Important rules for limited companies

If you run a limited company, and have a website, this is important news. From the 20th of January 2007, the law requires you to display this information on your website:

• your company's place of registration and the number with which it is registered,
• the address of its registered office,
• if your limited company is exempt from the obligation to use the word "limited" as part of its name, you must indicate the fact that it is a limited company.

Here's more information:

DTI Information on Companies Act 2006 (Microsoft Word document)

If you need help with editing your site to include this information, please get in touch with us today to ensure that you comply with the law.

Add comments as you browse

A new service called Diigo, which – in all seriousness – stands for "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff" allows you to add comments as you browse. It works similarly to bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us. Where it really comes into its own, however, is web annotation: the ability to highlight text and images, or add ‘sticky notes’ (a bit like online Post-its) to any webpage.

Before we look at annotation though, there are few things that Diigo does with bookmarks that make it stand out. It’s like the Swiss army knife of web browsing.

• You can store all your bookmarks online so you are no longer tied to the browser on one computer when it comes to finding information that you’ve bookmarked. Additionally, Diigo will store a copy of the page as it was when you viewed it. That means no more going back to a page to look something up again only to find that it’s not there any more.
• If you are already using Del.icio.us or another similar service, there’s no need to stop. You can set this clever web application to simultaneously add a page to Del.icio.us when you add it to Diigo.
• If you’ve read something that perhaps you would like to add to your blog simply right-click and then choose ‘blog this’.
• There are a number of other very useful features on the right-click menu. For example if you read something you think someone else would like to see you can right-click on it and then email the page directly to them. Or if you highlight it the Diigo menu appears automatically and just the highlighted text is sent, and of course added to your list of bookmarks automatically.

As mentioned above, the really exciting feature here is web annotation. If you’re carrying out online research, or perhaps collaborating on a project, it’s a very powerful tool. Imagine looking at your website and deciding what you need your web editor to update. With Diigo all you have to do is highlight some text and add a note telling them what the text should be changed to.

You can keep your highlights and notes private so they’re just for you to see or allow other users to see and interact with them. You can even choose whether or not you see anybody else’s notes if you don’t want to be interrupted while browsing.

Try it out at and let us know if you come up with any other uses.

Diigo

Rechord deface York Minster!

Christmas is coming, but we've not been idle. We’ve been helping the Church of England to deface York Minster. In a press launch for their Advent Stories website, we were asked to create a slide which would be projected onto a 20ft screen stuck to the side of the ancient building. This was to advertise the fruits of our combined endeavours, the Church of England’s first ever official online Advent calendar. Sadly there is no actual chocolate hidden behind the doors, Willy Wonka style. There are, however, stories (ranging from the sad to the entertaining) of what Christmas means to people from all walks of life in Britain today.

See it here:
Advent Stories

The more observant among you may have noticed that there are no doors for the 1st and 2nd of December, but this is not a mistake. We have been assured that Advent does not actually start until the fourth Sunday before Christmas – something we didn’t know despite having a Theology degree and two vicar parents between us. We really should have listened harder at Sunday school...

Wireless net access anywhere at no charge...?

There was a buzz in the rechord studio (no, not a fly seeking refuge from the strange weather, just a palpable excitement) when we heard about what FON are doing.

This new company, it is said, may become bigger than Skype. The way their amazing offer works is:

• You pay for their special wireless router, a snip at 15 euros
• You agree to let any other FON member use your connection
• You get to use any other FON member's connection, without spending a bean

Go here to find out more:
FON

Rechord and Scope

We are now working with SCOPE on the redesign of several sections for their website. SCOPE are a charity who campaign for equal rights for disabled people, so we are very pleased to be working with them. We strongly believe that making a site accessible for people and devices of all sorts doesn't mean that it has to look boring.

The lovely Nigel Tuckett, who manages their web presence, was impressed with our experience of creating websites which are accessible by people with all sorts of disabilities.

There's gold in them there forums

How communities and businesses are helping each other out, online

The second part in our series of posts on online communities is about how they are actually benefiting business, and vice versa. Let's pause now for a minute, while we listen for the sound of Marx stirring in his coffin. Actually, it's not as sinister as it sounds (the concept, not the dead economist) - there's no exploitation going on. Forums attached to business websites are becoming more and more popular, and can be the great leveller.

There are a number of exceptional benefits to be had from a properly functioning community on a website. For a start, on the side of the organisation, a good group of people regularly saying interesting or helpful things will bring new visitors back to your site again and again. If you are offering any kind of product that needs support, having a message board or forum can cut down on your support costs as users give each other advice on how they overcame problems, or you can post advice about common support issues. It's also a good way to demonstrate that you can deal with criticism and respond to problems quickly and effectively. You can scour the forums for positive feedback which can be used (with permission) in your marketing materials and promotions.

On the side of the user, browsing an organisation's forum can quickly tell you whether this is an organisation worth dealing with or buying from. At the very least, simpy having a forum demonstrates an open attitude, and self-confidence in the product or service being offered. You can also search for quick answers to problems you may have been having, or find novel ways of using what is being offered which may be of benefit.

If you are convinced by the benefits, and are considering starting your own community, you should only do it if you have enough time to give to the project. A neglected community does not send out a good message. You need to make sure that you moderate it properly and update it regularly to send out the all-important message of professionalism, and keep the site secure.

Contact rechord if you need any more advice on this subject, at no charge. We could chew anybody's ears off for hours about it; we are just passionate about online communities.

Make your website better for 50p

Although the web contains an awful lot of text, it remains a strongly visual medium. However, most sites contain little in the way of visual imagery. People shy away from using high quality original photos or illustrations because of the perception that they are very expensive.

Those times are now past. Enter Fotolia.

Fotolia has almost 2 million high quality photos which can be purchased for $1 (at time of typing, just over 50p). Even buying one or two can make your website much more appealing to visitors, instantly.

Fotolia

Here's an additional brilliant thing about Fotolia; if you're a pro or a keen amateur photographer, you can submit your own photos, illustrations or 3D models for sale and earn up to 50% commission.

No need to check your voicemail ever again

Checking voicemail: a necessary evil. But still more annoying than Bruce Forsyth. So the news that we are about to see the back of it comes with quite some excitement!

Thanks to Spinvox, there can be no more scrabbling for pens trying to take down phone numbers said incredibly quickly. The service uses some mystery technology which turns a voicemail message into a text message and sends it to your mobile phone. It can also copy the full message to you in an email.

They are currently providing a free 7 day trial of the service. We think it will save you at least half an hour a month. Here's a link for you to sample it:

Spinvox

Send big files easily

If you're trying to get a big file to somebody fast, email just won't cut it. If you need to deliver data over to a continental friend, sending it by courier is not really an option either. The answer? A supremely easy-to-use site, YouSendIt.

Just put in the email address, choose the file you want to send and press that button. Easier than pie.

You Send It

How to get to number 1 without a record deal

The power of online communities, part one

What's the connection between a Will Smith film, a 90 year old Hungarian short story, and an internet phenomenon?

It's the theory that anybody on earth can be connected to anybody else through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than 5 intermediaries, according to Wikipedia.

This inspired the website sixdegrees.com way back in 1996. The way it works is that you link to your friends, and in turn you are linked to friends of friends and so on creating a network of people which you can send messages to.

A story that illustrates the power of this networking phenomenon is the rise to fame of the UK, band, the Arctic Monkeys. They built their following using the site Myspace. In a relatively short space of time they had a fanbase of thousands who had downloaded their songs from the site. Then, when their first single was released earlier in the Autumn, they became the first band to get to number 1 in the charts without a record deal.

It's not only fame-hungry rock stars who can use this kind of promotion. It's a great way to link up with people who will be interested in what you do. There are now a whole lot of different specialist sites of this kind, such as ones for business (Linked In), for music lovers (Myspace) or for social networking (Friendster, Facebook and Bebo).

Aren't you curious to find out who you might be linked to?

Six Degrees of Separation
Myspace
Linked In
Friendster
Facebook
Bebo

Free internet classifieds

The curious phenomenon of Craigslist

"Craigslist is like a rummage sale with only the things you want - no worn, outdated clothes, no broken knickknacks, no tacky hand-me-down prints that cost somebody 50 cents a million years ago... It's a great way to communicate to the world that you have something to offer, whether it's an apartment for rent or your old Baby Sitters' Club series to sell. Or you can put an entry in the Wanted section to find something specific."
-Sarah Anderson, PC Magazine.

What Ms Anderson neglects to mention is that the majority of the Craigslist site is totally free to use. It still looks like it was made by your geeky little brother in 1995, but then that's part of its charm.

Craigslist