Humble Technologies

The Technology Experts What is it? The technology experts is our...

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:30:00 +0100

The Technology Experts

What is it?

The technology experts is our own web property which we see as solving a real problem in the world of technology. Everyday I talk to people who ask me what computer should I buy? What virus software should I use? How do I build a website? and many more questions a like. The information is out there but people want trusted recommendations and a simple explanation which can be hard to find. We are building a website that gives clear unbiased answers to these very common questions. We’ll also be letting people ask and answer questions for the community. The aim is to help people make more educated decisions when choosing technology so they have less pain and more fun. We want to save people time and money so we’ll do al the research and find our users the best technology for the job in hand and the best prices too.

Where is it then?

OK so you noticed it doesn’t exist yet. Well its on its way and we hope to have it live with a ton of useful answers to those common technology questions within a couple of months. Watch this space.

MRM Technical Services Who Are They? MRM represent many European...

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:29:00 +0100

MRM Technical Services

Who Are They?

MRM represent many European and American Equipment Manufacturers. They supply high quality equipment used in Oil and Gas exploration and production, petrochemical and chemical manufacture and electrical power generation.

What Did We Do?

MRM came to us wanting a fresh web presence with a focus on clearly displaying their catalogue of equipment. They wanted the site to be search engine friendly and easily editable. So we chose to use Wordpress along with a highly customised wp e-commerce plugin to provide easily editable catalogue functionality. By creating an optimized hierarchy for the catalogue content taking into account both product types, product names and brand names we were able to generate a lot more traffic to the site through search engines.

More Features Please!

As is with many projects as the development progressed they became more engaged and had more interesting feature requests so we ended up implementing a related product feature, and a smart little AJAX brochure download widget.

Low Carbon We developed lowcarbon.com which advertises jobs,...

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:28:00 +0100

Low Carbon

We developed lowcarbon.com which advertises jobs, courses and events in the renewable energy, carbon management and climate sectors. The site is full of rich features for advertisers and job seekers as well as including a sophisticated administration area. We used Ruby on Rails throughout.

Features

The site has a myriad of powerful features for job seekers including full text search, advanced search, custom RSS feeds, custom email alerts and the ability to save jobs and companies to your profile for easy access in the future. If new jobs are found meeting the job seekers requirements then an email is sent out daily containing these jobs. From this email a user can easily deactivate alerts, unsubscribe, login and of course view jobs of interest.

Advertisers can signup and post jobs themselves. Advertisers can also manage the lifecycle of their adverts by closing, deleting and reactivating. There are plenty of statistics to help advertisers get a picture of how successful their post has been and they can login to keep track of advert views, click thru’s to further information on their site, requests for further information etc. Once invoiced advertisers can easily pay for adverts online and administrators can keep track of invoices and payments.

The site administrators have a powerful web interface for managing adverts. They can edit, approve and close the adverts as well as look back at full version history of each advert reinstating older versions if necessary. The site also boasts a simple but effective CMS (Content Management System) where administrators can update the vast majority of site content with simple markup. Images can be easily uploaded through the CMS and automatically resized for use as logos, or used inline within the page content. The project also included the implementation of a bespoke CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.

Managing a Successful Project

We believe the secret to a successful project is truly open communication channels. With a combination of face to face meetings, telephone calls, IM and Basecamp we were able to stay in touch constantly so we could get the right solutions for the client in the right timeframe. Regular test deployments to show the client our progress meant they kept involved with the development and we didn’t get chance to stray far from what they were looking for. This all resulted in a timely delivery and a happy customer.

Steve’s the best developer we’ve ever used, on the case, responsive and very bright. He’s fast, but takes the time to get the code right. Steve and Rails are a great combination.

- David White, Director CSML

End User Satisfaction

The most important thing to us and our clients is the end users of the system. We focus on usability and simplicity in order to get people using the site, loving the site and coming back time and time again. The website has gone down well with end users and is gaining popularity quickly. Here is some feedback from an end user that lowcarbon.com recieved about their site.

This is the best website I think I’ve ever seen - the first one that shows a good array of jobs and links to climate change. I’m a recent graduate from the University of Edinburgh and was alerted to the website via Student Force. It’s a fantastic site and one that I’ve been waiting for about 4 years to see! I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me feel. Thank you so much for restoring my faith in finding a solution and seeing beyond the uninspiring temp job.

- Rebecca Mcintosh, lowcarbon.com user