red-enet multimedia solutions

Well, doesn’t time fly! No longer did I mention our 1st show on the radio, than we’ll be doing our 6th tomorrow!

It’s  been a really buy time, hence lack of updates here. And summer is descended on us with very little warning! After apparently having the wettest May since 1971, we suddenly got hit with scorching weather over the last 3 weeks.

Business has also been good with us taking over the design of a magazine for children - 1st for Schools. Will keep you posted!

Well our first show went quite well. To listen to the podcast just click here.

Fame and fortune to come our way

Seriously, tonight is going to be our first show on REM FM hosting the show called “Twin Geeks”. A little bit nervous but also looking forward to it.

It starts on REM FM  (listen on 91.MHz FM, 104.8MHz FM or www.rem.fm) just after the 6pm news tonight.

The initial show will be mostly an introduction to what it is all about and touch on some of the things that we intend to discuss.

Over the coming shows we hope to discuss some of the questions that are mailed in to us on info@twingeeks.fm and also posted on the forum: Twin Geeks

Hope that you have time to listen and take part!

Exciting times are ahead for this blog. Scheduled to start on the 4th June, red-enet will be hosting a radio show on REM FM to talk about things that people are interested in with regards to the internet, graphic design and computers.

Watch this space!

If you’ve been reading any of my previous posts, you will see that I have been running with Ubuntu for some time now - with no hiccups at all.

It seems that Ubuntu is promoting the way people think about Linux nowadays: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7358483.stm

I must confess, I still don’t think I would run my home computer on Ubuntu - I doubt whether the graphics flexibility is yet good enough to play our most popular games - but for office use, I can’t fault it.

Interestingly, we are currently doing some tests on installing Ubuntu on all client machines in one of our clients of about 20 seats. Watch this space to see how that goes!

I had to have a little giggle at this. for those that don’t know, Safari is the browser for use on Apple Mac machines - and moreover - Apple and Microsoft are constantly trying to get one over on each other.

Apple’s end user licence agreement (EULA) states that you are forbidden to install it on a Microsoft Windows machine. However, they have been offering it as an update to their Apple software update pop-up (that you will have if you have i-tunes or Quicktime installed) for quite sometime - so by accepting the update you are breaking their licensing agreement. A simple oversight of course. But quite amusing all the same:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/03/26/apple_safari_eula_paradox/

As many of our customers know, we’ve been running a property application for real estate agents and rental agencies for a number of years. We actually rent our software out which means that agents can get up and running with no large up front costs for their application, and a small monthly rental payment for rental and support of the software.

Recently I’ve had 2 people wanting a personal website to promote their own property. I turned them away telling them that it would be too expensive for the return that they would get.

Well now we released a personal version of the website for people with 1 or just a few properties with a very small monthly fee. Here’s an example and I think it looks pretty cool:

http://www.hartlandapartment.com/

I’ve got some other ideas for the system, and I’m sure I’ll post some updates over the coming weeks.

I read with interest that Microsoft has been hit by a record fine (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7266629.stm) for anti-competitive behaviour.

It’s interesting for me - I now read these stories with more open-ness - I used to work for Microsoft for 5 years, and in them days I had very little understanding of open source programs and why we should be sharing our code with people.

I’m not going to sound like a convert just because I’ve started using Open-Source. After all competition is what business is all about. And if they are good at something, then bravo!

That said, I can certainly see a case for stopping them getting too powerful. I mean - it’s not really fair for them to keep buying up companies and incorporating that application into the operating system is it? What chance does the little software house have? (Actually I also remember trying to fix a problem on a computer - what I wanted to do was remove Outlook Express from the installation for reasons that I won’t go in to - but it’s impossible! That did irritate me).

Anyway -without going on, I’ve now been using Ubuntu for over a week now (my biggest and closest experience of Open Source so far). The thing that amazes me, is just how good it is. It looks like a real operating system and feels like one. And the OpenOffice application (equivalent of MS Office) is as good as the MS version for my needs - in fact some of the features are really neat, though maybe I never found them on my Windows machine.

There’s another thing that I’m really impressed with - how easy it is to find open source software. Try finding a free PDF writer on Windows. It means a hell of a lot of trawling of websites that Google has found you - even if you find one that is genuinely free there is so much dross out there that you inevitably have to waste so much time finding one - I’d even happily pay a little for something that’s decent but it’s still hard to find. With this, you just go to “Add/Remove Programs” and you’re presented with an up to date list of programs that you can install (or remove without fuss) (not just a handful of programs, but seemingly hundreds of them). If I wanted an ftp client for example, I could search on “ftp” and I’d be presented with anything that has ftp capabilities, with a popularity rating and description.

I still don’t fully understand how open-source manages to be free. There must be thousands of hours gone into many of these apps, so how do they support themselves. But what I can see is how it can improve your productivity for a small business like us. I mean, we have been writing websites on Apache servers, using PHP and MySQL for around 3 years. Now I’m using an open-source operating system, and finding so many cool tools that I can use - and it runs so damn quick!!

Well, I’ve finally taken the plunge - I seem to being sucked more and more into the Open Source world and have now installed Ubuntu onto my laptop as my poor aged machine started to cry when I pulled out the Windows Vista CD.

So far so good. The installation took a fraction of the time that Windows XP took - and the sound and wireless network drivers have all installed perfectly - which I’m quite surprised about. We’ll see how it goes over the coming weeks!

Well this week’s been a busy week, so all my good intentions of posting a few blogs have gone out of the window. Each time I sit down to write something, then something comes up!

I’ve been busy doing a few things for my company this week. Not least that we’ve lauched a new product to bring down the cost of starting your on-line shop. There are plenty of complexities in writing an on-line shopping cart system - ok so most of the time you wouldn’t write the cart from scratch unless there were very specific needs of the client (which we did have to do once) - you would normally install and configure open-source software, but of course there is the small matter of making sure you can accept on-line payments securely. So, to reduce startup costs, this week we’ve launched an online shop that you can get for a small monthly fee which is tailored for you and your website - whether you already have a website or need one designing. I’ll try and get my dev manager to post a demo on our site soon.

One thing I should just mention. This is the first day of this blog. Bear in mind that to start with nobody but you and I might be reading it. So keep coming back - keep posting - tell your friends and colleagues and I hope to get a big circle of people sharing information.

 To register you will find the link on the right.

Welcome to my first blog. My name is Dyan Graham and I am the Managing Director of red-enet multimedia solutions S.L.

Though there is one thing I want to be clear as to why I am writing here. One thing I am certainly not doing is writing commercial material material based on my company. OK, so yes, if we release a new product, I might want to tell you about it - likewise feel free to tell me (and everyone else that reads this blog) anything you find interesting about anything related to the web, internet, print, graphic design - or about your holidays if you really want to! But what I really want to do is generate discussion - hopefully this will help to improve our understanding of the topics that I mention so that we can all use them more effictively.