It's taken a while! We've been ever so busy with the paint, the magic wand and the odd sprinkling of clever dust.

And, finally - today we are very happy to cry out to the world with a single, and very simple statement...

"The new utopia 365 website is live!"

You can see it at www.utopia365.com, but in the meantime, here are a couple of tasters for you.....

Going with a very utopian design (naturally), the site is packed full of lovely content, jQuery effects, AJAX and other goodies - but fully W3C compliant (and friendly on the iPhone).

We went with a fixed background (something we would normally avoid) because it works really well for the design and content. We must admit a little inspiration comes from the look and feel of Twitter.

We've had a couple of designs and several 'holding/information pages' over the last year, but this is here to stay and it's a keeper.

Take a look through, find out what we do and let us know what you think.

'The internet in your pocket'?

Taking the web by storm

There is no doubt that the iPhone has decimated the mobile internet with around 80% of web traffic on mobile devices coming from the iPhone. That is an impressive feat to achieve in such short time.

How did this happen? Well, the iphone has an amazing interface which when added to their wonderful safari browser finally made browsing websites on an phone a joy rather than a headache. Being able to render a page quickly, pan around, zoom in etc. on a normal page "just worked".

When you read Apples own website we see that they state:

"And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do — again."

That is some statement to make for a mobile, but mostly I agree with it - having been a user of nokia, samsung and sony smart-phones I can safely say the iPhone finally made browsing the internet easy, and more to the point I could see what I would see on my desktop or laptop. The internet was in my pocket.

Telling us how to browse (we're trying to be helpful)

When the stats started rolling in on the iPhone web usage people suddenly took it seriously. Wow they said "we're getting loads of traffic from a new device"! It was then that they (the people who know best) decided to 'help' our browsing by the introduction of 'iphone mobile optimized web-pages'.

Surely this is a good move though? We get the content all formatted in a nice way that suits our device. Mostly I will agree, but I have some issues with it.

Lets look at the BBC website on my mobile:

That looks ok, I don't mind it and I get access to the information I want. However, there might be times that I want the 'proper' website, after all I am using a mobile browser with a desktop-class web browser. When I visit the bbc on my phone they automatically take me to the mobile-optimized site. Thankfully if I scroll to the bottom of the mobile site I see I can have a choice by clicking on the desktop site.

There is still a slight issue; with the ease of implementation surely would it not be wise for the site to store which version I want as my default instead of forcing me to the mobile version? I know they are trying to help, but give me the choice.

So what do CNN do?

Well we get the same auto-detect telling me that I want to see their content in an optimized fashion, but from what I can see they do not give me the choice to access their content other than the 'mobile optimized' version.

    

To me, this is poor design - here I am on my desktop-class web browser and they are forcing me to view their site in what I consider a poorly designed layout. At-least the BBC gave me the option.

What are we asking for? Choice, simply the choice. It's sometimes very appropriate, and very nice to 'auto-detect' the browser being used and set the content appropriately, but please let there be a way to get to the standard desktop content (and ideally let me store my choice with a cookie).

On my experimenting I came across a site that I really did not think would block me on my iPhone....MobileMe.

Right, so I am on Apples iPhone which they claim is a 'desktop-class web browser', using a service that is aimed at mobility and they auto-detect and block access to me! Surely this cannot be right? According to the web-page I can access all of the features on my iPhone or iPod Touch? Firstly that's incorrect and secondly so what? Let me access the content from my web-browser! I cannot access 'my account' on the iPhone unless Apple have secretly rolled out a 'my account' iPhone App? Did I miss that? I can't use 'locate my phone'? Ok, so you might say if you are on your phone why would you want to locate it? Well, if you have a couple of phones under the same mobileme account then it shows them all, handy.

Perhaps it's because mobileme is put together in Flash? Nope, it's solidly built web/javascript and CSS wizardry. It should and would work on my iPhone. I am not given the choice though and I for one think that's a poor show Apple.

Views?

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.

iChart2000 Released

We're happy to announce that iChart2000, an iPhone App we undertook on behalf of Thomson Software Solutions has finally been released.

Submitted a couple of weeks ago it's now been approved and available for download in the App Store.

iChart2000 is a new software application designed to run on the iPhone or iPod Touch. The superb graphics capabilities and user interface of the iPhone make it ideal for near vision testing. iChart 2000 includes a huge range of near vision tests (acuity, reading, fixation disparity, stereopsis, Amsler etc.), a range of charts scaled for 3 metres for domiciliary visits and a toolbox for those tricky optics-related calculations.

Media Training 101

We're pleased to announce the launch of Media Training 101

for jackAnaCommunications.



We were commissioned by them to produce an iPhone App which would be effective at delivering their content.

Media Training 101 provides the user with invaluable information when dealing with the Media. This can be TV, radio, newspapers etc. In-fact, we think it provides great information for anyone that does any speaking - be that public or presentations.

Powered by UTBookReader the App has the ability to deliver interactive content whilst allowing the user to choose their own reading styles and themes. The addition of multiple bookmarks and notes allow you to study and assimilate the information.

Moving on from IE6 (forcing the issue)

I'm not a developer (Andy does all the clever stuff), I dable.

What strikes me though when developing sites and apps for the internet is the amount of 'voice' regarding how horrible developing for IE6 is.

You spend all this time putting together a nice site or app which sits nicely in Firefox, Safari and Chrome - then load it in IE and despair....sigh, you then move through the site hacking it to play nicely with IE6. This can be a tremendous amount of work depending on what features you implement into a site.

We then despair that things are not moving on and we have to keep doing this extra work for our clients.

We've recently introduced a simple policy - if you want IE6 support then you have to pay extra.

And any personal work (for instance my own site), I have simply dropped support for anything below IE7.

What strikes me is unless the web-developers stop supporting IE 6 then the problem will never go-away. We're the guys that drive it, so if we make the point that the site wont work in IE6 then people will have to move on and upgrade their browsers.

People don't like change, so if a site sits pretty and functional in IE6 then why should they upgrade?

Naturally there is a slim possibility you might loose some work by not actively supporting IE6, but if most clients understand that for the web to evolve they need to help evolve it by NOT supporting a dated engine, then I think you'll find many will support it (and for those that don't they simply pay extra).

There are many ways to let users know they really should be moving on. I use a very simple method (which is probably not the most efficient):

<!--[if IE 6]>
		< meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=ie6.html" />
		< script type="text/javascript">
		/* <![CDATA[ */
		window.top.location = './ie6.html';
		/* ]]> */
		</script>
<![endif]-->

I then display a simple page telling the user to go upgrade, and give them some links to the latest browsers. One day I will make a pretty version of this, but for now it gets the point across.

If enough developers make the stand then in the long-run the web will be a happier place....

Announcing Masterspares update

Almost one year on and Mastersparesonline.com has had a slight update.

We've introduced an advert/promo column to the site along with popular 'tags' and extra information into the home-page.



You may have noticed that Masterspares also switched to using Google Checkout several months ago which has been very successful.

However, like many on-line traders, Masterspares is considering moving to a direct-bank merchant system due to the controversial new charging system that Google is implementing, which starts in May.

For those that are unaware, Google are increasing their fees bringing them in-line with other online payment systems like paypal. Many have complained at this sudden price hike (where google actually become more expensive if you accept payments from overseas customers). The real 'sting in the tale' though is that they will no longer offer a credit in fees for traders using their popular Adwords system. This had made Google Checkout an exceptionally tempting option for traders.

Thankfully our checkout design means switching would be painless, but we are waiting to see if Google back-tracks on the Adwords credit removal. Time will tell....

Masterspares supply domestic appliance spares, accessories and sales for hundreds of manufacturers. They are celebrating trading for 10 years and have become one of the south-coasts premier suppliers for Dualit, Miele, Kenwood and Sebo amongst other makes.

Announcing Osmotech.co.uk

We're thrilled to announce the new Osmotech.co.uk website which is now live.

Osmotech.co.uk uses a fluid design and ruby on rails for 'behind the scenes' goodness.

We opted for a different approach to the landing-page, giving broad, useful information to the incoming user. However, the main area being the header, navigation and 3 content boxes are all within 1st 'screen' viewing.

The design-goal was to bring a clean look, but allow the visitor to understand what Osmotech.co.uk do before they have to click through second levels.

The site features a custom blog tool for 'Our Work' along with various JQuery effects.

Osmotech, based in Hamble, are one of Europe's leading marine care centres specialising in GRP repair, osmosis treatment and providing expert installation of all yacht systems from bowthrusters to climate control.

Happy Birthday!

Well, it's April 1st 2009 and we are happy to announce that we celebrate our first birthday as utopia 365 LLP.

What a year, it has flown past and in the midst of todays economics we could not be more happy with how things have gone.

A BIG thanks to all our customers and supporters out there, watch this space...lot's more exciting things are around the corner from utopia365.