are turned off then rather than just sit there broken, the site must inform the user they must switch on cookis to use this functionality;

How this affects you

For the record, Slightly Different developed sites use 1st and not 3rd party cookies;

So, as far as your site is concerned, you know that the site works with cookies turned on (current default for most browsers)  so you will need to check how works if cookies have been set to be refused by the browser, i.e. you will need to manually turn off depending upon your browser, then navigate around the site and find what doesn’t work as should:

• It is very important to ensure users experience will not be 2 tier;
• By turning off cookies, Google Analytics (GA) will not track their visit and so traffic statistics will show a reduction in site visitors – no way around that, as GA currently sets 3 cookies;
• This apparent decline in site visitors will increase as more users hear about the legislation and avoid 3rd party cookies;
• All websites now need a prompt if cookies are enabled by the browser but the user wants to disable for specific sites, on a case by case basis;
• This needs new code functionality adding to each site and so is chargeable work;

Actions

Slightly Different is reviewing cookie usage on all sites we have developed on a site by site basis and will be contacting our clients with  recommended actions as each will have varying requirements for progressing;
Costs will therefore vary depending on complexity of solution;

Slightly Different is not rushing into this, given the 12 month grace period, as browsers are expected to include some or all of this functionality at no cost to the user, meaning completely different amendments (and costs) would be needed by website owner;

Google Chrome and Firefox are probably the people to watch as both view this as superb opportunity to take users from Microsoft who update Internet Explorer every 5 years it seems;

Finally, this will also be the death knell for out of date and insecure browsers like IE6 and 7 as site owners choose not to spend money on coding solutions for those, so will severly restrict functionality if still used, furthur forcing the upgrades;

So is very much a ‘watch this space’ scenario; but don’t worry, we’re watching that space very closely!

At Slightly Different we like to take some time to send our staff out into the world – to experience fresh air and sunshine, so they don’t forget what it looks like. Luckily for us we got the perfect opportunity a few weeks ago…

At Wild Futures, they're completely bananas about monkeys

Wild Futures, a monkey sanctuary not too far away from our Cornwall office, had their annual ‘Adopters Day’ at the end of June and kindly invited us to go along to check it out. This special event is an opportunity for all the adopters to have a private tour around the sanctuary, to see how their monkeys are doing whilst also finding out the news and having a fun day out.

With advice against “going bananas” or “monkeying around” from the guys in the office, Kes and I were set free to go and look at some real life monkeys and bring some tips back for our resident code-monkeys.

The day started early, for a Saturday at least, with me picking Kes up at half 9 for our drive across into the unknown. Thanks to the awkward roads in Cornwall it took nearly an hour and a half to travel the 50 miles or so to get to our destination. To confuse our sense of internal navigation – the roads actually took us closer to the wrong side of the county before we could turn off the main road and drive back down to get where we wanted to be. Along the way we found ourselves passing through a place called “No Man’s Land”, the irony perhaps being that there was actually a decent sized community living there. I’m pretty sure I saw a house for sale there as well… Guess you can’t take yourself too seriously when you live in No Man’s Land.

Our trip took us past No Man's Land. I didn't get a picture of me and the sign enjoying the day together though, as Kes was too distraught at my blatant show of amateur photography to join me outside of the car.

After taking only two wrong turns, we arrived perfectly on time in the car park. It was at this point that I chose to get lost, ambling around looking for any kind of heads up. After someone kindly pointed out the big (read: huge, blatantly obvious) sign telling us the right way, we ambled down the hill only to find ourselves in an entirely different world, full of tall trees, bird song and even the occasional monkey scaling a nearby branch. Cornwall certainly has trees, and I can generally hear a bird song or two, but the monkeys were something new. If ever we were in doubt about what we would find, it was about to become abundantly clear.

The first port of call was a presentation on who the monkeys were, which seemed to be a good place to learn all about the monkeys we could see clambering around outside. They went through the various histories of each monkey, how they ended up living at the sanctuary, and what they got up to now that they were there. Some of the monkeys had sadder histories than others, but all in all they were doing well now they were in a nice, safe environment.

I like to think that they print words on the wrapper so that the monkeys have something to read when all the people leave.

In amongst all the background information about each of them, one of the things that I noted was that each of the male monkeys was a complete and utter ladies-man. Or is that lady-monkey’s man-monkey? Either way, in each group within the sanctuary there were love triangles and even love squares all over the place. It was like watching an episode of All My Monkeys, or The Monkeys and The Restless… Anyone? Moving on.

Several of the monkeys had ended up with diabetes through being fed ice creams and chocolate bars by their previous owners. To help this, the keepers give them a healthy diet of various fruits and nuts and other things that monkeys would normally eat in the wild. Later in the day kids helped the keepers to make these little food parcels to feed to the monkeys, and we got to watch them scamper around their cages and clambering upside down to retrieve these little wrappers of joy.

This struck me as a pretty good tip to bring back to the office, and whilst we could probably skip bringing children in to make food packages for us, it might be a nice idea to have a fruit bowl to keep us all healthy. I suspect that I might get lynched if I tried to take the biscuit barrel away however, so I might keep this on the down-low…

All of the monkeys got treats, but this one seemed to think that it would get more if it pretended we weren't actually there. Turns out capuchin's really are as devious as the movies say they are. Although, thankfully, this one wasn't a pirate.

Afterwards we took a meandering tour around the enclosures, meeting the various monkeys and talking to a couple of the keepers about the individual monkeys and their habits. Kes took the role of the paparazzi, taking hundreds of pictures of various different monkeys jumping around in the branches, eating food and coming to say hello to the crowds. That was probably more of a courtesy on their part, knowing that they would get a treat from the keepers by doing so, but it was nice to see them up close nonetheless, and we got some pretty good pictures of them at the same time.

All in all it was a good adventure, the air was fresh, the sun was bright and my arms got a healthy tan. We got to go on an exciting trip and even saw some monkeys at the same time, what more can you ask of a Saturday?

I made sure to stop and take a picture of the No Man’s Land sign on the way back, despite Kes rolling his eyes. It seemed like a good way to end a Slightly Different day out.

Garage Door Direct have been selling garage doors online for over 5 years, in fact, we built the first site that they used to do just this, back in 2005..

Project Objectives:

With the competition hot on their tails, Jon and his team at Garage Door Direct were keen to stay one step ahead, create a new more focussed brand and redevelop the website to continue improve their customers experience and overall to hold on to and increase their market share. Years of website analytics, sales information, customer profiling and market intelligence were used in line with business objectives to set the objectives for the new brand and website.

The new concept for this project was a complete departure from the previous offering.  When we analysed the user demographics it became obvious that the majority of the customers were male.  It was also obvious that there was a gap in the marketplace for a no nonsense approach, so we sat down and brainstormed on an approach to take.

We decided to make the site purposely ‘blokey’ and slightly tongue in cheek.  We felt that taking a humorous approach would appeal to our core demographic, for example calls to action like “A cracking Set of Tips” can be found here, and this is toned down I assure you.

Branding:

The logo design had to take into account the new more focussed target audience, it needed to say, DIY, masculine, hands on, no fuss, you’ve come to the right place..

The colour scheme was selected based on our research of the target market and the other sites they are likely to use, we chose strong bold contrast colours and kept it simple but striking.

Website Design and Development:

Using the very powerful Magento ecommerce system to handle the site, we were able to make a site that matched our needs without any compromise.  Garage doors have many variables which can affect the price, and Magento meant that we could build a very complicated, yet very flexible system that would be easy for our visitors to use.

When a user adjusts any of the variables, such as height, width and motor options, the price updates in real time.  This means that the customer is always clear on the price and there are never any hidden charges.

It was also important to us to ensure that there was a detailed and comprehensive help section, with tips, advice and videos.   We involved ‘Big J’ himself, who took the time and trouble to provide us with some great videos.  We also installed a Live Help system, so visitors to the site can have a webchat with someone in real time and get their questions answered.

With prominent calls to action, massive discounts, price matching and a great approach to customer service, we believe that Big J’s Garage Doors will become the website in this sector that continues to lead the field.

So, If you like a well hung door, you’d be mad not to pay it a visit.

www.garagedoordirect.co.uk