18.05.09 - Point your Mobile and SaaS
Searching for information through a web browser on your laptop or PC is a quick and efficient experience, especially as Google tells you how few milliseconds it took to find the information you searched for. But, searching for information on your internet-enabled mobile phone can be a fiddly affair.
Nokia, however, have started a new service called
‘Point and Find’ which makes finding information about things you are interested in much easier. Using the camera on your phone, the ‘Point and Find’ software will display information about the item you have pointed at almost instantly without using your keypad to enter text into a mobile search engine. It’s a neat service and could revolutionise how we use our mobile phones.
‘Software as a Service’ or ‘cloud computing’ is taking off and it is especially useful for small businesses that need to minimise the amount of time spent on their IT while maximising the amount of time they spend selling. Services like ‘Google Docs & Spreadsheets’, ‘Zoho.com’ or Microsoft ‘Office Live’ are all useful tools which can save small business not only time but money.
Our New Business Director, Will Hawkins, recently appeared on BBC Radio Lincolnshire talking about both of these subjects. You can listen to the recording below.
© BBC Radio Lincolnshire
01.05.09 - Hodder Education website launched in RVE 4
The redesigned Hodder Education website went live towards the end of last week. The site has been redeveloped to make it easier to find the books that you want.
During the process we upgraded the site to the latest version of our content management system RVE4 giving access to wide range of features and functions, which are built into the system as well as developing some specific functionality particular to the site such as ‘Other titles you may like’ and ‘Send to a friend’ links.
09.04.09 - Getting Rich with Internet Applications &
Breaking Codes with your Phone!
Technical jargon is a great way to quickly bamboozle people and the term ‘rich internet application’ is one which was spawned a number of years that does not mean a lot to most human beings. Our customers are finding that their ambitions for digital marketing are not always met by campaigns which are solely web browser based. They want to provide richer experiences for their customers and partners that enable them to make better decisions about which of their products or services are most suitable for them.
Web browsers were not designed to do many of the actions that we ask of them so along came technology to take the user experience beyond the browser. Applications were built which combined rich media, browser technologies and desktop processing power to provide what are known as ‘rich internet applications’ or RIA’s. eBay Desktop is a classic example of a recently built RIA.
Also, you may have started to notice an increasing number of odd looking bar codes on the back of soft drinks or on advertisements in magazines. Marketers are starting to use what are known as ‘QR codes’ to capture customer data through their mobile phone cameras.
Would you like to know more about RIA’s and QR Codes? Once again, BBC Radio Lincolnshire’s William Wright asked our own Will Hawkins to come and speak to them about these technologies in their ‘Drive Time’ slot recently. You can listen to the recording on William Wright’s show below.
© BBC Radio Lincolnshire
19.03.09 - eBooks? Now, we’re talking!
We spend a lot of our time working and speaking with publishers, listening to and understanding their challenges on how to reach more customers, sell more content and lower their costs. It’s a speciality of MMT Digital. We like to think we speak the same language as the publishers because we have been working in their world for a very long time.
Lately, eBooks have been a major topic of conversation and, in particular, reading books on mobile phones and special reading devices such as Amazon’s Kindle 2. Publishers are seeing an increasing demand from their customers to be able to access their content from any device and they are working hard to catch up with the market by digitising their content.
This trend was picked up by one of our local BBC Radio stations, BBC Radio Lincolnshire, and they asked our very own Will Hawkins to talk about the subject during their ‘Drive Time’ slot. The BBC has kindly let us use the recording of the show to share with our customers. If you have a spare fifteen minutes, you can replay the recording here.
© BBC Radio Lincolnshire
13.03.09 - Doing Something Money for Funny!
Our office in Rutland has a split personality. Normally, the ground floor is noisy because this is where our Client Services Team lives. Whereas the top floor, where our highly talented developers work, is a very studious place. They are deeply involved in designing and building very creative web sites and digital solutions for our clients, and so, the floor is a quiet place. The only regular break in the routine is a highly competitive table football league which is held in their ‘anarchy room.’
But, 13th March saw a break in the rhythm when our own Paul Walker, decided that we all had to do something funny for money for Red Nose Day. He promptly went out and purchased 15 red noses and challenged the developers in the office to wear their noses non-stop for two hours.
How easy did that sound? An hour and a half later, there were gasps for air and customers thinking that our development team was about to go down with ‘flu thereby stopping the work on their new web site or application. Two hours with a red nose on your beak is not as easy as it sounds.
Nevertheless, Paul succeeded in squeezing over £100 out of the development team and he nearly asphyxiated them at the same time. But it was all for a very good cause and was not half as breathless as all those celebrities hiking up Kilimanjaro for the cause!
And don’t worry. Production schedules were not affected!
19.02.09 - Getting to the (Share)Point
Here’s an interesting fact. One of Microsoft’s fastest selling products in recent years has been ‘SharePoint.’ However, recently a Microsoft partner account manager was telling us that they did not have enough skilled partners in the UK with the ability to develop and customise the portal, content management and collaboration system to meet their customers’ needs.
Fortunately, for the last three years, our developers have been making SharePoint increasingly productive and effective for our clients by improving upon the built-in systems. For our clients, SharePoint has become a digital marketers dream after our developers have customised it to meet their branding guidelines and to target audiences more easily.
With some clever incorporation of Flash technology and AJAX components, for example, our developers make our clients’ SharePoint sites and microsites into dynamic tools which enable them to adapt their sites to their audiences quickly. Our developers’ work on SharePoint truly helps them to attract new customers to their businesses to either sell more products and services or to recruit the best talent.
23.12.08 - Festive trumpet blowing
It is great to know that your work is appreciated and even better that the solutions you deliver really are effective so we were thrilled with the following introduction to a review of one of the projects that we have recently been working on with Hodder Education. We promise that the author was independent and that this copy was not drafted by our marketing team! Great to finish the year on a high note and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.
“Once again Hodder Education are back with another entry in their ever expanding Dynamic Learning range of software! Having dealt with Medicine through Time and Germany 1918-1945 it was logical that Crime and Punishment through Time would be next to receive the Dynamic Learning treatment. For those who have already seen Dynamic Learning in use then go no further; you know what you’re going to get! (But as always it just keeps getting better...I really do pity the people who have to come up with something to improve on this piece of software!)” – Paul Hargreaves, Teacher of History & English
News Archive
24.11.08 - Digital Ribbon cut by local MP
17.11.08 - Growth but can it continue?
15.07.08 - Books as far as the eye can see
01.07.08 - Fore!
13.05.08 - Car trouble?
16.04.08 - We are on the move (again)
02.04.08 - Wash your hands!
25.03.08 - Back to School
02.01.08 - BETT Awards 2008
06.11.07 - Relocation...
03.10.07 - Move to Rackspace
21.09.07 - Company Trip to Amsterdam
07.09.07 - A Further Addition to the Team...
04.06.07 - MMT Digital Continues to Grow...
17.05.07 - Team Building ‘Adventure’ Day
