Ecommerce in a box
July 21st, 2007One thing which many of my clients require is an online shopping cart. When they ask for this functionality I am usually caught between a rock and the proverbial hard place. Ecommerce software is expensive and usually difficult to skin or configure. Free ecommerce software is available but the functionality is usually limited and the styles are again difficult to alter and it becomes uneconomical from my perspective to spend hours tweaking the UI.
As such, I was interested to be asked to review Ashop Commerce, shopping cart software produced by an Australian ecommerce software provider. At first glance, Ashop is like many other large players in the ecommerce software market. However with its web interface, it combines the flexibility of updating products and prices from anywhere you like via your web browser with the reliability you would expect from a major software house.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any clients in Australia. If I did however, I’d consider recommending that they try this software first, rather than getting a designer like myself to build a cart. You may think that this would be doing myself out of business, but it is always my belief that if a product is good and benefits the client then I will recommend it. I find that this builds a lot of trust with clients who may then come to you for other pieces of work.
Ashop seems to have all of the major bases covered, right down to the (usually) highly annoying task of creating thumbnails for product images. Some software requires you to do this manually and can have you tearing your hair out. Good luck to them I say. To any Australian visitors to the site, I say take a look at Ashop Commerce ecommerce software.
Will Jaws 9 support Ajax?
July 20th, 2007Ian Lloyd over at Accessify has posted an article on his blog about a rumour he has heard about Jaws 9.0 potentially supporting
The web is becoming a much more interesting and usable place to be due the increasing use of
For far too long now, the main drive for the adoption of Accessibility and Web Standards has come from developers themselves, seemingly endlessly shouting upwards into an uncaring corporate cloud layer. Manufacturers of assistive technology and software have also been slack in adopting to changes in technology and internet society . After all, the way we interface with the web now is entirely different from 5 years ago, never mind 10. The web is unrecognisable from the web at the turn of the millennium.
Any indication that screen reader manufacturers are starting to move with the times can only be good news.
Coming Soon - Edinburgh Festival
July 20th, 2007The buzz around the city is starting again and that can only mean one thing. The Edinburgh Festival and the associated ‘Fringe’ is almost upon us. Whilst this brings in a great deal of revenue to the city, it also brings a great deal of disruption to it’s residents.
It becomes almost impossible to do anything quickly during the months of August and September as the city’s population swells to three times it’s normal amount. Even getting a bus from one side of the city centre to another becomes a major chore. Forget even trying to get a taxi.
Ideally, instead of building a tram network, maybe
Whatever your opinion on the festival - love it or loathe it - the Edinburgh International Festival has been with us for 60 years and will be for another 60, long after most of us are dead and gone.
Bluekazoo Feedback
June 8th, 2007With the new website design being launched, I’ve set up a survey on SurveyMonkey in order to track feedback from site visitors. I’d be really grateful if you could take the time (around 2 minutes) to complete the brief 10 question survey. It will be really useful in helping me determine whether the site meets your expectations and provides the information you are looking for.
Update (18.07.2007): Well, what an unopinionated bunch you are. Only one person replied and they weren’t entirely convinced with the bloggy approach. Good feedback though.
I really want to persist with the blog feel just now. Blogging is such a commonplace feature of the web now that I really feel the need to ‘join the revolution’ so to speak.
Furthermore, regularly updated content never harms search engine positioning, an issue which Bluekazoo has suffered from in recent years due to a highly saturated marketplace. It seems that everyone and their dog is offering web site design these days and indeed it seems like an even bigger problem than it did in 2002 when I started designing sites.
So, to summarise. Thanks for your opinion oh mysterious one, but I’m going to stick with it for the time being.
Top Spammer Arrested
May 31st, 2007
Always the bugbear of us site owners, Spam is a real issue, particularly when our own domains become abused or in extreme cases blacklisted. Recently certain spammers were sending out spam mails purportedly from the bluekazoo.co.uk domain. Eventually I realised what was going on but not before I had received about 400 out of office replies in my inbox in one day.
With that in mind, it’s nice to see that one of the biggest spam lords (is that what you call them?), 27 year old Robert Alan Soloway has been arrested in Seattle. The full story can be found at The Register website. I’d suspect that any updates to the case will be posted there as well, given the level of interest in this as a test case of sorts.
Hopefully we’ll see more of these guys being arrested. I suppose if you are stockpiling Viagra, fake Rolex watches and diet pills then maybe you will be one of the few people on the planet upset by this intrusion on Mr Soloway’s civil liberties. Personally, it makes my job and my clients lives a hell of a lot easier.
For a business to sort through their incoming mail every day and identify and eliminate spam is time-consuming, and time equals money. I await his court case with anticipation.
