Information Solutions Win Gold at Mayor Awards

Thu, 09/05/2013 - 10:04am — Pete

For the second year running Shrewsbury based Information Solutions Limited have won an award at the Mayor of Shrewsbury annual awards ceremony.

This year the Gold award was presented by the mayor in recognition of Information Solutions’ “outstanding contribution to the community in the business sector”.

On receiving the award, company director Pete White said: “It’s great to be recognised for the hard work we do in the town helping local businesses with their IT and web requirements. We’ve been helping local companies to improve their competitive edge with advanced information technology for the last ten years."

Information Solutions also trade as The Web Orchard and are one of the companies behind the popular Love Shrewsbury website. Pete added "Undoutably our success with Love Shrewsbury over the past year is one of the reasons we've won this prestigious award and we look forward to continuing this over the coming year".

Information Solutions have been providing IT Support and Services to businesses throughout The Midlands and Wales since 2003. They serve some of the largest and smallest organisations in the area from their offices in The Pump House, Shrewsbury.

The company provides a wide range of services, from advanced websites and server/network installations through to computer maintenance and IT consulting services.

www.info-sol.co.uk

www.theweborchard.com

Shrewsbury

Affordable alternatives to game consoles

Thu, 09/05/2013 - 9:43am — Pete

This year has seen a revolution in game consoles, with a new focus on social gaming and cloud technology. The Nintendo Wii U has completely remodelled the classic controller, whilst the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 are gearing up to transform game titles from physical DVD discs to internet installations. But these brand new console releases come with a hefty price tag, and the accompanying games only add to the rocketing costs that players face nowadays.

So, whilst you wait for console costs to drop, here are some of the best alternatives that will make sure you don’t go without your gaming fix.

Online games and emulators:

There is a huge online market for instant games, with sites such as EA and MoneyGaming offering everything from action to casino classics. You may sometimes be required to sign up with a player account and make a small deposit, but you can usually take advantage of promotional offers and even turn a profit whilst playing (which will certainly help you afford that Xbox 720 by Christmas time.)

However, if you have your heart set on a specific rare or discontinued title then emulators are a great solution. These can be downloaded straight to your PC and all you require to play is a cheap, USB compatible controller, which is available online or from gadget shops.

Mobile Gaming:

Smartphones have advanced significantly over the years, offering players impressive graphics and a high quality gaming experience. However, tapping some buttons on your phone isn’t quite the same as playing from your favourite console. Well, that’s where mobile gaming accessories come into play.

Portable game controllers connect straight to mobiles to allow you to game from any location. iPhone users can play with the iControlPad from £45 and Android gamers will be impressed by the stylish PowerA Moga, which costs around £30. Although a little pricey, these accessories are a fantastic way to keep entertained and, with free and affordable mobile games, they are easy on the bank balance.

Stream games to your TV:

Mobile gaming is all well and good, but sometimes you want to see your favourite game titles blown up on the TV screen. For around £65 you can purchase the OnLive, which allows you to stream full console games to computers, phones and TVs without the need for big bulky hardware. A microconsole links the OnLive to the television and works impressively well.

Similarly, MHL can connect your smartphone to your TV screen and is much more affordable, at less than £10. The smartphone controller accessories even connect to some Android apps, to allow the use of PlayStation 3 and Wii remotes whilst playing.

Microconsoles:

Microconsoles give you all the fun of playing your favourite titles on the TV, but at a fraction of the cost.

The console taking the industry by storm at the moment is the Ouya. Priced at under £100, the Ouya will be released in June and will allow players to enjoy Android games with a physical controller. Its creators also promise that it will be open to hacking, meaning avid gamers can use the microconsole to play emulator apps on.

Image courtesy of Stratageme.com at Flickr

GameStick is another microconsole very similar to the Ouya, except that it is smaller in design and cheaper in price. PlayJam, the creators of the device, are a game developing company, meaning that the software support on the GameStick is likely to be better than that of its rival.

Tech

Yearly Returns with Zopa

Sun, 14/04/2013 - 1:08pm — Pete

I first wrote about Zopa in 2007, back then returns on ISAs and similar investments were good and Zopa was a relatively new website with no track record.

With interest rates at 0.5% and most highstreet ISAs giving a similar return I've been struggling to find somewhere to save my money.

Zopa's philosophy remains unchanged, you move money into your online Zopa account, set the rates you wish to lend at and Zopa lends your money to people that need it.

When setting your rates Zopa gives you guidelines as to the market rates, these change frequently and I tend to set mine on the high end of the recommended rates. This means my money is lent our slowly however the return rates are higher.

I lend out a maximum of £10 per person hence my maximum exposure per loan is limited. Zopa has a number of markets and you can choose the rates you lend to each one (if at all) A* being the best market and B being the riskier, obviously the rates for the riskier markets are higher.

Through your loan book you can see the usernames of who you lend money to and the reasons, most are for DIY, cars or to consolidate existing debts however you do get some more entertaining ones.

If you need access to your money quickly Zopa has a rapid return facility however you lose a percentage of your earnings by using this.

My difficulty with Zopa came in trying to calculate the percent rate of return over a period of time. Therefore just over a year ago I took the decision not to add anything further into my account.

Over a year long period I could then calculate the years earning as a percent to then compare with other investments.

As a result in this time I had one unpaid load (ie bad debt), once taking this into account and the 1% Zopa fee my return was 5.56%.

Compared to high street ISA's and similar this is a good return.

Money

April Fools on Love Shrewsbury

Tue, 02/04/2013 - 7:55pm — Pete

When I was writing the April Fools editorial in bed at 8.30 yesterday morning it didn't cross my mind that it would be the best day ever on the site. We over doubled our previous visits record, 5 times the average good days traffic and even got mentioned on local radio.

What was really interesting about the day was how quickly the article went viral and how quickly it started to bring visitors to the site. I published the article at 9.09, I immediately shared this on the Love Shrewsbury Facebook Page (with an audience of 877 likes), I then reshared to my personal Facebook friends (an audience of about 500). I then shared on my personal Twitter (knowing that the Love Shrewsbury Twitter would be tweeted automatically from IFTTT).

Almost instantly people started to click through to the website. Between 9.09 and 12pm traffic was fairly consistently showing 20-25 people reading the article. Just after 12 we broke the sites previous hits record (set sometime last year), by 9pm we had doubled this amount.

What was also interesting is the number of people that used the Facebook like button within the page, as I write this post it has 163 likes, given we struggle to get comments on the site its good to see people interacting in this way.

We've put a lot of work into developing our social media channels and days like yesterday so how effective they can be in distributing content and bringing traffic to the site.

The big challenge is continuing to develop content, the 1st of April only comes round once a year and this sort of article wouldn't work any other time.

Today we have a great photographic piece about the closed Shrewsbury prison that I was hoping would be the big article of the week however something tells me it won't cause as big a stir!

Originally posted on petejwhite.com