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Merry Xmas from all of us at 64 Digital

Merry Xmas from all of us at 64 Digital

by | Dec 21, 2012

In a couple of hours we’ll be putting our feet up and enjoying a nice extended Christmas break so it seemed like a great time to wish all our clients and partners a very happy Christmas and to thank you all for a great year.

In 2012 we’ve transitioned our brand to 64 Digital after spending 10 years as TVI Design, launched our new responsive website (and breathed a huge sigh of relief when everybody said they liked it), won an award for creating the second best estate agent website in the UK (the first was Foxtons, we’ll let them have that!), created our first iPhone and Android apps, had our work featured in a book called ‘Emarketing Excellence’ and launched over 25 new client websites!

It’s been our most successful year yet and we couldn’t have done it without you guys. Here’s to a fantastic 2013 for everyone.

The 64 Digital Team

Another award winning website for 64 Digital

Another award winning website for 64 Digital

by | Dec 20, 2012

We almost forgot to mention in the busy run up Christmas, 64 Digital are pleased to add the International Property Awards “Real Estate Agency Website” Highly Commended award to their virtual trophy cabinet.

“The International Property Awards are open to residential and commercial property professionals from around the globe.They celebrate the highest levels of achievement by companies operating in all sectors of the property and real estate industry. An International Property Award is a world-renowned mark of excellence.” – http://propertyawards.net/uk-2012/

The BeresfordsGroup website launched in March this year and includes a whole range of informative and interactive features to make the browsing process more enjoyable and productive for both buyers and sellers.

http://www.beresfordsgroup.co.uk

The 64 Digital Super dooper device testing station

The 64 Digital Super dooper device testing station

by | Aug 9, 2012

Anyone who designs and builds websites or mobile apps will have found themselves having to ensure their work is compatible with an ever expanding number of devices over the last few years, and it’s only going to keep expanding.

There are a number of different ways of testing compatibility on different devices, from just testing on a desktop and resizing your browser (not recommended) to software emulators, to buying real devices

We’re a firm believer in testing on real devices. Not because emulators don’t work, but because you only get the full experience when testing on a real device: Are the colours bright enough on an iPad in sunlight, are the buttons too small for my fat fingers on a small Android phone etc.

Having a large number of devices around the office can be a nightmare though. We’re constantly losing cables and chargers (and devices) and it takes ages to connect them up and test on them all. That’s why we built the 64 Digital Super Dooper Device Testing Station (name still up for debate).

Building it was pretty simple, we went to B&Q and bought some wood, constructed a cabinet with some thin shelves to put the devices on. We then used strips of Velcro above the shelves to allow us to fix the devices to the cabinet.

The next step was to drill some 30mm holes at intervals along the shelves so that we could pass all the cables through to the inside of the (most of them are small Micro USBs but the iPhones and iPads have silly proprietary connectors).

We fixed a couple of power strips inside the cabinet. These devices don’t draw much power so we were able to plug one into the other giving us a single power lead trailing from the cabinet which can easily be moved about and plugged in on anybody’s desk.

We also found some pretty cool 4 port USB plug adapters made by Lindy, which means we can plug up to 8 devices into 2 power sockets. Pretty neat

Now for the real time-saver. We use Adobe Shadow to synchronize all the devices so that they all show the site we’re working on. It’s a fantastic app for smartphones and tablets which connect to your PC over Wi-Fi and mirrors the page you’re looking at on every one of your devices without you having to keep pressing refresh.

So far we’ve got the following devices plugged in.
Google Nexus 7

Apple iPad 1 (not upgraded for testing on an older iOS)

Apple iPad 2

Apple iPhone 4S

Apple iPhone 3G

Samsung Galaxy S

Samsung Galaxy Note

HTC Desire HD

HTC Magic

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Motorola Xoom

Blackberry Bold 9000

All of this means that when we’re building mobile websites or responsive websites, we can test it on all of these devices as we build, saving lots of time and ensuring maximum compatibility.

The Google Nexus 7 arrives

The Google Nexus 7 arrives

by | Jul 19, 2012

We’ve been collecting new devices for our mobile testing lab for a while and today we took delivery of our new Google tablet the Nexus 7.

It’s our first 7 inch tablet in the office so it’ll be interesting to see how some of our sites look. I’m pleased to report though that our own site (which is a responsive site) looks pretty good.

The device looks lovely and so far it’s been a joy to use. Most importantly, Angry birds on Android is free. Goodbye productivity!

We’ll be writing an article soon about our new mobile testing station and how we test all our sites now on various devices.

TVI staff run BUPA 10k in aid of Barnardo’s

TVI staff run BUPA 10k in aid of Barnardo’s

by | Jun 7, 2012

Last Sunday, three of our team managed to tear themselves away from their PCs for long enough to run the BUPA 10k in London in aid of Barnardo’s.

The hottest day of the year so far made the going slightly tougher than it should have been, but the spectacular views of Buckingham Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral and the London Eye, coupled with the fantastic support along the route from spectators, steel bands and even a barbershop quartet made it all the easier.

We even managed to raise over £500 for Barnardo’s in the process.

If you’d like to, there’s still time to sponsor us on our JustGiving page….

http://www.justgiving.com/teams/tvidesign