The study of 1,500 consumers found that 60 percent of Facebook fans and 79 percent of Twitter followers are more likely to recommend those brands since becoming a fan or follower.

The most popular reason people follow brands in social media is to receive discounts, but there were also many people who responded that they follow as a customer of the brand and to show their support of it.

Read the posts at WebProNews and Econsultancy.

If you can access the same files remotely (when away from your permanent office) no matter where you are is a relief. Even more so: access to those files and docs regardless of the device you’re using is possible too.

If you get a new computer, and already use cloud services for storing your image, documents, music files, or email, you will be surprised to find out that there are barely any files you’ll have to transfer.

Heres our selection of the best cloud based services:

• Online storage – Dropbox
• Email and documents – Google Apps
• Project Management – Basecamp
• Sharing photos online – Flickr
• Sharing thoughts online - Twitter
• Sharing bookmarks online – Delicious

What we used 6 months ago, are different to what I have recommended here. I’m looking forward to seeing what services we’re going to be using in the next few months!

Put simply, cloud computing means that your computing resources live outside of your computer or computer room.

The Cloud is being touted as the key driver behind a new emerging economy based on lower costs and higher productivity than before: an economy holding great potential for smaller, agile businesses

Cloud Architectures address key difficulties surrounding large-scale data processing:

• In traditional data processing it is difficult to get as many machines as an application needs.
• It is difficult to get the machines when one needs them.
• It is difficult to distribute and co-ordinate a large-scale job on different machines, run processes on them, and provision another machine to recover if one machine fails.
• It is difficult to auto- scale up and down based on dynamic workloads.
• It is difficult to get rid of all those machines when the job is done

Cloud Architectures solve such difficulties

• Applications built on Cloud Architectures run in-the-cloud where the physical location of the infrastructure is determined by the provider.
• They take advantage of simple APIs of Internet-accessible services that scale on-demand, that are industrial-strength, where the complex reliability and scalability logic of the underlying services remains implemented and hidden inside-the-cloud.

Business Benefits of Cloud Architectures

There are some clear business benefits to building applications using Cloud Architectures:

• Almost zero upfront infrastructure investment: If you have to build a large-scale system it may cost a fortune to invest in real estate, hardware (racks, machines, routers, backup power supplies), hardware management (power management, cooling), and operations personnel. Because of the upfront costs, it would typically need several rounds of management approvals before the project could even get started. Now, with utility-style computing, there is no fixed cost or startup cost.
• Just-in-time Infrastructure: In the past, if you got famous and your systems or your infrastructure did not scale you became a victim of your own success. Conversely, if you invested heavily and did not get famous, you became a victim of your failure. By deploying applications in-the-cloud with dynamic capacity management software architects do not have to worry about pre-procuring capacity for large- scale systems. Thesolutions are low risk because you scale only as you grow. Cloud Architectures can relinquish infrastructure as quickly as you got them in the first place (in minutes).
• More efficient resource utilization: System administrators usually worry about hardware procuring (when they run out of capacity) and better infrastructure utilization (when they have excess and idle capacity). With Cloud Architectures they can manage resources more effectively and efficiently by having the applications request and relinquish resources only what they need (on-demand).
• Usage-based costing: Utility-style pricing allows billing the customer only for the infrastructure that has been used. The customer is not liable for the entire infrastructure that may be in place. This is a subtle difference between desktop applications and web applications. A desktop application or a traditional client-server application runs on customer’s own infrastructure (PC or server), whereas in a Cloud Architectures application, the customer uses a third party infrastructure and gets billed only for the fraction of it that was used.
• Potential for shrinking the processing time: Parallelization is the one of the great ways to speed up processing. If one compute-intensive or data- intensive job that can be run in parallel takes 500 hours to process on one machine, with Cloud Architectures, it would be possible to spawn and launch 500 instances and process the same job in 1 hour. Having available an elastic infrastructure provides the application with the ability to exploit parallelization in a cost-effective manner reducing the total processing time.

Examples of Cloud Architectures

There are plenty of examples of applications that could utilize the power of Cloud Architectures. These range from back-office bulk processing systems to web applications. Some are listed below:

• Document processing – Convert hundreds of thousands of documents from Microsoft Word to PDF, OCR millions of pages/images into raw searchable text
• Image processing – Create thumbnails or low resolution variants of an image, resize millions of images
• Video encoding
• Create an index of web crawl data
• Data mining – Perform search over millions of records
• Back-office applications (in financial, insurance or retail sectors)
• Log analysis -Analyze and generate daily/weekly reports
• Perform nightly automated builds of source code repository every night in parallel
• Automated Unit Testing and Deployment Testing
• Testing (functional, load, quality) on different deployment configurations every night
• Websites for conferences or events (Super Bowl, sports tournaments)
• Promotion, Viral or Seasonal Websites – websites that only run at a certain time of year

Services offering cloud hosting and storage:

• Windows Azure
• Rackspace cloud
• Amazon Web Services

Below are a selection of free services that enable businesses to compete for contract opportunities linked to the London 2012 Games and other major public and private sector buying organisations.

With a particular focus on supply chain opportunities, many of them act as a brokerage service, matching buyers with potential suppliers.

Where to find out about contracts:
Office of Government Commerce www.ogc.gov.uk
Purchase and Supply Agency – www.pasa.nhs.uk
Government Opportunities – www.supply2.gov.uk
Tenders Electronic Daily – www.ted.europa.eu
Partnerships UK – www.partnershipsuk.org.uk
Business Link – www.businesslink.gov.uk
2012 Olympic Games – www.competefor.com
Buying Solutions (Supplier Zone) – www.buyingsolutions.gov.uk

Business Link will be giving access to focused business support through their network, the aim of this will help to boost the long–term competitiveness of your business. This support is free and will help focus and strengthen your business for the long-term.

Now this is the ecommerce application that everyone was waiting for, and to be open-sourced, meaning free to install, no licence required, even better!

Magento 1.3 feature list (PDF) is all that customers will need for their online store, and easy for developers and agencies to sell as part of their product family.

MAGENTO COMMUNITY NEEDS LOVE FROM VARIEN
However, I feel that Varien are ignoring important feedback provided by its users, after all there have been over 1 million downloads – so each version is very well tested by the community.

With Varien listening and monitoring what is being said about Magento will lead to a stronger, more powerful and flexible platform for all owners and users to enjoy. This currently isn’t happening.

There are lots of frustrating quirks and ‘Magento-isms’ to the application that are quite easy to debug, being based on the PHP zend framework. However, they still remain on each release, as a developer you just have to be aware of installation or database issues from past experience.

Currently bugs, issues and even ‘how do I’ questions are being left open on the Magento forum, ie: not being answered by moderators. This I feel is rather sad for a product that clearly has huge potential.

For example:
» Reduce heavy load javascript in the headers
» Optimise the code – Magento is very resource intensive
» Less demand on server memory

Many many more at the Community Roadmap

WHY BOTHER?
As the community has to fend for itself (although the forum always says 1000 users online), you will find that a lot of users actually keep fixes and workarounds to themselves, rather than sharing fixes on the forum. Perhaps the feeling ‘why should I bother, if no one is listening?’ attitude?

CUT THE FORUM NOISE
Their are a lot of questions on the forum that are the same, and some threads that go off in a different direction. Moderation and slimming down the unnecessary content is required.

PUSH FOR EXTENSION EXPERIMENTATION!
I would also like to see more experimentation with Magento extensions over at Magento Connect. Currently there are some ‘nice-to-have’ features members or partners have added. However, more CMS integration would be great, like with WordPress, there is currently a Magebridge extension that allows you to share databases and content, but it’s still early days. I recommend Varien focus on getting the existing features in the next release (1.4?) stable before committing to any new features.

At the moment, anyone can experiment, but again there’s no support or advice when you require it, unless you hire a Magento solution partner to help. Costly.

VARIEN SUPPORT
You can get support from the Magento Enterprise edition which was released this April (2009). This version provides a service agreement with Varien and starts at £5,500 per year. However, the difference between a free model and per annum basis is huge, and one of the main ideas behind the open-source movement is that developers and programmers contribute towards improving the core code of the application.

POSITIVE STEPS
A positive step forward is that Varien have transferred the development of the roadmap to the Community Advisory Board. Through direct involvement with the community the CAB will be able manage and supervise the roadmap more efficiently, more openly and more cordially. Link to Roadmap of Magento.

That’s good news. However, it is very, very sad that Mageno has so far completely ignored interacting wiith the community – there are no team members in the forum any more. Bug reports are ignored and not commented on or just closed without any explanation.

I would really like to see Magento proving that it is listening and working with the community. More Mage-camps and workshops please.

Magento feels like how WordPress was a few years ago, (good, but could be great!). Magento has some killer features that still prove to be shaky..

Varien will continue to offer an application that will be a few years behind in development if they choose to look away from a community that is sharing very valuable feedback.

The company’s reasoning for endless beta cycles has never been clearly explained, and Google always insisted the tag would be removed once the product was ready. I suspect Google’s motivation for beta tagging is a combination of:

• It reminded users that the web application was experimental and undergoing development.
• It lowered user expectations of early web systems and gave us a pleasant surprise to find fully-functional online products.
• Version numbers rarely have much meaning when applied to web applications and services. Unlike shrink-wrapped disk-distributed software, web solutions can be incrementally improved on a daily basis. Few people, other than the developers, will care if it’s version 7 or 57.

However, Google has finally recognised that the “beta” label has different connotations in the business world and it could be damaging their prospects. Many business users are put off because they associate the term with incomplete or untested software.

It is possible that other Google products will follow the example set by Chrome. The web browser had a beta period of just 100 days and is already at version 2, even though it was only released in September 2008. Could Google’s beta habit be over?

Has Google’s use of beta labels ever confused, or put off any of your clients?

All these services are ‘cloud based‘ meaning you can log on and access them anywhere in the world, giving the potential to work wherever, whenever you need to.

Why we like them? There are a number of reasons why they have been our favourite online services for a while – Increased productivity, no licence fees for expensive software, always on, access anywhere, powerful community features, and takes the headache of having to write your own code for these services:

1. Basecamp http://basecamphq.com – Basecamp is the leading web-based project collaboration tool. Focusing on communication and collaboration, this takes the hastle away from project management, where you can create to do lists, add milestones, share files, and message entire teams working on a project so everyone is up to speed.

2. Google documents http://docs.google.com/ – Our files and reports would be in a real mess without Gdocs! Think of it as an online Microsoft Office suite, docs, excel, powerpoint, and even surveys. You can create as many documents as you like, send a link to colleagues so they can collaborate on the same report, for example. There is a full revision history, something not available on a desktop publishing software.

3. Twitter http://www.twitter.com/ – Without Twitter the world would be a much bigger place. The site that allows you to update your status, share links to interesting web sites, and even breaking news is an invaluable resource to a small business or freelancer. I have successfully promoted our business using this network to new and existing clients so they are always aware of our new projects and developments. No day on Twitter is the same as the each other, with trending topics and current affairs being discussed by a global community.

4. Flickr http://www.flickr.com/ – This community is all about photos, that you have taken, and also being able to search for tagged photos, and browse photos from your friends. Whether its a conference, party or family holiday you can always find colourful, inspirational photographs that you can download or comment on. Flickr has created quite a few web celebrities, by amateur photogrpahers attracting millions of views and comments to their work. A good resource for finding stock images too, if you need to for a current or future project – like Google image search, but more fun!

5. Upcoming http://www.upcoming.org – Even ubergeeks have to leave their offices now and then, this is why upcoming, an events listing site is so useful. Upcoming is a community for discovering and sharing events. It can help you find things to do, and discover what your friends are doing or going to. Use it for networking at local or even international events, view who is going, and add yourself to an event to let everyone know you are attending too!

One thing in common for all these applications is that they bring people together, sharing ideas, knowledge and information. And they are all have free packages!

All the services are password protected and safe from prying eyes. All accounts include SSL security – the same as online banks. The option to you is whether you wish to offer public information to your friends and the public, it’s always up to you.

All these tools are relatively new still, and we look forward to seeing how they evolve around the people that use these apps on a daily basis. Being owned and managed by large corporations means they can adapt and add features requested from their community relatively quickly.

What are your favourite online services and applications?

Using open source software means you are not tied into any licence agreement with us or any other third parties. If you wish us to keep the content management or ecommerce platform up to date, its a very straight-forward software upgrade. Open source also means the software is contributed by the community of developers like us, who write plugins or extensions to make the software flexible and scalable like never before.

All the solutions are web based, meaning there is no software to install on your machine, so you can access the admin area of your site and edit pages wherever you are in the world!

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS (CMS)

• CUSTOM: Hand written custom code, unique to your sites requirements.
  
• STANDARD: WordPress – Excellent admin for managing site, very powerful CMS and publishing platform, many plugins to make integration with third party sites, rich media and social networks a breeze.
  
• LIGHT: CushyCMS – Easy to use, lightweight, unilimited users, unlimited pages, no training required.
  

» CMS prices start from £1,000, depending on site features, and flexibility of editing your site content.

ECOMMERCE

• CUSTOM: Hand written custom code integrated into new or existing web site, , unique to your sites requirements.
  
• STANDARD: Magento – Super powerful CMS and ecommerce platform, for up to 1000 products and beyond. Over 1 million downloads. Being adopted by some big international companies as they realise the potential.
  
• LIGHT: Shopify or WP-ecommerce (using WordPress) – Adding these extensions to a site adds ecommerce functionality seamlessly. For up to 100 products.
  

» Ecommerce prices start from £1,000, depending on how number of products, and the payment provider, ie: Paypal, Google Checkout or a merchant account, like Protx.

Not sure about what you are looking for? Don’t worry, our first job when we talk to new clients is always to listen and then devise a web strategy on how we can make your web project a complete success. Contact us

Before we start any sexy, fancy design, what we want to consider is “is the structure and layout of the web interface easy to understand?”, “does it follow how users think it works in their minds?” This way of working allows us to understand our users “mental models” in their minds, in relation to how the site should be physically structured.

By learning and using this feedback in the web design, we can add to the value of the user experience on a web site, and turn this into an enjoyable experience for our users.

We’ve had an example published on the wireframes website which summarises how we used interactive prototypes worked on a recent project with East Hampshire District Council.

Using interactive prototypes allowed us to confirm the areas of the site that were successful in terms of users being able to achieve the tasks (we were asking them in a user testing interview) successfully and quickly.

More about the way we worked is on the article. We hope you find it interesting.

Image of the interactive prototypes for easthampshire.org