The issue has long been the balance between the benefits that the Internet can offer in terms of communication and support for independent living, versus the (perceived) complexity of the devices needed to access these benefits.

Having been involved in both public sector and private projects looking at supporting independent living since the 1990s, the team here at Big Media are watching with interest as the debate rises again.

In particular I’m referring here to the article in the Sunday Times about Whiteley Village published on the 19th February 2017.

The article covers the quest for the secret of longer life, and how this English village retirement community in the Surrey stockbroker belt is being studied alongside communities in Japan, Greek islands and the Himalayas. Apart from the encouragement from the Whiteley Homes Trust – who run the village – for residents to take control of their lives, and to interact socially as much as possible, it is also interesting to see that the whole village is to be wired up to become a “Smart Village”.

The idea behind the Smart Village is to allow scientists from surrey University, and tech companies, to experiment with new ways of promoting good health and wellbeing.

There is little doubt that much has been done to improve the interface and ease of use of many devices over recent years, including smartphones and tablets. This is good, especially when compared with the high hopes and subsequent failed realisations of tech service providers in the past when trying to encourage elderly users to adopt computers. The sheer complexity and number of buttons meant what these would-be new silver surfers actually had in their home was a £500 doorstop.

Experiments with Interactive TV

As a team, Big Media’s foray into Interactive TV started in 2003, and explored many different aspects of using the TV to provide interactive services in support of Independent Living and care of the Elderly.

“Why Interactive TV” I hear you ask? Well, cast your mind back to 2005, which is when our concept services were in full development. The announcement of the iPhone was still over a year into the future, and we were almost 3 years away from the first Android G1 smartphone. So what could possibly provide the means to encourage the use of the internet by people who were anti using computers?

Screenshot of Whiteley Village “Companion” channel on TV – circa 2009

The TV was recognised as the only other viable, and importantly TRUSTED, screen device through which any kind of meaningful service could be delivered to a non-computer audience. And an overriding element behind this is that it was SIMPLE to use.

A delve into the archives

I’ve included some links to concept videos we put together in 2008 that were working examples of the kind of ideas that could have a part to play in supporting Independent Living and care of the elderly, using Interactive Internet TV – apologies for the quality, something else that has advanced since we put these together!!

Our work had the internet services available to users as another channel on the TV. Delivered using a Netgem iplayer hybrid digital TV / internet set-top box, these services were seen as an advanced teletext. Pages could overlay or embed live TV, or could be viewed completely separately.

The main difficulty we faced back in 2009 – 2011 when we were testing the acceptance of the Companion channel at Whiteley was the lack of connectivity – a problem it seems will now be resolved. It will be interesting to keep an eye on how this latest iteration of ideas and experiments evolve. As time has passed, will more and more elderly users be comfortable with computers? Or will simple services on intuitive devices be the order of the day? Either way, perhaps alongside smartphones and tablets, PCs and laptops, the TV might yet have a place.

Responsive web design techniques are all the rage at the moment, and represent a fabulous way to create websites that look good and work well on handheld devices like mobiles and tablets. However, responsive design can come up short.

Responsive techniques work by checking the size, well width really, of the screen you are viewing the site on, and applying different design rules based on that.

Fantastic, and beats the previous options we had to live with, of either having a separate mobile site (how 2011) or even worse, having an app (how 2009)!!

For any of you who have looked more closely at the iPad, you’ll notice that it doesn’t conform when it comes to responsive. No matter which way you hold it, the width stays at 768 pixels. Maybe those cool people at Apple really bought into the sentiment of Huey Lewis and the News’s track “Hip to Be Square”.

This is a good example of why the team here at Big Media decided we needed more control over the way sites display, and invented Chameleon Software. By adding device recognition to websites, we’re able to provide different rules to devices and browsers that have an excessively independent way of looking at things. With tablets gaining in popularity for browsing the web, and the iPad in particular, having a bit more control over the way it displays your site just might make the difference in capturing your audiences attention.

In October we’re going to move to chapter 2 on the iPad, and explore a bit more into the idiosyncrasies of this iconic device.

Over the summer we embarked on a 3 month Search Engine Optimisation experiment to see if a certain approach could benefit page rankings.

Working on advice from a team with demonstrable results in certain cases, the approach involved writing a number of articles of generic interest on a given subject. Within them was included a link to 2 or 3 sites as examples of particular aspects covered, amongst which was one to our site.

These articles were then submitted to a range of online publications.

The purpose behind all of this was to boost external references to the site, using particular phraseology (ie the chosen search term) and an associated link, all with the intention of encouraging Google to recognise the validity of the site and boost our position in search results.

“Did it work?” I hear you ask.

In a word, “no“. In two words, “not yet“.

Will it? Don’t know frankly, but I’m not holding my breath.

The problem we have with this whole SEO thing is we’re told so many things about what has to be done, and yet the best SEO is supposed to reflect the natural shape of things to have a lasting, positive effect on your search result rankings.

My point is this: if Google’s search engine, as an example, is meant to reflect the natural shape of things, how come we spent 3 months, at what would have been not far under £1,000 at normal SEO rates, to manipulate the natural shape of things so that it looked like the natural shape of things? I mean we must have mimicked it perfectly, because apart from lightening our bank balance it made no difference whatsoever.

If this photo was taken as the natural shape of things, would Google classify the tomato as a “root” vegetable?

Never send a machine to do a human’s work

So search engines use algorithms to sift through the millions of websites to try and gather a picture that means when you search for something you see relevant results. But this is clearly far from infallable. The fact that under the search criteria “web design in Milton Keynes” the DIY store B&Q appears before we do makes my point. I mean I’ve heard of self-build websites, but B&Q??

Furthermore as a team of professional web designers and developers, we recognise that certain things should be done to make the most of your site. But many changes to the algorithms by Google seem to be about moving the goalposts to keep the SEO witch doctors on their toes, rather than benefitting the general public who use the search engine. The recent mobile algorithm update was a positive exception, as mobile users genuinely benefit from mobile-friendly results.

Our conclusion in all this is to take care before spending out on SEO services from the very people it appears companies like Google are trying to thwart. It’s probably up to each of us to put the witch doctors out of business, then perhaps the search engines genuinely will be able to reflect the natural shape of things.

The much anticipated “Mobilegeddon” seems to have passed by without the world stopping on its axis. True, Google’s algorithm change in April of this year is taking effect, and mobile-friendly websites are rising to the top on search result pages on mobiles. And this is a good thing, as it improves customer experience and makes the web work better for all of us.

But it has not, from all the evidence I can see, been the death knell of many businesses and websites that some have been predicting. All in all, for those of us who use the Internet, it is a change for the better.

Getting on board

Organisations and individuals are increasingly recognising not only what it means to have a site that is mobile-friendly, but also appreciating the benefit of delivering their website information to suit whatever device their audience chooses to use. This is a significant change from when we started out trying to promote the advantages of sites that look good and work well on mobiles back in 2011 – people often thought if you could see the website on a mobile that was enough. Now it is understood that you should be able to read it and navigate it as well.

“So what’s all this stuff about hurdles and high jump then?”
I hear you ask.

Well, the tortured analogy I’m trying to shoe-horn into my article here is that whilst on the face of it both activities are essentially about clearing an obstacle, they are fundamentally different events.

Big Media customers who have Chameleon Software installed in their websites won’t be facing a major challenge when the next platform shake-up hits the world wide web. Whilst there’s always another hurdle to clear in managing your business, Big Media’s Chameleon reduces the height to a manageable level.

How do we do this? – Chameleon works as a layer over responsive design to add device recognition into your site. So when Google throw the next challenge at us, perhaps whether your site is SmartTV-friendly, with us you’re already most of the way there.

Browse the site or contact us to learn more about the Chameleon advantage

Big Media in the Welwyn and Hatfield Times – 3rd June 2015

Following on from our inaugural outing at the EXPO at the end of April, the attention Google is bringing to the need for sites to be mobile-friendly is rubbing off on the Big Media Team.

The Google Mobile Web Doctors made an appearance in the business pages of the Welwyn and Hatfield Times on 3rd June 2015 after our approach to helping small and medium businesses become mobile-friendly attracted the attention of journalist Alex Lewis.

David Taylor, who now heads up the sales and marketing efforts for Big Media, commented in his interview with Alex: David, “The internet was a place where small businesses could compete with the big boys, but now smaller businesses will suffer.

David added: “Most large organisations already have mobile-friendly websites. Gone are the days when it was a ‘good idea’ to have a mobile-friendly site, it is now an essential. We don’t want local businesses to start suffering because the big boys are going to corner the market again.”

Gecko vs Chameleon

Fundamentally Big Media has two approaches – Gecko and Chameleon

Gecko is a tool that allows us to convert a site to be mobile-friendly. The first pass is to add a line of code to a page or a site, in a very similar way to how Google Analytics is included, that sets a mobile centric baseline to the way a site behaves on mobile. This invariably benefits from design tweaks that take into account specific elements of the individual site, and the result is a site that passes the Google Mobile test AND appeals to site visitors.

Chameleon takes a more advanced approach, by adding the capability to the customers site of device recognition. Chameleon essentially allows responsive design techniques to handle most of what is needed for sites to work cross-platform, but builds in a future-proofed aspect by catering specifically for various devices, such as Android, Apple, Windows and Blackberry mobiles and tablets, PCs and on to Games Consoles and Smart TVs.

“If browsing ends up being a mainstay for in-car sat-nav systems, Chameleon will be ready to cater for those as well”.

We were very encouraged by how much interest was shown on the day in our mobile-friendly and fully multiplatform online training solution – easy2training.

Built on our in-depth knowledge and skills in mobile-friendly and multiplatform web design, the easy2training platform has been specifically implemented to work on mobiles, tablets, PCs and Smart TVs. كيف تربح بالروليت

We have worked closely with ECG Training who specialise in the medical field particularly, to develop the platform to be as easy and flexible to use as possible for non-technical training delegates. العاب تربح جوائز حقيقية

Sitting comfortably alongside their face-to-face training programmes, our online training solutions enable delegates to self-register, and carry out their training when and where it suits them.

“The number of delegates registering on the system and doing the courses outside the working day is fascinating, and the analytics shows a high proportion of users are on mobiles and tablets” comments Paula Taylor, Head of Content and Training development for Big Media.

“This underpins the need for today’s online training solutions to break free of device and browser restrictions, especially those imposed by Flash-based systems. The flexibility for delegates to start their training on one device, and continue on another, also meets the need of people looking to develop and learn using online means. الالعاب التي تربح المال ”

ECG have also added:

“We have been able to offer affordable training online to supplement and complement what we do face-to-face, and not only has this added to our business revenue, but many factors [such as the printable A4 certificates] included in this system save us time and administrative costs.”

Big Media are working with a number of exciting new partners and clients deploying online training solutions built on easy2.

See more about elearning and online training at our dedicated site easy2training.co.uk

A BIG thank you to everyone who took time to talk to us about our online training platform and our FREE mobile-friendly site converter

Our thanks also too from us to the organisers, Vicky and her team, for all their efforts before and on the day.

The Big Media team built on the “Mobilegeddon” story and the recent announcement by Google by theming our stand as the “Google Mobile Web Doctors”.

A FREE prescription for a healthier website

Google’s 21st April algorithm update, first announced on 26th February, concerns mobile search results and the preferential placing for mobile-friendly sites in relation to PC only ones. As Web designers and web developers based in Milton Keynes, Big media were offering a FREE solution to help PC only sites take the first step to becoming mobile-friendly.

Entitled Gecko Musketeer, our mobile-friendly site converter is available free of charge as a first step to turning PC only sites into working on mobiles. We also had a special offer on the customised version (Gecko Knight) where from £49, usually £79, we work to improve and tweak the user experience specifically for your site.

Read more about our easy2training online elearning and training platform here

Google have announced a change to the way they will display mobile search results, starting 21st April 2015, which is just round the corner now.

Essentially, mobile-friendly sites will start to rank higher in mobile search results than those which are not. And as 30% of all searches are done from mobile now, this is a significant change. فيلم سباق السيارات

How do I know if my site will be seen as “mobile-friendly” by Google?

You can see how your site performs on Google’s test platform here

This will tell you whether your site passes or fail, and if you fail, some of the things that need addressing. And that’s where we come in.

Given that you probably have a host of other things to be dealing with, you’ll be pleased to know that well over 90% of sites with our FREE one line script installed PASS the test.

Click the button below to get our FREE CODE to help you PASS THE GOOGLE MOBILE-FRIENDLY TEST click here – or read on further for more information and what the offer consists of:

NOTE: The aim of our free tool is simply to move your site from FAIL to PASS against the criteria Google analyse in their test. This is step one in making your site mobile-friendly, and will buy you time to look at further improving the user’s experience, without losing your place in mobile search rankings in the meantime. تحميل لعبة conquer We would of course be happy to discuss what would make your site properly mobile-friendly, with no obligation.

So what do I need to do NOW to pass the test? كريستيانو رونالدو الفرق الحالية

Click the button below to get our FREE CODE to help you PASS THE GOOGLE MOBILE-FRIENDLY TEST: click here

We also offer a free demo of how your site will look once our code’s installed, just check that box on the form.

What our FREE offer includes

You will be given a line of html code that calls a script to add our gecko mobile adjuster code to your site. This needs to be included in very much the same way as Google Analytics.

UPDATE: Read more about the changes in Google from the BBC here

The gecko mobile adjuster code has two elements:

• a tag which ensures your site is viewed at the right scale for mobile screens and
• a set of styles which adjust your site so it lays out more effectively on mobile screens (less than 500 pixels wide for those who are interested to know!)

Our free version of the gecko code (called ‘musketeer’) is a “one-for-all” generic solution – a “sticking plaster” which buys time for you to consider options. This is why your site is likely to benefit from further user experience adjustments to make it truly mobile-friendly for your users, rather than just technically mobile-friendly.

We will make this free version of the software available to you for a minimum of three months from the time you apply, and aim to discuss further options with you during this period, but there will no obligation on you to take any services from us.

In terms of going on to give your mobile users a truly mobile-friendly experience, we have a number of options which we can offer you:

• You can choose the customised gecko code approach (‘knight’) a version of the code which is SPECIFICALLY tailored for your site, rather than a generic solution – from only £200 (NOTE this has changed from the previous published offer of £199, as Big Media has reviewed it’s pricing structure for 2016).
• We also offer full chameleon site upgrades which can make your whole site fully mobile-friendly
• Alternatively you may wish to have a new site which builds on responsive design by adding device recognition to your site.

As a Milton Keynes web development company, Big Media are not only pretty central geographically in the UK, but are also central in the emerging mobile-friendly web market.

Things have moved on regarding mobile web usage to the point where it is now essential to have a site that works properly on mobile, not just a “nice to have”

This image shows the “mobile-friendly” label that Google returns alongside results displayed on mobiles. This is what Google will be building on. gaminator 777 bonus code 2021

From the 21st April 2015, sites that DON’T qualify as mobile-friendly will drop down the rankings in favour of those that are – this is what we mean by it being ESSENTIAL to have a mobile-friendly site. If your marketing spend is in any way related to driving people to your website, don’t waste it by not catering for mobile users.

You can see how your site performs on Google’s test platform here

Click the button below to get our FREE CODE to help you PASS THE GOOGLE MOBILE-FRIENDLY TEST: click here

There aren’t THAT many mobile searches are there?

Well it depends on what you consider a big number, but roughly mobile searches, on Google, per day, are 1,000,000,000

Yep, a BILLION per day, as they account for 30% according to an article on the fastcompany website here. And this article on the Search Engine Land website confirms Google searches are over 1 Trillion a year.

Pretty big numbers in our view.

So if you want to maintain or improve your position on mobile results, check out how we can help you FOR FREE by reading about gecko – getting you mobile-friendly in minutes

Google announced in February 2015 that it is making a major update to its search engine ranking algorithms on the 21st April.

Google are making another move in the drive to offer users a better web experience. Building on initiatives including the mobile-friendly label found on (most) mobiles when you search, the change on 21st April 2015 will see owners of mobile-friendly sites standing to benefit even further in mobile search result rankings than those without. tippmix szelvény nyertes


As mobile-friendly specialists, we applaud the initiative to make the web a better experience for Smartphone users. bukméker képzés The issue we have is whether this will once again skew search results in favour of larger organisations, who have been able to address the issue already.

Fear not – good citizens of the world – we can help you make the transition to having a mobile-friendly experience in a shorter timescale, and at probably a far lower cost, than you might have thought. And for those of you who are interested, we can put our placeholder “starter for 10” into your site to get you on the road to being fully mobile optimised in under an hour.

Contact us for more information