February 2012
4 posts
2 tags
How to use @pinterest as a social commerce...
See the full gallery on Posterous Few people have realised that @pinterest is the world’s fastest growing social commerce platform. It’s so simple! All you need to do is ‘Pin’ your product page and include in the description of the pin a price. When you do so, the pin gets a ribbon in the top left with the price.
Manchester Digital's Talent Day a great success
I attended this event organised by Manchester Digitial and was frankly overwhelmed by throngs of students passing through the doors. For most of the time our table was several people deep with students keen to learn more about Livelink. It was also impressive to see what a high standard of businesses now thrive within Greater Manchester. We are witnessing exciting times in digital Manchester. ...
2 tags
Would your school like to WIN a £100000 learning...
See the full gallery on Posterous This competition is too good to keep to myself. In partnership with RIBA, Elliotts and EC Harris Architects, one lucky UK primary or secondary school will genuinely win a state of the art learning space, which the children themselves can design as part of the competition. The objective of the competition is to encourage schools to develop designs for new and...
2 tags
Canada geese take flight in #uksnow
January 2012
8 posts
1 tag
Powerpoint sucks! or maybe it's just you? 2...
Bad powerpoint presentations are a threat to the global economy John Bohannon estimated the drain is $250 million a day! He recommends in his TEDx talk employing dancers to get our message across. What can I do? - I don’t have dancers! So we can’t all afford a team of dancers so here is an excellent set of slides to show you how not to suck on powerpoint.
1 tag
FREE Mobile development conference "Mobile and...
Listen to real web designers and developer share their hard-earned experience of building flexible/mobile apps and sites, from the trenches of the web industry Mobile and devices Saturday 03 March 2012 13:00 - 18:00 The unpredictability of the web medium has always presented a challenge to web designers and developers. Differing web standards support and other variables are less of a...
Arndale Centre Manchester
2 tags
How to create a viral competition on Facebook -...
The clever people at AppSumo, an iPhone development company, completely get the power of Facebook and how reaching friends can amplify your reach. This ever so simple competition is beautifully crafted to ensure that entrants encourage their friends to enter, be that on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. By making social sharing a requirement to enter they ensure the competition goes viral. You do...
1 tag
Ancient avenue of trees, Lyme Park, Stockport
I am very fortunate to live in a town close to many stunning historic buildings, many maintained by the National Trust. Lyme Park was the location for Colin Firths famous scene emerging from the lake during Pride and Prejudice.
Trust
See the full gallery on Posterous Having fun letting Amy choose new colours for the bathroom.
2 tags
Who is attending DrupalCon Munich? Want to know?
DrupalCon Munich will be held The Westin Grand München August 20-23 2012. It promises to be the largest European Drupal conference yet. I notice on Drupal.org that there are already approaching 300 people indicating they will be attending. This is remarkable so far in advance, a reflection of the calibre of the event. You can find out who they are here.
1 tag
Predicting trends for 2012 in UK Digital
Whilst researching emerging trends I found that OFCOM have just released their sixth annual International Communications Market Report. This provides some substantial data to help those working in the digital space to make strategic decisions for 2011. Read the OFCOM International Communications Market Report 2011
December 2011
1 post
Playmobil meets Lego for a perfect Christmas
We’ve been having heaps of fun creating a Christmas lego land at home. Rainy days are never dull when you have a 4 yr old, Lego and a daddy who loves being a kid.
November 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Strong year for Drupal - 2011 Open Source CMS...
Just received my copy of the 4th annual Water & Stone report. As with all stats, they can be interpretted so may ways. Rather than introduce any bias, I’ve shared the report. “This report assesses 20 Open Source Content Management Systems on a variety of metrics related to Rate of Adoption and Brand Strength.The analysis looks at a broad range of indicators — both direct...
2 tags
Klout score doesn't matter, think smarter!
Klout scores are all very well, but what do they actually mean? The truth is very little is known about how the score is derived. My Klout score seems to being going down all the time but in the real world I consider my Twitter presence to be growing in vlaue. Whilst algorithms can give some measure of your Twitter following, you should be aware of who they are and where. The who Focus on...
October 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Hoax image of #occupyWallStreet goes viral on...
Here is an interesting example of how you must not believe everything you see on social media. The image looks pretty convincing, but as soon I saw it I started thinking suspiciously - “Where did they get such a high vantage point?” …. and the answer is Google Maps. The story has been shared on Facebook over 22000 times, yet it is a hoax. See the image source on Google Maps...
1 tag
FREE Omingraffle stencils for Drupal 7 and...
Omnigraffle is without doubt one of the best planning and visualisation tools available. I use if for wire framing software projects, including Drupal. It enables even novice users to rapidly produce impressive imagery to communicate complex concepts to clients and helps avoid mis-interpretation. I recently discovered on Graffletopia, the community driven library of stencils for Omnigraffle,...
1 tag
Thanks @webchick and @drupalize.me - Free...
Less than a month ago I identified a significant opportunity to improve Drupal’s growth. Many users struggle with the concept of patches and would readily fix bugs, provide improvements, contribute more if they understood how. Rather than write a lengthy blog post I thought it more beneficial to engage the power of the Drupal community. Angie Byron for years has been a Drupal Documentation...
1 tag
Show this to your kids, Think Different narrated...
Thought provoking stuff, hard to watch today.
September 2011
15 posts
2 tags
From Vienna to Manchester - fostering the...
Sebastian Siemssen is one of the maintainers of Jake Strawn’s hugely popular Omega Theme. I met both of them at DrupalCon London and quickly realised these guys were forging ahead with some innovative responsive design approaches for Drupal. Fast forward a few weeks and Sebastien is now at Livelink’s offices working alongside our team advising on a major effort to streamline our...
1 tag
Drupal agency NodeOne takes stand against...
With the enviable growth of Drupal into enterprise, education, government comes less desirable consequences. Swedish Drupal agency NodeOne have been served a cease and desist notification from EPiServer, a proprietary CMS, to un-publish their comparison between Drupal and other CMSs. In September NodeOne published the article comparing Drupal against several proprietary products (EPiServer,...
1 tag
Drupal agency NodeOne takes stand against...
With the enviable growth of Drupal into enterprise, education, government comes less desirable consequences. Swedish Drupal agency NodeOne have been served a cease and desist notification from EPiServer, a proprietary CMS, to un-publish their comparison between Drupal and other CMSs. In September NodeOne published the article comparing Drupal against several proprietary products (EPiServer,...
1 tag
Drupal agency NodeOne takes stand against...
With the enviable growth of Drupal into enterprise, education, government comes less desirable consequences. Swedish Drupal agency NodeOne have been served a cease and desist notification from EPiServer, a proprietary CMS, to un-publish their comparison between Drupal and other CMSs. In September NodeOne published the article comparing Drupal against several proprietary products (EPiServer,...
2 tags
Google Plus - was it worth it? Cost $585m -...
Google have released some interesting stats around Google+, their latest venture into social media. And this time they seem to have got it right. This week Google+ went into public beta so expect adoption to accelerate. Whilst there was an initial surge of activity on the platform, things have expectedly cooled down. Indeed from what I can see most Drupalists are still hanging out back on...
2 tags
Klout Google Chrome Extension
If you take Twitter seriously, evaluating who you follow matters. Klout score is a good rule of thumb, but typically you have to visit the site to establish this. Google Chrome users can enhance their experience of Twitter.com with a Klout Chrome Extension. It presents the Klout score against all users in your stream along with a link to their Klout profile. Thanks to Matt Tucker for...
1 tag
Drupal Modules examples for Developers - The...
Since late 2009 Randy Fay has been heading up the Example Project on Drupal.org. The aim of the project is to provide module developers with highly documented best practice examples of how to approach common tasks in development. You can hear Randy talking about the Examples Project on Drupal Voices. Download here: http://drupal.org/project/examples
2 tags
Twitter Web Analytics available in weeks
I was interested to discover that some weeks ago Twitter acquired BackType. It appears they have been working away to create a new reporting platform for marketing professionals. “Twitter Web Analytics will be rolled out this week to a small pilot group of partners, and will be made available to all website owners within the next few weeks. We’re also committed to releasing a Twitter Web...
1 tag
What is Drupal? A brilliant short video by Drupal...
As Drupal’s momentum escalates, more people begin to ask this question. The Brighton Area Drupal Association was awarded one of the first Drupal Association Community Cultivation Grants. This short film is how they spent the grant. I think you will agree, it was well spent. Source: What is Drupal? - Brighton Area Drupal Association
2 tags
Stroring Drupal Entities in MongoDB
Just stumbled across the idea of storing Drupal 7.x Entities outside of MySQL to achieve significant performance improvements. There is a mention of this technique on Drupal Voices 135: Jeremy Andrews on Performance & Scalability Tools http://cyrve.com/mongodb http://drupalwatchdog.com/1/1/performance-scalability-drupal-7 ...
1 tag
Twitter Lists - an alternative to following people...
The trouble with following more than 300 people who tweet reasonably often is you start missing really important posts. Twitter lists offer a way to watch groups of people without actually following. By only following people you really need to keep a daily watch on, adding everyone else in lists (and unfollowing them), you are less likely to miss vital tweets. Equally a list could contain a...
1 tag
So what did the Acquians ever do for us?...
Yesterday Acquia announced that “Drupal-Acquia together have been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Visionaries quadrant of both the 2011 Magic Quadrant for Externally Facing Social Software and the Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace.”. This raises Drupal’s visibility and acceptance particularly amongst the top 10,000 global businesses. This recognition has...
2 tags
Manchester Drupal Lunch Up - Who's in?
So it seems I am not alone in finding evenings, paricularly Fridays impossible to handle for the North West Drupal user group. Mark Hope of accessadvertising.co.uk has the same issues. What if I were to propose a shorter lunch break style casual Drupal meet up in central Manchester? Would anyone be interested? We could elect a cafe and just socialise, talk Drupal and share knowledge, advice....
2 tags
Visualisation - What does your Twitter account...
I care about what impression I emit online, especially Twitter. Tagxedo.com enables you to create visualisations from Twitter accounts. The image above is one such example, based on a tag cloud concept, highlighting commonly used terms. Try it on your account, are you happy with the impression it gives of you? Next time you Tweet, pause, consider what impression it will leave people of you.
3 tags
Responsive web design and Drupal
What is a responsive design? As one of the leading innovators in responsive design Ethan Marcotte explains it is composed of three distinct parts. A flexible grid. Flexible images. Or more specifically, images that work in a flexible context (whether fluid themselves, or perhaps controlled via overflow). Media queries. The final layer of a responsive design, media queries optimize the...
August 2011
19 posts
1 tag
Warning: Fake Twitter emails - "Your Account has...
Just received an email reporting that my main @pdjohnson account had been suspended due to ‘aggressive following and tweeting’. Having spent over 2 years carefully building my following I was of course initially gutted. Reading the message on my iPhone it seemed fairly convincing, if on reflection the English was not quite perfect. However, upon logging in to Twitter all seems to be...
2 tags
Announcing Drupalcon Munich 2012
Today sees the announcement of the next European Drupalcon. For more details visit http://munich2012.drupal.org
2 tags
#DrupalCon London - The Twitter Hall of Fame -...
The list below is available as a Twitter List ‘Drupal Sessions’. This article was collated by @pdjohnson - Head of development for @livelinkuk , a Drupal agency in Manchester. The following people are presenting at DrupalCon 2011. The links are to their Twitter accounts so you may connect with them. Adam Kalsey Al Croston Alex Dergachev Amitai Burstein Andy Stynen Andrea...
2 tags
THURS 25TH #Drupalcon Sessions - Twitter directory...
[ Tuesdays Sessions ] [ Wednesday 24th Sessions ] The list below is available as a Twitter List ‘Drupal Sessions’. This article was collated by @pdjohnson - Head of development for @livelinkuk , a Drupal agency in Manchester. Most DrupalCon London session presenters are on Twitter. Below is a list of Thursdays sessions with links to the respective presenters Twitter accounts. ...
2 tags
#DrupalCon London - The Twitter Hall of Fame -...
The list below is available as a Twitter List ‘Drupal Sessions’. This article was collated by @pdjohnson - Head of development for @livelinkuk , a Drupal agency in Manchester. The following people are presenting at DrupalCon 2011. The links are to their Twitter accounts so you may connect with them. Adam Kalsey Al Croston Alex Dergachev Amitai Burstein Andy Stynen Andrea...
2 tags
THURS 25TH #Drupalcon Sessions - Twitter directory...
[ Tuesdays Sessions ] [ Wednesday 24th Sessions ] The list below is available as a Twitter List ‘Drupal Sessions’. This article was collated by @pdjohnson - Head of development for @livelinkuk , a Drupal agency in Manchester. Most DrupalCon London session presenters are on Twitter. Below is a list of Thursdays sessions with links to the respective presenters Twitter accounts. ...
2 tags
Wed 24th #DrupalCon Sessions - Twitter directory...
[ Tuesdays Sessions ] [ Thursdays Sessions ] Below is a list of all the Twitter Accounts for presenters of sessions at DrupalCon London Wednesday 24th August. The list below is available as a Twitter List ‘Drupal Sessions’. This article was collated by @pdjohnson - Head of development for @livelinkuk , a Drupal agency in Manchester. Keynote: The Future of Social Media - A...
2 tags
Tues 23rd #DrupalCon Sessions - Twitter directory...
[ Wednesday 24th Sessions ] [ Thursdays Sessions ] The list below is available as a Twitter List ‘Drupal Sessions’. This article was collated by @pdjohnson - Head of development for @livelinkuk , a Drupal agency in Manchester. Most DrupalCon London session presenters are on Twitter. Below is a list of Tuesdays sessions with links to the respective presenters Twitter accounts. ...
1 tag
Drupalcon Europe grows 50% in 12 months!
Copenhagen DrupalCon saw 1200 attendees, today DrupalCon London is preparing for the arrival of 1800 developers, designers, business leaders and guest presenters. Significantly DrupalCon London represents a 50% growth in 12 months. This is further evidence of Drupals growing momentum, now powering over 2% of web site. Its going to be one hell of a big group photo tomorrow...
2 tags
#DrupalCon London - The Twitter Hall of Fame -...
The following people are presenting at DrupalCon 2011. The links are to their Twitter accounts so you may connect with them. Adam Kalsey Al Croston Alex Dergachev Amitai Burstein Andy Stynen Andrea Pescettial Angel Brown Angie Byron Antonio De Marco Barry Jaspan Benjamin Koether Brad Bowman Christopher Gervais Chris Pliakas Claes Gyllensvärd Dante Murphy Damien Tournoud David...
2 tags
THURS 25TH #DRUPALCON SESSIONS - TWITTER DIRECTORY...
[ Tuesdays Sessions ] [ Wednesday 24th Sessions ] The list below is available as a Twitter List ‘Drupal Sessions’. Most DrupalCon London session presenters are on Twitter. Below is a list of Thursdays sessions with links to the respective presenters Twitter accounts. Keynote: Designing the Sustainable Web The Web Standardistas Content Staging and Deployments in Drupal 7 ...
2 tags
Wed 24th #DrupalCon Sessions - Twitter directory...
Below is a list of all the Twitter Accounts for presenters of sessions at DrupalCon London Wednesday 24th August. Keynote: The Future of Social Media - A Historical Perspective Tom Standage Building and Maintaining a Distribution in Drupal 7 with Features Antonio De Marco, Andrea Pescetti Minnesota Usability Study : What Do Users Have to Say About Drupal 7? Angie Byron, Brad Bowman,...
2 tags
Tues 23rd #DrupalCon Sessions - Twitter directory...
The list below is available as a Twitter List ‘Drupal Sessions’. Most DrupalCon London session presenters are on Twitter. Below is a list of the sessions with links to the presenters Twitter accounts. The Path to a Mobile Drupal: Techniques, Tools and Failure John Albin Wilkins Hollywood Storytelling and the Drupal Development Process George DeMet Living, Breathing, Drupal: The...
1 tag
Drupalcon London - there's an iPhone App for that
Just started to plan my schedule for Drupalcon. Delighted to discover there is an iPhone App (by Kasper Christensen and Jeff Veit) based on Chicago DrupalCon code by Palantir.
2 tags
Facebook harvesting your smartphone address book -...
As each day passes I come closer to cancelling my Facebook account. This one might just tip me over the edge. I am certainly removing it from my iPhone. Try visiting https://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/?sk=phonebook as see what information you have unwittingly given Facebook. OK, this was not public, but are you happy that they have this data? On the right hand side there appears to be a...
1 tag
Drupalcon London - there's an iPhone App for that
Just started to plan my schedule for Drupalcon. Delighted to discover there is an iPhone App.