Why Architecture Matters?

The following photo is of The Winchester ‘Mystery’ House. This grand and quite unique house was built back in 1884 and took 147 builders 38 years to build.

Here are some quite unique facts about the house, it has:

• 160 rooms
• 40 bedrooms
• 6 kitchens
• 2 basements
• 950 doors

However, there was NO Architect involved in the designing, planning and building of this house and as a result there are:

• 65 doors to blank walls
• 13 staircases abandoned
• 24 skylights in floors
• And – No architectural blueprints (although some rough drawings have been found on table clothes!)

At PushON we regularly receive requests for Website MOTs. It is a service we offer because so many websites on the internet have been built like The Winchester ‘Mystery’ House; they look good but have little or no functionality. Here are many of the things we find wrong with websites:

• No inbound links to your website – Blank Doors
• Poor navigation structures – Abandoned Staircases
• Duplicate content on older sites - Skylights in Floors

An MOT is free and will give you a good overview of both your websites structure and online presence, along with some suggestions for improvement.

So if you’d like us to MOT Your Webiste drop by and let us help you make your website work for you.

Mobile Web

I was having a play on my PDA the other day and I thought I'd have a look to see if websites geared up for mobiles/PDA were better the when I last checked.

I have to be honest and say that I was slightly disheartened by the lack of sites showing good quality content that was changing quick enough for me to bother having a look on the move.

I've previously written about Time Magazine developing a mobile friendly website and I was pleased to see that the BBC have followed suit with:

But after struggling to find any good sites I went to the place where all search marketers begin... yes Google! Google have launched Google Mobile Services.

As you can see from the layout of the search engine it has been stripped to purely functional elements with a new option for Mobile Web (Beta).

I'm undecided by its usage at the moment but as I look around at the new mobiles for sale today, its clear that the devices to support mobile web are selling everywhere and its not going to be long before companies are going to have to take their 'Mobile Web Presence' seriously.

FeedBurner FeedFlare

FeedBurner's FeedFlare Services allows feed publishers to add content to the bottom of their syndicated post with more information about their content. It gives your subscribers an easy way to email, tag, share, and act on the content you publish.

FeedFlare places a simple footer at the bottom of each content item, helping you to distribute, inform and create a community around your content. This really is where Feed Optimisation meets Web 2.0
To see FeedFlare in action check out My Feed.

Blogger Upgrade

As like many fellow bloggers on Blogger I've 'upgraded' to NEW Blogger! After having a look at the tour the following functionality seems to have been implemented:

• Customising Your Template Tool
• Create a Private Blog Function
• Extension of the Feed Options (Including RSS Support)
• and An Updated Dashboard Layout

Some other bits I've noticed include the introduction of category tags to posts and the removal of the option to publish the entire blog or just index (which won't be missed!)

I'm quite impressed with the new upgrade, although I'm still wondering why I now log on using my Google Account details?

I'd be interested to hear how other people have found the upgrade... Drop me a comment and let me know.

Update: Keep an eye on the 'Official Blogger Buzz' as it happens.

Update: I've introduced a range of social bookmarking badges into the full page version of my blog posts.
I found the script for the buttons on badged.net.

The Team is Growing

Great News...

Yes we finally found someone to fill the positions advertised back in October.

At PushOn, Katrina has joined us from Code Computerlove in Manchester and brings some real marketing brains to our team. Check out Katrina's Blog to see what she has been up to and how she is getting on.

The guys at Virtuaffinity are growing too. Jim has joined them and brings a wealth of web development know-how to the team. You can have a read of all the clever things Jim gets up to at JimNeath.com

So it looks to be an exciting start to the new year. I look forward to updating you on how we're all getting on.