Big Top Multimedia Blog

iPad sales continue to soar

2010-06-24T02:02:00.000-07:00

iPad sales have passed the 3 million mark already with analysts now speculating that Apple’s iPad could drive total tablet sales for the year as high as 10.5 million devices this year.

Although it's still possible that the iPad is not going to be a long term success, but it's off to an amazing start. We are advising all our clients to actively consider developing for the iPad now, in order to take advantage of the mass market potential of the device as it rapidly gains market share.

Read more at:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-to-analysts-eat-my-ipad/7309

City Cards iPhone App Launches!

2010-06-15T03:31:00.000-07:00

On Friday 11th June 2010, European Cities Marketing launched the first iPhone application to serve as a mobile tool for discovering 33 cities spread over 19 different European countries. The tool has been developed by Big Top Multimedia for the European City Card group. The group consists of 33 cities who work together to develop city cards for visitors. After the launch of the website www.europeancitycards.com in 2008, the group came together once again to produce the innovative tool, the “City Card App”.

“The City card application created by the ECM City Card project is a perfect example of how important it is for tourism to stay in line with the latest developments in modern technologies. City cards target active people who embrace technological innovations and if we wish to provide quality tourism services, we cannot only react to these influences but we must stay proactive,” says Dieter Hardt-Stremayr, ECM President and Managing Director of Graz Tourist Office.

Citycards

A city card is a card that offers free or reduced-price entrance to museums and attractions in a city in combination with public transport and other advantages for visitors. In recent years city cards have become more and more popular with visitors because of the value they bring to a city trip. Usually a city card comes with a map or a brochure that contains information on all the sights of the city and on everything it has to offer. With the iPhone application the visitor has a mobile tool to explore the city. The application is available for free at the iPhone store http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/city-cards/id374488671?mt=8&uo=6

and at the website www.europeancitycards.com

33 Cities in One

The cities that the iPhone app allows you to discover and which offer a city card are:- Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bruges, Brussels, Copenhagen, Cordoba, Dijon, Dubrovnik, Dublin, Gijon, Goteborg, Innsbruck, Krakow, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Nice, Nurnberg, Olomouc, Oslo, Prague, Reykjavik, San Sebastian, Split, Stockholm, Tallinn, Tarragona, Turku, Turin, Valencia, Vicenza, Zagreb and Zaragoza.

City Cards iPhone App Launches!

2010-06-08T01:43:00.000-07:00

European Cities Marketing, one of our clients, will officially launch their City Cards iPhone app this week at their annual conference.

The City Cards iPhone app allows users to explore the visitor attractions available in 31 European Cities!

All of the attractions listed in the application are mapped, so the user can easily find their way from their current location to the attraction that they wish to visit.

City Cards are a great way to see the sights when on vacation and at the same time, save money. City Cards give the bearer discounted admission to a range of top visitor attractions, and in many cases offer a range of money saving special offers on food, drink and shopping.

Download it FREE from the Apple App Store!

N900 - the verdict... not quite an iPhone killer.

2010-05-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

Some months ago I wrote about the N900. It's Nokias flagship N-Series device and the only Nokia phone to use the Linux based Maemo Operating system.

I was excited to get the phone, because for many years I felt that you just got a better "phone" experience from Nokia than anyone else. And the N900 was billed as Nokias come-back device with a brand new O/S ready to take on the iPhone and win!

I have to say that my relationship with this phone has been a love/hate affair. The phone is great... Messaging, chatting on skype, making skype calls, accessing WiFi, web browsing are all really easy to use. The camera is good and the file sharing functions are simple and intuitive. It's got GPS and Ovi Maps which are excellent. There's a lot to love about the N900. If it weren't for one small thing the phone would be an all-conquering hero for Nokia.

That small thing is the existence of the iPhone. I have to say that as much as I really, really love my N900, the iPhone is an easier device to use. And at the end of the day, that's the clincher. iPhones interface and touchscreen are just better than the N900.

Don't get me wrong, the UI on the N900 is excellent, it's not quite as polished as the iPhone but what lets the N900 down is the resistive touch-screen. The screen itself is head and shoulders above my old iPhone 3G in terms of resolution and clarity, and watching video on it is a real pleasure. However, the lack of multi-touch makes the whole device more fiddley to use than would otherwise have been the case.

So if I have to be honest, and declare a winner between the iPhone and the N900 it's still the iPhone. If Nokia released the same device with multi-touch and a capacitive screen then they would really have been able to put it up to Apple.

The other thing that the iPhone (and Android phones) have that the N900 does not have is a wide range of apps. The N900 compensates by giving you a real web browser that can run Flash, JavaScript etc, so you can get a desktop experience (or pretty close to it) from the built in N900 web browser. But the relative lack of Apps for the N900 means that you miss out on some of the fun of having an iPhone or Android device.

So N900... great phone, but Nokia still need to try harder.

Facebook Finding More Ways to Compete with Google

2010-04-30T03:58:00.000-07:00

Apparently Facebook is not content with only taking over the web, but wants to get some penetration into the physical world as well. Taking a cue from another dominant company, Google, Facebook is now giving brick and mortar businesses decals to put in their windows. While Facebook tells WebProNews the decals are currently only a test with a small number of businesses, I would expect this to be expanded in the future.
Increasing Competition with Google

Google has been sending decals to businesses as part of its Favorite Places program. In fact, they even just announced the expansion of this last week. Whereas Google's decals include a QR code pointing to the business' "Place Page," Facebook's include a link to the business' Facebook Page.

Google has its fair share of competition from a variety of angles. Apple is getting a great deal of the attention in this regard (making two big moves yesterday), but Facebook is up there as well. Facebook is already a key competitor in terms of where people spend their time online. Facebook expanding its presence all over the web only increases that, and will likely play a big role in the diversification of how people obtain information - in other words, maybe a little less Googling. Some of us have even speculated on the possibility that Facebook could one day create it's own AdSense-like network.

Implications for Local Search

In a recent article, we already touched upon the idea that Facebook is positioning itself to have a greater presence in how people find information at the local level. Even before Facebook's latest announcements, business pages have been a great way to engage with local customers.

In that article, I referenced a quote from Search Engine Land contributing editor Greg Sterling, who says, "It [Facebook] could do nothing in particular or it could build the single most effective local directory and search site that exists. This data will be more valuable than anything Google has or any individual local publisher-partner possesses. That includes Yelp, YPG or anyone else that joins the Open Graph and implements these new Facebook platform tools."

All of the "liking" of local businesses that will be facilitated by Facebook's new Open Graph strategy may be further facilitated by these decals. We don't know at this point how many businesses are getting these, but if this becomes widespread, it could be pretty powerful for businesses, and perhaps even more so for Facebook itself. As Facebook notes in a letter to those who receive the decals, businesses are already including their Page URLs on various materials - receipts, napkins, storefronts, etc.

Does Facebook Want to Replace the Website?

There has been some discussion lately that perhaps Facebook was going to make Facebook Pages obsolete by putting the "like" button all over the web and changing the "become a fan" button on Facebook Pages to "like". The thinking here would be, what's the point of liking a Facebook Page for a brand, when you can just like that brand's site? I think Facebook has the opposite in mind.

As I've discussed in the past with regard to Google's Place Pages (and to some extent, Facebook Pages), maybe they'd rather make the website obsolete and have the Facebook Page (or Google Place Page in previous examples) take their place. If Facebook wants to be the new web, and it wants "likes" to be the new links, why wouldn't they want Pages to be the new sites? The decals point to Facebook Pages.

In reality, businesses are not going to be giving up their websites anytime soon and handing over full control to Facebook. However, businesses that don't even have a website may find that a Facebook Page is pretty easy to set up and can connect them with a whole lot of people (much like Google's Place Pages can). Maintenance is much less of a hassle when it comes to a Facebook Page as well, and some may find that attractive in itself.

Mashable suggests that in the battle for the more dominant decal (in terms of what businesses actually want to display), Facebook may have a leg up with its 400 million+ users and "the value of an instant Fan". While Google has no shortage of users, that "instant fan" concept carries a great deal of weight. When someone visits a Place Page on Google, they can find information about the business, sure. But if they're already at the business, how much value does that really have, when compared to the one which will put that person essentially on the business' mailing list - the Facebook version. When they're a fan, you can communicate to them and with them directly.

Facebook says businesses that promote their Page off-Facebook tend to see a 20% or greater increase in connections.

Microsoft shelves ‘Courier’ tablet PC, e-book combo

2010-04-30T02:47:00.001-07:00

Microsoft shelves ‘Courier’ tablet PC, e-book combo

An innovative two-screen tablet computer code-named ‘Courier’ has apparently been shelved by Microsoft. The internal team working on the project have been told it will no longer be supported.

The Courier PC is understood to have neared completion and would have heralded a new age of pen and touch-based computing.
While the project has been shelved indefinitely, Microsoft believes the technology that allowed a computer with two screens to open like a book could be evaluated for use in future offerings.
Microsoft communications vice-president Frank Shaw, in response to questions from US gadget site Gizmodo, said: “At any given time, we're looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It's in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity.
“The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time,” Shaw said.
The timing of the news could tally with an announcement earlier this week of Windows Embedded Standard 7 which the software giant intends to make broadly available to a wide number of devices, from digital TVs to other net-connected devices.
The presence of a Microsoft-branded ‘Courier’ device with two screens might have alienated OEMs from producing their own versions. However, with the availability of an operating system and a concept that has clearly sparked a lot of imaginations, enterprising OEMs may be free to produce their own dual-screen tablet PCs.
Consider this alongside yesterday’s acquisition of Palm by HP for US$1.2bn. HP is not interested in the Palm Pre, HP is interested in webOS and creating its own new product families of handsets and computer devices with an embedded OS to compete with products like the iPad and future iterations of Android devices perhaps running on Intel Atom processors.
It may be the end of a Microsoft-branded device, but perhaps not the end for a concept that others could run away with.

What Facebook "Likes" Mean for Search & Reputation

2010-04-29T05:48:00.000-07:00

What Facebook "Likes" Mean for Search and Reputation

Facebook "Likes" Mean More to Businesses Than Just Traffic

It's been nearly a week since Facebook rocked the world with its Open Graph announcements, and many of us are still wrapping our heads around all of the implications they have. I don't think there's any dispute that it's a huge move, and that it's important to pay attention to from a business perspective, but just what it means for businesses is still up in the air in some regards. Like Facebook itself, or even social media in general, we're going to see more benefits (and possibly negatives) as time goes on, and more sites and applications harness the power of said Open Graph.

As those wheels turn in our heads, there is plenty of discussion already happening around the subject - not just the Open Graph and the issues related to it (open web ramifications, privacy, etc), but how we can indeed take advantage of it.

Traffic

In a recent article we talked about why Facebook's Open Graph and particularly its social plug-ins will be good to drive traffic. It's pretty straightforward. The like and recommendation buttons are essentially different versions of the share buttons that people have been using to drive traffic for quite some time. The main difference is that instead of only showing up in the news feed only disappear shortly thereafter, they will remain on the user's profile page for people to see in the future - a fixed link to your content.

Have you seen more traffic from Facebook's buttons since they've launched? Let us know.

Search/SEO

Search Engine Land contributing editor Greg Sterling makes some interesting points about the search implications of the whole thing:

However, the vision here is a network of discovery tools and information that operate higher up in the funnel than search: what are my friends doing, where are they eating, what do they recommend? This clearly doesn’t eliminate the need for search. But it does represent an alternative way in many cases to discover information.

Yet the mountains of data that Facebook will gain could improve Facebook search results and potentially the coming, new and improved Bing integration. At a simple level, if Facebook knows the most “Liked” sushi restaurants in New York and those liked by my social network it can show me that information in search results. That hypothetically makes Facebook search much more social and more of a “recommendations engine” than Google at this point.

Nobody's saying Facebook is poised to replace Google, but the whole thing falls inline with the diversification of search we've been talking about a lot lately. Search is getting more diversified, meaning that people are using more and more applications to find the information they're looking for. Facebook obviously plays a huge role in this. Also consider that Facebook's search market share has been on the rise, and it stands to reason that will continue as more and more data becomes available as this Open Graph expands.

Do you see Facebook's own search becoming more of a go-to place for finding information? Comment here.

Local

Assuming that every business rushes to get like/recommend buttons from Facebook in the way that they would rush to claim a listing in Google's Local Business Center (Now named Google Places), Facebook may become a very valuable place to find out the best businesses to go to for any given category.

As Sterling says on his Screenwerk blog, "It could do nothing in particular or it could build the single most effective local directory and search site that exists. This data will be more valuable than anything Google has or any individual local publisher-partner possesses. That includes Yelp, YPG or anyone else that joins the Open Graph and implements these new Facebook platform tools."

This is mostly forward thinking, and we don't know what Facebook is going to do. It's definitely something to keep eye on. Either way, local businesses are likely to attract fans from their areas with more friends from that area, who may in turn pass it to their friends in the area. Facebook has already been a great marketing tool for local businesses, and the Open Graph will only help in that regard.

Do you think Facebook is going to become increasingly important for local businesses? Share your thoughts.
Reputation

Facebook's latest changes have plenty of implications for reputation management. Likes and recommendations are potentially great for building a good reputation, but even while there is no dislike button (at least yet), a lack of likes/recommendations may reflect poorly on your brand, particularly when your competition is getting all kinds of love from Facebook users.

On the other side of things, you may want to be careful what you like and recommend yourself. Wording of likes and recommendations can come off as inappropriate, but the bigger issue may be liking and recommending stuff that that paints you in a non-professional light. Depending on what you do and the image you are trying to portray, this may or many not be a problem, but for those who wish to be careful about how others perceive them, this is something to think about.

Should you be concerned about likes/recommendations from a reputation standpoint? Tell us what you think.

Another thing worth mentioning about all of this is that Facebook is showing suggestions for things to like and recommend to new users. Facebook has posted something of an FAQ for the new features that aims to clarify how it all works for users.

iPhone Apps

2010-01-30T03:44:00.000-08:00

It seems like Apple is always in the news lately. Their recent launch of the iPad has once again put the spotlight on a company that have consistently provided products that are beautifully designed and well thought out.

Apple are probably most famous for the iPhone, a piece of hardware that has totally changed the way people interact with their mobile phone. The iPhone has continuously gained ground in the marketplace, and iPhone Apps are now a hot ticket item for many businesses.

iPhone Apps are small programs that provide a user with information, entertainment, or useful services directly to their phone. They offer companies an exciting new way to interact with consumers. Apple claims that over 1 billion iphone applications have been downloaded since the iPhone was launched in 2007.

In recent months we've had more and more enquiries about iPhone applications and so we've set up an iPhone development team that can provide our clients with the highest quality in application development. We're already working on 3 different iPhone Apps for our clients, and we think that in 2010 iPhone apps are going to be more and more popular with Irish businesses.

Nokia N900

2010-01-03T06:41:00.000-08:00

For Christmas I got a Nokia N900. This is the latest phone from Nokia and the first handset to use the Maemo operating system. Maemo is a version of Linux, and it aims at giving a true desktop PC experience in a handheld device.

It's an amazing little device with a fast processor, lots of memory, a high res touch screen, and slideout qwerty keyboard. The N900 virtually has every vital feature currently available for the trendiest mobile devices. So with a feature list, far too long to fit in one article, I'll simply list some of the unique features I found interesting after playing around with it.

Off the bat, it has 32GB of memory, which can be used to store thousands of documents and media files. About 2GB of the device's memory is dedicated to applications. With the addition of a microSD card slot to boost memory, up to 48GB of memory is achievable.

It has an amazing web browser - which is one area where the device really shines. The MiroB browser is a full Mozilla based browser with proper JavaScript and Flash support, so you can use all normal web sites and web applications straight from the browser, just like on your PC. This means that unlike the iPhone, there is less need for Apps and additional downloads and add-ons. That the N900 relies less on apps to expand it's functionality is a good thing, because there isn't a huge amount of apps available for the N900 yet. That said, the most popular needs are catered for - maps, facebook, twitter, some games. Hopefully there'll be more N900 apps to come.

Additionally, there is an FM transmitter to turn the device into a mini radio station so it can wirelessly send music stored in its memory to any tuneable FM radio.

With an active Internet connection, the device also automatically scans and downloads official updates and checks for firmware, alerting the user of any new developments to keep the device running at its best.

Stunning images and video are captured by a five-megapixel, dual LED flash camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and is displayed on a beautiful 3.5-inch, 16 million colour touch screen!

Finally, one big advantage that the N900 has over a lot of its competitors is the ability to smoothly run multiple applications at one time, you can easily listen to music, surf the web, have an email client open, have your calendar open, and maybe a couple of other applications running all at the same time. You don't have to close one thing in order to open something else, which is a major gripe that many users have with the iPhone. N900 also let's you switch easily between these open applications, or back to the desktop through a very well thought out user interface.

I don't think it's going to compete with the iPhone which offers a more polished and user-friendly experience overall, but I think that it's an interesting first step for Nokia who need to up their game in the smartphone arena where their standard Symbian operating system is starting to look old and clunky. Maemo offers a nice, smooth, responsive user interface that's easy to use and relatively bug free from my experience. However, the iPhone interface is more polished, though in a head to head competition between the two, there's not a lot in it.

What the N900 does offer is an alternative to the Netbook in a phone sized package. N900 is a very capable web, email, and instant message (skype, google chat etc...) device. It can run multiple applications with ease, and the slide out keyboard means that typing is a lot easier than on touchscreen devices. It will be interesting to see how the platform and the applications for the N900 develop over time.

I'll post an update in a month or so and let you know how I'm getting on with it!

Using PDFs to get found on the Search Engines

2009-12-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me recently about PDFs and Search Engine Optimisation. It's something that most people don't think about but in fact you can use PDFs to get better rankings on Google and other search engines in much the same way as you can with web pages.

PDF optimization is similar to optimization for a regular content page. Try this: good use of keywords/phrases, appropriate headlines and sub-headlines, solid content that reads well to a human eye, etc. If the PDF will include images, a caption underneath each image would be a good idea, especially if the caption includes a targeted keyword/phrase.

There's an interesting article about how to do it here: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/optimizing-pdfs-for-seo/288/#ixzz0YT6iJgU5

Google Chrome O/S sees the light of day!

2009-11-20T01:45:00.000-08:00

Today Google finally aired its long awaited Chrome Operating System. The operating system was detailed at a press conference starting at 1 p.m. EST, and the open source code was posted online just before the start of the presentation. The new operating system brings a dramatically different look and perspective to the market and just may give Microsoft and OS X some tough competition by reinventing a tired old wheel -- the operating system -- offering the first laptop/desktop OS built around the browser and web applications.

A Google engineer set the mood for the presentation announcing in the introduction, "Chrome is the foundation of everything we’re doing here."

Read more about it here: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16883
And directly from Google here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

Google Social Search

2009-10-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

Google are preparing to roll out social search accross their network. Google Social Search is an experimental feature that helps you find relevant public web content from people in your social circle, when you're signed in to your Google Account. For example, search for [ restaurants ], and restaurant reviews by your friends and other contacts may appear more prominently in your results. Join the Social Search experiment at http://www.google.com/experimental

This could mean that companies who are active on the social networks are set to get a lot more traffic from Googel Search in the near future.

Take a look at the video below to see how it works.

BNI Ambassador site goes live

2009-10-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

We've just launched the BNI Ambassador web site. http://www.bniambassador.com

BNI is the most successful business networking organisation of its type in the world. It offers members the opportunity to share ideas, contacts and most importantly, business referrals.

Big Top Multimedia has been part of the Ambassador chapter since it began in late 2008. The chapter meets every Friday morning at 6.30 in the Academy Hotel, just off O’Connell Street in Dublin, and visitors are always welcome.

The site features LinkedIn profiles for all chapter members which are pulled automatically from their LinkedIn accounts, and automatically update when a member updates their LinkedIn profile.

New Cafe Fresh website goes live

2009-09-28T01:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we put the new Cafe Fresh web site live online. The site is complimented by a Twitter feed and a Facebook page for Cafe Fresh which after only 24 hours has already got some fans and followers!

Mary Farrell, the owner of the Cafe wanted a site that was easy to update and that would actively help to engage visitors on a topic that she is really passionate about - food that is not just healthy, but is also delicious!

So we built a site powered by the WordPress blog engine. It's a simple solution, but it gives the staff at Cafe Fresh some big advantages over many other content management options.

Firstly, it allows the business to quickly and easily update their site using the simple WordPress tools that many people are familiar with.

Secondly, it allows Cafe Fresh to easily extend the site by posting information, adding pages as they require, and (importantly) utilising simple plugins such as Twitter feeds, Facebook feeds etc. WordPress opens a host of options for the company that a regular web site just could not easily offer.

Finally, the site not only offers Cafe Fresh an opportunity to interact with their users through comments and to regularly update their site with news and information, it actively encourages them to do so. Keeping a site up to date and enhancing interactivity is the key to delivering a "sticky" web presence that will get visitors back to the site over and over again.

We think that Cafe Fresh site will help Mary Farrell and her team to really spread the word about their great value, healthy, and delicious food!

Visit them today at http://www.cafe-fresh.com/

It's Culture Night tonight!

2009-09-25T02:09:00.000-07:00

Culture Night is on tonight! If you've never experienced it before, it's a night of entertainment, discovery and adventure!

This year over 120 arts and cultural organisations open their doors until late with hundreds of free events, tours, talks and performances for you, your family and friends to enjoy.

There’s also Culture Night events in other Irish cities and towns, so switch off the telly and get out there!

Check out the event highlights here!

Keywords Meta-tags - Google doesn't care!

2009-09-23T04:15:00.000-07:00

I came accross an interesting Webmaster Central video where Matt Cutts from Google explains their stance on Keywords Meta-tags.

Google does not use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking. Google's Matt Cutts explains this in a Webmaster Central video. This is not breaking news, by any means, but there are a lot of people out there that still put a lot of stock into this.

Google Busts the Duplicate Content Myth

2009-09-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

Interesting article on Web Pro News about duplicate content and whether or not Google penalises sites that have duplicate content.

"While Google's Matt Cutts has certainly provided a wealth of helpful tips via the company's Webmaster Central YouTube channel, he is not the only one to do so. Greg Grothaus of the Search Quality Team has posted a video (along with a presentation on the Webmaster Central Blog) covering duplicate content and multiple site issues that webmasters continue to face when trying to rank well in Google."

Read on...

New Big Top web site rolls out....

2009-09-12T09:22:00.000-07:00

It's been a while in the works, but we're rolling out the new Big Top Multimedia web site this weekend.

We've tried to provide a simple web presence that looks good and delivers key information clearly. I hope that you like it.

We'll add more content and project information as time goes on, so stay tuned!

New Big Top Logo

2009-09-10T03:26:00.000-07:00

We've got a new logo! I'd welcome any feedback that anyone cares to give.

My Dublin Life

2009-09-08T01:42:00.000-07:00

As part of Dublin Tourism's new web site we have incorporated a blog written by a tourist. The blog is a personal view of Dublin as seen through the eyes of a Canadian student spending a year here. Her blog was discovered by a member of staff and we thought that it was really well written and interesting.

We approached Dublin Tourism and suggested that they consider featuring it on their site as a way of giving their web site visitors a look at real life in Dublin. The aim is to let people see the city through the eyes of a tourist. To see all of the new, interesting, and wonderful things that the people who live in the city don't really notice because they are everyday things to them.

Of course blogging as a form of online promotion is well known and nothing new but we think that getting a real life look at the city is an interesting departure in Tourism promotion and adds authenticity to the message that Dublin Tourism are trying to deliver - namely that Dublin is a great European city destination!

Visitdublin.com Re-vamped

2009-09-02T01:35:00.000-07:00

We've had a re-vamped version of visitdublin.com in gestation for a while now and I am delighted to say that the new site is now live!

This is the 6th iteration of visitdublin.com that we have been involved in. The new version of the site attempts to keep the best elements of the previous build whilst delivering more rich content, and improving the navigation and delivering easier access to all areas of the web site.

We spent a lot of effort this time around on highlighting the social networking side of Dublin Tourism's online marketing. For the last two years we have been working with Dublin Tourism to build their profile on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. These new channels have helped the organisation to develop and deliver more interactive content and to reach out to new audiences.

Of course, there are more innovations in the pipeline and we hope to unveil new initiatives and enhancements in the coming months.

New Dublin Cultural Institute web site launched

2009-09-01T01:51:00.000-07:00

We're delighted to announce that the Dublin Cultural Institute (http://www.dublinci.com/) have launched their new site.

We re-developed their site to allow DCI to offer their web site visitors easier access to key information about studying in Dublin. The site features improved navigation, improved user interface and presentation, and easy access to their range of excellent social network resources.

We expect the site to drive new business to DCI and help them to compete successfully in an ever more competitive market place.

Big Top wins a new client - Vayu Ltd

2009-08-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

I am delighted to be able to announce that we have signed a contract with Vayu Ltd to develop a SQL database application for internal company use.

Vayu supplies gas and electricity to businesses all over Ireland and offers a real alternative in the Irish energy sector.

In 2003, Vayu became the first independent supplier to be awarded a gas shipping and supply license by the Commission for Energy Regulation. Since then, we have gained 28% of the large commercial and industrial gas sector.

In November 2007, Vayu was awarded an electricity licence and started to supply electricity to commercial and industrial Customers in June 2008.

Vayu is an Irish company, with offices in Dublin and Cork. Vayu is backed by Glencore International AG, one of the world’s largest suppliers of a wide range of commodities and raw materials to industry.

We are looking forward to a long and happy relationship with Vayu in the coming months and years.

Culture Night Launched

2009-08-18T01:27:00.000-07:00

Culture Night 2009 was launched at an event in the National Museum at Collins Barracks.

From coast to coast, 11 cities and counties from Dublin to Letterkenny to Tralee will play host to a variety of arts and cultural events taking place at 124 venues on September 25.

Culture Night is back and Big Top Multimedia are delighted to have been involved in developing the web site for the event again this year.

Visit the Culture Night web site at www.culturenight.ie

You can also see the 2008 archive site at 2008.culturenight.ie

Windows 7 - Launching on Oct 22nd

2009-08-12T09:26:00.000-07:00

As many of you will know Windows 7 will be available to the general public from October 22nd.

We've been running the release candidate version (RC) of it on a number of our PCs in the office and on the very laptop on which I am typing this blog!

We've had no problems with the RC and would strongly recommend that anyone getting a new PC upgrade to Windows 7 as soon as they have the opportunity.

Microsofts Partners and MSDN subscribers should be able to download the final version of Windows 7 already. We're planning on transitioning all of our workstations over the coming months.

If you're wondering about whether or not your PC can handle Windows 7 then take look at our previous posts.

Windows 7 - Getting started: Hardware requirements

2009-07-26T02:40:00.000-07:00

Microsoft have issued details on the hardware requirements for running Windows 7. This article will hopefully give you some ideas as to what you will need in a real world situation.

Windows Vista was notorious for requiring very high powered machines in order to run well. Something which undoubtedly contributed to Vista's reputation as slow and unwieldy.

Happily the situation with Windows 7 is that it will, in my experience at least, run well on any PC with a modern processor like an Intel Core2 or AMD Athlon or Phenom processor. I have found that Windows 7 is quite happy with the following processors:

Intel Core 2 1.6 Ghz
AMD Athlon FX51 (2.2 Ghz) - This is the original single core Athlon FX processor from many years ago. Windows 7 runs very smoothly on it.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 (2.4 Ghz)
AMD Phenom 2 (3.0 Ghz)

I have also tested Windows 7 on an Eee Box with an Intel Atom processor running at 1.6 Ghz. Although the OS runs OK, the Eee box really does not have the necessary power needed in order to run the OS properly. However, Microsoft are supposed to be issuing a version of Windows 7 (Windows 7 Basic) which will be more suited to netbook/nettop PCs. So we'll have to wait until that is available to test this again. For the moment, I couldn't really recommend Windows 7 over Windows XP or Linux for netbooks.

So what about RAM? I would advise 2GB of RAM. Microsoft say that you only need 1GB but the fact is that while Windows 7 will run on 1GB of RAM but if you want to have multiple programs running at the same time and really get the most from your PC you will need 2GB or more.

To summarize, if you have a reasonably modern PC - bought in the last 3 years you should be able to run Windows 7 without any problems. However, you might want to upgrade your RAM just to be on the safe side.

Windows 7 - Getting started: How easy is it to install?

2009-07-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

Anyone with any experience of installing Windows will tell you that it can be a very, very, very long winded affair! I have spent hours installing various flavours of Windows in the past. Hunting for disks with the right drivers, waiting for ages while Windows slowly chugs through the install process... I have to say, it brings back some very unhappy memories.

So I am very glad to be able to tell you that with Windows 7, those days seem to be over! I have installed Windows 7 RC on four machines so far:

a laptop
a modern quad core workstation
an old workstation powered by an AMD Athlon FX-51 CPU (the original AMD Athlon 64 chip)
an Asus Eee Box (low powered desktop netbook PC)

The only problem that I had was that there was no 64 bit SATA RAID driver available for the old workstation, which is no surprise seeing that it is about 6 years old. In that case, I just installed Windows 7 on a regular IDE drive and forgot about using SATA RAID for the boot drive on that machine.

So, in general, what can we say about the install process? Well, it's smooth as butter! Pop in the Windows Disk and away you go. The whole process will take about half an hour. And best of all, once you get Windows installed, it will go off and find all the drivers it needs by itself. Gone are the days of hunting for disks or scouring the Internet for driver downloads.

When it comes to device drivers, another good news story for those thinking of upgrading to Windows 7 is the fact that Windows 7 can use Windows Vista drivers. This means that it should be a very rare occaision where a user comes accross a driver compatibility problem.

So if installing the OS is a simple process what about the hardware needed to run it? That will be the topic of my next post.

As always, anyone with any thoughts of their own about installing Windows 7, please feel free to comment!

Living with 7

2009-07-18T00:39:00.000-07:00

When the Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) version became available a couple of months ago I decided to ditch Vista and take a gamble on the new OS. Spurred on by reports that Windows 7 was a big improvement on Windows Vista, I downloaded the RC from my MSDN account and set about installing it on my laptop.

It's important to me that my laptop runs smoothly as I do a lot of work on it, although having said that, it's not my primary work machine, so if disaster occurred all would not be lost. It's a modest machine, a Toshiba U113, 160GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, with a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo processor at it's heart. The laptop came loaded with Vista, and all was well initially but after a while Vista seemed to get bogged down and take forever to do anything. I tried re-installing the Vista to see if a clean install would help, but it didn't.

Before I go on, I should say that in general my experiences with Windows Vista have been OK. I started using it when it was realeased first in January 2007. There have been some times when I have cursed it vehemently but in fairness to Microsoft, a lot of the issues that I had with it related to driver problems in the early days which are not really Microsofts fault. Anyway, my big gripe with Vista is that it is sluggish. Even on my quad core workstation with 8GB of RAM it seems to take forever to start up.

By April of this year, sluggish response times from Vista on my laptop had finally become unbearable. In truth, it ran like a dog on my little laptop, so and I leaped at the chance to try Windows 7. I am SO glad that I took that chance.

Windows 7 is a revelation. The OS loads quickly, hibernates and resumes quickly and without any fuss. It is generally responsive and very, very stable. Even though I am using the RC, I have not had any problems with applications hanging (i.e. getting stuck), and I have not had one single crash or blue-screen on my laptop in nearly three months of using Windows 7.

In the following posts I am going to describe some of my experiences of Windows 7. Hopefully you'll find them useful, and it would be great to hear how you have found working with Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Welcome

2009-05-28T06:11:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the brand new Big Top Blog! For years I have been involved in advising and helping others to start blogs and get publishing as a way to give their visitors and customers a better online experience.

This blog will contain a fairly diverse range of material to do with IT, web site development, design, programming and usability. I hope you find it useful.

Thanks

Richard