A new website for the Soho based film production company. I built the flash / actionscript / XML brochure site which draws on the companies vast video and photographic library. Check it out: http://zap-productions.co.uk

FTP the csv file up to your web root, and login the PHPMyAdmin. Drop this in the ‘SQL’ box and tweak the table / field names.

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/importfile.csv' INTO TABLE table_name FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' (field1, filed2, field3);

Browse your table.

Drink tea.

The site is a ’shop window’ for a small bit perfectly formed bespoke matching service for classic Mercedes cars and owners.

The site has been built/designed from scratch, its key feature being a powerful search and car index which gives visitors a really easy and fast facility to locate cars of interest. The ‘Popular’ car list on the left is a result of interest in particular series, so those that are most frequently searched, appear at the top of the list.

The site is a prelude to a much larger and more functional group of websites from the Seller Group Ltd. Watch this space.

Four weeks ago at the beginning of September, I launched a new web-based application - http://votewise.co.uk. The site provides election candidates a (free) platform to post there campaign manifesto, engage with voters and harvest feedback on various levels.

As the site uniquely includes all candidates from all political parties in all (well .. we’re trying) UK parliamentary and local elections, the voter can find out about all of the candidates they are being asked to choose from - well in advance of reaching the ballot box.

With all the candidate profiles having the same layout, the voter can make an informed decision based on the candidates policy, not flashy website/budget/flyer/ability to door knock.

Using the free Google webmaster tools, we’re able to track it’s ranking/search index success.

We had just over 2400 unique visitors in our first month, perusing the 20 or so elections we’ve hosted over the period, all in all for what it’s worth … about 33,000 hits.

We’ve done no advertising (it’s a free service, we can’t afford it) so our usage is governed entirely by people searching and finding us, or through word of mouth.

Our Google tool very cunningly tells us the top 20 things that people typed into the Google search box in order to ultimately find their way to us.

Things like ‘aylesham by election‘ are evidently what people living in Aylesham look for when searching for election candidate information.

Of these top 20 ‘things to look for’, all of them show a link to votewise.co.uk on page one of the search results. That’s every one of the top 20 searches, showing in the top ten - often out of thousands / tens thousands of URL’s.

Not only that, but of the top 20 ‘things people searched for and found us’ … 17 of them show a link to votewise .co.uk in the top 5.

In addition, our results are consistently appearing higher than those of big, long established websites of political parties, associations, councils and news resources.

Accessible, optimized code …. wins every time.

We do a little research to establish who our candidates are having had no literature or visits from any of them so far.

A passing interest rapidly evolves into an all consuming personal quest to find out who these people are, what they are standing for and why we should vote for them.

We found out how many there are, where they live and what party they stand for quite easily. Getting to the core issues however, seemed to be a tedious matter of waiting for a visit / flyer or trawling through endless impenetrable council / party websites.

Five months later, giving the voting public the opportunity to make a more informed decision, we launched http://votewise.co.uk.

Voters can now simply click on a map once an election is announced and are presented with a list of all candidates standing for election. The information remains live until the ballot is closed.

Post ballot, candidate profiles move to a central archive - ‘a promise bank’. In months and years to come voters can refer back to original campaign pledges and responses.

By clicking on a candidate’s photograph, visitors to the site can read a summary of their politics and their top campaign issues.

All candidate profiles are presented in exactly the same format, created by the candidate and subject to Electoral Commission campaign material guidelines.

All candidates are sent a postal and email invite containing their unique Votewise account details which they can use to edit their profile and respond to questions.

Voters can give issues the ‘thumbs up’ and challenge one or all candidates on any aspect of their manifesto by using a simple ‘ask a question’ box.

By providing a one-stop-shop for voters in all local and national elections, http://votewise.co.uk is set to become the leading source of pre-election intelligence.

http://votewise.co.uk is an entirely free service. It is run independently for the benefit of all electoral candidates equally and without sponsorship.

Political parties continue to increase attention and investment on e-campaigning and e-democracy. Quite right, the web is an ideal medium for such activities and the opportunity should be fully exploited.

We believe it’s only right that all electoral candidates should have a robust, consistent and equal platform on which to inform and engage with the voting masses.

While each political entity fights its own campaign based on its policies at varying degrees of spin, the public are often left bemused, blinded or simply in the dark as to who should ultimately win their vote.

By removing the spin, presenting the facts and doing so for all candidates equally – perhaps, more of our democratic society can be encouraged to actually take part?

A complicated site, linking multiple databases at different sites, including an EPOS and stock management system in their north London retail outlet.

I wanted to find out what sort of computer experience they had prior to using the salon software. Bearing in mind these are hair stylists .. not office administrators.

80% of them have had no previous computer experience before using the package. Considering none of them have had formal training and all are now using the package in their everyday jobs, I’d say that’s a pretty bloody marvelous testament to it’s usability wouldn’t you?!

* We spoke to 30 stylists in 7 salons in Stockton, Newcastle, London, Cardiff and Brighton .

It’s a big ole thing, linking the database from their mail order service, a technical triumph i’d say :)