http://www.agincourttech.com Agincourt Technology's blog covering all things technology, including new hardware, software, web services and business. http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/2009-in-review How quickly has 2009 (almost) passed? We’ve just taken a look at our reports, and Agincourt has had quite a busy year! Read on for our statistics... Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:30:59 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/atl-support-site Our long experience of both onsite and offsite IT support has taught us that communication is key, we've just launched our new support website, read on to find out more. Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:32:43 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/business-email-for-21st-century While free email addresses may seem a good idea, what are they actually saying about you and your business? Many people are now taking the next step and upgrading to dedicated domains and email addresses to match, the days of seeing adverts with bertsblinds@aol.co.uk or davidaccountants@hotmail.com maybe coming to end. Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:13:05 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/disaster-recovery-basics Don’t turn away – move your mouse away from the [Back] button, this is absolutely key to your business. 20% of all companies will suffer fire, theft, flood or storm damage, power failures, terrorism or hardware/software disaster. Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:23:07 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/dropbox Syncronise, backup and share you documents using this simple and free application. Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:37:16 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/email-etiquette Like SMS text messages, emails can often be misinterpreted, the changes in our tone of voice and context of words is often lost. We should all be careful of this, so here is a short list we've devised to help prevent misunderstandings and improve relationships. Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:19:54 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/exciting-upcoming-web-technologies Over the past few years we've seen some really exciting progress on the web, and this is set to continue at an ever rapid pace. Fri, 21 May 2010 11:47:10 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/fake-it-support-scam Increasingly businesses and home users throughout the UK are being targeted in sophisticated IT scams. Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:21:06 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/gifts-hospice-web-site GIFTS Hospice is a well known local charity that provides much needed palliative care support to people in South West Lincolnshire. To assist in their communication and fund raising efforts we have built a fresh new website based on our Radiate Content Management System platform. Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:20:39 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/google-apps-disaster-recovery Like life insurance, everyone has difficulty facing up to the prospect of disaster. Most businesses have woken up to the risks to their local infrastructure, we covered it back in October. However do we stop to think about upstream? What about your ISP? How secure is their provision? Would they survive a disaster? Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:01:02 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/guide-to-google-apps-video Straight from the Google Apps You Tube Channel - a video outlining the system. Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:15:17 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/hanwell-observatory We’ve been hosting the website for Hanwell Observatory, Oxfordshire, for about a year now, since we first aided Leo Huckvale, one of their volunteers, in designing and setting it up. Last month, they kindly invited us down to the opening of the Millennium Telescope. Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:38:16 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/how-to-be-a-great-web-design-agency After reading how to be a great client by Seth Godin, it got me thinking, web designers and developers often get hung up on clients requesting changes to websites that don't make sense and it quickly becomes frustrating. However, it's not client being awkward; the blame generally lies on ourselves. Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:10:24 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/how-your-business-should-be-using-twitter Last week we covered why businesses need to be using Twitter, and we went a little into how to use it, but only really scraped the surface, so today, we're going to how to search and respond to users to produce real business value. Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:43:03 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/ignoring-the-social-media-buzz-why-do-twitter-and-facebook-actually-matter In the past, your product/service's reputation lay mostly in the hands of the media and word of mouth. If someone had a bad experience, provided they weren't the media, they were unlikely to spread that around to the masses. With the rise of the social web, the voice of the individual has become much stronger. Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:51:19 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/iphone-4-review The phone we've all been waiting for is finally here, and it certainly exceeds expectation! Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:35:21 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/kings-school-presentation As the leading I.T. business in the Grantham area, Agincourt were invited to give a talk on I.T. careers to The King's School (http://www.kings.lincs.sch.uk), providing an insight into the various options students have for career paths. As we all have joined Agincourt through different paths, we were able to provide a balanced view of what paths should be taken in particular situations. Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:27:19 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/launching-minimise-it Last week we launched a new web application called Minimise It @ http://minimise.it/. Check out a video demo at: http://screenr.com/Yhd Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:11:29 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/our-experience-of-home-offices Having recently set up a 'home based' office for our business, we've become quite interested in the growing phenomenon of working from home. A survey by the Federation of Small Businesses found that 39% of small businesses were based at home. Having seen many of our customers run extremely successful businesses of varying sizes, sectors and ages from a variety of situations from their homes we started to think 'why not?' Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:02:58 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/our-first-open-source-rails-plugin-sieve On Fridays we like to work on projects that benefit the community or provide a better experience for our clients, and this Friday is no different. For a while now we’ve been working on a Ruby on Rails plugin that allows for filtering sets of objects by parameters you define. To save even more time, it will even automatically generate a form containing all the fields with the options and values included. Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:18:48 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/snow-leopard-review A few weeks ago Apple released an update to their operating system, Mac OS X, codenamed Snow Leopard. We've been using the system for a few weeks, so here's our short review. Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:42:09 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/social-media-top-tips ocial media is about harnessing the power of communication via the Internet and disseminating information through user interaction. Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:19:01 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/solid-state-drives When you buy a new computer, you're always quoted exciting figures about how fast the processor is, how big the hard disk is and all the nifty features that are included, but manufacturers often gloss over the fact that one of the most limiting factors of computers is the speed of the hard disk. Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:43:31 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/standing-out-on-the-web When looking back on traditional media, you might think a website should stand out against all others, do something unique and wow visitors with flashy graphics and animation to get their attention. Newspaper advertisements, TV and radio adverts all have to fight for attention. On a newspaper you see multiple adverts on a single page, and on TV and radio, people are generally quite zoned out and relaxed so need a bit of umph to wake them up, but this isn't true for web design. Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:44:01 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/stepping-into-your-visitors-shoes Running a website is much like running a physical shop, regardless of whether you're selling something, you still have people visiting - they either find what they want and leave happy, or they walk away empty-handed. Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:37:31 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/sustainable-seo Many dedicated SEO companies are keen to get businesses on paid advertising campaigns because it generates an instant increase in traffic to the website, which is great for the SEO company because they look like they are doing a good job, but the trouble with this is that it isn't sustainable. Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:06:58 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/the-added-value-of-web-applications The web is continually increasing in prevalence within our lives, with the uprise of capable smart phones with desktop-quality browsers such as the iPhone and Palm Pre and operating systems becoming more 'web-aware'. But how can businesses harness the benefits the web provide through web applications? Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:00:23 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/the-small-business-guide-to-google-apps Google Apps for business has a number of benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the suite places all of your data and workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all at any time from anywhere with an Internet connection. Fri, 11 Jun 2010 09:07:02 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/web-design-time-lapse Professional web design isn't as simple as picking a layout and dropping in some images, we create bespoke designs where every pixel has been thought out. To illustrate (part of) what our web designers do all day, we've produced a short video. Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:51:15 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/what-google-chrome-os-means-for-you You've probably used Google for search, maybe your email (Gmail), possibly for your documents (Google Docs) and calender (Google Calender), and possibly even your web browser (Chrome) but soon, you might be looking to them for an operating system too. Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:27:03 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/why-its-important-to-have-a-fast-website-and-how-to-make-improvements In a Forrester Research study of over 1000 people, they found that 40% of people will abandon an e-commerce site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. How fast is your site? Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:24:05 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/why-you-shouldnt-run-adverts-on-a-commercial-website If your site is a free service, or a blog, then adverts may be your only source of revenue, and that is fair enough, but for commercial sites that sell products and services or ultimately lead to generating you money through potential sales leads they should be avoided, read on to find out why. Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:09:38 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/why-your-business-should-be-using-twitter There has been myriads of buzz surrounding how businesses can use Twitter lately, and seeing as we are avid users at Agincourt (follow us: @rgdavies, @ryantownsend, @lmnaylor), I'd like to share a few experiences we’ve received that you might take inspiration from to aid in marketing your business. Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:05:26 +0100 http://www.agincourttech.com/blog/windows-7-review Windows 7 has been in the pipe-line for a verylong time, but its finally here and in many ways, picked up where XP left off. Windows Vista was supper to be stable, clean and clutter free, however in many peoples eyes, Vista didnt live upto its expectations, and this reflected in its sales figures. Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:49:24 +0100