Provoke Design

Provoke's Online Marketing Insight, What Would You Like To Know About?

Embracing The Live Web Revolution!

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A new digital decade is only days away! As purchasing online grew at six times the rate of high-street sales in the run-up to Christmas, the future is clear for those businesses willing to embrace the continuing live web revolution!

Despite 2009 being another year of economic uncertainty, Team Provoke have been hard at it, as usual, in the front line of weaving their website design magic for a diverse range of clients, starting right here in Manchester and spreading right across the Northwest and around the UK.

Many of our regular site visitors would of course have noticed our big website refresh, featuring regular and hopefully, insightful blogs and articles plus daily Twitterfeeds to keep everyone aware of our latest info and in the loop with latest digital happenings!
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Google or Facebook – who’s the new Duke of URL ?

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URL shorteners, TinyURL and bit.ly are now challenged by ‘Fb.me’ and ‘goo.gl’, the Facebook and Google versions, just released this week.

Many platforms, such as Digg, are developing their own shorteners in house, so the flurry of apps activity we are currently witnessing as 2010 appears on the horizon seems to indicate that social media communications are not set to stop their phenomenal rise any time soon!

Up until now, bit.ly has been the standard shortener, but the sheer volume of short links which both Facebook and Google generate soon overwhelms the number of bit.ly links.
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Get Your Goggles On As Google Goes Real Time!

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Google steps up a gear as ‘Real Time’ search becomes the latest ‘live’ info feed to explode into the social mediasphere!

Now you really can know what’s happening in real time when you type in your search word or phrase! The announcement by Google that it is rolling out its latest search engine application to take effect immediately, now means the instant availability of news and comment feeds – ‘tweets’ – from social media favourite, Twitter, being relayed as a ‘latest results’ update on the related word search results page.
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GoogleWave’s email launch adds to Social Media, not competes!

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Social Media is everywhere! It’s rapid adoption right across social and business life is a clear indication that traditional communications channels leave something to be desired.

From ‘talking at’ consumers, the emergence of Social Media has altered the balance of power, and now consumers have a significant say about company brands and the way goods and services are accessed and purchased.

Consumers are voting with their mouse! One click is all it takes to say whether you are getting it right or urgently need to talk with your website design company! An experienced and professional agency should be able to analyse, advise and build relevant, targeted results-driven online marketing strategies.
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Heatmaps Flare Up User Hot Spots!

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Every website needs to track and record exactly where every visitor looks, clicks, scrolls and responds so you can precisely know, plan and action profitable online marketing campaigns.

Yes – Heatmaps do all of the above for you! Web marketing research proves conclusively that websites have specific areas where human eyes always spend the most time. Patterns have been detected in the ways that people not only navigate the web itself, but also on web sites and within their individual pages.
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Google robots mission to save Earth!

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The way Google spiders search to find and rank your website is now being used to protect life on earth from extinction!

Professional website design and development agencies have always been at pains to impress upon their clients just how clever and sophisticated search engines have rapidly become, ever refining their methods of how and why they might choose to visit your website, recognise genuine, interesting informative content and index your importance by rank, accordingly.
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Designing websites for the mobile internet

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Over 17 million households in the UK are estimated to have subscribed to various broadband technologies in 2009, according to the latest digital marketing research figures. This represents a 6.5 per cent increase on the 16.1 million households that used broadband in 2008.

Third generation mobile phone networking technology (3G) is now included as standard on most modern handsets. This has given mobile users the ability to surf websites at broadband speeds
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Pick up a desirable domain names with Provoke

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Thought that all of the good .com domain names were all snapped up and never to be seen again? Provoke have caught on to the fact that many years ago people thought it would be clever to buy up loads of desirable domains to sell on at a premium in later life.

The fact of the matter is that this bubble is certainly bursting for these horders with the economic melt-down, increase parking charges and expensive renewals.
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Blogging Hits Politics Hard

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This morning you will find that you cannot get away from the media talking about the damaging affect that blogging has had on politics.

The issue of McBride-Draper has been spreading like wild-fire and the willing for an apology from Gordon Brown being desperately called for by the Conservatives.
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Forwarding HTTPS on Thomson 585v7

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Recently moved home and sgned up for Be There Broadband.  This service comes with a Be branded Thomson 585v7 Router, which is a very basic and horrid bit of kit.  While it is self explanatory using the basic web interface to this device to forward ports and services to the correct machine on your LAN, I found I could not forward port 443 (HTTPS) even though I had set up the rules to do so.
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Disable Onboard Sound, Enable USB Soundcard – Ubuntu Hardy

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I’ve recently moved to a Laptop as my full time computer, replacing my Desktop.  My Desktop had an Asus Xonar D2X sound card and my Dell Inspiron has a very bad on-board sound card by comparison.  To make up for this I have purchased a USB sound card for use when my Laptop is “docked” at my home office.

A problem I encountered is while Ubuntu Hardy recognises my external sound card I have to go to

System » Preferences » Sound

to enable USB Audio for Sound Events and Music and Movies.  The only problem is that while Rhythmbox and Totem use my external sound card, the OS sounds and VLC do not.  Using asoundconf to set my default sound card does not rectify this solution.  I cannot also disable my on-board sound card in the BIOS as this option doesn’t exist and would also mean changing my BIOS every time I’m using my laptop on the move if I want sound.
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