Pod1 Blog

We’re putting the finishing touches to a microsite explaining our Epifony content management system over the next week or two. We built Epifony so that we can create rich and dynamic websites that our clients can manage themselves. An example of what this means can be seen here.

With Epifony, the business completely controls what pages there are, what’s on each of those pages and all that kind of thing. Pod1 has done 4 projects using Epifony now, and it’s proving to be a very powerful and flexible tool. One of the websites it supports is delivering over 5 million page impressions per month, so it’s scaleable as well.

There are plenty of commercial options for content management, and quite a few open source ones too, so why did we build our own? The solutions we looked at weren’t able to give our clients the total creative control they needed, and so we chose an open source framework called Symfony to give us a head start, and built Epifony from there. Now we can give our clients exactly what they need, quickly, in a royalty-free commercial setting.

The new microsite will explain what Epifony is, how it works, and why we like it for content managed websites.

Some interesting facts and tips on social media marketing. Contact us to find out how social media marketing can help your brand

From fashion photo or video shoots to product 360’s – Contact us for more information about Pod1 Studio.

Yet another useless Firefox toolbar? Not this time!

If you use Firefox search toolbars a lot, this tool can be just for you. The latest and experimental add-on for Firefox called Super Search v1.1. lets you enter the search term and select from cleverly designed drop downs the search engine you want to use. And that doesn’t only end on the usual 4-5 biggest players.

You can select from the popular web search engines, real time search engines, social network searches, news, blog, document & wiki searches and video / image searches. That’s a lot of search engines in one drop down. In fact, there are almost 70 most popular search engine only 2 clicks away. Just think how much time and browser’s bookmarks space this could save

The last cool feature about the Super Search is the green Search Links button. That opens list of links to results from all sorts of useful websites, from Google Maps and Yellow Pages to Job Searches and Yahoo Answers.

Make sure you check it out. Tested on Firefox version 3.5.1 without issues.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13308

… and Yahoo! will provide the paid search.

The deal will last for 10 years and means Microsoft’s search market share will rise to around 21.5%, according to figures released by Hitwise last month, or roughly one quarter of Google’s share.

This is potentially huge news for the Search Market and could at last provide a real challenge to Google’s dominance of the search market. It is worth remembering that the impact will be far greater in the US where the combined market share will be closer to 40%.

This move seems to signal that Yahoo! has effectively given up on natural search after nearly 15 years allowing them to concentrate on the media and advertising side of their business.

For more info on this story try typing Yahoo & Microsoft into Google;-)

Twitter has decided to keep it simple with the launch of their new homepage where blue is most definitely the colour. The page no longer tries to explain what Twitter is (if you don’t know by now you probably don’t care anyway), instead the all new homepage shows that Twitter has decided, not surprisingly, to concentrate on Search, Popular Topics and Sign Ups.

This new look follows on from ‘Twitter 101′ a guide for businesses and is yet another sign that Twitter is revamping its marketing proposition.

I recently had a demonstration of Magento Enterprise Edition, from the team at Varien. The demonstration and conversation were very helpful, so I thought I’d blog some of the key points.

Magento is now offered in 2 editions:

• The free open source Community Edition
• The paid-for Enterprise Edition

Both are based on the same Magento Core code, which will be kept in parallel ongoing, The differences with the Enterprise Edition break down into 2 categories:

• The support for the code
• Additional plug-ins and modules that are not available in the Community Edition

Continue Reading

Example Bokode from MIT

MIT has released details of a new bar code technology that can be read from a distance by ordinary cameras or camera phones, yet is almost invisible to the naked eye. We’re all used to bar codes appearing on products, and 3d bar codes that can be read by phones have been around for a few years, but the new technology has lots of potential. Imagine pointing your camera phone at a product in a shop window and getting price comparison information about it instantly from the Internet. The inventors are saying we could tag buildings, so that Google Street View cameras could retrieve data about locations at the same time as taking their photos.

More worryingly, imagine we all have one of these on our person somewhere: on Red Dwarf it would’ve been on your forehead. Now CCTV can read the tag, get your name, social security number and your date of birth. The audit trails would be invaluable to spooks everywhere.

I’m more excited about the business potential than the possible bad uses. It looks like another technology that could help the physical and digital worlds converge.

Pod1 have been working with Yahoo!’s Trade Marketing team for the past 12 months to produce 5 UK, European and international websites. The websites are an online portal for Yahoo!’s B2B sector and allow Yahoo! to showcase their portfolio and communicate with potential and existing customers.

Global – http://global.b2b.yahoo.net
UK – http://uk.b2b.yahoo.net
France – http://fr.b2b.yahoo.net
Italy – http://it.b2b.yahoo.net
Spain – http://es.b2b.yahoo.net

The sites have been designed by Pod1 and developed using Pod1’s Epifony CMS (based on the Symfony framework). The modular approach to template development in Epifony meant that we could recycle the templates for each country, adjusting where necessary, and minimising cost for the client.  Epifony CMS allows Yahoo! to edit all areas of the website in-house, and SEO-friendly controls mean that Y! staff can also optimise content directly within the CMS.

The most recent project is the newly launched Global B2B site http://global.b2b.yahoo.net (launched Fri 24th July). The Global site is designed to target global brands worldwide and is seen as more of a showcase site for Y! rather than a functional site. Showcase pieces include:

Over the next couple of months, Pod1 will continue to work with Yahoo! to develop multi-language facilities and evolve the online extranets.