Our Ops Director, Dave Haygarth yesterday won the Blackburn Grand Prix cycling race.

Well done Dave!

Pics here

Our good friends and clients Craven & Murray opticians are busy building up their online presence with a social media campaign, and are offering a quailty pair of designer sunglasses to a lucky follower of their Facebook page. All you need to do is become a fan of Craven & Murray to put your name into the virtual hat and have a chance of getting hold of a pair of designer mens or womens’ sunglasses of your choice from the north’s most chic specks boutique….

Craven & Murray Opticians

As Reverse Delta grows, we are looking for a project manager to help manage our projects.

You can read more about the role and apply here.

Lots been going on lately and more tweeting between Dave B and myself than olde world blogging. Just occurred to me that we’ve had a few sites released to the real world lately that need a bit of an introduction.

Elizabeth Michael Associates

FXRecruiter recruitment website for this large, well established and friendly Nottingham recruitment firm.

“We spent an inordinate amount of time researching and liaising with web design companies prior to instructing Reverse Delta and entrusting them with the design of what many would now consider to be one of their most important tools, if not the most important. I am not given to extolling the virtues of many businesses or indeed individuals, but in the case of Reverse Delta and in particular Dave Haygarth I am more than happy to make an exception.

From the word go he has advised and supported and been a true business partner. His patience, ideas, thought processes and general good humour have all contributed to what is now in my humble opinion an excellent site. It is welcoming aesthetically pleasing has great functionality, but above all manages to portray to the outside world exactly what we as a business are all about.

I am more than happy to recommend Dave and his business unequivocally to any organization considering any form of website improvement.”

[Dave: Shucks.]

Read more here…

LoveWorkLife

Paul Jacobs is a big name in recruitment and LoveWorkLife is Paul’s consultancy ‘brand’. The site is more than an online brochure for his successful business, but a fledgeling blog.

“The time is right for forward thinking businesses to get ahead of the curve, to gain market share, take control of their destinies and steal the march on competitors.

What is more when you have created your own enviable contemporary culture that will attract and retain clients, candidates and colleagues, you too will Love your Work Life!”

Read more here

EDS Scotland

The first rung on the ladder to online presence, a simple site to showcase the products and services of this rather niche company.  EDS have existed for years on a single homepage with basic contact info.  By building them a well structured website that follows good architecture practice, Google now can start to return search results for EDS, and traffic is coming in in very promising quantities.

Read more here…

Web designers around the world will be rejoicing that Google is taking a lead in banishing the deeply unloved Internet Explorer 6 to the annals.

Those not familiar with web design probably won’t know that we routinely have to ‘break’ code to make it work in this old browser, yet people still refuse to upgrade — mainly corporates who lock down desktops for fear of security issues. The irony here, of course, is that IE6 is a security vulnerability in itself — as one bright spark once remarked about Windows “its not like theres a load of back doors its more like the back of the house is missing”.

As we previously posted, Google launched “Chrome Frame” back in October 09, which essentially replaces Internet Explorers rendering engine (ie. the main bit inside the window) with a Google Chrome-based replacement. A stealth-like approach if ever there was one.

Next, Google roundly blamed Internet Explorer for the Chinese hackings. The French and German Governments followed this with a warning to their citizens to stop using the old browser. The UK Government did not issue a warning. Microsoft have since released a patch.

Google then announced dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 on its widely used GMail webmail service “this year”.

Yesterday, Google upped the ante by announcing it is dropping support for IE6 on YouTube – its video sharing site.

Our own web stats are showing a startling demise in the use of Internet Explorer in general.

In the last Month:
Firefox – 46%
Internet Explorer – 38%
Safari – 6%
Chrome – 5%

Of the Internet Explorer traffic:
IE8 – 52%
IE7 – 32%
IE6 – 15%

So, farewell IE6 – you won’t be missed.

For those looking for an alternative, try Google Chrome or Firefox.

Google Buzz is possibly the most long overdue movement from Google that one could imagine.

People (myself included) spend a good deal of their time sitting looking email… increasingly more on web based mail clients. To add social networking / status updates / microblogging / call-it-what-you-will to the main hub of your online experience is at best, genius, or at worst, blaringly obvious.

Still – that’s the beneft of hindsight…

Some very strange stuff going on – even SEO expert Dave Naylor hasn’t quite got to the bottom of it.

It seems some spammers/hackers are managing to redirect people from legit sites to dodgy online shops selling Windows 7.

Jobsite especially seem to have fallen victim to this attack.

See http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/buy-windows-7.html and http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/buy-windows-7-state-of-the-index.html

A bit scary. Looking forward to finding out what has happened here — could be very powerful in the wrong hands and totally screw up the search engine indices for everyone.

The British government and armed forces are to continue their widespread use of the version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser that was attacked by Chinese hackers who broke into Google’s corporate network – even though both the French and German governments have advised people to stop using it.

The Cabinet Office, which oversees the deployment of computers in government, said today that “it doesn’t think the issue [of being open to hacking] would be resolved any better by going elsewhere”.

Originally found on The Guardian site… read the story in full here UK ignores fears over Internet Explorer despite French and German warnings | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

If you like antique furniture, then please check out my mother’s new website, selling antique chairs, antique sofas, antique tables, various antique boxes, objet d’art and other products.

Viewings are available in Lancashire and Cumbria.

I’ve been putting this together in my spare time and relying on the kind help of friends with graphic design, Wordpress and CSS skills as years of management have made me rusty! Thanks Dave H and Phil for your patience and help!

As has become customary for RD, we have donated to a worthy charity rather than spending on cards and postage – thus saving a few trees (and denying the Royal Mail some income – but you can’t have everything!)

This year we have made a donation to the World Wildlife Fund to help with their campaign to safeguard the natural world and tackle the global threat of climate change. You can also make a donation here: http://www.wwf.org.uk/