Solution Perspective Media Blog - General

We're hiring

nospam@example.com (Jeremy Coates) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:35:09 +0100

In case you've not noticed on our main site, we're hiring - a PHP web developer (OOP).

New Staff - again!

nospam@example.com (Jeremy Coates) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:34:00 +0000

As usual things are busy round here, however, things are getting better since we've added two new staff again. Firstly at the beginning of last month, Phil Wastell joined us as a Web Developer and has already started to have direct impact on my over-heavy work load. Phil already knows quite a bit of PHP, xHTML and CSS and is starting to get his head round the approaches we use on top of those technologies such as OOP, Zend Framework and YUI. Additionally, at the beginning of this month, Emma Parker joined us, initially on a part-time basis, as an Account Manager - this should over time help us to keep in touch with our clients more, so if that's you, expect to be hearing from Emma in due course.

Alongside our own clients we continue to service other firms in the New Media sector, especially where they don't have the high-level technical skills in-house to deliver application level projects. This has recently resulted in a situation where we've signed an out-sourcing deal with a local marketing and design house. We now undertake their high-end projects on behalf of their clients - they get to provide best-of-breed approaches to them and the code developed is sound internally rather than creating a bunch of maintenance headaches as previously. For us it means we drive the direction of the code used and know things are backed up properly and we can keep the version control of the sites developed under a tighter reign. I've got a meeting next month that may result in a similar approach by an SEO / Accessability company from the South - so you never know, might be announcing more growth soon

Access all Areas! The life of a Business Analyst

nospam@example.com (Priscilla Coates) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:07:22 +0100

Being a business analyst in a team with developers and designers there are interesting times when structure competes with creativity.

I was reading a book by "37signals" called "Getting Real" and they propose that developers of software should move away from paper based documentation such as functional specs and move straight to Real development of screens. They suggest creating mock ups which are then developed, amended and fixed from there and that we should dispense with useless functional specs. www.37signals.com

I like this concept and am excited by what they propose. It is certainly upside down from how I have previously worked, but I like it!

What are your thoughts in living with that tension in regards to holding the end users nerves whilst they see development going on with less structure, no functional spec and only near the end is the spit & polish added?

Psychic Interruption

nospam@example.com (Rachel Williams) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:44:44 +0100

I was visiting Cedar Farm (www.cedarfarm.net) a few month ago and came across a mixed media art exhibition (very good it was too - abstract and colourful with clever use of language and text and partial objects) where the artists incorporate the concept of 'psychic interruption' into their work – the idea that 'voices' from another realm, time or place can have input into todays creative/design process...

Anyone had any experience of this? Interesting possibility or a load of rubbish?

Comments please...

Metamorphosis

nospam@example.com (Jeremy Coates) — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:16:01 +0100

Just an intro for those who know us already as Co-Comp Ltd, well we're still that as a legal entity but we're now going by the name of Solution Perspective Media as that better reflects who we are and what we do these days. The new site, to go along with the new name, should be ready in a few days time, however I'm just putting the finishing touches to our revised content management system first - based on a combination of ZendFramework, ADOdb and XTemplate it's becoming a great tool - ask me for a demo when you see me!

Cool Firefox plugin

nospam@example.com (Jeremy Coates) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:08:44 +0100

Just discovered a new Firefox extension plugin today - ScribeFire (formerly performancing) which lets you create and edit blog posts direct from within the firefox interface. In fact this is my first post using it, so it's a bit of a 'test' post!

It's pretty cool as it supports a wide variety of blogging APIs and does a 'split' window mode. This mode is quite cool as it allows you to have ScribeFire open at the bottom area of your window and the site you're browsing at the top - which makes it easier to get accurate context when writing. Nice

Anyway give it a go and let me know what you think about it.

Netgear Wireless Access Point woes WN802T

nospam@example.com (Jeremy Coates) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:47:07 +0000

I've been having issues with Netgears WN802T wireless access point - there's a full rant on Netgears' forums about it - I'll see what comes of that.

It's really annoying when QA suffers as it seems to have done with these devices, hopefully a later firmware update will start to rectify things but for now I'll stick with my old access point (WG602 v1). The worst thing is the wasted time one spends trying to rectify these problems, compounded by talking to muppets in a call centre outside the UK who only know how to follow the scripts they've been given rather than actually understanding anything about the products they're 'dealing' with.

Rant over (for now!)

New Staff

nospam@example.com (Jeremy Coates) — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:11:00 +0100

We've just taken on a new member of staff Rachel Williams as a designer / coach. This action should help out lots round here - things have been way too busy for a long while (hence the scarcity of blog entries!). Welcome aboard Rachel.

Her role is partly design (especially web design) based and partly as a business / life coach and so it's not the usual skill mix you'd find in a single person. However find that person we did, as Rachel is a fully qualified life coach and has done quite a bit of design work - she's now got to learn how we do things (HTML templating with XTemplate! ). Hopefully there'll be many new developments as things get settled in.