Chris Brandrick

A few days late but here is my monthly appreciation post for Entrecard users. A few days late but hey! As ever if your not familiar with Entrecard check out this post. Here is the list of the top bloggers who dropped by here on my blog in September, to all those on the list you just got link from a PR4 blog:

• verITableLIFE
• Blogging for Starters
• lucky mom
• IT-AID :: PC Tips, Tricks and Tweaks
• Your Listener
• Happy Thoughts, Happy Tot
• 2Sexy2Hot

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a contest being ran over at Flockey, the contest was simple and to be in with a chance of winning all you had to do was subscribe and post about the competition.

The contest came to a close a few days back and I won the 2nd set of prizes, including a design courtesy of Flockey, coding from BreakCoding and advertising on Xemion.

Once I have used up my awesome prizes, I will be sure to blog about it and share the no doubt great results!

Last week I re-enrolled back at University to begin my third and final year doing my Web Technology degree. Today I had my first lecture and it’s good to be back after a 5 month hiatus.

University Of Lincoln

As I posted back in January getting into my third year at the University was one of my goals (goal 7) for the year, which clearly I have achieved. So yes, just a short post, but I am back at Uni and come May I hopefully will have a degree and be Chris Brandrick BSc.

Diggy is an established web design company based in Brisbane, Australia that have been in operation since 1997, and since then have produced more than one thousand different websites for various clients, making for a varied portfolio and client list. The experienced company offer a variety of custom products and services such as standard website design, domain name registration, internet marketing, e-commerce options, search engine optimization and graphic design; an impressive range of services!

It’s clear from looking through diggy’s past work that the company can offer an extensive variety of services and offer them to a satisfactory standard. Some sites in their portfolio have impressive elements and the case studies of certain sites give good examples of this. In addition to this plenty of glowing testimonials can be found.

Diggy’s actual site could use a lick of paint, especially from a design stand point, as it is starting to look a little dated; but other than this the site seems fairly straightforward to use with clear navigation and a simple page flow which is easy to follow. Of course contacting the Brisbane company is important from the stand point of any prospective client and thankfully the site offers visitors plenty of options on how to contact them.

Australians looking for a company who can offer a wide range of web services can do no harm in looking up diggy!

Flockey has had it’s doors open for some time now, and it recently had a blog re-design, and to keep the steam going (and gain RSS subscribers) owner James McDonald is currently running a competition.

The competition has a series of prizes, ranging from hosting packages, logo designs, blog intgration and more. All you have to do to be in with a chance to win is to subscribe via email to James’ blog, which you can do here, and post about the competition. All the details can be found Flockey side.

I’ve entered, and I suppose you should to (although that would lower my chances of winning), so get over to the Flockey Blog and check it out.

The guys over at WooThemes are bringing them thick and fast as yet another quality premium wordpress theme has been released. WooThemes club members must be pleased!

The new theme is called ‘Fresh Folio’ and is a mix between two older themes bringing together both a portfolio style theme and a blog theme. Together this new theme offers a nice balance for the professional wanting to show off their work yet still have a blog on the homepage. Check it out now!

O2, the UK mobile network that holds the rights to sell Apple’s iPhone finally revealed a few days back the price for the upcoming Pay & Go (no contract) version of the popular device. Personally I think the price point is pretty steep, especially considering those on Pay & Go are usually on the simplier service for one of a few reasons, be it no ties, lack of constant use, or general savings.

The 8GB version of the iPhone will retail for £349.99 while the 16GB version of the mobile will sell for £399.99. For those of you reading stateside, the 16GB model will roughly cost just over $700. The Pay & Go option will be availble from the 16th of September, and will include one year of free web/data use.

Do you think the price point is two high, or is it justified considering the technology within?

Yesterday Google announced they will finally be entering the browser market, and I can only hope Internet Explorer and Firefox are ready.

The Google browser will be known as ‘Google Chrome’ and hopes to be a better browser that adapts more suitably to the web of today. A lot more detail on the browser can be seen in this comic (38 pages) that Google have released, it goes in to good detail as to what to expect and how the browser handles certain tasks, for example resource management, javascript, and security.

The browser promises stability, security and speed, and I have no doubt that the team at Google will deliver. The browser will apparantly be availble for beta sometime today, so keep an eye out on the official Google blog.