blog archive.

To help mark Safer Internet Day, Bristol City Council are holding a number of free training sessions for parents aimed at helping to keep their children safe whilst using the internet.

The workshops are designed to raise awareness to parents about the dangers and possible risks that young people face online, and how they can help deal with them.

The events start from 10th February throughout the city with training starting on the 25th March in Horfield.

For more details see the Bristol City web site:
http://www.bristol.gov.uk/redirect?oid=PressRelease-id-29431073

Bristol Balloons asked us back in December to extend their current booking system so that flight vouchers could be bought online. The flight details, booking voucher and a personalised message can be emailed to the lucky passengers, while all payment details get sent separately to the purchaser.

Initially rolled out to see whether they could cut down on the expense, admin time and paper wastage of posting flight details, the team at Bristol Balloons are delighted with the results.

“We hoped for a take-up of perhaps 25% of our customers of this service but have been overwhelmed with the response – over two thirds of our customers this month have chosen to book in this way”, Sales & Marketing Manager Michelle Holloway remarked.

With the spring and summer seasons approaching this will save them a lot of time, money and hassle!

The W3C have recently brought out a new series of guidelines for web accessibility (WCAG 2.0) that we've been  digesting here in the office.  The most immediate change noticeable is the shift in how accessibility is defined.  There are now four principles that all have to be adhered to for conformance, rather than a series of levels you can choose to comply with or not.  The levels are whether your website is:

1. Perceivable - Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
2. Operable - User interface components and navigation must be operable.  (This means that the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform)
3. Understandable - Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
4. Robust - Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Ref: WCAG Introduction 

Although there are several improvements, the language is still very jargony, and an attempt to simplify some of the terms has actually resulted in making some areas more vague.

As some of you may know, founder of FNM Mike Newing has recently started his trip of the Far East and the Pacific that won't see him return to the UK until mid April.

Currently sweltering in forty degree heat, we've heard he and wife Lynne can't help but raise a little smile at the thought of us buried under a bit of snow.

After a short stay in Hong Kong they're now just outside Sydney and have stays in New Zealand, Fiji and Singapore to look forward to. Yes, makes you sick doesn't it.

However Mike's already keen on the idea of a Hong Kong office and sent us the following photo as evidence that he's found the ideal location.

More news and photos no doubt to come.

So as we found this week, one of the things our new office in Hertfordshire is going to have to cope with is the occasional harsh winter.

Those Russian winds bought in a good five inches of snow on Monday which caused the end of buses, tubes and made roads unusable. However the occasional train was still able to rumble along into London.

We managed to get some photos of our offices and Sawbridgeworth in the snow, hope you like them.