We specialise in dynamic websites, online stores and E-newsletters.

We’re working to build a web property of our own again, we’re proud to announce the pre-launch page for Cofacio, our new conversation web site. Sign up on the site to be notified when it is ready, and let me know what you think of the sock puppets!

We’ve just made Mewburn’s Content Managed Website live with Japanese pages too. Take a look at www.mewburn.com

We’ve been working with the Get Bike team for almost 2 years now and after drastically reducing their Google Adwords spend and increasing their ranking in the main Google results we are making good progress (have a look at CBT London in Google: that’s number one of about 1 million and that’s just one term.)

Internally they now have an intranet based Booking Calendar to book in the thousands of people they help through their Compulsory Basic Motorbike Training each year. As part of our gradual roll out we have just released the Online Booking Element which checks their intranet for booking availability and allows pupils to reserve a space on the web site.

Rather than re-invent the calendar system, we have used Yahoo’s excellent calendar plug-in too - part of the set of user interface tools Yahoo have kindly released to the developer community. We also use Ajax technologies so that the office based system automatically updates itself whenever a new online or office based booking is made. As you can see from the booking system we are going for a gradual release - it’s not fully automated yet, because the pupil must be able to provide their licence to take the course, although we are hoping to move that way soon.

Once a booking is made online and confirmed or in the office then Get Bike’s internal 3rd party accounting system is automatically updated with the pupils details and their payment information.

It looks that we will seriously save admin time, decrease the mistakes in the paper based system and allow people to book out of hours: this truly fits with our vision for Online Business.

Next up it’s time to make the Get Bike site look as nice as it performs.

Multimap have a new web site, and are slowly transitioning their users across to it, if you haven’t seen it aleady then it’s well worth a look - follow the “try our new site” link under the logo. The new Multimap site, the first new iteration since I left is wonderful, it’s slick, it’s left brain, it looks and feels like a Mac application or a modern 2007 web application, it’s more than a web site. The maps can be as big as you want them - my 17″ widescreen Imac was filled with Bartholemews map data, I can click and drag and pull maps around, I can save locations to access later.

The route planning has also had a major overhaul and is now cleverly split into 3 panels - an overview of the entire route, a smaller map of the starting location and a similar one of the end point. The interface in all of the sections is simply lovely, clean, and easy to use.

The exciting thing from my point of view is that we are now starting to see the site working like a true mapping application, it’s more than a web site. I can easily use the bits I want to, hide the bits I don’t, save the things I want to return to, print out the results and send them to my friends. Interestingly you’ll probably use it in a completely different manner to me, you’ll have a completely different experience and hopefully you’ll love it just as much.

In fact when Simon demo’d the site to us in a meeting last Friday I discovered so much more to the site than first meets the eye, and also there’s so much more to come, as if the Ebay mash up, point saving, and worldwide integration wasn’t enough!

They’re still transitioning to the new site so at the moment you’ll have to select the “try our new web site” under the logo (and can return to the old site at any time).

As always with Multimap and when you’re dealing with new technology and 10million users it’s sometimes a little slow or there are small glitches but overall Simon Lewis, and the team at LBi have done a fantastic job. More interestingly all the functionality on the web site, is available to Multimap business customers using their API, so if your business has an old fashioned store locator, maybe it’s time to get in touch and upgrade it to the new Multimap system, take advantage of all the fantastic new features and more importantly that beautifully slick user experience. If Apple Mac made maps this is what it would be like.

The internet doesn’t need much more of an explanation than this really:

Some call it web 2.0 but it’s more than that. The proof’s in the pudding.. went to www.clagnut.com (ex-colleague’s site) -> saw eleganthack.com link -> followed it -> saw this video from Kansas summarising what we (all) do online and what the web really is about -> opened up our blogging software (wordpress) -> copied the code from youtube.com into this site -> wrote this -> 5 minutes -> no techie knowledge required.

It took me back to when I was giving a training course at Multimap on XML to some of the client services team. I asked the question what happens when web pages are written in XML that any machine, program or person can interact with.. it was a rhetorical question, not any more: we’re nearly there.

We caught up with NMK too late to catch their excellent summer event called Content 2.0 but I’d spent many an absorbed tube journey listening to the podcasts of their talks. We’d been looking for another chance to join in and found out about their latest Beer & Innovation talk covering Aggregators and Upsetters. The venue was great, downstairs in the Albannach just off Trafalgar Square, and the line-up intriguing and the audience very well connected. These Beers and Innovation sessions are a mini-conference in a bar with a panel of 3 speakers given 5 minutes to talk, followed by a lively q and a session. Last night we heard from Paul Pod from the about-to-be-launched Tape It Off The Internet give us the low-down on why he created his web site. His refreshing down to earth approach about the issues of content aggregation (TV guides and show downloads) and the challenges of making his wbe site pay were delivered in his unique style. Richard Anson from the review web site Revoo showed the business way through this with a nice solid model of capturing and selling independent customer product reviews to online stores such as Currys and Dixons. Although he seemed to be going a little against the web 2.0 grain by making it a closed service and charging to aggregate these reviews to big business.

Harder to place and more opiniated and controversial was star blogger Umair Haque who tried to give us the low down on where the industry was going and why web 2.0 sites such as friendster failed so miserably. We met up with some great people from all parts of the industry, and one of the common topics of conversation seemed to be people wondering why all the online innovation is happening in the US and not here, some say size of audience, some say it’s down to the ease of V.C. funding, and by the end of the talks I was wondering if it was just an English personality trait: no-one seemed capable of agreeing with anyone else!

Part of Clear Left’s professionally run package of facilities at D.Construct was a back-network, an event intranet in-a-way. Unfortunately I was a bit slow getting my info in but amusingly you can see my personal profile page here. Ok nothing very special you may think but look closely and there are two pictures of me (OK one of the back of my head) at the bottom of the page. I didn’t add these, in fact I didn’t even remember them being taken.

The social network example of this is the photographers tagged them as containing me and uploaded them to flickr. The back-network system when showing my profile page checks flickr for photo’s which have me (and d.construct) in the tags and then present them at the bottom of the page. Not rocket-science I know, just a flavour of where we’re all heading.

P.S. Even more amusing is someone’s comment added to the flickr original: “Former Multimap employees, still arguing about its future.”