So, after years of dabbling with POP3 iMap, exchange, Samba shares, Webdav calendars, hardware backups and endless disappointment, have we found the perfect business setup? Well we think so and we’d like to share it with other smaller business owners that want all the bells and whistles of what was formerly the domain of large business – the company intranet, file sharing and remote working… it’s now oh so easy.

With the advent of cloud computing comes a new era of accessibility – and here are the tools to do this (or the ones that worked for us at least):

Google Apps

By far the most effective and cost efficient (the Standard Edition is free) route to getting things kicked off is Business Edition of Google Apps. This suite of tools from Google provides just about everything you need in terms of business communication. The suite includes:

• 7GB of email – which is easily used with any email application, although I love the web based interface and ‘offline’ feature which uses Google Gears to cache your emails locally.
• Public, Private and Shared Calendars – This is so powerful. Create as many calendars as you like, and let whoever you like see them. The system has a great, easy to use interface and also supports the event invite process used by most of us to confirm meetings nowadays.
• Shared documents – well not file sharing s you know it but an online collaborative tool – fully compatible with the office suite. Collaborate live on documents and have them for easy access online. I can’t remember the last time I needed to open Excel.
• Contacts – Each user stores their contacts using Google Contacts. This easily syncs with smartphones and other address books so you never have to worry about losing anything.

I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that every small business should start off using this – it’s an essential tool, it’s absolutely free and takes an hour to set up on your domain.

File sharing with Jungle Disk

After initially using the usual suspects (Samba and VPN) to share files we’ve now moved everything to the cloud (Rackspace and Amazon S3). This means that we have a repository of live files as well as several backups securely stored and available whenever we need them. Moreover we automatically sync with this repository on every machine we have – be it a laptop, desktop, Mac, Windows or Linux based machine. We use Jungle Disk to do this which is a background program which essentially watches a cloud repository (bucket) which you’ve set up and linked to a directory on your local machine. If I make a change on Machine A then I see the new files on Machine B if it’s using the same repository in the cloud.

There’s an iPhone application which allows me to access files if I need to and a web based interface should I require it. It also allows the setup of individual disks in the cloud for users so they can backup and sync their data or even entire machine backups.

So far we’ve had few issues and it just works.

Skype

What would we do without it. It runs our phone system, it keeps us in touch via chat all day and gives us the ability to conference call with clients and each other.

As I mentioned we use Skype for our phone system. This is a fairly new thing but it works exceptionally well. We have decent internet connections so why not?

The way this works is that calls come into our central Skype account on a Skype-In number which then forwards the call to each of the Hutchhouse offices (using their Skype accounts thus also making them mobile). It also forwards to a landline just in case. If the call is picked up then great – if not then it goes back to our central Skype answer machine. This means we can pick up calls wherever we are. It’s been a real time saver.

Customer relationship management, Capsule CRM

A CRM keeps everyone who needs to be in the loop regards client contact – well – in the loop. It’s a real time saving application and, because we would only consider a web based solution, it’s amazingly flexible.

Because we use Google Apps – it made sense to use a CRM which was integrated with our contacts and Google logins. Capsule CRM fitted the bill from this point of view. We also liked the simplicity of the interface and generally considered the sales journey to be most suited to our needs. Notwithstanding there are several amazing CRM systems out there like Salesforce.com, SugarCRM and Highrise form 37Signals so go and try them out.

That’s it for now – I just felt compelled to write this as it feels good to have this stuff at your fingertips… and it’ll just get better.

If you’re at the Carswell Senior Golf Tournament in Oxfordshire on Thursday the 15th of July then you’ll see us at one of the holes (tbc). We really wanted to get involved with some local events and saw this as a good opportunity to dip our toe in. We’ve made a vinyl banner for the occasion (which for us digital designers is really quite exciting!).

Big thanks go to Nick Ruck at Falcon Signs for getting our sign finished in double quick time. Good luck to everyone playing in the tournament!

TED is a great source of inspiration on all things known to man. From how geckos stick to glass to global *yawn* warming you can spend hours watching these short talks. Even when the subject matter is something you’d usually walk right past, the speakers knowledge on the subject is usually so good you just have to give it a gander.

In order to save your little finger getting sore, we’ve done the hard work for you and highlighted some of the best ‘web related’ talks we could find:

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Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet enables intimacy
We worry that IM, texting, Facebook are spoiling human intimacy, but Stefana Broadbent’s research shows how communication tech is capable of cultivating deeper relationships, bringing love across barriers like distance and workplace rules.

Kevin Kelly: The next 5,000 days of the web
At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?

Jonathan Harris: Collecting stories
At the EG conference in December 2007, artist Jonathan Harris discusses his latest projects, which involve collecting stories: his own, strangers’, and stories collected from the Internet, including his amazing “We Feel Fine.”

Tim Berners-Lee: The next Web
20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.

Gary Flake: Is Pivot a turning point for web exploration?
Gary Flake demos Pivot, a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on breakthrough Seadragon technology, it enables spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and links invisible in standard web browsing.

Steven Johnson: The Web as a city
Outside.in’s Steven Johnson says the Web is like a city: built by many people, completely controlled by no one, intricately interconnected and yet functioning as many independent parts. While disaster strikes in one place, elsewhere, life goes on.

Peter Hirshberg: TV and the web
In this absorbing look at emerging media and tech history, Peter Hirshberg shares some crucial lessons from Silicon Valley and explains why the web is so much more than “better TV.”

Jeff Bezos: The next web innovation
The dot-com boom and bust is often compared to the Gold Rush. But Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos says it’s more like the early days of the electric industry.

Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good
We’re at a unique moment in history, says UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: we can use today’s interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic — and work together to confront the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy.

Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide
At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for “raw data now” — for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up.

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For more TED Talk goodness visit the main site:www.ted.com

Ed Cooper is a talented artist. Originally from Suffolk, Ed was studying Painting & Drawing at University when we first became friends. It was pretty clear from the outset that this guy had talent and he soon became a source of both inspiration and good practice.

Ed would always carry a notepad and pencil wherever he went, often stopping off to ‘bust out a sketch’. The sheer amount of output impressed me and his imagination often made it’s way onto the back of a Sunday supplement. Much to our amusement.

Visit Eds website here. Although I’d suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg…

It’s 9 hours into the new start up business and things are flying along. We are close to a brand execution and the developers are steaming along (lots of odd sounds coming from that quarter). Looking at the developer plan it all seems to be finished by 1pm – which is a little ambitious – although as we all know developers always underestimate things….

We have been genuinely busy this year and have had our noses pressed firmly against the millstone.

Back in February we won a fantastic project with BT. There’s not much we can say about it unfortunately because it’s all under lock and key, but needless to say it’s kept all of us at Hutchhouse very busy. We’re excited about its implications and with phase one out the door, we can’t wait to get stuck into phase 2. This is a huge project and likely to be ongoing for the rest of the year .

In May we did some work for a local company based here on the business park: CMS Industries & CMS Ergonomics. They required two websites to cover both aspects of their business. For the ergonomic website they saw a requirement for some videocasts which we filmed, edited and compressed for the website. You can see them here (bottom right video library). A big thanks to Matthew Royan for his help as the cameraman on this shoot.

Around this time I went to New York with my good friend@NickClement. We had a fantastic week meeting up with old friends, cycling around Manhattan and generally enjoying the trappings of the metropolis. We visited the MoMa and theNew Museum. Both rammed to the rafters with inspiration.

During June I did some designs on behalf of White October. Working in conjunction with the RSA and Carbon Limited to create an online web application based around the emerging Carbon Trading Market. I was particularly happy with the design for this and think it’s easily one of the best works to date. I’ll post up here when it’s live.

July also saw the release of allthingsbeer.co.uk. One of our first projects where we gave our Junior – Paul Clement – as much control as we could. Paul got stuck right in and produced a good website which the client was more than happy with. He also did a fine job of the business cards, logo and comp slips, also producing a glossy brochure that eventually reached over 1000+ copies.

August saw us push through two more websites for local businesses Space2Think and Landscapia. Neither of them are live yet but they both went through the design/build process seamlessly and should be ready before long.

Another two happy customers added…

We’ve just finished designing/building our first Wordpresstheme for an overseas client. After advising them this was a cost effective way to get what they wanted the client was happy to install all the plugins themselves before handing over to us for styling. Check out youropex.com to see what we did!

That brings up up-to-date. Along the way we’ve done plenty of other bits and bobs which has also kept us on our toes. We’ve started using Harvest to clock our time-sheets for the larger projects and our ‘high tensile project line’ has been put to the strength test at last.

We were also (un)lucky enough to have regular visits from the wasp nest that’s formed in the wall below our window this summer. There’s a picture of what we called ‘The Killing Fields’ after the jump. Because of this we’re glad to see Autumn coming.

That’s all for now. More to come…

…promise.

Smashing Magazine have compiled a fantastic list of Ajax techniques and Plug-ins. Any designer worth their salt need to know a few – if not all – of these. When designing websites it’s not just our job to make it look nice. It’s also our responsibilty that the user has a pleasant, seamless experience. Ajax can really help us achieve this. Here are the topics the article covers:

1. Calendars and Timelines
2. Navigation
3. Tool Tip
4. Menu
5. Slider
6. Slideshow
7. Image
8. Image Previewing
9. File Upload
10. Auto-Complete
11. Lightbox
12. Form
13. Table
14. Worth Checking Out
15. AJAX Examples and Demos

Here at Hutchhouse we’re always trying to streamline our workflow to both maximize efficiency and keep the wasted design time to a minimum. Over the years we found a natural course for presenting our designs online which has culminated in the creation of AllWorkedUp: An online management tool for designers.

At Hutchhouse we predominantly design websites so it’s only natural that – during the design process – we should want to show these designs online. Like most agencies our clients are dotted around the country so it has proved really useful to upload our creative work to a protected area and have clients access them. It guaranties everyone is looking at the same design wherever they might be located.

When we had some spare time we added some further functionality to the system enabling members of a project to leave comments. This works great for both designer and clients as notes can be added when a creative is uploaded, and the client can then comment against them. Once a comment is submitted all members of the project are notified. This really helps small teams like ours react to client responses without having to always go through the Project Manager saving countless emails flying back-and-forth.

This week we put a Beta version live offering 200 free accounts on a first-come basis. We’re interested in hearing what people think of the system, whether it has some legs or whether it should be thrown out with bath water! Any feedback regarding tweaks, added functionality or obvious floors would be gratefully received!

Please, have an account on us!

Along with our good friends at White October and Nonsense we have given ourselves 24 hours to conceive, design, build and promote a new web based start-up company. It’s currently 03:16am and the office is mostly quiet apart from the odd murmor from the development team and the tip tap of keys.

The project situation is pretty healthy. We have a name. Dr.Hue. We have a business idea (shopping by colour) and we have a brand. We even have a holding page Drhue.com. The main site is being templated, whilst the templates are being finished off and there’s a whole host of image manipulation trickery going on in development. In the background, accross the room, the marketing boys set about promoting the site and pulling together a campaign.

And of course… you can currently see it all unfold: 24hour-startup.com

As taken from the OGN homepage:
“Oxford Geek Nights offer a chance for web developers and designers in the local area to get together, share their skills and talk about new ideas, techniques and technologies.

Each OGN consists of two keynote talks of 15 minutes each. There are also frenetic bursts of socialising, sometimes adverts for other local groups, but always interspersed with two sets of 5-minute-long microslot sessions.”

Hutchhouse will be there, as will the White October gang.  Hope to see you there too!