To understand the current economic crisis – go dog walking!
October 13, 2008 by Paul Imre
Normally if you want to understand the state of the world economy you would read the papers and watch the telly….. But I found a better method, dog walking.
I was in Costa today with the Sunday Times and the latest copy of the Economist trying to understand if this was the end of the world as we know it.
Enter Alan King, the owner of Jack, the lab that crashed into me and sent me flying with the result of a knee injury that required me to use a pair of crutches for 3 months……
Let me tell you about Alan. At the moment he can see two things. In his day job he gets to visit the top UK manufacturers and comes home filled with gloom and doom about the state of the UK economy. In the evenings he is a “prosumer” creating and mixing music. For fun he created a website and uploaded some of his work…… Bang! Number one in the charts, loads of contacts massive demand for his music…… an amazing introduction to a whole new world.
If you ever get around to reading Wikinomics they will tell you all about the category six storm that we are about to be hit with. What? Say again – about to be hit ? No ! The current banking turmoil could be this category six storm. To get an idea of what a category six is, we must first understand that hurricane ratings stop at five! This is it folks, we are entering a period of consequences, to quote Churchill. Never will things be the same again.
Massive down turns, serious changes, collapses of banks, unemployment, a complete restructuring of the global economy… But also with incredible opportunities!
Now lets think of Alan again, should he ever lose his job, heaven forbid, he is actually sitting on a huge plan B. This plan B is all about the reach that is possible through social media, the internet and tribal interests. Build it – or rather create it – and they will come.
Forget the papers, the BBC and the traditional media. Go walk your dog and talk to the real economy. Be prepared for massive change and massive opportunities! Change happens and now is the time to be prepared.
More info on Alan and his rise and rise in the alternative charts:
You can count on Namesco
October 11, 2008 by admin
A big thanks must go to Micheal Follet and Tom Vernon. Here at Imre we had a huge incident that tied us up in knots for the whole week.
Tom and Micheal were very efficient, pulled out all the stops, and got us up and running in super quick time. Offered great advice and were an extension of Imre to help our clients.
We only exist to serve our customers and when we really needed Namesco, they stepped up to the plate! Thank you!
If you want cheap hosting – good luck! If you want people who will stand behind you and who actually care, well then you wont go wrong with the Nameco dedicated support team!
The Internet as a Platform
October 6, 2008 by Adam Owen
What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word ‘internet’? Websites and email are the most common replies, but there is much, much more out there to help us. Over the past few years online applications, also known as webapps, have been steadily progressing from being simple webmail readers to full blown applications you’d expect to see on your desktop.
Here at Imre, our lives our made much easier by using these webapps. Gone are the days where we would write to-do lists in an email or jot meetings down on paper. Using online applications such as Basecamp and Backpack by 37 Signals, we can now assign to-do lists to specific projects, and to specific people. These lists are shared between all of us, even including our clients if need be. We each have our own calendar which is aggregated into a central company calendar so we can quickly see who is doing what, and when.
This philosophy of online applications extends in many different directions, and education and research institutes have always been at the leading edge. My girlfriend has just started University and is using an online application called Blackboard. After each of her lectures she can pull down the associated notes, powerpoints etc. straight into her Blackboard and access them wherever she may be.
As well as online applications, there are other interesting ways in which the internet can help speed up research by spreading processing power across a global network of computers. An interesting research project called Folding@Home is being conducted by Stanford University. Focusing on the area of protein folding, users can download software to their computer (or access it on their Playstation 3 console, where it is already installed), link up to the network and the software will then use their computer to help process the simulations. The more people that use the software, the more powerful this global supercomputer becomes. This kind of power that would run into the millions, even billions, of pounds to acquire is now free thanks to the global network and is already accelerating research by literally years.
A similar approach has been taken by CERN to collect particle collision data from the Large Hadron Collider experiment which will allow them to collect more than 15 million Gigabytes of research data per year.
The future of computing and the internet is very exciting. Imagine not only being able to access all your files online and share them with anyone you wish, but being part of a global supercomputer where everyone is helping eachother to work faster and more efficiently. This future is already being born. Even Microsoft, who have a long history of keeping things locked down, are developing a cloud computing operating system which installs a core operating system onto your machine and then links you up to online applications. Of course there’s also Google, who with their already impressive line up of online applications have really helped to push things forward.
If you have any thoughts on the internet as a platform, software as a service, or any other clever phrase to describe using the full potential of the internet, please drop us a comment using the form below. We’d love to hear what you think!
SewSublime like our work!
October 3, 2008 by admin
Hi Paul and the team
Feedback
Your service is outstanding when I ask for things to be done ,they are done very promptly and very professionally , we are extremely happy with the site, the only disappointing thing is the website not being able to do multiple size ordering , perhaps that will be added in a later version of click cart. We will definitely be recommending you to others.
Thanks for all your hard work and look forward to working more with you in the future.
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Director
Sew Sublime Ltd
