Island Web Works

It’s Wimbledon and my favourite time of the year where my two favourite world of tennis and technology collide. IBM, the technology partners of all the Grand Slams including Wimbledon, always do a fantastic job of managing the vast amounts of statistics generated by the tournaments. This Wimbledon is no exception with integration into Social Media using Facebook and Twitter and the introduction of an iPhone application. Also interesting are the smaller innovations which occur on the outside of the core technology, such as meta-data attached to landmarks which are used to full effect by the new Google Android phone. Imagine the possibilities of local-based meta-data in CRM, giving you an extra level of detail on client and support sites. BBC Digital Planet showcase this feature as well as provide a sneak look inside the tech hub of the Wimbledon broadcast centre.

The power of social media has just bitten Microsoft in the backside with regards their next version of Microsoft Outlook 2010. The fixoutlook.org campaign has created a very simple page that creates a viral campaign over Twitter. What’s their beef? The continued lack of web standards in Microsoft Outlook. Although there are no official web standards defined by the W3C (or anyone else) on presenting emails effectively in email clients using XHTML, there is best practice. Without best practice, end-users may not find their email as well formatted as the designer, which can detract from a marketing message. Unfortunately, any degree of movement towards best practice is hampered by Microsoft’s response. This time, it seems, they are not interested in defining the standard themselves. Maybe they were stung by the standards they created alongside Internet Explorer 4 through 6?

Document Management comes in many forms and MIGTurbo provides its own document functionality alongside additional integration into third-party document management systems, such as LaserFiche. Our clients’ use of document management is wide and varied, ranging from a simple archival or audit trail for compliance requirements to paperless offices where forms are scanned and sorted electronically for later access. Before jumping in to investing in a document management solution, it’s well worth stepping back and considering how you will use such a system to its fullest extent within the resources of your business. We found a great article giving 8 things to ask yourself before jumping in to Document Management. Well worth reading, if it looks of interest both ourselves and our technology partners would be happy to help answer any questions you may have.

That’s it for this week, hope you have a good weekend.

Nathan Friday Feeling CRM, Document Management, DocuMentor, IBM, LaserFiche, MIGTurbo, Office 2010, Wimbledon

With the new user interface in MIGTurbo 2 coming together, we were faced with the daunting task of replacing the existing set of icons.  In older versions of MIGTurbo we have been using pixel-based 16×16px icons, just like the ones you find in older versions of Windows (pre-XP).  Whilst they’ve been serving us well, we thought a new set of vector-based icons would suit the new Graphical User Interface (GUI) better.

So, considering we’re currently using more than 350 icons in MIGTurbo, how to go about getting a replacement set?

First we looked at commercially available icon libraries, but we soon hit a couple of problems. To start with, existing libraries are subject to a range of complicated licence schemes, where you might or might not be able to use the purchased icons in distributable software products (whilst it’s true that MIGTurbo is a web based solution, it’s not after all a single hosted web site).  Secondly, finding a set of icons in a suitable style catering for our rather specific needs proved to be difficult.

In the end we found it more convenient to create the replacement set ourselves.  This gave us full control to add and/or modify icons to suit our needs, and obviously licencing wouldn’t be an issue either! Also, it was quite rewarding to get an opportunity to work in Illustrator again.

So, what at first seemed to be a daunting prospect turned out to be the easiest solution - with the added bonus of getting a unique one-of-the-kind icon set!

Below you can view a small subset of the new icons - I think they turned out quite well!

Andreas MIGTurbo Graphical User Interface (GUI), GUI, icons, MIGTurbo, MIGTurbo 2.0, User Experience (UX)

Kicking off our new blog, in which we hope to give you a glimpse at inside of the  Island Web Works’ team, each of us has come up with a site that helped, inspired or made us smile this week.

Andreas has been tentatively getting acquainted with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, ready for working with ASP.NET which will form the backbone of the new version of our MIGTurbo CRM application. Tentative steps indeed, a committed user of Adobe’s suite we all have a bet on whether he’ll switch to the [superior?] Visual Studio environment sooner than he thinks. We think he should check out some case studies to help decide.

Charles currently has his nose in figures spewing from one of the more advanced MIGTurbo plug-ins we have developed. I guess I better send him this Webinar on Blogging for Business when he’s less busy. It’s a really good presentation (if a little on the quiet side) that shows how to write your own business blog which we have found really useful in making sure that we’re doing things right. Of course, we’ve been monitoring the social media space for some time and its key players both on and off island so we’re confident we’re following best practice. (But do tell us if you think differently!)

Meanwhile Stephen has been busy maintaining some of our clients’ web sites while also testing Microsoft’s latest browser, Internet Explorer 8. Now nearing its final release with Release Candidate 1, it’s important to make sure your own web site isn’t causing any headaches. Cross-browser compatibility is a constant thorn in a web designers side, having to make sure your shiny new web site works across all browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari & Opera) is made even more difficult when you have to consider that there is a still a large proportion of surfers using older versions of IE and Firefox, and with some exciting new style sheet techniques coming up in CSS3 that will only be able to work in the very latest of browsers, it may be a good time to update your browser and take some time to think of your poor web designer.

I [Nathan] have been getting my teeth into the new version of our successful CRM application MIGTurbo, which probably explains the ever-increasing library of thick textbooks on my desk. A messy desk is a sign of a busy mind, I’m sure. With frameworks and ideas floating around my head, it’s difficult to really pick one out that really stands out and without getting a little too nerdy about it all. We’re all very excited about the new version, one reason for which is the opportunities it gives us in revisiting an existing successful user interface which people are familiar with while introducing new “Web 2.0″ features such as slidy things, AJAXy things and other snazziness that will hopefully give users that “ahhh” feeling when they log in. We’ve decided to use a set of components from Telerik that allow us to create rich interfaces quickly. One of the side benefits of this is it comes with a build of jQuery, a client-side Javascript framework that helped me reduce 40 lines of Javascript to just 9.

We have a lot of plans in keeping this blog up to date and interactive, combining it with other publishing channels we use. We’re looking forward to publishing some of the more interesting things that occur here at Island Web Works, hope you can join us on our journey. Have a great weekend!

Nathan Friday Feeling jQuery, MIGTurbo, Telerik