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So after the big news that Yahoo has bought Tumblr for a staggering $1.1 Billion, comes more interesting developments on another Yahoo platform: Flickr.
It seems almost every social site has undergone a revamp in recent weeks, and Flickr is the latest to completely redesign the way it looks, acts and feels.
It’s all geared towards creating a responsive site that works seamlessly across small mobile screens, mid-size tablets and large-scale, hi-res desktop screens: something which is taught and emphasised on our Responsive Web Design Course.
So what exactly has changed with the ‘new’ Flickr. Let’s take a look:
Flickr’s New Look
The most obvious and striking change is the way the site now looks. Gone are the small images, scattered text and gaping white spaces:
Now we have expansive images, minimal and hidden text and only hints of white space.
It all looks a bit Google+ (post the recent redesign of that site), especially the screen-spanning cover photos at the top. Careful with that though, Flickr will just pick an image by default as your cover photo, so make sure to manually change it if you don’t want to end up with something potentially iffy.
The homepage has taken its cue from sites like Pinterest and Scoop.it with a large central stream of both photos and comments and a minimal top navigation bar.
The entire site is also now accented with striking black borders and lowlights which gives it a more structured, solid feel than before.
It’s pretty obvious what the impetus behind this redesign was: striking that balance between a site that looks great on mobile and a site that looks great on hi-res, large screens, whilst remaining consistent across the board.
It’s a move which has been taken by everyone in recent months, from Google+ to Facebook (still rolling out); clearly it’s the Zeitgeist in web design.
Terabyte of Free Storage
This is quite a bold move from Flickr but one that plays nicely into the burgeoning mobile/cloud, non-traditional storage model that is transforming tech. Any free account holder (new or old) receives this expansive storage facility as part of the deal.
Storage that big means images can be uploaded in super high-res formats and in unfathomable quantity; ideal for professional photographers looking to showcase their full body of work.
But that brings me onto a point that this redesign hasn’t addressed. Despite being geared towards both amateur and professional photographers, Flickr has always had strict rules about the commercialisation of work on their platform, and nothing has changed on that front.
In their guidelines it states:
“Don’t use Flickr to sell.
If we find you engaging in commercial activity, we will warn you or delete your account. Some examples include selling products, services, or yourself through your photostream or in a group, using your account solely as a product catalog, or linking to commercial sites in your photostream.”
Realistically, if Flickr wanted to go after the market that they seem to be hinting at with features like (almost) unlimited high quality image storage, then they’re going to need to rethink their policy on commercialisation.
It’s the photographers that make Flickr what it is, but without the facility to sell, or at least market their product, they’ll begin to look elsewhere.
Flickr’s New Features
There are a couple of other new features which help to make this redesign even more interesting. One is the new full-screen slideshow feature that uses preset transitions and facial-recognition technology, to seamlessly interweave entire collections of images, and focus on key subjects within the images, in an aesthetically pleasing way.
This feature would be fantastic except it currently seems to be very slow and sluggish to load (wouldn’t load at all on my machine); hopefully that’s an issue that will be ironed out soon.
One other new feature is the ability to upload longer, better quality videos. Up to 3-minutes per video in full HD to be exact. I can’t see this really being a deal-breaker for many users though, when there are bigger and better video sites out there (one major player springs to mind!).
Final Thought
Clearly this is a big statement of intent from Yahoo and Flickr. They intend to stay relevant in the quick-pace photo-site world that has seen two behemoths emerge in recent years (Pinterest and Instagram).
With this new look, Flickr could quite easily re-carve out a niche as the the photographers’ photo-site but to do so, it need to rethink its archaic terms regarding commercialisation.
Will it be the next big player in social media? Certainly not. Will it survive, in the face of plenty of doubts in recent time? Almost certainly yes.
If you want to make sure your photos look amazing in the the new Flickr photostream, come on our Photoshop Training here at Silicon Beach.
Posted by Aaron Charlie in News, Photoshop, Social Media on May 21st, 2013 | No Comments »
When people think of Microsoft Excel, they often picture dull figures and charts and just generally lots and lots of data. All very useful stuff but not the most enthralling outside of a work environment.
Some people however, take a different approach. To them Excel can be anything and everything. It’s not just for business and numbers. It can be used to create innovative and original concepts, in all sorts of different ways.
Whatever you want to use Excel for, our Excel Training will give you all the knowledge you need to make the most of this powerful tool and it’s also worth reading this blog post on some hidden Excel tips and tricks.
So let’s take a look at some of the less traditional uses of Excel to give you an idea of what this software can really do.
Art in Excel
Excel can and has been used by artists as a platform to express their ideas and creativity. It may sound like an odd choice of medium but the flexibility and functionality Excel provides is surprisingly suited to artistic endeavour.
Take a look at these magnificent pieces by Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi:
And these Star Wars-themed works by Shukei are out of this world (excuse the pun):
Read the rest of "Creative Uses of Excel: From Nyan Cat to Pac-Man"
Posted by Aaron Charlie in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, News on May 20th, 2013 | No Comments »
Fresh off the back of criticism from Reuters for failing to entice brands to the platform, Google+ has fought back at I/O 2013 with a completely overhauled social network.
The changes went live at the conference, meaning that everyone can already get their hands on the new features.
Those new features include:
1. A Slick New Look
2. Redesigned responsive stream (1-3 columns)
3. Automatic Hashtags
4. Revamped Photos
5. Hangouts
Since launching nearly two years ago, Google+ has done little to set itself apart as a social platform, instead borrowing the more successful features from other networks. This hasn’t been enough to entice people away from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – possibly because Google+ attempts to be all three at once.
By the end of 2012, Google claimed that they had 235 million active users (550 in total) but the general consensus is Google’s definition of ‘active’ differs somewhat to industry expectations. Many predict that if it wasn’t for Gmail, Android and the adoption of rel=author within the marketing industry (which you can learn about on our SEO courses) then Google+ would be something of a ghost town.
We’ve been testing Google+ out this morning to get used to the new features and the initial impression in the office is that Google has stepped up its game and finally done something to set it apart from other social networks. Let’s dive in…
1. Google+’s Slick New Look
The whole feel of the new design is that of a mobile app. It draws on its own iOS and Android app layouts, as well as those of other sites like Pinterest and, yes, Facebook.
Read the rest of "Google Grows Up – Google+’s Best New Features"
Posted by Aaron Charlie in News, Social Media on May 16th, 2013 | No Comments »
BYOD is the buzzword in business IT at the moment, but is there more to it than just easily spouted rhetoric by a few industry influencers?
A study by Gartner would suggest there is. It predicts that 38% of organisations will stop providing mobile devices to employees by 2016 and 50% will mandate a BYOD policy by 2017. That’s a significant enough portion of organisations for IT professionals to stand up and take notice.
So what does this mean for the tech side of businesses? On our ITIL courses, we emphasise the difficulty in managing multiple and diverse platforms from both a support and security perspective, something which BYOD only increases.
With BYOD getting more and more popular, does this mean that the traditional model of internal IT support and service management will have to be entirely scrapped? Or can it adapt to the challenges it faces with BYOD and continue to be the technical bedrock of any business?
Why BYOD Could Spell the end for Internal IT Support
BYOD throws up all sorts of issues for businesses, and in particular, for the IT crew. In the time of blanket company Blackberries and uniform Dell PCs, IT support was in the most part, a lot simpler: if you could fix a problem on one machine, you could probably fix it on any of them.
These days, to be able to provide full IT support to an organisation, you’d need to be an expert in Windows, iOS, Android and maybe even Blackberry OS. People like this don’t exactly grow on trees.
Read the rest of "Mandated BYOD by 2017: Is this the End of Internal Tech Support?"
Posted by Andy Trainer in ITIL, News on May 15th, 2013 | No Comments »
Huge news coming from Adobe in the last week. After 10 years of service, it will be dropping its Creative Suite product entirely, in favour of pushing the Creative Cloud service that was introduced last year.
Here at Silicon Beach, we’ve already updated to Creative Cloud and so all our Adobe Courses, including our Photoshop Courses, will be completely up to date.
This is a massive shift in focus from Adobe, whose business model had until the release of Creative Cloud, followed the ‘traditional’ software licencing model. So what exactly does all this mean for consumers and what’s new?
What is Creative Cloud?
Last year Adobe released Creative Cloud which at first appeared to just be an alternative payment option for existing Adobe products, rather than an entire product in itself. As it has transpired, Creative Cloud will be the sole focus of Adobe from now on.
The next release in June will see them scrap the ubiquitous CS (Creative Suite) moniker that has been attached to Adobe programs since 2003 and instead each product will be branded as CC (Creative Cloud).
There will be no ‘full’ update system in place as their is currently (CS4 to CS5 to CS6 etc) but rather more frequent, less substantial updates each remaining under the CC brand.
Read the rest of "Adobe Drops Creative Suite to Focus on Creative Cloud"
Posted by Aaron Charlie in eBooks, Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop, Print Design on May 13th, 2013 | 1 Comment »
Landing your first management role is an exciting and rewarding experience. You’ll have more responsibility, more power and more money. You’ll be given more freedom to act on your own decisions too.
It’s not all a bed of roses though. Management can be a tough and gruelling profession whatever the industry, and one which needs to be fully understood and prepared for in order to succeed.
Coming on our Management Skills for New Managers Course is a great idea and our Leadership Training will get you started on the path to success but I thought I’d reach out to a selection of managers and professionals from a variety of industries, asking them what they think is the biggest challenge they faced in the first few months/year in the job. Hopefully this will help those starting out in management understand the issues they may have to deal with.
First up we have someone who has only been in management for a day (or had when I spoke to her at least)!
Building Relationships and Understanding the Company
Laura Evans, Marketing Manager at Create.net
“Joining a new place is nerve-wracking but Create have been especially welcoming. Having a dedicated internal HR person has been useful here as it meant they were very supportive in checking I have everything I needed.
As a marketing manager it’s a challenge for me to have good connections with everyone I work with across the business, especially heads of customer service departments and the product manager, as well as those I work more directly with.
I bought donuts for everyone on my first day (which went down really well!) but I realise these relationships are something that need to be built up over time and will take long term attention to grow and maintain.
Read the rest of "Biggest Challenges Faced by New Managers"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Management, News on May 9th, 2013 | No Comments »
One of the most common reasons that small businesses attend our SEO Courses is that they’ve had a Google link penalty - manual or algorithm – which have become part and parcel of SEO since the Panda update first reared its head.
With the increase in penalties has come an increase in link removals, but it’s not always easy to know when to remove links, or even which links to remove. After all if you remove all your links then you’re not going to rank for anything at all!
We decided to clear up the confusion surrounding link removal by creating a downloadable guide to removing links. Simply work your way through the guide to decide if and when to remove bad links, and how to go about doing it.
Click the image below to download the full PDF:
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It’s important to remember that links are no longer the be all and end all of SEO anymore. Personalised results based on location, preferences and search history now mean that no searcher has the same results. This is even more true for mobile searches, which is why we’ve just launched our one-of-a-kind Mobile SEO course that focused specifically on the mobile side of search.
Have You Had a Manual Link Notification?
Check your Webmaster Tools account for unnatural link penalty notifications, which mean that Google have taken manual action against your site.
If you haven’t set up Webmaster Tools then it’s essential you do; use this guide to setting up Webmaster Tools and make sure you set up email alerts so you don’t miss important messages. Read the rest of "Downloadable Link Removal Guide – When to Remove Links"
Posted by Aaron Charlie in News, SEO on May 7th, 2013 | No Comments »
In the last few weeks, Google Glass has rolled out to a limited number of developers and beta testers known as ‘explorers’.
Because of this, we’ve begun to see more and more photos and videos emerge on social media giving us (non-explorers) some idea of what life through Glass is like.
Us non-explorers are still very much attached to our smartphones though and with a booming app market, coming on our Android App Development Training and learning how to make apps would be a smart move.
Much of the skills learnt will be transferable to Glass too!
With fascinating new apps mooted by the day and many wearers waxing lyrical over its epochal potential, but also pervading concerns over privacy, it’s clear (pun intended) that Glass is going to dominate tech news for quite a while.
Read the rest of "The Best Google Glass Photos and Videos So Far"
Posted by Jackson Rawlings in Mobile, News on May 3rd, 2013 | No Comments »
