Well it’s Christmas Eve and we’ve come to the end of another Twelve Days of  Twitmas. It’s been amazing response all the way through to our Christmas Crescendo times two.

FINAL FRIDAY:

So we had an Amazing final day of Twitmas yesterday where we had not just one but two over night stays in two of Glasgow’s finest hotels to give away.

One of our featured hotels was ABode Hotel in the other The Grand Central Hotel. Both offered one lucky Twitmas winner the chance of a free double or twin room on a “Bed and Breakfast” basis for an agreed date in 2012.

So congrats go to @Daviegardner for picking up the over night stay in the Grand Hotel and to  @seasider007. We really hope you have a wonderful, memorable (for all the right reasons) time in two of Glasgow’s best hotels!

CHRISTMAS EVE FINALE

So here we are on Christmas Eve 2011, and we’re delighted to be giving away a two-night break on the island of Arran at the Douglas Hotel.

This is just an amazing prize, because not only is it two nights at the hotel, but they’ve kindly thrown in breakfast and some free Bubbly on arrival too!

So for lucky winner @AlexBoyd you can take your partner, a friend or a family member and enjoy this amazing break.

Congratulations Alex, you’re the last winner on Twitmas12 for 2011!

Once again we’d like to thank all the people who supplied us with festive goodies to give away over the past twelve days. We’d also like to thank all of you who tweeted and re-tweeted for the past two weeks.

Please follow @Alan_Tennant  the Regional Director of hotels.tv!

Plus our lovely hotels for the final giveaways @douglashotel @abodehotelsgrp @bairdstravel – thank you so very much!

So that’s a WRAP kids! Look out for #Twitmas12 in 2012!

Happy Holidays one and all from all of us at NSDesign!

Wow, what a fun prize was on the cards today for Day 8 of Twitmas12! Well in my opinion anyway.

It was the cutest little Cardboard Radio and MP3 Speaker.

The radio’s design is simple, environmentally-friendly and I think it has great appeal.

Tune into your favourite radio station or simply plug your iplayer/ MP3 in and enjoy.

Love the concept of this one.

We thank Maia Gifts for providing one of these to  give away on Day 8.

We’d like to congratulate @grahamorriss for scoring this cool, simple gadget.

Now don’t forget, we’ve still have four more days of #Twitmas12…and I can’t say too much just now, but I can tell you that you’ll have some good chances to win some goodies on the final day. Thanks to some kindness of others, we’ve outdone ourselves this year!

Keep an eye on @nsdesign on Twitter to be in with a chance of some of our final yuletide goodies.

Something a little different for Day 4 of Twitmas12…some VIP, courtside tickets to see the Glasgow Rocks Basketball team play.

I can tell you, I am not a big sports fan (either playing or spectating), but once I caught one of these games I was hooked. I’d defy anyone to not have fun night – right there amongst the action.

Congrats go to @idgamez – who picked up those four VIP tickets. Well done you! Hope you enjoy whatever game you see – and hope the Rocks Win it!

So tomorrow, for something completely different once again – we have  not 1, not 2, but 3 photographers offering photo sessions.

Australian web domain company KetMo.com has published a list of its top six web design clichés to avoid and it makes interesting reading… see what you think.

1.    Flash pages
A Flash sequence can act as a delay, if not a total barrier, between customers and their intention (finding out information and/or making a purchase). Use Flash on a minimal scale for maximum impact.

2. Stock images
Stock images look cheap and tacky. Highlight the uniqueness of your company and business by using original images.

3. White background
Colours always attract attention and yet many websites have white backgrounds. While there is nothing wrong in having a white background in the web design, some use of creativity and colours can make a plain website look lively.

4. Wet floor/reflection/shadow effect
These should only be used if you really want your website to look as though it was designed in the early 1990s. Assuming that you want to appear more modern than that, avoid these so-called special effects at all costs.

5. Big fonts
While big fonts are eye-catching and bold, they should not be used too often and all over the website. Strategic use of big fonts can be effective in a website design.

6. ‘Click Here’
When you say ‘Click Here’ it creates ambiguity about the whole message. The visitor is unaware of the action that will be performed by clicking on the link. Instead of such a redundant and mysterious term, use phrases such as ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Read more about our services’.

Web designers beware!

The new version of Firefox has just been made available for download – and it includes Twitter search navigation.

The latest version of the popular browser, which is made by Mozilla, was posted to its FTP servers last week a few days ahead of its official release.
Firefox 8 is available for PC, Mac and Linux computers.

The most notable development to this latest version of Firefox is that it lets users search Twitter directly. Users can search the microblogging site by selecting it as an option in a drop-down search box or alternatively by highlighting some on-screen text, right-clicking and selecting ‘search Twitter’.

Firefox users can search Twitter for people, hashtags and topics.

The new version of Firefox also disables all third-party add-ons in a bid to offer extra security. Should users want to enable third-party add-ons, they can do this manually.

Tab loading is also different in Firefox 8. When a user selects ‘show my windows and tabs from last time’ as the default start page, instead of trying to open every tab at the same time when the browser starts, it simply loads the one currently selected by the user and then loads the others when the user switches to them.

Other improvements include changing the animation when tabs are re-ordered or detached.

Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox around every six weeks, earning them a reputation for rapid-fire web development.

So a while back I wrote a wee blog about QR Codes. Well, I thought I’d follow that one up a bit, as last week I attended the October New Media Breakfast about them.

The speaker of the day was Jim Divine from Cyberlogo.

Citing the rise of handsets, Jim urged the use of QR Codes, specifically ones containing logos, to connect with clients.

Some great examples were shown -  such as Jim’s own Twitter-inspired cyberlogo (Pic right), one for T3 Magazine, and one for Cake Decor (Pic left: a chocolate chip looking logo) and a make-up company too.

Possibilities are endless.

BEST IN SCAN

If you’re looking for a good scanner (of the many out there) – Jim recommends i-nigma. (I immediately downloaded it and began scanning on my Blackberry. Worked a treat).

Or if you’re an iPhone person Optiscan might be the one for you. (From iTunes: “Optiscan lets you create, scan and share QR codes straight from your device”.)

Like the sound of that.

One of the great advantages of these QR codes is their versatility. You don’t have to link to just a site, you can link to your V-card details, a calendar event, an SMS or a direct dialer to a phone number.

Another advantage is you can, through many QR code creators, update the link as time goes to keep it fresh. There will often be a charge of this, so get your initial code from a place that will allow changes if it’s one you’re going to be updating.

Personally speaking, I find QR Codes challenging. They don’t always work for me and that can be frustrating. In fact on this page on Jim’s site I couldn’t even get them to load! That said, with Gary’s iPhone they often worked better. (So more fool me for having a Blackberry I guess).

Finally if you are considering using QR Codes yourself, take a look at this piece in the Drum recently to make sure you’re not ‘doing it wrong’.

Adobe has acquired a raft of new web tools in a bid to make its services even more accessible to web designers.

The organisation has bought Nitobi, which makes PhoneGap and TypeKit. It announced the acquisition at its recent Adobe Max developer and designer conference.

Experts say that the new tools will help Adobe to extend its services beyond its Flash Player technology into other areas of web design such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

PhoneGap allows designers to create web apps designed exclusively for use on mobile phones. It is an open source programming tool.

Danny Winokur, general manager at Adobe, said: “PhoneGap is a fantastic solution for developing a broad range of mobile apps using the latest web standards, and is already integrated with Dreamweaver CS5.5.

“It’s a perfect complement to Adobe’s broad family of developer solutions, including Adobe Air, and will allow us to continue to provide content publishers and developers with the best, cutting-edge solutions for creating innovative applications across platforms and devices.”

Meanwhile, TypeKit focuses on web-based typography. Subscribers to the service can use TypeKit fonts on their web pages.

Adobe already offers a font licensing service, which it can now extend to allow flexibility for display and digital fonts thanks to TypeKit’s capabilities.

Lea Hickman, vice president of product management at Adobe, said: “Typography is a fundamental design element and something that designers want to be more creative with on websites – especially as these websites now need to be viewed on mobile devices.”

Nearly half of all cloud computing providers expect that the small business sector will lead on the take-up of their services within the next year. This is important knowledge for any organisation offering business internet solutions.

According to a survey by OnApp, a cloud platform provider, 27% of respondents expect organisations from the enterprise sector to be their main clients over the same time period, whilst just 18% think that consumers will lead the way in the take-up of cloud computing services.

The study also demonstrated that the strongest uptake of cloud services by businesses is expected from web and application developers. A total of 67% of cloud providers say that this sector of industry will drive the biggest growth in business for them.

Meanwhile, 42% of those questioned expected to see the biggest growth from the IT sector in general, 39% from financial services and 30% from retail customers.

Those small businesses that were questioned said that they would adopt cloud computing services because they would allow them to scale their IT services on demand whilst not having to run their own IT infrastructure.

Ditlev Bredahl, OnApp’ss CEO, said: “Based on cloud adoption rates, our survey shows that cloud computing is most accessible to technical users right now. Adoption is being driven by small and medium sized businesses focused on application and web development. This makes sense, since sandboxed development, web development and testing are very well suited to a cloud environment.”

Adobe has unveiled its new web design programme.

Muse allows graphic designers to create and publish websites without having to write code or work within restrictive templates.

The programme uses web standards including HTML 5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Its beta version is currently available as a free preview from the Adobe website and then a full version will go on sale in early 2012.

It is targeted primarily at designers and artists who are used to working with print, enabling them to work online without having to learn code. As such, Muse is built on a process that is very similar to InDesign, one of the most popular graphic design programmes on the market.

The programme provides a full set of pre-coded widgets for creating interactive site elements, allowing designers to create effects such as lightboxes and navigation menus. It automatically generates all HTML, CSS and scripting for the design and allows users to publish from within the programme.

In a further bid to make the programme as easy to use as possible, Muse also offers sitemaps, master pages and flexible tools. It also allows users to embed code from sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Google Maps: “Muse was built with the print designer in mind. It allows designers who are not coders to create unique, professional websites as easily as producing a layout in InDesign.

“This is an end-to-end solution with interactive elements like slideshows, tool tips, remote rollovers and lightboxes. It allows the designer to do things that only a hand-coder could do.”

An Israeli web design company is using the principles of feng shui to help it built websites.

Feng shui is an ancient Chinese system that helps people decorate and arrange their rooms and spaces in order to enhance the flow of energy and encourage health, happiness and prosperity.

Now, the system is being applied to websites in order to provide a better energy flow for the page.

Feng-GUI is a new Israeli company that aims to optimise the structure of websites by automatically analysing people’s attention when viewing a website for the first time.

It uses technology that simulates human vision during the first five seconds of a website opening up. The mechanism shows the main spots where the simulated vision goes to and stays. This enables web designers to adapt the website to maximise content where the simulated vision stays longest and overall to design a page that replicates the energy flow of this vision.

The mechanism uses an algorithm that could eliminate the need for focus groups and test viewings as it is as effective as mouse tracking and eye tracking. However, it would be hard for it to replicate other human responses, such as amusement or confusion.

Feng-GUI offers different types of analysis including heat maps, opacity maps, gaze plots and areas of interest.