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We’ve been running Photoshop courses here at Silicon Beach Training since 1999, and through a combination of great facilities, expert instructors and continually improving the courses we’ve become a recognised leader in the field (even if we do say so ourselves!)
Over the years we’ve added quite a few Photoshop workshops to our portfolio, so we thought it was high time they had their own section!
You can now find all of the Photoshop courses in one place at www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/photoshop-training/
What could be easier!
The Photoshop Courses we run are:
If you’d like to learn more about any of these or would like to make a booking, call our office on 01273 622272 or e-mail us at info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk
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Posted by Colin Welch in News, Photography, Photoshop, Web Design on March 19th, 2010 | No Comments »
Image by Heather Buckley
Are you a budding photographer? Win free training and online exposure!
Whether you’re an aspiring photographer or have a photographer who works for your business, enter Silicon Beach Training’s photography competition to win a free training course. The winning entry will be announced on our blog, Twitter and Facebook as well as other social media platforms – an excellent way to generate online exposure and increase traffic to your website!
Photography competitions will run bi-monthly, and the theme this time is “My Home Town”. It’s up to you how you interpret this; it could be about people, architecture, landscape, culture etc.
To follow this competition head to Flickr or our Facebook page and hear about updates on our blog. We will also be announcing regular photography competitions and details of winners on Twitter so don’t forget to follow us @SBTtraining.
Read on to find out more about the free training prize, learn about the high profile photographers who will be judging the competition, and how you can enter.
Read the rest of "Photography Competition – Win a Free Course"
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Competitions, News on March 16th, 2010 | 7 Comments »
Check out new, hands-on Blogging Training course.
Business blogs are fantastic marketing tools. Blogging provides you with a platform to share news, useful articles and how-to guides with your clients, adding a dynamic dimension to your website above and beyond the usual list of products or services.
The information on you blog can then be syndicated to your clients and prospects using social media networks for greater exposure (you can learn more about finding and communicating with your clients online on our Social Media course).
Regularly updated blog content will not only keep people coming back to your site, but provides you with an opportunity to prove your experience and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
Not all of us are born writers, and coming up with interesting blog content that people will want to read and bookmark regularly can sometimes be a real challenge.
Our 1-day Blogging workshop is designed to help you overcome the dreaded bloggers block (here’s 10 ideas for what to blog about to get you started!)
Our blogging course is led by experienced blog copywriters, and by the end you’ll know how to write effectively for your audience, how to build up a bank of suitable material and be confident about the nuts and bolts of blogging like tags, links, categories and RSS feeds.
The 1-day course is just £225 + vat per delegate and runs on a regular basis here at our training centre in the heart of Brighton’s North Laines.
For more information and bookings, call 01273 622272 or e-mail info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk
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Posted by Colin Welch in News, Sales and Marketing, Social Media on March 16th, 2010 | No Comments »
Location based services are not new, some, such as Loopt have been around since 2005 but 2010 is the year that they’re really taking off. Loopt has around 3 million users in the US (its not available anywhere else) but it differs greatly from the current trend in location based services, that of moving away from “always on” location to that of “checking in” at specific locations.
Foursquare and Gowalla are leading the charge of the ‘Geosocial‘ location based mobile services, with Foursquare having recently had 370k “check ins” in one day. With only 500k registered users the leader, Foursquare, is still relatively small compared to other, traditional, social networks (Facebook, with 400m users is by far the biggest social network but doesn’t yet have a Geosocial aspect) but it is growing fast.
Arguably 2010 will be the year of location based social and business networks, especially with services such as simpleGeo offering location infrastructure to startups. This lowers the barrier to entry significantly allowing start ups, such as stickybits, to provide geotagging in its unique offerings.
So is it all hype? From a business point of view are they worth engaging with like other social media?
Read the rest of "Geotagging the Future with Foursquare, Gowalla and Twitter"
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Posted by Daniel Inniss in News, Social Media on March 15th, 2010 | 1 Comment »
KeePass Review – Store passwords securely
To start with I have about twelve different passwords just for social media, about seven for different websites that I manage, three for different forums…you get the message I have a lot of passwords to remember!
It gets even worse if you are a business engaging in social media, you want to protect your passwords but also want employees to use your social accounts.
So how do I keep track of all these online passwords?
Read the rest of "Online Password Management with KeePass"
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Posted by Daniel Inniss in New Free Resources, News on March 10th, 2010 | No Comments »
Image by Steven Depolo
It seems there’s always a technology or service threatening to revolutionize the internet. Promising to change the way we access information and how we use it.
In the past it was “web 2.0″, “web 3.0″, “crowd sourcing”; the list goes on!
Recently, “Real Time Web” has entered the arena, it sounds great but in practice, few people have a clue what it is. Simply put it means web resources are published and consumed in real time.
Real Time Web
As as soon as “stuff” is published, a blog post or any other user generated content, it is syndicated around the web and indexed immediately. The most obvious example is google search including up to the second results from twitter. Social media is all about real time, streams of information created constantly and consumed almost instantly (find out more with out social media course). Broadcasting your location in foursquare is pretty useless if people only find out a few hours/days later! Real time web can be thought of as another paradigm of the social web experience.
For a while only the big boys, Google, Facebook and Twitter and others have made use of these real time data streams, with us peons only able to use RSS and ATOM to get our content out there. Recent developments by both Google and Wordpress have put this real time power at the disposal of every blogger and content creator on the web. If you are thinking of using Wordpress and need help check out our Wordpress Training and our Customising Wordpress Templates courses.
You’re probably thinking how does this differ from RSS and ATOM? Well it doesn’t, its an extension to both those protocols to allow for real time publishing, but how exactly have they done this?
What is PuSH or PUbSubHub?
The very definition of “Real Time Web” is to have content consumed in real time. PuSH or PSHB (many names and acronyms have been used in discussions but from here on out I’ll only use PuSH as it best describes what it does) is a protocol that allows RSS and ATOM feeds to change something that you need to ask for into something that is given to you. Read the rest of "Real Time Web and the PubSubHubBub"
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Posted by Daniel Inniss in News, Social Media, Web Design on March 8th, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Wordpress has become one of the most popular blogging tools around. It’s simple to download and install and its user interface is straightforward and easy to use. Our Wordpress Training courses have been filling up fast!
Businesses are fast waking up to the value of incorporating a blog in their website (read our piece on why businesses need Social Media and our tips on how to write a great blog post).
Businesses most often want to seamlessly insert their blog in to their existing website (like this one) rather than sending their clients to a seperate URL, and we’re increasingly being asked “how can I customise Wordpress to fit in my existing site?”
To do this, you need to learn how to create custom Wordpress themes. So – we’ve launched a comprehensive 1-day Advanced Wordpress Training Course that covers everything you need to know.
Our Custom Wordpress Themes Training is delivered to small groups, and delegates are invited to bring their own HTML templates and stylesheets with them to the course to use as live examples.
You’ll leave the training having started to develop your custom theme, and with the skills to complete and modify it as required. You’ll have your Wordpress blog integrated in to your site in no time – just like ours!!
For more information and bookings call 01273 622272 or e-mail colin@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk
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Posted by Colin Welch in News, Social Media, Web Design on March 5th, 2010 | No Comments »
Does Google rule the world?
Google handles 80% of European web searches, according to ComScore, compared to 65% in the US. Does this give Google a Monopoly over search and more importantly the advertising revenue that search engines attract?
We offer a great Google Analytics Training course for beginners and an Advanced Google Analytics course.
This week there has been a enquiry by the European Commission into three separate allegations that Google’s ‘so called’ democratic style seach is being adapted by Google who they claim are demoting competing websites in faouvour of their own services in the search results. Google will sometimes insert links into results offering its own own specialist services – news, price comparison, maps or book search. Competitors claim this diverts traffic away from rival services.
The commission has sent out questionnaires seeking information about complaints from a British vertical search company called Foundem, a French legal search engine called eJustice and the shopping site, Ciao, which is owned by Microsoft.
Many SEO and Search companies will be rejoicing in the fact that the commission is taking the issue seriously. This enquiry should shake up Google who will be aware that the commission has previously levied huge financial penalties on Microsoft and Intel in recent years for using tactics to squash competing software.
Google is claiming that the attack has been orchestrated by Microsoft, which recently merged its search business with Yahoo’s in an effort to challenge Google. They have pointed out Microsofts interest in Foundem which is part of a trade grouping sponsored by Microsoft called the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, and their ownership of Ciao. Read the rest of "Google Monopoly questioned by the European Commission"
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Posted by Heather Buckley in News, SEO, Sales and Marketing, Social Media on March 1st, 2010 | 3 Comments »
