As all of our users know we are going through a huge learning curve that not only involves the development tools we use but also up and coming technologies and more importantly user interface and experience design.
The courses we take are mainly on Pluralsight who release 30-40 new courses a month (yes a month!) but we also check Udemy from time to time.
Recently we were awarded two Pluralsight certificates of achievements, Creating User Experiences: Fundamental Design Principles and Mobile First Responsive Web Design, and a Udemy Certificate of Completion for User Experience: The Ultimate Guide to Usability.
Are you attending The Movers & Storers Show at Silverstone Motor Circuit on Tuesday/Wednesday? Ever fancied yourself as a budding Formula 1 World Champion? Be sure to make a pit stop at our stand (D2) for your chance to drive the infamous Silverstone Circuit, the home of the British Formula 1 Grand Prix, on our virtual simulator!!!
The driver with the fastest lap of the day will take home a bottle of Moet & Chandon!
We look forward to seeing you there.
I am very pleased to announce that after months of searching we finally have our apprentice. James Logan joined us on September 16th and begins a 2 year Level 3 Advanced Apprenticeship in Software, Web and Telecommunications. His main roles will be Technical Support (so, please bear with him while he finds his feet) and designing the user interface of Move Administer 2, therefore his aim is to ensure your user experience will be the best ever. To aide this development you may find James in attendance with me when I begin to visit many of you during 2014 to gauge for ourselves how Move Administer is currently being used within your office environment.
James and I will be in attendance at this year's Movers & Storers Show, which is being held on Tuesday October 22nd and Wednesday October 23rd at Silverstone Motor Circuit, leaving Daniel to hold the fort in our absence. The Movers & Storers show is, as in previous years, free to attend and you can register your attendance on their website by simply clicking their logo shown. Additionally to the show there is also a 2 day Mover Conference, organised by The Mover magazine, however, there is a £295 fee to this.
If you are attending please swing by our stand, bringing with you one of those fizzy bottles that come complete with exploding corks as I will be celebrating my 45th birthday while in attendance on the Tuesday!
There have been some good technology announced of late and I would like to bring a couple to your attention:
Firstly, Leap Motion, which really does bring Minority Report to your desktop. It's a tiny device that connects to your PC/Mac via USB. From Leap Motion's website I quote "The Leap Motion Controller senses your hands and fingers and follows their every move. It lets them move in all that wide-open space between you and your computer. So you can do almost anything without touching anything. It's the tiny device that just might change the way you use technology. It's the most natural technology that just might change the world".
Secondly, although not available until December (yes we have one on pre-order) The Eye Tribe is the world's first $99 Eye Tracker! Eye Tracking is the process of using sensors to locate features of the eyes and estimate where someone is looking (point of gaze).
So, with the death of the mouse now inevitable what will you be using to navigate applications of tomorrow?
It was during email communication between The Movers & Storers Show and I that I mentioned day one of the show was being held on my birthday. In a following email I was kindly asked if I would like a cake, a stripagram or a stripagram coming out of a cake? Partial to cake, and most certainly a stripagram, I declined this offer of kindness and cheekily asked for a white Aston Martin DB9S instead.
What followed the next day was a knock on the door, with the postman holding a box for my attention. Intrigued I returned to my desk and began to carefully open said box. What I found inside was gift that made my entire week, which then took it's pride of place on my driveway, as the photos below will show:
Thank you Keith and Charlotte, two of the most amazing people in our industry, and having emailed copies of the photos above Keith's reply was as humorous as ever "Never bought anyone a car before", classic!
BAR have recently launched their Trusted Mover website www.trustedmover.org which provides members extra online exposure but more importantly allows consumers to easily search for a local BAR member via postal code or town and view details such as BAR certification and real time reviews from customers.
The reviews come from consumers completing online questionnaires, which are sent from within the Trusted Mover website. However, Zooble (the wesite developers) have provided a neat little way of generating online surveys from emails sent from external systems, such as Move Administer.
To do this you will need to do two things, firstly grab a copy of your member encryption key and secondly create a new mail merge token within Move Administer.
To grab your member encryption key simply log into your account from the Trusted Mover website.
Once logged in choose 'Edit Profile' from the top menu.
As you scroll down you will come to a section headed 'Member Encryption Key', keep open this page as you will need to copy and paste this encryption key into the new Move Administer mail merge token you are about to create.
To create a new mail merge token within Move Administer simply click Tools -> Templates -> Email -> Insert.
From the new email template click Actions -> Insert Token.
From the list of available tokens click the Insert button.
In the Description field type Trusted Mover URL and press tab.
The Name field will become ((-Trusted Mover URL-)), you can press tab to move from this field to the Formula field.
In the Formula field copy and paste the following line:
'<a href="http://www.trustedmover.org/pre-questionnaire.php?encryption=xxx&email=' & Cus:Email &'">here</a>'
Then jump back to your profile within the Trusted Mover website and copy the Member Encryption Key into your clipboard.
Within the Formula field highlight xxx and replace this with the contents of your clipboard.
So,
'<a href="http://www.trustedmover.org/pre-questionnaire.php?encryption=xxx&email=' & Cus:Email &'">here</a>'
should become something like
'<a href="http://www.trustedmover.org/pre-questionnaire.php?encryption=Bp8HuP0HYtQvw9Nh7tuvWAb5wRdfxFC4ABHW_RxP6Q&email=' & Cus:Email &'">here</a>'
Save the new mail merge token.
What this will do is create a simple here link which you can then use within your emails. When the client clicks on this link it will automatically take them to the Trusted Mover website and allow them to complete your survey, with the results being logged against their email address (which is formed in the background of the mail merge token by using the Cus:Email section).
In order to then use this token simply log out and back into Move Administer for the token to take effect.
During the BAR Conference the coveted Domestic Mover of the Year (DMOTY) 2013 was announced
The final 3 candidates consisted of Maidman's Removals & Storage, Matt Purdie & Son and White & Co plc (Telford branch), two of whom are not only previous winners but also Move Administer users.
Well the winner is… Maidmans Removals & Storage, who become the only remover to win this prestigious award for the second time, being crowned winners in 2011.
Our congratulations go to all three finalists.
Since the inception of DMOTY a Move Administer user has won every year except in 2012, where the winner then was and still remains a Remstar user!
World Backup Day is on March 31st!
Dont be an April Fool – Backup your files! Check your restores! And take the pledge today!
Why should I backup?
We increasingly trust technology to look after all the important memories in our lives. Your precious baby videos, financial documents, love letters, business emails and wedding photos. Think about what you'd lose if these were erased forever.
What is backing up? Basically, it's making copies of all the important information that you have to ensure that it won't ever be lost or damaged. It's not as hard as it sounds – in fact, it's really simple!
You might think your computer, phone or tablet is pretty reliable, but in reality, it's not. Everything (yes, everything) fails, and once it does, all the important information you've stored on that device can be destroyed. In fact, it's not a question of if a piece of technology will fail – it's when.
More than 60 million computers will fail worldwide in 2013. Only 1 in 4 people back up their information regularly – that's roughly 45 million times this year where files will be lost forever. Even worse – 113 cell phones are lost or stolen every minute in the United States alone. That's hundreds of photos, conversations, calendars and more, gone in an instant.
It's important to be ready. That's why World Backup Day was created – to show you how to prepare for the inevitable. They will help you to devise a plan to store your precious memories and information in a safe location. Because there's nothing worse than losing something important to you.
Goodwins of Lincolnshire have enhanced their current Move Administer system with the addition of our Archive Administer module to assist with their Doculink Archive Storage and Document Management company.
Archive Administer is to replace their existing system (Archiver Professional) and to allow complete records management under one central system. Their existing data was converted into Archive Administer remotely with no issues whatsoever.