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Elemental Creative Newsletter March 2006

Welcome to the latest edition of our newsletter, which contains industry news, useful links, as well as company information.
Enjoy!
Noreen

In this edition:

Introduction.
Useful Industry Information.
Meeting us at Upcoming Events.
Useful Web Links.

Welcome to Spring Newsletter

Welcome to our spring newsletter, which contains information on what's new within Elemental Creative, accessibility, usability and search engine news and useful links- enjoy!

This month, Elemental Creative is one of the 24 top UK and Ireland Accessibility and Usability Consultancies selected for the new Usability & Accessibility Buyer's Guide 2006 by E-consultancy, which provides information on best practice online marketing and e-commerce. This is the second year that Elemental Creative has been selected for inclusion and is the only Irish company to be included. For more information visit http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/usability-and-accessibility-buyers-guide-2005/ - happy reading!!



Useful Industry Information

Google to Settle Click Fraud Suit for $90M

With the buzz on PPC search click fraud at fever pitch, Google agreed last week to pay up to $90 million to advertisers in the form of click credits.

Click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on an advertiser's ads to cause the advertiser to spend more money, or when one person starts a small web site, becomes a publisher of ads, and clicks on those ads to generate revenue.

For many companies click fraud is becoming a growing area of concern and moves such as this are certainly overdue!

For more information click on the link below:
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3590251

User-friendly websites for all

Key guidance on how to develop a website which is user-friendly for disabled people has been launched. Following an investigation by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) which revealed 81 per cent of British websites are inaccessible to disabled people, the guidance document, Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 78, was developed by the British Standards Institution (BSI) and sponsored by the DRC.

PAS 78 Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites is applicable to all organisations and is intended for use by those responsible for commissioning or maintaining public-facing websites and web-based services.

For more information on the guide, click on the following link: http://www.bsi-global.com/ICT/PAS78/index.xalter

Industry News

20 Rules Of Smart And Successful Web-development
Vitaly Friedman shares some thought on smart and successful web development. in his 20 rules of smart design, the following really do ring true:
1.Respect your visitors. Don't try to force your visitors to read the content of your web-pages. Let them choose and decide what they want to read. For if you have someting to tell, you'll find your listeners.

2. Inform and teach your visitors. Share your thoughts, ideas, experience and knowledge with those who need or maybe will need your advise. Since you have this information, you have a powerful instrument to draw public's attention to your works, interests and services. Besides, if you share valuable knowledge with other users, you'll be respected and regarded as a person who knows what he/she is talking about.

3. Develop your own style. Develop your own ideas. Let yourself be inspired, but don't copy. It is far more interesting to find out what you are capable of than what other people are capable of. Explore your imagination and curiosity. New or improved old ideas are more likely to attract web users than the copied old ones.

4. Respect the standards. Think about people. Taking web standards into consideration will help you to save a lot of work in the future. It won't take long until web standards will become a standard in the Web; and since you are creating web-pages for people, it seems to be reasonable to spend some extra hours checking the code and applying it to the standards - in case the code doesn't conform to the standards. Once it is done, you don't have to be worried about the new versions of browsers coming along. Well, basically because you've done your work well. Readability, accessibility, usability. Respecting them, you respect your visitors.

5. Answer your e-mails immediately. Make a contact with your potential clients as quickly as you can - don't let an e-mail just lie in the inbox folder for more than 12 hours. Don't send auto-reply-messages. The person who has written to you knows that he/she has written to you. So don't waste other people's time just the way you wouldn't waste your time.

For more information on Vitalys thoughts, visit http://www.alvit.de/blog/article/20-rules-of-smart-and-successful-web-development-and-web-design

Google buys online word processor

According to Pandia Search, Google challenges Microsoft by buying the web based word processor 'Writely'.
At the same time as Microsoft plans to take over Google's search market, Google is busy building up services to compete with Microsoft. In essence Google is trying to move as much of your work as possible online, away from the Microsoft Windows environment.
http://www.pandia.com/sew/186-google-buys-online-word-processor.html

MSN Search to be replaced by Windows Live Search

Microsoft has announced that its present MSN Search is to be replaced by Windows Live Search.

The Windows Live Search is currently in beta testing but unlike the current MSN search, Windows Live Search makes use of various sliders and frames to present listings. For more information, visit http://www.live.com/#

Kinderstart sues Google over lower page ranking
We couldn't resist another Google story- so how's this one!!

For more information, visit http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-03-19T020836Z_01_KRA907614_RTRUKOC_0_US-TECH-GOOGLE-LAWSUIT.xml


Upcoming Events

Elemental Creative will be attending the following events:

Microtrade Networking - 5th April, Dublin
ICT Expo 11th - 12th April, Dublin
We will be attending other events throughout the year, so make sure you book mark us!

Useful Web Links

This little tool helps create pop-ups that are accessible and search engine-friendly:

http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/accessibility-tools/pop-up-window-generator/

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