The Future is Bright,

The future is Full of Type!

@font-face came up with the excellent idea of helping web designers out with the limited type-faces or fonts available through web browsers. Sadly for @font-face Google also thought this was an excellent idea and so have set up Google Web Fonts. Knowing that they cannot compete @font-face has bowed out gracefully.

Applying Google Web Fonts is simple (see the in body title above):

1) link to the font in the head of your html in much the same way you link to style sheets

2) Add a style in your style sheet that references the particular font style you are referencing (Tangerine above).

Google Web Fonts are only in Beta at the moment but it will surely take off. Check out Google Web Fonts.

As part of an ogoing investigation into website "appeal", Craig along with colleagues within the Bournemouth University Eye Tracking Consultancy (hereafter BUETC - see buetc.com) have set up a survey (using the open source LimeSurvey - would recommend). If you would like to particpate in this survey please click here.

Company Director Craig is to take part in the ShelterBox Dartmoor Challenge 2010. As part of a team of 4 Craig will carry a shelterbox 30 miles accross Dartmoor over 2 days. He will be doing this in aid of the charity ShelterBox.

If you are not aware ShelterBox is an international disaster relief charity that delivers emergency shelter, warmth and dignity to people affected by disaster worldwide. Here are a few of the international disasters that ShelterBox have been involved with in the last few months:
-          Haiti earth quake (10,000 tents)
-          Tropical storm Agatha and Volcano Pacaya (Guatamala)
-          Floods in Brazil
-          Pakistan floods (over 1000 ShelterBoxes)

 
Sounds like a charity worth supporting doesn’t it?
For more info on the ShelterBox charity please see their website (www.shelterbox.org).
 
If you would like to support ShelterBox please consider sponsoring Craig and the rest of his team for doing the challenge.

The easiest way to sponsor the All Crowns (anagram of Cornwall, with an 's') is to go to the Just Giving website (http://www.justgiving.com/allcrown-shelterbox).  If you would prefer to send me a cheque you can send it to Kudo Solutions (see contact details), but please make it payable to “ShelterBox”.

When asked how much the All Crown's would like to raise, Craig said

"Each box costs £500. We’d like to raise enough money for at least 2. Please, please support this amazing charity."

Found useful online tool for testing websites in different screen sizes. Check-out this screen size emulator.

Last night I was in discussion with Kudo's newest web design client (a Cornwall based building services firm). Anyway, when we implement their website we will be registering a brand-new domain.  Previously I have always recommended buying the .com domain, and possibly buying the .co.uk so that no one else can.  However, based on some recent SEO studying I believe that it might be sensible for a UK based company who are looking for local trade to purchae the .co.uk top-level domain (TLD) as their primary domain. The reason for this is that search engines will use this TLD suffix, along with other things such as host server location, to determine the location of the company and index accordingly. Kudo Solutions is a UK based Web Design and development company with a .com TLD (kudosolutions.com if you didn't already know). If you search for Kudo Solutions on Google.com we are usually number 1. However, if you select uk webpages only we are not!  Obviously, kudosolutions.com is a brand new website in itself and our in-house SEO guys are working hard to get us to where we need to be. However, this is interesting that our .com features less in uk based search!

Interestingly, if we look at the top 100 retail website in the UK (see IMGR/HitWise) half are .co.uks and half are .coms - However, some of these companies are International.

Thoughts?