Archive for January, 2011

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It happens in Nottingham too: Reality TV – Startup style! By LucyH on Monday January 31st, 2011   1 comment

This series is sponsored by ClearBooks: Online Accounting to free your time.

The idea behind inafishbowl.com is for entrepreneurs to learn from the trials and tribulations of other new businesses so they don’t fall into the same traps.

The site follows 3 entrepreneurs for the first 6 months of their business lives, asking them to blog, tweet and video diarise their experiences along the way. There’s a team of local experts on-hand to give advice on marketing, budgeting and how to build their new businesses – including Apprentice finalist Claire Young and Dragon’s Den investment winner Imran Hakim.

There are currently 2 bowls – one in the East Midlands and one in the West, each containing 3 businesses and up to 40 experts.

Techfluff went to meet CEO Toby Reid, who’s vision is for a fishbowl in every region of the country and hopes that the site will enhance entrepreneurial culture in the UK.

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It happens in Nottingham too: Aware monitoring does all the complicated stuff so you don’t have to. By LucyH on Friday January 28th, 2011   8 comments

This series is sponsored by ClearBooks: Online Accounting to free your time.

Aware Monitoring keeps tabs on your websites and internet applications to makesure they’re running at optimum performance.

Simplicity is the name of the game for CEO Nick Barker and CTO Simon Oxley, who’ve made their complicated code throw back easy to understand results.

Sign up for a free 15-day trial and simply copy + paste in the url for the site you want to monitor and within seconds data is returned on page-load speeds, login forms and search options.

Results are also colour-coded – green in good, red is bad, amber could be better – and you are alerted via email if a considerable error occurs.

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Ain’t no pre-party like an Erskine pre-party: The warm-up to #naconf in Nottingham By LucyH on Wednesday January 26th, 2011   4 comments

This series is sponsored by ClearBooks: Online Accounting to free your time.

Last week saw the first ever New Adventures in Web Design Conference happen up in Nottingham, organised by Simon Collinson. Unfortunately TechFluff couldn’t make it to the main event, but we heard about the pre-party so got on down to a local bowling alley find out what all the fuss was about.

The pre-party was organised by Erskine Design and attended by developers, designers and web strategists from around Europe. What most delegates seemed to be excited about was the concise 30 minute speaker-slots and the specific focus on the creativity and design on the web.

Oh and some pretty high-profile design speakers including Andy Clarke and Brendan Dawes.

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It happens in Nottingham too: Online adverts for your business or charity with Annot8 By LucyH on Monday January 24th, 2011   1 comment

This series is sponsored by ClearBooks: Online Accounting to free your time.

Annot8 is an advertising platform that allows you to make promotional web content for your business quickly and easily.

They’re different from Google AdWords because the content you create can be displayed on any website in the world – not just on Google products. Plus they give something back by sharing revenue with the websites that display their adverts. There’s also a charity section where you can earn money for a good cause everytime someone clicks on an Annot8 advert that appears on your site.

Having only launched a month ago, they’re still in Beta and so there’s a bit more to be added to the site in terms of what they do and exactly how they do it… but in the meantime you can meet Eddie – a friendly cartoon that guides you through making campaigns.

Watch out for his banana though.

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Creative Nottingham connects local creatives By LucyH on Friday January 21st, 2011   7 comments

 This series is sponsored by ClearBooks: Online Accounting to free your time.

Home of Paul Smith and Lord Byron – Nottingham’s well known for its creativity and colour. Trent university has a world-class reputation for fashion, graphics and design, it boasts one of the highest concentrations of theatres in a city centre outside of London and one of the largest contemporary arts centres in the UK.

Creative Nottingham is a blog that connects all of this talent and gets people working together.

TechFluff spoke to artist and illustrator Charlotte Thomson and writer Sue Barsby - who are part of the collective that run the site. We find out how it started, the best social media tools to reach out to creatives and the competitions they’ve run to engage with their readership.

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XMA showcases its cutting-edge IT services at The Langley Academy! By Talia Sternberg on Thursday January 20th, 2011   2 comments

With a whole IT division dedicated to ‘MacLand’, whiteboards connected to projectors and state-of-the-art facilities including a fully-functional TV and music recording studio, it’s amazing how lucky the students are at The Langley Academy -who have literally become digital natives using the infrastructure provided by XMA.

The new age building, crafted as a model learning environment, houses hundreds of computers, as well as other technologies, totaling to £1.2 million in funding.

The integrated curriculum gives students the opportunity to learn through the use of advanced technology, offering a variety of courses, concentrating on areas such as media, music and theatre studies. This ideal learning environment prepares students for a successful university experience and potential careers post-graduation

Our sister video production company, Newspepper, recently visited The Langley Academy, to get an inside view of the facilities and how XMA‘s involvement has impacted, not only the students but also the teachers alike!

To find out more watch this video below:

Langley Academy – XMA (FC, Version 2) from Newspepper on Vimeo.

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Local music for local people with PlayChimp. By LucyH on Wednesday January 19th, 2011   1 comment

This series is sponsored by ClearBooks: Online Accounting to free your time.

PlayChimp gives singers, djs and bands a platform to promote their musical wares to local people. It also helps music lovers find artists in their area.

They’ve still got a couple of week’s til the official launch but co-founder Tina Bilan says it’s important for startups to get their products out and sites up and running asap.

TechFluffTV asks Tina what difficulties PlayChimp has faced in the development process and how they’re different to all the other music-matching sites out there.

You can watch PlayChimp dancing to MJ here.

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Introducing our new Techfluff.tv Editor @LucieBean with the series sponsored by ClearBooks! By Chloe on Tuesday January 18th, 2011   3 comments

If you are a regular reader of Techfluff.tv – and let’s be honest who isn’t?! You may have noticed that we’ve got a new Techfluff.tv Video Editor onboard and we would like to officially welcome Lucy Hewitt to the team! While Hermione Way is spreading The Next Web Video wings over in SF, Lucy will be taking over the reigns to report on the UK’s tech scene and will be interviewing startups, covering events and news – so no-one misses out on what is hot and not in tech. You can follow Lucy on twitter here and listen to an interview about her new role here.

We’re also very excited to announce that ClearBooks will be sponsoring the series produced by our Techfluff.tv Editor and are very grateful for their support. This month, our sister company, Newspepper.com produced a couple of video testimonials of their clients Pigment and FT Advisors, which you can watch below.

If you want to get you or your product covered on Techfluff.tv get in touch. We hope you continue to enjoy the content produced by @LucieBean and the rest of the team!

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Freeserve co-founder Rob Wilmot speaks to local entrepreneurs at NottTuesday By LucyH on Monday January 17th, 2011   2 comments

This series is sponsored by ClearBooks: Online Accounting to free your time.

Rob Wilmot is a bit of a startup pin-up. He was co-director of Freeserve back in 1998, the Internet Service Provider backed by the Dixon Stores Group. After floating on the London Stock Exchange, Rob became one of the youngest directors of a FTSE 100 company at the age of 29. Rob exited Freeserve after the completion of a £1.6 billion sale to Wanadoo in 2001.

Since then he’s invested in a range of tech and media companies and is on a number of company boards as well as being the Chair of Governors for Doncaster College.

He spoke at NottTuesday – one of Nottingham’s most successful meetups set up by Adam Bird of Esendex just a year ago. TechFlufftv went along to speak to startups from the area and ask Rob for his top tips for entrepreneurs.

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It happens in Nottingham too: Run out of energy? OuterArc monitor what you’re using and where you could save in real time. By LucyH on Sunday January 16th, 2011   No comments

This series is sponsored by ClearBooks: Online Accounting to free your time.

These boys have a few products up their sleeves and it’s all about being green.

First up is KyotoTV, a web app that pushes people towards a more sustainable culture. Screens tell you how much energy you’re using and where you could save in a simple way. The idea is to prompt you to turn off that light switch without bombarding you with information.

Second is Telewatts, a site that promotes renewable energy generation in your building or business.

They’ve  secured energy monitoring and screens at Derby University, hoping to get students involved with energy conservation.

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