Search For Offices In London With Google Maps

2007-06-06

http://www.londonofficespace.com | Rating : 6.70

London Office Space is a website that offers a map-driven system to find serviced offices available to rent. By letting them do the work for you, finding an ideal London location can be as easy as signing a short-term lease and moving in.

Design & Layout The main page of the website is unique but is organised well. It consists of a main banner and paragraph and underneath are two columns, the left column with a list of location names to click on and the right column containing a clickable map. At the bottom of the page are text links to "London Life", "Privacy Policy" etc. The maps on the website are triumphant feats of illustration (even if they are from Google) and are very helpful to the viewer and as an added bonus, they resize when the browser window does too. A minimap also helps to pinpoint the region. There is a key to go with the map showing offices, railways and so on, but since the key contains ticked circles instead of representative symbols I found it confusing. Colours for the website are orange, grey, blue, black and green and are consistent with the logo. London Office Space’s logo is modern, simple and stylish, the only issue being the words "Office Space" which do not sit aesthetically under the word "London". Possibly flattening a font like Arial Black as a tagline would work better. I thought the colours represented the type of business well and looked professional. The layout of the pages is neatly organised and pages are consistent with the two column design with contact details up the top. I liked the large phone number in orange at the top as it’s so obvious no customers can fail to use it if needed. The colours in the top and bottom of the main page wrappers are an interesting idea too – thin multicoloured bars adding to the colour scheme. Images within the individual locations are sharp, bright and don’t look too doctored (which is normally the case with real estate). These pictures look realistic but well-taken. Each serviced office has a description, rating and buttons to schedule viewing, request price or add to shortlist. Navigation & Coding It is easy to navigate London Office Space, especially as there are two ways to navigate on many pages (text links and clickable map). Since the contact details are at the top and an arrowed destination list is shown, viewers can not get lost and should not have trouble finding what they are looking for. This is an example of a straight forward website. If you live in central london, have a look at Central London Officesand if you live in outer london, have a look at Offices in Outer London. You can see that searching for offices is very easy by clicking on the balloons in the map. Coding is php using javascript and CSS as well. Loading times are a bit slow (even on an ADSL connection) – I believe this may be due to the map loading times. That are pros and cons of using Google Maps and loading time is one of the cons. Summary This website needs faster loading times, otherwise traffic might go elsewhere and regular customers might get frustrated. Maybe with caching or the advance of internet connection, loading time can be improved? Other than that, the site adequately meets customer needs and provides a huge range of offices to choose from in UK. With the same technology, it is likely that the company can extend their services to include other countries as well. Londonofficespace.com is an example of a site that incorporates the latest open source technology into their services and is a role model for many other directory sites. The design in particular is efficient, simple and easy to navigate. Well done! Logo & Thin Colour Bar Each office has ratings etc Key with ticked items

Australian Oxfam Website - Colourful and friendly

http://www.oxfam.org.au

Oxfam.Org.AU the Australian website of Oxfam International is a well designed and up to date information portal combining the many services and activities across Asia and Indigenous Australia, to overcome poverty and injustice. OXFAM stands for OXford Committee for FAMine Relief founded in England in 1942.

Design The site displays a simplistic design using soft greens with 2 or three shades variations. The design and logo are reproduced from the parent organization Oxfam.org, since it is the Australian branch. The logo is white on green, very symbolic, could resemble two hands holding food or something similar. Since this is an aid organization I did not expect grand design, and truely the minimalistic approach works well and reflects the core values of the organization - to help, and not to waste resources. The bright colours and full smiles of the children in the main photograph reflect the objective of Oxfam, to touch people in need, and warm their souls, to light up their world. There are more images of Oxfam volunteers on site at one of the many aid projects in Asia. The horizontal top navigation bar is followed by the feature article with the focal image and then a four column design to list current projects and future events such as the Sydney TrailWalker. Follow the link and you come to a separate fresh and attractive promotional website for the walk. It's good to find high quality deep links backed by a wealth of information on your site.  Follow another link and you get to the non-feature simple information pages containing topbar, 2 columns, left navigation, right the body with a head image then the text. The opener image helps well to break up the text flood that follows. However the following text is again broken up well with frequent subheaders in shiny light green font. Design is nice, easy on the eyes, I would only change a few minor points: The font seems to crumble a bit on my screen, even though I use a high end 1024 screen, it may be the result of a too ambitious css stylesheet scheme. It is just not very sharp. Cramping the site into 780 px wide container may work for smaller screen resolutions, but with more flat screens around that use 1280 and higher, the site will look very narrow on those screens.  I would either bring the fixed size up to 980 px or have it flexible adjusting up to 1100 px even. Content The site holds a vast amount of information (in access of 500 pages, that's were my sitemap crawler stopped). The pages are well catalogued, structured and navigatable. For example the first button 'Programs' leads to various maps and submaps, then the body of each progam in detail. As maintained through the whole site, head images help to break up lots of text and paragraphs. Other main content is 'Campaigns', 'Donate' and 'Get Active', just the sort of pages I am looking for when visiting a charity website. Follow the 'Donate Now' link and reach an online payment gateway that accepts credit card payments. That's convenient. My advise would be to make the 'Donate Now' button more prominent on the home page. Loading times are good since the content is optimised graphics, CSS colour, text and some images. Navigation 4 tiered, well designed navigation structure makes it easy to find anything you need, from topbar horizontal navigation bar, (1) to left hand sub navigation menu (2),  then sub-sub navigation in the head image (3) to links spread over the body text and subimages (4). The News page is my only point of concern - it is overwhelming and confusing.  Use of that larger shiny green subheader font would help the structure there. Other Features There are lots of 'Calls to Action', such as 'Make a Donation', 'Buy Fairtrade Coffee', 'Sponsor a Team'. Calls to action are one of the most thought after ingredient in online marketing.  Any website optimsation strategy needs to direct traffic onto pages that are not just plain text and information, but contain calls to do something, either buy a product, book a consultation or like here, 'Sponsor a Team'.  The copy writing team at Oxfam appears to be well aware of this. Offer information and aim at getting a result. Conclusion Overall we are looking at one of the better charity websites I have seen. We learn about the many facetes of charity business, have many online opportunities to get involved, and the visual experience invites you to extent your stay for more than just page one or two. If you are looking at getting involved fighting injustice and poverty, this may become your favourite portal. It certainly has for me.

Parents - Send your kids to pbskids!

http://www.pbskids.org

PBS Kids has a huge selection of interactive kid's games, showcasing TV characters that kids love. The website is designed in flash and is one of the best children website out there.

This is the second review for pbskids.org. The first review is here. Introduction There's so much to look at and play with on this site, kids will be kept busy for hours! With exciting graphics and interesting things to do, the kids don't have to know the TV characters to enjoy themselves. A lot of work has gone into this website and it shows. Design and Layout The pages in PBS Kids seem to be simple and well laid out, with minimal (but important) information to focus on. These aspects are especially suitable for children's websites, where the kids need to have clear choices about where to go in the site. The main activities mostly happen in the centre of the screen (where they should be) and the buttons, pictures and text are clickable and reactive. There is sound, so make sure you turn your speakers on to hear! I was impressed with the interesting way the designers managed to use bright colours throughout the site, while keeping the central, interactive parts the main attraction - this is the hallmark of an experienced web designer or team of designers - design is all about communicating the message and these people have done it well. Backgrounds are exciting but well thought out and general site info that wouldn't be interesting to kids is contained in subtle, out-of-the-way places, as it should be. Graphics are cute and attractive as well as loading quickly, and anyone who has worked on this site would be proud to put it on their resume. I'd suggest that the age group targeted would be 4-11 year olds. I encountered a Flash message on navigating from the main page to some of the character pages and although it was necessary, it was a bit boring compared to the rest of the site. Since it was left aligned and in a standard web font it didn't really fit with what else was on there - maybe dressing this up while keeping it fast loading would help with consistency? Navigation & Coding The website is made of html pages with CSS coding (mandatory on a huge site like this), with javascript functions for the interactivity and in some cases, flash objects. Flash movies with sound and fast loading rollover gifs (javascript) make up the bulk of the games and interactive parts. Navigation is quite simple due to the minimalist approach where pictures say more than words. I don't think many kids would have trouble navigating on this website as the choices are pretty obvious. All navigation appears to work and goes to the right page. PBS Kids is a great example of how a huge children's website should be built. Items of interest I really enjoyed the lack of obvious advertising in this website, as the only advertising at all seemed to be in the fact of playing with the TV cartoon characters. As a parent who often has to stop the kids from wanting to buy everything, websites like PBS Kids mean that the most amount of work required from a parent at a later stage would possibly be to tune in to the TV shows. At the same time, I guess PBS Kids has a website in the first place to attract people to their shows! The games within the website are excellent and will hold kid's attention. An example of the games contained include lots of printables, lots of scenarios with interactive play such as online cooking (you click on ingredients and the character cooks a meal), click and drag items, online books and much more. Lots of fun and some new stuff here as well. Conclusion PBS Kids is a great website for kids - I highly recommend a visit there as it is educational and interesting. The huge variety of things to do will keep kids busy for hours and the website is reasonably fast loading, so the kids can have some fun at their pace online. To the designers of this website - pull out the champagne and give yourselves a pat on the back - you have earned it! Central focus area on page The boring Flash message Online cooking game

Harry Potter Web Magic

http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com

The latest Harry Potter movie, The Order of the Phoenix, has it’s own website, which is an interesting online experience promoting the movie. This is one of the most well-designed Harry Porter website so far.

Design & Layout When first arriving at the website, your browser will probably ask for an add-on, but I suspect this is only necessary for those of you who need to view in a language other than English, because the Flash introduction worked OK without the add-on for me. The design of the introduction was very good, a basic middle Flash container with Warner Bros. website links up the top, an opportunity to skip the movie within the container, links to different language versions (these were greyed out due to the add-on I suspect), some red “alert” text and other bits such as a privacy policy etc. I liked the design of the Flash container with the magical looking border corners, but upon further inspection, I noticed that the 4 border corners were different in size and design to each other but this took a while to notice as the whole effect was pretty good – and design-wise the border corners couldn’t have been better. Pressing the Sound On/Off button worked on the main part of the website where there was background sound but not on the intro which was interesting but quite loud.   With lots of black, wood colouring, and olde fashioned textures, the site reminded me of the old Lord of the Rings site. The main website page had a two column layout, with Harry Potter website links on the left, the main viewing screen on the right and all the links needed for Warner Bros. website on the top and bottom. The left menu had some interesting CSS for the hover functions and also some nice looking hover down menus. Olde weathered wood textures abounded and with a default creepy image of Voldemort in all his horrible glory, the home page had an excellent appearance.   Clicking on the Marauder’s Map (top right) leads to some addictive and well presented games. I had some trouble opening the Pensieve link though, I believe the add-on might have been needed for this one. Some of the items require you to sign up to the website – these involve “joining Hogwarts” or downloading webmaster materials and so on. The content and depth of the site was quite good – lots of things to look at, lots of latest updates and info and lots of things for people of all ages to enjoy.   One slight error was found on the home page left menu where the “Marauder’s  Map” link was missing an apostrophe and had a default font box instead. I suspect this is due to my browser not having the right webfont. And the blue text in the same menu needed to be just a hint darker so it could be read easier.    The navigation worked fine, all the links appeared linked. Some items didn’t load because I didn’t have the add-on, but you could download it rather easily (I just wanted to see what the add-on would be needed for). The Flash movies played fine and it looked like the site had been built by people who really knew their stuff.   Coding is a mix of html, ASPX, Flash, javascript and CSS. And I must say that while the code is a bit bulky, the loading time is quite reasonable when you consider how long the Flash intro is and the elaborate set up of all the different codes in unison. Loading time is medium to fast but varies depending on which part of the site you are loading.   It was interesting to see the amount of keywords and the long description inserted into the source code, a bit of an eye opener for someone like me who does a list of 30 keywords and a couple of sentences for the metatags normally. You can certainly see why they’d get so many visitors and you could also see that they wanted to promote the website intensely.   Conclusion   The Harry Potter Order of the Phoenix website is a website worth visiting for Harry Potter fans – I am thinking about going back and having some fun on it after completing this review! Outstanding looking design, swish graphics and very minor errors make for an interesting viewer experience and promotes the movie effortlessly. I do think that most people visiting the site would have either seen the movie or read the book but since Harry Potter is so popular there is sure to be no shortage of viewers. The Marauder's Map Issues on the left menu The Daily Prophet nes & updates Triwizard Challenge page One of the games

A Web Library Worth Visiting

http://www.webdesign.org

When entering the Web Design Library (the Designer's One-Stop Resource) you will find yourself entering a slick and highly organised website that is worthy of bookmarking. If you like visiting SiteCritic.net, then you will also like visiting this website as it contains a wealth of informative information and tutorials that are helpful to the online design community.

Navigation: Menus are well laid out and a lot of information is compacted so it is easy to read. On the left menu bar is categories for tutorials and articles, and the right menu bar contains interesting site stats, site of the day etc. Clicking on the Editor’s Pick in the centre panel takes you to informative tutorials and articles that are worth a peek. The right menu changes the order of the content depending on which page you visit, which is a handy idea. However, the "back" button doesn’t work in the tutorials/articles and you will need to scroll to the top to choose where to go after reading the page. Colours: The colour scheme using a turquoise gradient is very easy on the eyes and encourages a feeling of calm while complimentary highlighted text attracts the eye. Tutorials and articles benefit from beautiful and well-sized graphics that demonstrate the content well. Small details, such as the blue borders in the left menu items and the thoughtful use of icons improve the look of the site, as does having a simple, well-spaced logo. The overall effect is very pleasant, attractive and highly recommended as part of a successful website experience. Layout: The three-column layout, while a common one, is usually hard to make attractive as the volume of information and advertising normally bombards the viewer, while the layout does not lend itself to unique appearances. However, I feel that the Web Design Library has successfully used a rare colour theme to make the layout more attractive. The organisation of the information improves readability dramatically compared to other three-column websites I have seen. Advertising is kept to a minimum and favours websites connected to the Web Design Library in appearance and subject. Such pleasing advertising displayed in subtle ways is an open invitation for the audience and should do well in attracting repeat viewers. Usability: A triumph in CSS implementation, the Web Design Library’s website pages are quick to load, while the theme continues throughout the site. As mentioned above, my first impulse after reading a tutorial was to click the "back" button which didn’t work, so I had to scroll up the top to get back to the previous page. This is my only gripe with the website, as all other elements seem to function well. Conclusion: If anything, the Web Design Library inspires envy in web design and is proving to be a highly successful website. The domain name www.webdesign.org is well suited and worth a visit. Check it out! "Example of tutorial" "Small details" "Subtle advertising"

How to Get a Good Deal on a Hard Drive

Computer equipment is one of the hardest things to buy if you are not at least somewhat competent in the market. Many people are willing to take advantage of someone who does not have a clue what he or she need. Take the MarketPro Shows for example. Many different vendors frequent the shows in order to sell their wares, and on one occasion, this writer thought the Motherboard had gone on my computer, but I was also interested in upgrading my hard drive as well. One vendor quoted a price of approximately 350 to replace the Mother Board and include a hard drive of 2 Gb It seemed like a good deal at the time until shopping in various computer stores showed that a whole system with an 80 Gb hard drive could be purchased for not much more than that. Interesting thought, isnt it.

Why is a person going to pay 350 to get 2 Gb of hard drive memory when for approximately 599, one can get a tower with an 80 Gb hard drive, 512K of RAM, a keyboard, and sometimes even a printer depending on the sale that is being offered at the time. How do you know where you’re getting a good deal on a hard drive? One of the things that you don’t want to do is take the first deal that interests you because you think it sounds “good.” Unless you are a computer whiz who knows the prices and specifications of every product in the local area, you need to check around. Find out exactly what it is that you want and get some prices. While you are doing this, do not let anyone think that you are interested in buying at that time because they will attempt to convince you that if you don’t buy your hard drive that day, you will pay much more money for it and not get the same quality. You want to do all of your research before you make your final decision and know that in the end you have made the most informed decision of all. When it is suggested that you check around, that doesn’t mean just the stores in your area because often times, an Internet search will yield you a much better price, but this means you will have to know exactly what it is that you want right down to the size of the hard drive and speed of the processor. Even EBay is a good source of value-priced hard drives, but you must be able to read into the seller’s profile, meaning that you do not attempt to place a bid if the seller has a private profile. Again, you must read the description in detail because if you are looking for a new hard drive, you must look at the complete description. Even if your hard drive has taken a nosedive, give yourself an opportunity to look for a good deal instead of simply taking the first one that sounds like a good deal because you’re desperate. This has not yet been mentioned, but one of the most important things about a hard drive is know the potential that it can crash and being sure to have all of your important information backed up so that it’s just a matter of reloading it when you replace the hard drive. Lastly, be sure to keep your virus protection up to date because one of the biggest causes of hard drive crashes is a virus.

ATA vs. SATA Hard Drives

The last few years have witnessed some exhilarating developments in the manufacturing of hard drives with the introduction of larger caches, quicker spindle speeds, greater data transmission speeds, and better reliability.

ATA hard drives (generally known an IDE drives) are the hard drive type mainly used by most end user computers. Introduced in 1986, the ATA standard has seen many modifications to improve the size and speed of the hard drive which it can support. ATA-7, unleashed in 2001, can maintain data transfer rates up 133MB/sec.ATA-7 is thought to be the last model for the parallel ATA standard. In the year 2000, hard drive manufacturers came up with a new hard drive standard called Serial ATA, most popularly SATA. The SATA hard drives overcame all the limitation of ATA such as electromagnetic interference (EMI), signal timing, and other data integrity issues. Within no time, SATA has become the basic standard for most computer users. The following description elaborates on the differences between ATA and SATA. Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) is based on a 16 bit parallel interface and is generally used to control computer hard drives. Whereas, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) is a single bit serial advancement of the Parallel ATA. SATA hard drives can easily be distinguished from ATA hard drives by the unique power and data connections used on the back of the hard drives. When comparing ATA against SATA, SATA hard drives have performance benefits which set them apart from ATA hard drives. SATA drives are more suitable to install and draws less power. Another noted characteristic of SATA is the higher bandwidth that is possible. The latest models of ATA hard drives offer the highest data transfer rate of 133 MB/second. While the current SATA standard can provide data transfer of up to 150 MB/second. According to Seagate, the performance of SATA drives over ATA drives can currently be expected to be about 5%. The developments in SATA technology will surely improve on that. The future of SATA bears great interest in computer users, the 600 MB/second SATA hard drives are expected around the year 2007, which will provide outstanding speed and performance. When making a comparison of ATA hard drives and SATA hard drives, you may find SATA drives to cost more, but when considering the overall benefits of SATA drives over ATAs, it is worth spending a few extra dollars for SATA hard drives. In short, the latest SATA hard drives provide noteworthy benefits over ATA hard drives when considering power consumption, convenience, and performance. Experts are in the process of creating more powerful SATA hard drives which will surely help hard drive developments to keep pace with other key system products to improve the overall performance of a computer system.