News:: Online Counselling for Leeds University

By Francis Crossen on 2009-05-28 17:05; Last edit 2009-05-29 17:05

Leeds University Online Counselling Portal

Newly completed by SeeIT, in conjunction with Ideas Garden, an Intranet application for Leeds University Student Counselling Centre.

I am surprised that more traditional face to face services do not go online. Online counselling is something that I see as easily adapted to the Internet.

As long as you get the basics right (like security, audit trails, client functionality) there are plenty of advantages to this.

The Internet generation is completely comfortable at a keyboard and monitor. Apart from both counsellor and client saving on travel time, it is said that it easier to bare yourself online than it is in person – the . I know I would have a much easier time baring my soul to a PC in the knowledge that there is either complete or partial anonymity for me.

 

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News:: Motor Display Systems Redesign

By Francis Crossen on 2009-05-28 17:05; Last edit 2009-05-29 17:05

MDS snapshotWe are pleased to have been involved in the redesign of the Motor Display Systems web site.

It is quite common for web sites to begin as a small brochure project and to quickly grow to unmanageable proportions as they fill up with products, articles and other forms of content. Tom and Bernard of MDS recognised this and decided that they wanted to completely redesign the web site and it's functionality.

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News:: The Ellies are on the Telly!

By Francis Crossen on 2009-01-09 13:01; Last edit 2009-01-09 16:01

www.TheElevator.ie snapshotThe Elevator (www.TheElevator.ie) is a satirical website based in Ireland.

Last year we were approached to do a small voting application for them to manage online voting for their Gooseberry awards - celebrating the worst of Irish entertainment. Nothing to it really - just a simple script with a database to handle all the votes. All good clean fun and some beer money as compensation!

What is great is when something like this captures the attention of the media: last years awards were picked up by The Irish Times, The Irish Examiner, The Irish Independent, The Star, The Evening Herald and the Irish Daily Mail! Check out the bottom of the Gooseberry awards page to see the clippings.

However this year the lads have really outdone themselves: yesterday evening none other than RTE's Network 2 News ran a piece on the awards - have a look at the clip on the Ellie Telly page or click 'read more' at the end of this article to see the video clip.

By the way, if you have a similar project/mini application and a limited budget, by all means contact us and make an impassioned plea. If it catches our imagination you'll get the job done for the price of a few pints or it may even get done Pro bono publico!

Very well done indeed!

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News:: The Dry Cleaning and Laundry Skillsnet

By Francis Crossen on 2008-11-12 17:11; Last edit 2008-11-13 09:11

DCLS web site snapshotThe Dry Cleaning and Laundry Skillsnet provides training and information to their members courtesy of funding from the Department of Trade, Enterprise and Employment.


SeeIT and CIC were contracted to provide a web site providing:

The main issue here was to design web site that was easy to navigate and clear for non-computer literate users.

News:: New website for SeeIT!

By Francis Crossen on 2008-10-07 12:10

At long last - today the new website goes live!

SeeIT.org is built on our own content management system (CMS), using PHP and MySQL along with some excellent Open Source tools. Our CMS is simple, flexible and extensible.

Contact us for more information or to arrange a consultation. For more information, see our blog post 'A Reluctant Web Designers Journey'.

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Blog:: Web site portfolio

By Francis Crossen on 2009-06-01 12:06

We now have a selection of our web site work up in our Web Site Portfolio section.

This section is intended to give you an overview of what is possible, and of some recent work.

While most of our work is done for web design and IT companies, we do look at each job on a case by case basis, and if necessary we will recommend a partner company to work with. All work is done to order, so if you would like to discuss your requirements, please contact us and ask.

Blog:: SFO Syndrome - The Hidden Menace

By Francis Crossen on 2009-05-28 17:05; Last edit 2009-05-29 17:05

Muppets!

...or watch out for the Muppets...

Again and again get a very similar request:

Can you move/fix/migrate/upgrade our web site please?

... and every time I get a similar reason for the request:

There was a bloke who used to look after us, but he's gone now...

This is (un)commonly known as SFO Syndrome - Supplier Fecked Off!

Cleaning up after SFO is a service we regularly perform for clients, and sometimes it is quite shocking to see the mess that a previous supplier has left behind. (I am often led to muse that the provider may have disappeared because they may have realised that the game was up!) I have written before about this (see 'Open Source and Open Standards') but it is worth restating:

If a quote is to good to be true, then it usually is!

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Blog:: Open Source and Open Standards

By Francis Crossen on 2008-10-07 11:10; Last edit 2008-10-07 13:10

Open Neon SignRecently we were asked by a client to migrate a web site from one server to another. The web site in question was built on a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla - a CMS written in PHP and using MySQL for database storage.

I am not fond of Joomla, but that is my personal opinion and don't let it colour yours. As a programmer I find it heavyweight and overly complex. Lots and lots of code means frequent discoveries of bugs and frequent updates. As my friend Alan Kennedy says "every line of code is a liability" and he is spot on. However we aren't all programmers and for someone who wants an "out of the box" experience Joomla may well fit the bill. Personally I prefer the excellent Wordpress - it may be a 'only' a blog system, but it is fantastic for static web sites too and uses a much simpler database schema, although it doesn't have the extended functionality of Joomla.

Open Standards - your data, your way

Where am I going with all this? Well what happens when the person you used to create your web site disappears, or when you just want to migrate? If you are stuck into a commercial, closed source and/or proprietary model, you are at the mercy of whatever commercial provider will take you on. If, on the other hand, you are using open standards, then at the very least you have access to all the code and data in your web site.

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Blog:: A Reluctant Web Designers Journey

By Francis Crossen on 2008-10-06 20:10; Last edit 2008-10-09 03:10

A picture of some random HTML codeA long overdue of SeeITs' website. My colleague Simon Stewart in CIC made the very valid point that a web programmer should show something more on his website than a page of largely static text and a broken contact form. (In fairness the contact form brought me nothing but spam and Asian software companies trying to get me to outsource my coding jobs to them, so it was no great loss to me.)

One pleasant surprise was how modern browsers behave with standards compliant HTML and CSS (as long as you don't get too funky with your layout).

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Common Sense Consultancy

IT is a increasingly important area for all of us. Whether at home or in the workplace IT is almost ubiquitous. However as we embrace new technologies and become more connected, it is important that we are getting the best from IT and doing so in an efficient and secure way.

The Solution:

SeeIT Consult provide common sense consultancy to individuals and businesses. We are based in Dublin and offer expertise in the following areas:

In addition to this we work with a number of partner companies to provide a complete end to end solution for all your IT needs.

Our Mission:

We are here to give you what you need and to give you unbiased and clear advice. We are not affiliated with a software or hardware vendor so we have no hidden agenda other than satisfying your requirements.