Google Streetcar at Deganwy Quay, North Wales

Spotted the Google Street View car in North Wales this afternoon at 12.30, two years after the Streetview Car was last in town!

Going off the last Street View North Wales visit we can expect the images to be live in around twelve months.

Measuring time according to Google Street View visits is interesting, two years ago Livetech (Web Design North Wales) were operating  from Central Colwyn Bay, now were are based at the exclusive Deganwy Quay development.

It’s interesting to see how people react to the privacy issues highlighted by publishing  images of everyone’s homes, from a household security, home kerbside appeal (when selling), and whether you washed your windows that week.

Would you for example want a picture of your child on the camera going home from school? Not an unusual occurance on the service.

Google Street View Man is he coming to shoot you?

All interesting questions, I wonder how camera shy this particular chappy (featured left) is?

View the full series of photos here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=352449&id=789157111

New Training Rooms with Stunning Location

This week I’m busy putting together a new training venue here at Deganwy Quay, Conwy, North Wales.

The Marine Rooms are a exceptionally well situated training rooms based at Deganwy Quay, within Marina House, part of the marina complex.

The rooms are available for hire for training events, corporate use, venue north wales etc.

The main room is 9.5m x 5m with the use of a smaller side room 3.1m x 4.1m

The facility has its own kitchen and toilet facilities and its own secure access.

Views over Deganwy Marina looking East

Featured here are some views of the rooms under preparation.

The rooms are available as follows

8.30 AM until 5.30 PM Day session

6.00 PM until 10.00 PM evening session

Rates are currently being finalized.

The venue provides a really nice feeling as soon as you enter, views over to the castle, a world heritage site are really inspirational and are bound to set the right tone for your event.

View of decking area from the main training room

Enjoy a break from your training by taking a stroll on the decking and enjoying some fresh air. View shown is looking South from the main room.

The Marine Rooms | Promote your Page too

Website under construction for this Venue North Wales at www.marinerooms.co.uk

Other businesses at Deganwy Quay

Quay Marinas – http://www.quaymarinas.com/Marinas/DeganwyQuays/

Network Yacht Brokers – www.nybconwy.co.uk

The Quay Hotel – www.quayhotel.com

Coast and Marina Properties – www.coastmarinaproperties.co.uk

Livetech – www.livetech.co.uk

Dye sublimation printing from Nova Chrome is the process of transferring full colour graphics and photographs onto items such as glass, ceramics, t-shirts, mousemats and more.  Sublimation Printing gives a better and more durable finish than other printing transfer methods where the image is only applied to the surface.

Nova Chrome supplies a wide range of sublimation printing systems so that you can customise a wide range of products, quickly, easily and effectively, whilst keeping your costs down.

Their range of products includes heat transfer presses, premium sublimation inks, a choice of printers and a wide selection of printable items and accessories.

WARNING: Don’t get caught out by the domain name renewal scam!

There are several popular email scams out there from overseas companies that either try you to renew your domain name (i.e. Livetech.co.uk) with them at exorbitant rates or scare you into buying alternate domain names such as Livetech.asia / .cn etc.

They often tell you that they have received an application from a third party to purchase your domain name or these alternate ones.

If you communicate with them and renew your domain with them then it is quite possible that you will be inadvertently transferring ownership of your domain to them. In addition it will likely be at an exorbitant rate.

If you purchase these alternate domains you are no doubt going to be paying over the odds again. Again they’ll probably end up owning them too. Plus do you really need these additional domains?

Maybe they’ve posed the threat that someone could clone your site  and extract your clients credit card details. This is always possible, but there are so many variations of domain names that if someone was going to do it, they’d find a suitable and similar domain. You can’t purchase everything just in case.

If you receive these offers our advice at Livetech would be to follow our simple tips:

1. In the vast majority of cases we renew domain automatically for clients, included within our clients annual service charge. In other cases where client manage the domains themselves they will often be renewed automatically, as long as the credit card on file is still valid.If you do renew the domain yourself do put a note in your diary when the domain lapses, usually on the  anniversary of the original registration, typically one year for .com domain names and every two years for .co.uk names. It is actually quite hard to inadvertently lose a .co.uk name due to the various grace periods and reminders, but incredibly easy to lose a .com name as, depending on the registrar the domain name can be available for re-registration once lapsed within a week or two!

1. Never respond directly to an email requests you to renew domains. If you know the hosting company where the domains are registered, type their URL directly into your web browser and login to your secure account to renew the domain.
2. Check the paperwork they send you, often is an overpriced order form that transfers ownership to them.
3. Check the domain name accurately, sometimes they’re trying to get you to renew a domain that isn’t exactly yours.
4. When in doubt call your hosting company directly and inquire about the renewal notice with them.
5. Renew your domain at least 4 months in advance. Most legitimate and false registrars start sending renewal notices 3 months in advance. If you renew in advance of that point you should never receive a renewal notice and will not fall prey to such scams.

The team at Livetech are always on hand to chat to you about your domain renewal and these scams. If you’d like further information or advice please give us a call.

Does my business need to blog?

Let’s start with what a blog is. It is a web page usually made up of short, frequent updated posts that are arranged chronologically, similar to a what’s new page.

Blogs are excellent ways of:

1. Sharing your expertise,
2. Building additional website traffic
3. Connecting with potential customers.

There are some great free tools out there to help you too. One that we’ve used is blogger.com, it’s free, easy to use, easy to set up and easy to start. All you need is an email address.

Blogging provides people on the internet news of your company and its services. You can talk about

Benefits of a busy Business Blog

Easy access to company news

One huge benefit is the ability to inform your customers of any changes, new products, latest offers and much more. This, in turn, can lead to direct sales.

People will find your blog when searching

Search engine optimization is a particularly beneficial form of online marketing. It can be used to gain search engine traffic for given keywords or search terms. Your blog offers the opportunity to promote your Web site for hundreds or even thousands of different keywords. Search engines love blogs because the content is updated regularly.

Appear Accessible

It doesn’t matter whether you are not, but you and your company will appear to be more accessible especially if you allow freedom for all your visitors to post comments. Accessibility is often a stumbling block for many potential customers that still prefer to deal with companies offline. A blog makes you more approachable and so alleviates this concern.

Industry know how

Customers will be much more likely to use your service or purchase your goods if they see you as an authority on a particular subject. Give your views on the latest events in your industry, offer reviews of related items and comparisons of several items.

Brand Awareness

The more a customer hears the name of your company the greater the chance of remembering it. It takes, on average, around seven items of direct communication between you and your customers to make a sale.

Relationship Building

A blog enables you to speak freely to your customers and in a more informal and personable style than your Web site. The more they know, like and trust you the more likely they are to buy from you.

Gain An Insight Into Your Customers

Your customers can leave comments on your posts, you get a sense of how they react to what you say. You can also track which posts are being read more often and which generate a greater number of clicks, emails, etc.

Reduce Calls And Emails

You can use a blog to pre-empt questions that customers might have. It may reduce the amount of niggling questions that you get asked by customers.

If you’d like further information on setting up a blog or would like to some help from us to do, please get in touch with the Livetech team.

CPS Kitchens have been designing and fitting kitchens and bathrooms in the Colwyn Bay and North Wales region formany years.

CPS Kitchens North Wales

All work is done or supervised by the proprietor Simon Longworth. Simon prides himself  on punctuality, clear pricing, no pressure sales, and doing what we says  he will when we say we will. Traditional values that hold fast at CPS Kitchens.

You can view some of Simons work with the adjacent pictures from Kitchens North Wales

Bathrooms North Wales

Simon has fitted a wide range of styles of bathroom from simple but beautiful installations to opulent larger budget jobs.

CPS Kitchens will remove your existing suite, tiles and floor covering and make good any surfaces before tiling and painting. We dispose of the old suite; tiles and any building rubbish, recycling where we can and leave your home clean and tidy.

Kitchens North Wales

CPS Kitchens specialise in kitchen design and fitting. They  will fit your brand new kitchen exactly as you want it. CPS  will give you a free consultation where we will help you to design your own kitchen and make the best use of the space available.

More information: www.cpskitchens.co.uk

Bedcheck Wales - saving visitors time and and helping accommodation providers towards 100% occupancy

Bedcheck Wales is a really exciting new service that allows the visitor to make the most of their time by ensuring they find an accommodation provider.

The whole system works on the basis -of  “Don’t waste time contacting places to stay that have no availability”. You are presented with an initial choice of  provider for your area, type/grading and dates. If the result comes back that they have availability, great you can book it there and then. If the provider does not have space on that date you are directed to other providers that meet your requirements in that same area. Initial feedback from both visitors and the accommodation providers themselves has been fantastic. The more providers that get involved the better the service becomes.

Further information from Bed Check Wales – www.bedcheckwales.co.uk