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This is a blog from the Internet Development Team at ILRT, Bristol. We build websites and web applications for a wide variety of customers, many in the UK higher education sector. Continue reading…

Puzzles, e-cards and Rover – engaging the user

ILRT has developed a web site, Hidden Lives Revealed, for the Children’s Society, with information about the Society’s work and its children’s homes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The site was originally funded by the National Lottery and is intended to appeal to a range of ages and to be used as [...]

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Published on 3 Aug 10 under Briefings | No Comments »

Life in the cloud

Despite working in the IT industry for more than fifteen years, when it comes to my personal use of IT, I find that I’m rather reluctant to embrace new technology. I’m one of the few developers on the team who continue to use a Microsoft Windows operating system, not only that, but it’s one that [...]

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Published on 16 Jul 10 under Briefings | No Comments »

Worldwide Universities Network – a new website

We’re delighted to have recently launched a new website for the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) http://www.wun.ac.uk/ Here at ILRT using a Drupal-based Content Management System,  we designed and developed a number of templates that allow the editors to keep to a consistent look and feel throughout the pages. The templates also reduce the time needed [...]

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Published on 8 Jun 10 under News and updates | No Comments »

The power of semantics

Chris Bailey explains how searching for Iron Man uses sophisticated semantics. Here in ILRT, we don’t just produce websites for people.  Over the last year I’ve been working with our Web Futures team on a number of their projects. Web futures is a research group within ILRT investigating new ways of managing, organising and interacting [...]

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Published on 14 May 10 under Briefings | 2 Comments »

Unicode and the web

Why bother? If you create content for the web, you may have to transfer accented characters (or text in non-Roman scripts) onto a web page. But even if the text looks all right when viewed within your organisation, it may be illegible to the wider world. To avoid this, you need to know a little [...]

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Published on 4 May 10 under Briefings | No Comments »

The internet free lunch

The idea of free as in zero price, along with free as in openness and freedom, has long been integral to the nature of the internet and hence to its economics and business models. Essentially the internet provides a means for virtually zero cost reproduction and distribution of digital products, e.g. books, music, films, software, [...]

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Published on 9 Apr 10 under Briefings | No Comments »

Is your website emotional?

Bipolar Emotional Response Tests (BERTs) Design provokes an emotional response. The positive we remember –  the Mini, the iPhone, the London Underground Map – the negative we try to forget. Websites are no different. While all aspects of design are subjective it is possible to plan for the emotional response you want from your website. [...]

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Published on 8 Mar 10 under Briefings | No Comments »

The value of a professional content editor

Our clients are all really busy, and few of them are full-time website managers. One of the most common complaints I hear is that they don’t have the time to produce enough new, high quality content, and are concerned that parts of their sites may be out of date. On top of this, they are [...]

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Published on 8 Mar 10 under Briefings | No Comments »

How to make the most of a support query

Some quick tips on what to include when asking for help with a problem on your website

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Published on 3 Mar 10 under Briefings | No Comments »

Finding copyright cleared images for your website

In recent years, digital cameras have become much cheaper and more widely available. This, coupled with faster Internet connections and the increase in the use of websites such as Flickr and Facebook, has made it far easier for people to create, share, access and use digital images on their websites. Using them legally is not [...]

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Published on 2 Feb 10 under Briefings | 2 Comments »