Hull is not the first place you think of when you imagine a vibrant, innovative online, digital community. However, there are web-lovers, online evangelists, deisgners, developers and gamers, so I thought it was about time we embraced this, and more importantly encourage this community.

This has brought me to launch Hull Digital, a site which is dedicated to Kingston Upon Hull’s Digital Community. The site is going to focus on a number of key areas in the Hull area:

• Local news, events and happenings in the online world
• Online Web Applications
• Broadband
• Home and business computing
• Gadgets
• GPS and Geo Location
• And many more great topics!

If you are from the local area in East Yorkshire, and would like to contribute, then please do head on over to HullDigital.co.uk and get in touch, or at the very least, comment and contribute!

We’re currently planning our first meet up in January, so please spread the word!

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There has been some amazing news for the UK today – well done BT!

BT today announced plans to spend £1.5bn building a super-fast broadband network across the UK over the next four years.

The plan would connect 10m homes, around 40% of the UK, to a new fibre-optic based network and replace the copper wires that link most homes today.

This could, rather will, completely transform people’s internet experience, and finally give the UK the internet infrastructure it really needs to be on par with other areas of the world (Japan / Korea).

BT’s plan for faster broadband will involve laying fibre directly to new homes as they are built, called fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP). At other sites, it will lay fibre most of the way to the home, called fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC).

FTTP will provide the highest speeds, up to 100 megabits per second. FTTC, which is slower because of the copper wire link between cabinet and home, will initially offer up to 40Mbps.

100mb per second! Now we’re talking Can you imagine that sort of speed? Nope, neither can I, but I sure would like to experience it!

All good news then? This is why I am worried.

Well, erm, no. Not for us poor souls living in and around Hull. For those of you who don’t know our misery, just imagine this…… you can only have one broadband provider. Yep, one ISP. No choice. No competition. Well that my friends is what we suffer from here in Hull. Shocking, yes. Illegal? Personally, I think it is, and many thousands of people agree.

Karoo is the ISP of Kingston Communications, and not only are they our ONLY choice, they are also VERY expensive. Try a supposed 8mb line for £29.95 a month. Not exactly cutting edge value is it when many providers give all manner of other services for that amount.

So, a challenge to Karoo / KC…. what are you doing in regard to matching BTs investment? I really would like fibre optics coming to Hull, so then we could perhaps attract some bigger businesses – ok, it’s not the be all and end all but it wold sure help.

I’m going to try and speak to a Karoo spokes person in the next couple of days and will post my findings. I may try for a video too.

UPDATE – Rory Cellan-Jones on the BBC Tech blog has a good post and some interesting comments.

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My advice would be to take the opportunity to try Firefox, Safari or if you really want (or are restricted by your IT department) upgrade to IE7. To be honest, you should be fine for a good while, but could run into trouble if 37signals change things radically in the coming months. (Being really honest, IE6 / 7 is a poor substitute to Firefox or Safari anyway!).

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An effective website is a critical part of the marketing mix, whether you are a freelancer or a big corporate company.

So lets check out the first site!

www.vitaaudio.com

Vita Audio is a company which was born out Ruark, a well reknown British speaker manufacturer. They market a number of Digital Audio or DAB products, and to my mind, really focus on ease of use, design and critically sound quality.

I think they manage to convey a very fresh and clean look to their brand and products. The navigation is particularly nice, with clear tabs at the top, and the quality of the pictures makes seeing the actual product nice and easy.

I’m impressed with the way that they have kept everything very clear, no reversing out of colours with the text and also have clear calls to action on all pages. The whole site makes looking at, choosing and possibly buying a product an enjoyable process. On the product pages they have some very slick animation pointing out key features.

They have an excellent section on the site devoted to reviews from big names magazines and other publications – it makes it very clear that all of the products are very well thought of – it inspires a great deal of confidence and trust.

So, all good? Not quite. There are a few things I would have liked to see.

• A little more of a ‘human’ side to the company – people behind the scenes, perhaps the designer, a person who makes it and certainly the person who is likely to answer the phone if you ring through
• A few more downloads would be nice – perhaps some high resolution wallpapers, or maybe a video or two showing the process of the products being made
• They could also easily provide a few custom badges for people to use on their sites / blogs showing they are Vita Audio fans
• Audio / sound! A pretty important part of the equation! I’m not sure how feasible it would be, but perhaps an audio file of one of their products, compared to traditional radio (this is open to many interpretations but I just think they are missing a trick here)
• Lastly, a newsletter sign up form

So, overall, a 7/10 from me on this site (maybe an 8). I think that the vast majority of visitors will get a good sense of the product and the brand and would be encouraged to buy (Amazon is cheaper though ).

UPDATE – I know what you’re thinking, we need more pictures / screen shots! Well, I’ll let you into a little secret. I got so brassed off with trying to get them to format correctly, I deleted most of them in total frustration! There you go, that’s off my chest now. Deeeeppppp breathe

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One of the goals I set myself this year was to attend a conference focused on the web. The Future of Web Apps was one of the ones I had my eye on and it looks like I will be attending. Web Apps for me, are playing a more important role in my work / personal life than ever before. The cloud is the future!

Do let me know if you are likely to be there, it would be great to meet up.

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I had heard about it last year and had taken a look, forgotten about it and that was that. The good news is that they have been working hard on making it better. Much better. How about getting a full screen 3D display of photos like this below?

Put simply, you can get a PicLens plugin / browser add on for a number of the most popular browsers as shown here:

(I’ve installed the FireFox one which was a doddle). Once you have done that and restarted your browser, you then see a PicLens logo appear top right in the browser, and if it is illuminated blue, it is a site that supports PicLens. Here you go:

When you see this, you can click on the logo and PicLens launches giving an amazing 3D scrolling media experience! There are many sites that now support it, so have a look! (flickr pictures look incredible when you activate PicLens – easily the best way to see your photostream!).

There’s one more great feature ……..

WordPress Plugin! – You should see a small PicLens prompt under this post, so if you click on this, you should launch PicLens Lite and see the photos within the post in a slick slideshow. Your readers will need to have Adobe Flash Player 9 or the PicLens browser add on.

So, what are you waiting for, click below and check it out!

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It competed head on with a product from AstraZeneca (one of the BIG boys) and stil does to my knowledge. That product is called EMLA cream and is very similar, but has been around for longer and uses older technology.

The reason I am blogging about this, is that Dan kindly sent me a link to a new website that AstraZeneca have launched, called ihateneedles.co.uk Again, a pretty good url, very much in the same vein as needlephobia.co.uk (an unintentional pun). What interested me, is that they have launched a video competition for people to upload their experiences of using EMLA cream – you can see the page below.

So, what do I think about this from an online marketing perspective?

1. Hats off to them for giving this a try
2. Looks VERY YouTube inspired!
3. Seems well laid out and easy to use
4. Great idea getting some UGC (user generated content)

There is one HUGE big hairy problem though – 4 videos. That is it, and that my friends is not good. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, so it is not like it is a new site. It’s a great idea, but it looks like it is a BIG flop. I would be interested to know how they have actually promoted this, so if anyone from AZ is reading this, then put me in touch with the brand manager – I’d love to speak to them.

A couple of other quick observations

They are running google ads against the word needlephobia (the Smith & Nephew site came up as the number one position unsurprisginly which is why they are probably not running ads on that keyword.

Finally, the site also has another page here. You have to name the needle!

So, if you are a little child, you can name the needle! Great fun! However, there is a tick box, saying that ‘I’m over 16 years old’. What 16+ year old in their right mind is going to want to name a needle?! I would hazard a guess there entry rate for this competition is a big fat zero. Doh.

So, 10 out of 10 for AZ trying something different, and it looks like a 3 out of 10 for how succesful it is. Saying that, the rest of the site for Healthcare Professionals and parents is pretty good and gives a load of information, so at least that opportunity is not wasted. In terms of the UGC and targeting kids, I think they need to have a rethink and try again.

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Pretty cool eh? They also do smaller badges for blog sidebars, so if you look over here in my sidebar, you should see mine. Anyway, big thumbs up from me on a cool service!

UPDATE – the blog sidebar badge is way better than I originally thought – click it, and it shows the widget above, which is extremely dynamic – you can contact me via email (even with it’s own captcha form), links to all my social sites, shows the latest blog posts … the list goes on. IMPRESSIVE!

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The fans:

And the pros:

There a number of things which really stood out for me:

1. The massive amount of digital cameras being used by the public to both take pics and video the stars
2. The massive amount of phones being used to record the event, both video and pics
3. The pro photographers taking shots and instantly sending them from their laptops via 3G to their editors or news agencies / showbiz agencies.

In fact, all this technology is available to anyone right now, and not for huge money. Even I, with my trusty iPhone, took a picture of Will Smith and emailed it to my flickr account, so that it instantly posted it on my blog. User generated content at its finest. The first major event where people recorded live footage using cameras happened during the horrific day when London came under attack from terrorists. Live footage was shot from camera phones. It is not a fact, that if a major news event happens, it is very, very likely that a member of the public will capture it in some form of digital format and not a professional. This was unheard of 10 years ago, and even 5 years, it was still very rare.

With the take up of 3G services, offering fast data transfer and better mobile video, the world is ready to be broadcast at a moment’s notice, and this can be from just about every corner of our planet. Pretty incredible.

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