Silicon Beach offers a range of Programming Training courses. We also offer Social Media Training, Ajax Training, Photoshop courses, PRINCE2 Training and Web Design Training in Brighton, Sussex. Bespoke courses are also available.

A robot that can detect faces and emotions!

Went to a breakfast meeting today called "Likemind" in Brighton and met some interesting people. Ian Oszvald a self-confessed Entrepreneurial Geek popped this little gismo out of his bag, brilliant! It is called the Headroid1 and is a face-tracking robot that can follow people’s faces, it is being developed to detect emotions and react to engage with people, I believe Ian is working on the "Smile Detector".

He says that programming is getting easier and is using a programming language called Python. Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. It's supposed to be easy to read, quick to write, runs on all popular platforms and is open source (which means it's free) "Anyone can make stuff like this now." he says (yeah right I'll just knock one up - give me a minute!).

As you can see from his demo the camera is tracking me as I move shifting and tilting so that my face is always in centre of the screen.

It's a collaborative project by BuildBrighton. Ian developed the AI for the device. If you want to learn more about the programming and code side of things you can read up about it on his blog.

This year the city celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Brighton Fringe and the 50th anniversary of the Brighton Festival.

In the spirit of the celebrations this year Heather Buckley and David Smith are exhibiting ‘Fringes of Brighton’ 5th May – 6th June 2016 – a showcase of photographs from events in Brighton taken over the last decade at MADE in North Road Brighton.

The exhibition is well worth a visit, it'll make you smile and so will the the coffee, lunch, and cakes.

The work that goes into putting on an exhibition requires a lot of the skills that we teach here. Photoshop and Lightroom of course, but also social media and content marketing. Many artist need to be thier own publicists these days. I managed to speak with Heather and David about their work and also with Leigh-Anne who opened the Gallery and Cafe MADE earlier this year.

I grabbed Heather today to talk about how she produces some of her amazing shots. I enjoy photography so it was a good opportunity to gain a little insight, particularly into the action shots.

Melissa Marie, Le Scandal Brighton Fringe 2008 - Heather Buckely

This year the city celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Brighton Fringe and the 50th anniversary of the Brighton Festival.

In the spirit of the celebrations this year Heather Buckley and David Smith are exhibiting ‘Fringes of Brighton’ 5th May – 6th June 2016 – a showcase of photographs from events in Brighton taken over the last decade at MADE in North Road Brighton.

The exhibition is well worth a visit, it'll make you smile and so will the the coffee, lunch, and cakes.

The work that goes into putting on an exhibition requires a lot of the skills that we teach here. Photoshop and Lightroom of course, but also social media and content marketing. Many artist need to be thier own publicists these days. I managed to speak with Heather and David about their work and also with Leigh-Anne who opened the Gallery and Cafe MADE earlier this year.

I grabbed Heather today to talk about how she produces some of her amazing shots. I enjoy photography so it was a good opportunity to gain a little insight, particularly into the action shots.

Melissa Marie, Le Scandal Brighton Fringe 2008 - Heather Buckely

With last week's announcement of a redesign for Facebook's news feed (which we discussed in detail in our post on Friday - Getting to Grips with Facebook's Redesign) comes renewed questions about the advertising policies of the social giant.

Despite no mention of ads whatsoever in that announcement (although post-announcement Q&As revealed some detail), the media and public alike are intrigued as to what a revised news feed with more focus on images, but also choice in what is seen, will mean for advertisers - with many suggesting that it will only increase their prominence.

If Facebook ads aren't your thing, why not try Google AdWords Training to give you an advantage on the biggest online advertising platform.

However, concern over Facebook ads is no new thing. Many users have become entirely disenchanted with the site's ad policy, especially since the advent of sponsored and promoted posts in the news feed.

Add to this the need to make Facebook more profitable after its largely unsuccessful IPO and big advertisers like GM not seeing advertising on the site as a useful spend, and it's obvious from a Facebook perspective why the redesign was as necessary from an ad point of view as it was from a usability and design one.

Prior to the revised news feed announcement, we here at Silicon Beach ran a survey to determine the public mood surrounding Facebook ads and thereby their effectiveness, particularly when it comes to small businesses.

Let's take a look at what all this data means for those without the ad budget of McDonald's or Coca-Cola!

Background

After engaging in an ad campaign to promote some of our blog posts, we received some negative feedback from an individual who happened to be a member of the anti-sponsored posts group "Say No to "Suggested Posts"".

At this point we felt that it was appropriate to suspend our ad campaign in order to first determine whether they were ineffective or even worse, actively putting people off our brand.

With last week's announcement of a redesign for Facebook's news feed (which we discussed in detail in our post on Friday - Getting to Grips with Facebook's Redesign) comes renewed questions about the advertising policies of the social giant.

Despite no mention of ads whatsoever in that announcement (although post-announcement Q&As revealed some detail), the media and public alike are intrigued as to what a revised news feed with more focus on images, but also choice in what is seen, will mean for advertisers - with many suggesting that it will only increase their prominence.

If Facebook ads aren't your thing, why not try Google AdWords Training to give you an advantage on the biggest online advertising platform.

However, concern over Facebook ads is no new thing. Many users have become entirely disenchanted with the site's ad policy, especially since the advent of sponsored and promoted posts in the news feed.

Add to this the need to make Facebook more profitable after its largely unsuccessful IPO and big advertisers like GM not seeing advertising on the site as a useful spend, and it's obvious from a Facebook perspective why the redesign was as necessary from an ad point of view as it was from a usability and design one.

Prior to the revised news feed announcement, we here at Silicon Beach ran a survey to determine the public mood surrounding Facebook ads and thereby their effectiveness, particularly when it comes to small businesses.

Let's take a look at what all this data means for those without the ad budget of McDonald's or Coca-Cola!

Background

After engaging in an ad campaign to promote some of our blog posts, we received some negative feedback from an individual who happened to be a member of the anti-sponsored posts group "Say No to "Suggested Posts"".

At this point we felt that it was appropriate to suspend our ad campaign in order to first determine whether they were ineffective or even worse, actively putting people off our brand.

Check out our updated post with cover photo templates and dimensions for all the major social networks.

Facebook Timeline has arrived. First announced in October 2011, Facebook Timeline's official release has been put back, and back, and back again. You've always been able to install it using a Developer preview but at the end of January Timeline went live to the world. Now, it is about to become mandatory.

However, the first thing you will want to do is to customise your Facebook Timeline cover photo! Something you've never been able to do before!

It is a given that by the end of the year, business pages will also have Timelines. This will be a fantastic tool for marketers to make their Facebook page stand out from the rest so use our guide so that you already know what to do when business Timeline is released! For a full course on social media marketing you should come on Social Media Training. We offer some fantastic deals when booked with SEO Training and Content Marketing Training!

As our Google+ profile design template proved so popular we have been kind enough to do the same for Facebook Timeline.

Download the Facebook Timeline Cover Photo Photoshop Template.

You can get really creative with the new cover photo so we have included some of our favourite designs so far at the bottom of this post.

Leave a link to your profile once you've customised it in the comments section below and we will publish our favourites over the next few weeks.

If you haven't already then make sure you have added us on Facebook for all the latest news, offers and resources: 

How to Customise Your Facebook Timeline

We have included a full step by step guide to using the Timeline Photoshop Template in our Complete Timeline Guide. The guide is also useful for changing your privacy settings and delving into all the new features before making your Timeline public.

Check out our updated post with cover photo templates and dimensions for all the major social networks.

Facebook Timeline has arrived. First announced in October 2011, Facebook Timeline's official release has been put back, and back, and back again. You've always been able to install it using a Developer preview but at the end of January Timeline went live to the world. Now, it is about to become mandatory.

However, the first thing you will want to do is to customise your Facebook Timeline cover photo! Something you've never been able to do before!

It is a given that by the end of the year, business pages will also have Timelines. This will be a fantastic tool for marketers to make their Facebook page stand out from the rest so use our guide so that you already know what to do when business Timeline is released! For a full course on social media marketing you should come on Social Media Training. We offer some fantastic deals when booked with SEO Training and Content Marketing Training!

As our Google+ profile design template proved so popular we have been kind enough to do the same for Facebook Timeline.

Download the Facebook Timeline Cover Photo Photoshop Template.

You can get really creative with the new cover photo so we have included some of our favourite designs so far at the bottom of this post.

Leave a link to your profile once you've customised it in the comments section below and we will publish our favourites over the next few weeks.

If you haven't already then make sure you have added us on Facebook for all the latest news, offers and resources: 

How to Customise Your Facebook Timeline

We have included a full step by step guide to using the Timeline Photoshop Template in our Complete Timeline Guide. The guide is also useful for changing your privacy settings and delving into all the new features before making your Timeline public.

when it comes to social media there is an ever-increasing number of online channels which can be used to quickly spread the word about your projects, products and services. But the wide range of choices available and the software available to manage social media can be daunting. When it comes to managing your social media, consider what your business priorities are and what areas you need to focus on daily, weekly or monthly. Planning your social media activity is crucial!

We've made life a little easier with our updated downloadable free Social Media Schedule .PDF!

Daily

Daily social media tasks are crucial for maintaining your image and conversing with others. While it is not time effectively to always be on Twitter and Facebook you want to make sure you respond to any communication quickly.

• Twitter - Tweet and respond to tweets and retweets - Tools such as TweetDeck and HootSuite are great ways to manage Twitter and if there's a topic you want to keep an eye on you can create a search column using the related hashtag.
• Google+ - respond to mentions and comments on your posts, scan the feed for interesting content to +1.
• Facebook - check your profile, pages and groups and respond as appropriate.
• LinkedIn - respond to private messages and posts/comments in your groups if you have any.
• Blogs - Respond to comments on your own blog posts - this opens up a dialogue between you and your users/followers, maximising opportunities for business relationships and reciprical marketing.
• Bookmarking - Scan what's popular on bookmarking and recommendation sites such as Delicious, Stumbleupon and Digg and then add your own bookmarks accordingly.
• Analytics - Google Analytics is the main choice for clear and concise information and it now features real time reporting. This is great as you can monitor your traffic from social media channels during campaigns to find our what elements of your social media strategy are the most successful.

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