Polypool website

Big concepts. Cute designs. Clean looks. That's the new Polypool website, just about launched at www.polypool.co.uk today.

We're still working together on some content so expect a few changes over the coming days/weeks.

We'll be working with Polypool on more future developments and designs than you can shake a stick at over the coming months! Big thanks especially to Ryan and Karen at Polypool - we're glad you're loving it all as much as we are.

Below is a massive preview of how it all looks. Nice isn't it! :o)

Gorgeous Galleries

Polypool.co.uk makes extensive use of our gorgeous galleries, through our own 'Media Block' system (dubbed UTMediaBlock, for our use only) - built directly into associateMe. We can also utilise UTMediaBlock independently of associateMe in other Rails websites we develop. As well as images, it can also handle: Video, Flash Video, Flash Movies, Silverlight, YouTube and audio (such as MP3).

Our famed in-line contact forms

We use these a lot - our famed in-line contact forms, and Polypool has one! Click the main 'contact us' link and it drops down from the top of the page ready to fill out... nice, smooth, functional and pretty much universally adored by our customers.

Beautiful Case Studies

Another advantage of UTMediaBlock is that we can utilise it as a method of navigation. That's just what we do for Polypool with their Case Studies, Completed Projects and Live/Current Projects. A large UTMediaBlock shows a pretty picture for each entry and you select between them using the Next and Previous buttons. UTMediaBlock then loads in the correct content for each entry as you work your way through. It looks and works beautifully.

associateMe

Polypool.co.uk is the first website to be built from the ground-up with associateMe and with associateMe in mind. We've used associateMe with a fair few earlier developments, but it has often been a case of trying to hack concepts and ideas into existing developments - never ideal. Now? We can start building our sites from day one with associateMe - and instantly gain access to much of the power it offers.

Second Shootr v1.1

The updated version (v1.1) of Second Shootr has now been approved by Apple and is available on the iPhone App Store, either for a new purchase or as a free upgrade from v1.0 for those that have already bought it.

Second Shootr was developed by utopia 365 for Plinkk Photography. Many new features have been added in v1.1, which are best described by Tim from Plinkk directly:

"

Second Shootr is a revolutionary digital photography assistant for professional photographers. Use Second Shootr to help you plan every aspect of your photography beforehand, leaving you free on the day to get on with what you do best....taking awesome photos!

Whether you're a portrait, wedding or event photographer (to name but a few!), Second Shootr will help you be on top of your game for every shoot.

Features of Second Shootr:

- Store detailed information about your clients, ranging from their names and addresses to detailed information about the event.

- Contact your clients from within the application by phone and email, or check their location using the in-built map.

- Store everything you need to know about the people involved in your photographic event. For example, if you are a wedding photographer, Second Shootr could prompt you with the name of the Best Man, or store the Vicar's contact details for later reference.

- Plan your session's shots. Second Shootr will help you to remember the must-have shots you'll need to take. Once you've taken the picture, you can mark it as complete, leaving Second Shootr to tell you exactly which shots you have left to shoot.

- Know the upcoming key events. Second Shootr is there to give you a gentle reminder to let you know where you need to be, and at what time.

- Ensure you have all your kit with you. Just cross off the items as you pack them into your bags in the morning, and check them back in again when you're packing up from the shoot ready to go home.

"

- Keep on top of your day-to-day photography tasks both before and after the photo session.

Gold's Gym iPhone App

We're pleased to announce that the Gold's Gym iPhone App has been released into the App store.

Commissioned by Equinox Apps, utopia 365 provided the coding for the App (and a few other bits and bobs).

The App features our own in-app updating engine (newly updated), an RSS reader/Blog parse, image libraries, GPS Gym lookups / find my nearest Gym and Gym class scheduling via external sources... basically there are some clever technologies being used under the hood.

Where have we been?

It has been a very busy and hectic couple of months for utopia 365.

We've seen a couple of websites launch which include some pretty clever back-end admin, a couple of iPhone Apps which include the lovely Second Shootr, email templates for our usherto service, a few bespoke RoR jobs on behalf of some design agencies we partner with, and some bespoke development for a great client of ours.

On top of all of the above we were dedicated to a project for a few weeks, but it's one of those we're not allowed to talk about. Shame.

We're now diving head first into a 'top secret' project (Shhhh - but hopefully we'll be able to tell you about it soon) and also getting a new version of MyChristmas with some great new features over to Apple.

We can say in the last 10 weeks or so we have learnt more about running a business than we did in the 1st year we operated, and it's great on reflection.

The blog may have been quiet but we're still around and working hard. We'll try and keep it a bit more updated in the run up to Christmas.

Second Shootr

Currently in development by utopia 365 on behalf of Plinkk Photography is Second Shootr.

Over to Tim from Plinkk for a brief intro:

"Second Shootr is a revolutionary digital photography assistant for professional wedding photographers. Use Second Shootr to help you plan every aspect of the big day before it happens, leaving you free to get on with what you do best....taking awesome wedding photos."

So, for all you iPhone & iPod touch owning wedding photographers out there, keep an eye-out for Second Shootr - coming soon. You can sign-up for email notifications at www.secondshootr.com and also follow Second Shootr on Twitter or find them on Facebook.

utopia solitaire update

Due to huge demand for our development and design services this year, our happy clients have monopolised pretty much all of our time. This has meant we simply haven't had the chance to get utopia solitaire finalised for launch. In some ways that's maybe been a good thing - we've re-visited it a little now, improved the UI and are (finally!) close to releasing it.

As you can see from the screenshots below, it's looking nice - and the utopia theme is optional! :-) You can choose from 100's of different combinations of card and table designs to create your own favourite look.

All things being equal (and assuming Apple's acceptance) utopia solitaire for iPhone and iPod touch will be available on the iPhone App Store this month! We're hoping to get it to Apple for review by 12th September.

utopia solitaire will run on 1st gen iPhones and iPod touches and above (unless things change over the next week). We don't want to limit it to later models only. You will require iPhone OS 3.0 though.

Romsey Town Football Club website

The utopia 365 designed, developed and hosted brand new official Romsey Town Football Club website is here. Best of luck for the new season guys!








Here's what it has...

- Tons of CMS and goodies

- Sponsors and Google banners + other methods of distributing advertising

- Fully updateable Latest News

- Create and Manage teams within the club at will (e.g. First Team, Reserves, Under 18's, Women's, etc..)

- Create and Manage competitions for individual teams (e.g. league, FA Cup, etc...)

- Create and Manage profiles for club staff (e.g. Chairman, First Team Manager, etc...)

- Create and Manage profiles for players, for any team already created within the club

- Add and Manage fixtures and results, for any team within the club, in real-time.

• Set the competition


• Set the opponent


• Set (or update) the kick-off time


• Set (or update) the match status (Pending, Result, Abandoned, Postponed, etc)


• Choose the club lineup, including substitutes, from the clubs players list


• Set the opponents team lineup


• Create and Manage match reports (including: goals scored, red and yellow cards, substitutions, etc)


• Match reports automatically added in to results and latest news


• And so very much more...

We aim to expand upon this in the future and launch a great service for other football (or rugby, cricket, etc) clubs. More details when we have them, but as a basis, we're going to have a fabulous service to offer to football clubs up and down the country, both amateur and professional alike.

Please feel free to contact us if you'd like to know more.

U2W3 | A URL shortening and redirection service

Hot on the heals of usherto, we announce U2W3 (beta) - a URL shortening and redirection service.

U2W3 is available at http://u2w3.com

* Create public/shared U2W3 URL redirections
* Sign-up and create your own U2W3 URL redirections
* View the number of hits (redirection requests) your URL's receive, the top referral HREF's and the top user agents (browsers) used to acces your URL's
* Manage your U2W3 URL's and hide or remove them when required

Announcing usherto

Today we announce the release of usherto - email marketing minus the muddle.



* Create and send your own email campaigns
* Manage subscriptions, un-subscriptions and email bounces automatically
* View reports and stats on just about every aspect of your campaign
* Only pay when you send
* Just a flat delivery fee of £5, plus 3 pence for each recipient

Visit usherto.com for further information and to request a free sign-up.

utopia 365 and EquinoxApps

We've recently been working on a number of iPhone projects (some that we can't talk about just yet) - including working with EquinoxApps on some of their iPhone Apps.

For Aphrodite, TransJakarta and Vibrazor, we have been putting the projects together in Xcode, building the framework and writing the actual code, working with specs and designs from EquinoxApps. It's been a positive agreement for both companies (with a few late nights thrown in!) and we look forward to working on more projects together.

An example of how we can work with you to get your iPhone App ideas and projects developed.

Another Day...another page

Some may have noticed that we have a new holding page. We keep promising to release our new website, but we keep getting really busy! That's a good thing though.

Anyway, we thought we ought to at-least put some updated information on the site, so we have.

We're pushing the iPhone work for external customers currently which is very successful.

Writing for the iPhone started in one direction (emphasising on our own Apps), but ending up allowing us to develop for others - and the Apps we wrote highlight that we know what we are talking about.

We will continue to develop our own iPhone Apps, but for now others are enjoying our expertise.

Tags?

I have been playing with 'Tag Clouds' and this is what our Blog reported....

A real mix of words from a real broad range of articles!

I also had a quick go on one of our client sites 'Mastersparesonline'

And as I liked the results so much decided to try our latest client Thaicats also.