We like to think our meeting room looks pretty snazzy with its Christmas decorations up; the fibre optic tree and inflatable snowman are the staff favourites!

About Google Wave

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when. A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

A big thanks to pagecrush.net for their support  making our new website their site of the day

A couple of us attended the big turn-on of Manchester’s Christmas lights last night, taking in performances from a line-up including Alexandra Burke and Mr Hudson, culminating in a three song firework display from the top of the town hall. Next stop, the Christmas Markets!

If you’re running an online shop, Google’s new Commerce Search may be worth having a look at. Google describes it as a “search solution designed specifically with online retail enterprises in mind.” Instead of a usual sign up button, you’re asked to contact Google’s sales team. Later on, you can then upload your product data at the Google Merchant Center, and go on to customise your site’s search engine. Google’s admin console lets you “manage product promotions, upload synonym dictionaries” and control search options. This service isn’t free though… you’ll be billed based on the amount of items in your data, as well as the number of searches performed every year.

GCS also has a bunch of user-friendly features that make shopping on online stores easier, and search results more refined and accurate. Some of those features are:

• Speed – GCS leverages Google’s ultra fast platform, because it’s hosted, providing sub-second response times to users.
• Google quality and ranking – GCS analyzes every item in the data feed using proprietary signals to determine its optimal placement in the result set, for more accurate query results for shoppers.
• Parametric search and sorting – GCS allows users to refine or sort results by category, price, brand, or other attribute; this is fully-functional parametric search for e-stores.
• Product boost and promotions – Retailers can boost the relevance of certain items, or highlight specific products during a sale, and cross-sell related products.
• Spell check, stemming and synonyms – By leveraging the larger Google search engine, GCS can include these advanced search and synonym options, so the shopping experience is smoother for customers – even customers who mistype.
• Fast deployment and scale – Since this is a cloud-based offering, GCS can be deployed in days and, because it’s hosted on the Google platform, retailers can scale to meet their higher-demand periods like the holidays without worrying about slowdowns or spikes.

This year we wanted to recapture the magic of the Guy Fawkes nights of our younger years. Here’s our efforts of capturing the moment.

This guy simply paints himself. No trick photography; he just paints himself. Very impressive especially the last one!

We have just finished some flyers to promote Yourshack’s Halloween Hoedown and Bonfire Bonanza. If you’re a Yourshack resident check out their site for more details on how to get involved.

This Saturday saw our team descend on Manchester Town Hall to celebrate Gemma and Al’s much-anticipated big day. It was a heartwarming ceremony with a rousing song from a group of Al’s students, an unorthodox reading of an ancient reptilian love story and of course the happy couple looking magnificent.

Afterwards we moved on to Stock Restaurant to savour the culinary delights of lobster ravioli and witness Al’s now-legendary speech-delivering talents.

A big congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs McColl, we wish you all the happiness in the world!

We launched the new Peter Kay website today, have a look and let us know your thoughts…