Best Rising Star 07

Well its official - at last nights Big Chip Awards I took home the award from Best Rising Star.

It was a great night for the whole team and I was thrilled to see some fantastic awards going to some real talent in the North West's New Media Industry.

Thanks guys for making the Evening a night to remember!

Rolling Out The Content...

As with many large digital industry conferences and awards, the geeks like to get the content out of the venue before they have managed to leave themselves! The race is on from the time the keynote speaker gets to his feet - and a critique of what he is saying is circulating around the blogosphere before he has finished introducing himself!

Well tonight is the Big Chip Awards, Manchester's Industry awards, by the industry, for the industry! And the boys (and girl) over at PushON have been searching hard to see what Web 2.0 has to offer in terms of social interaction.

So how do you juggle content distribution and a fun night of drinking and eating?

Well we think we've found the answer, in the form of twitter and ShoZu.

Twitter - Twitter is a blog-like site that allows users to "twit" about what they are doing at the moment. What makes this service more interactive then others is that it allows users to post messages via standard sms messaging.

ShoZu - is a Media distribution service that allows users to harness the power of their mobile phone to upload images and videos straight to their Flickr feeds.

So with the above installed and ready to go, all we have to do now is wait out and get ready for the awards. Oh - and remember to "Roll Out The Content..."

See what Katrina is saying on the PushON Blog for more.

Easter Project...

I've spent a bit of my Easter Break having a look over the AglowHealth website for a friend.

He asked me to help him bring his website up to W3C standards and to show him some optimisation techniques. There were some real common faults that I found in the Internal Linking and Navigation of his website. This in itself makes it difficult for search engine spiders to 'crawl' and 'index' his site. To overcome this I've helped him implement a standards safe navigation system, HTML Sitemap, XML Sitemap and submitted them to Yahoo, Google and Ask.

We also had a play with the layout of the site making it a bit more friendly on the eye and incorporated the Wealth & Wellness News Section into the main site.

Rob is offering a great business opportunity for anyone that would love a new and exciting way to make some extra money. So if you'd like to make some extra cash or are just interested in the great weight loss products on offer at Aglow Health then drop by and say hi.

Big Chip Nominations

The first week of April means only one thing to the North West’s New Media Industry… who has successfully been short listed for the Big Chip Awards?

Well I am pleased to say that Virtuaffinity and PushON have followed on from last years success at the awards with not just one but two nominations.

In the category of Best Commercial Website Virtuaffinity has been short listed for their work on the Didsbury Magazine Online. And in the category of Best Rising Star I have been nominated for my work over the last year with PushON.

As you can imagine we are really excited by the news that we have been short listed for these awards and that a body of the industries finest has continued to like our work. The future is looking bright for both PushON and Virtuaffinity – and nominations at such high profile events as this will continue to help us show the North West that for a small firm we can compete and succeed against the big boys.

Read all the Big Chip Shortlists here.

Say Goodbye to ISDN

BT have announced the "Withdrawing of consumer ISDN, as the demand for it has dived with the availability of cheap, fast broadband." the withdrawal will take place later this year.


So where does that leave consumer ISDN users?

As everyone knows broadband can be one faster and cheaper solution, but for those that don't want to go over to net-based alternatives that use the IP protocol what else is there?

As the bigger players start to drop out of the market, for being unable to deliver goods and services competitively, it has left a void for smaller niche ISP's to break into.

One such contender is FreeUKisp, a UK based ISP offering ISDN Alternatives. Simon Wharton, Managing Director of FreeUKisp said "It's allowed our market share to grow as we start to supply where big players no longer can."

For those concerned by the drop in connection speeds, FreeUKisp recommends the Netfury Accelerator, a state of the art internet accelerator that boosts the connection speed of any standard dial up connection.

So many consumers are now left having to look for new ISDN Providers as BT concentrate on making more money and forgeting about there loyal ISDN customers. But where will they go?

1 Year Today

Yes – as we break into the new tax year it can only mean one thing… I’ve been here a year! So what have I been doing in the last year you ask? Well I’m not sure. Looking back over my past blog posts it would appear that I have:

• Continued with My Degree


• Attended the Big Chip Awards


• Attended some Networking4Business Events


• Developed some Blog Optimisation Techniques


• Discovered Social Media Marketing


• Worked on some great campaigns – Manchester NTI


• Helped Implement a Viral Marketing Campaign

So all in all I have been quite busy! One thing I can say for certain is that PushON have allowed me the chance to grow. I’m am really grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given to help develop the my professional and technical skill set and help make a difference to the way we do business.

Cheers Guys.

Viral Marketing gets Exposure

The Viral Marketing Campaign we're working on at PushON is getting international exposure!! Today it reached the top post on Web Pro World and making their weekly mail out to all members.

So far we’ve had mixed comments, but love it or hate it, it’s proving to be a viral success. I am surprised by many of the comments/criticisms; most are about length, language (both swearing and English colloquialisms) and the use of women to sell the video!

If you’ve not already seen it, take a look at our Viral Marketing Video; but be warned, it’s not for the faint hearted!