"Death by Powerpoint" is a common phrase now-a-days. And don't you just hate it when you are listening to someone and all they do is read their Powerpoint slides?

To stop us inflicting this kind of pain on others, I have a couple of video clips (from YouTube) to give tips and to illustrate that it can sometimes be too much.

This next one is one of our favourites!

It costs can spiral out of control if you are not careful.

We have to pay for all the hardware, but we require more and more sophistication with the software we use.

Servers, back-up, domain names, web addresses... it all ads up.

Google apps.for small business may be something worth considering. It is not the answer to everything, but it's not too expensive.

What is Google Apps?

Google Apps provides the power of a first-class email system for your domain at an affordable, predictable annual fee of just £33 per user/year.

With Google Apps you can…

• Get customised email for your domain (i.e. name@yourdomain.com) with Gmail for business
• Share and manage your calendars online with Google Calendar
• Create team websites as easily as creating a document with Google Sites
• Collaborate easily and simply with documents, presentations and spreadsheets with Google Docs

Google Apps website

Watch the demo video: 

Then you may want to read this document.

As with any service delivery, we need to talk to the users of our services. The same applies to users of our website. This 22 page document also give case studies about what has worked and where things have failed which I personally find useful.

I especially like the "Surprising things we have learnt from our research over the years" at the end. This includes things like:

• Your users have no idea what a browser is
• 1 in 7 Britons have significant hearing loss
• The over 50's dominate new web audience
• The group most responsible for the growth in Social Media usage is women aged 45 and over

It is all thought provoking stuff. It has been developed by Publiczone. You can find them on www.publiczone.co.uk

Click here to download:

User-Research-Handbook-PublicZone.pdf (1.75 MB)

(download)

Click here to download:

User-Research-Handbook-PublicZone.pdf (1.75 MB)

It is difficult to predict what will be happening in the near and distant future... especially now.

We really need all the information we can get to make informed decisions about our future.

TRENDWATCHING is a free site which collates trends which people are spotting from all over the globe.

Quite often, these new trends relate to the Voluntary Sector (e.g. how are people donating and what for).

The link below has the latest briefing with the heading

“Random Acts of Kindness”

http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/