O'Brien Media are pleased to announce the launch of a new website for Hydra Industrial Services in Swindon.

Dispute being a well known name in the Fire Protection and Sprinkler industry this is the first website for Hydra and it has been designed to take advantage of an ever increasingly "tech-savvy" target market where having instant access to contact information and locating contractors with the aid of Google rather than a telephone directory is becoming commonplace.

You can take a look at the Hydra website at www.hydraindustrial.co.uk.

While out walking through the snow, randomly clicking with my camera, I seem to have managed to take this photo.

I'm not a very good photographer but something about this image really summed up the 'feel' of the day. I haven't edited the photo in any way - colours, size, etc.

It's currently my desktop wallpaper and I thought it would be nice to make it available (for personal use) to anyone who wants it!

Winter Bridge Desktop Wallpaper by Christian O'Brien is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

you may have noticed the new 'Project Login' link at the top of every page. We're now using a system called Basecamp to manage some development projects and this little link will take you straight to the login page to access your project area.

In case you're wondering, this is how we use it at O'Brien Media.

Basecamp allows us to document every aspect of a project, from emails and documents through to group editing of website copy and page content and it not only allows us to access the relevent information, and full project archive, but also allows clients access to everything they could possibly need in relation to the project.

We've tested it out on a couple of recent projects and the feedback has been 100% positive. Fear not, if you're not web-savy you can still give us a call or drop us an email, but if you fancy trying something new just ask us to send out your Basecamp login details (as every new project from the start of November is managed via Basecamp) and take a look around!

You’ve probably not given it much thought, you put a huge amount of effort into making sure your website reflects your brand and the ethos of your business but what impression to your prospective clients does your telephone number give?

Mobile Numbers

If you’re a mobile hairdresser or any other type of business that is focussed on visiting the client or if your business is conducted at the clients premises then a mobile should be prominent on your website.
If you’re trying to give the impression that your business is office based and using a dedicated landline number isn’t possible or practical for you (if you’re out of the office a lot then sending clients to voicemail gives a terrible first impression!) you should consider a ‘virtual’ number.

Something changed my view on Royal Mail today, sorry in advance if you're looking for a mini-rant about the postal strikes as you won't find it here. Yes the strikes have been inconvenient but as most of my communications are by phone and email it hasn't really impacted me as much as some.

Anyway, today I got a Viking Direct catalogue through the post - nothing strange in that I get than a few times a month as Viking seem to be unable to cleanse their mailing lists properly - but the odd thing today was the address.