PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGE TO VISIT THE SITE

The primary goal for this site has been to provide much easier navigation and simultaneously offer far more comprehensive and engaging content than ever before.

Essentially we started with a completely blank sheet of paper. The existing site wasn't particularly old and had served the company well. Such is the pace of technology these days, however, it was very much in need of a complete revisit, to enable Ash and Lacy to not only catch up with but stay ahead of the innovation curve.

A key design focus issue was the creation of an architecture that allowed the visitor to rapidly find the information sought and to utilise engaging ways of achieving that, such as the flip book format we've introduced for downloadable documents. We have rebuilt www.ashandlacy.com on a very flexible platform that is capable of enabling us to keep pace with any forseeable internet trends, and maybe even beyond that.

I think it's important to stress that this project is very much, and will remain, a work in progress. There are some ambitious plans for new features and development of existing ones.

In fairness, it was a pretty short total loss of service (just an hour or two for me at least) and only affected webmail-delivered services, rather than third party POP3 and IMAP clients. Google apparently blames it all a maintenance error, which had worldwide consequences, such is the apparent growing demand for Gmail.

So not a major disaster in the great scheme of things. But it wasn't the first such outage this year and it does inevitably raise some serious questions about the integrity of the so-called cloud based internet, which sees data being securely held on distant servers, rather than necessarily being stored on one's own hard drive.

The appeal of cloud internet is somewhat irresistible, the main attractant being that one can access web services on the move and also that a hard drive failure need not be the potentially catastrophic event it might have been in the past - you do back up your important data don't you!

Google's particular vision of the future is that much of the software of everyday life - webmail, document and spreadsheet creation, diaries etc all moves to the cloud. Indeed, this very website is created, edited and stored there!

Which is all fine and dandy, you might think, until a massive worldwide, or even localised, service outage occurs like the one many of us endured earlier this week.

All of a sudden, we are left feeling vulnerable if we are on the move without our laptops and especially if we don't have backups?

So does all this call the viability of The Cloud into question?

I emphatically say no it doesn't.

Remember in the days of dialup and the dawn of broadband when web access would often slow to a crawl? Those teething issues are thankfully long gone for the vast majority of us and, I think, we are seeing the same sort of evolution going on with cloud internet.

It was, after all, the very success of Google Mail that made a short service outage world news. No doubt it cost someone somewhere a loss of business or whatever, but in that the problem was over almost as soon as it had begun suggests that a good recovery programme strategy is already in place. 

No doubt Google and all cloud providers are learning fast from these experiences and tweaking their networks so that outages happen less and less in the months and years to come.

As ever, there isn't a perfect solution, but if you ask me if I would ever want to go back to a time when dropping a laptop in a puddle of water or a thief making off with it could at the very least mean the end to an expensive business trip - well I don't need to answer that, do I :-)

In my latest podcast, I take a close look at social networking and its potential for your business or organisation.

Please click on the above cover image above to download the podcast (about 7MB), which is in AAC format, for quality reasons. It can be loaded and played in iTunes or Quick Time player.

In truth, I've been very focused on client activity, so I've not had a great deal of time to concentrate on my own website. Such is the lot of the busy consultant - not a bad problem in this day and age, or any time for that matter :-)

I am planning to record my fourth podcast very soon. This will look at how social networking can benefit your business. Having been slightly sceptical about the potential of sites like Twitter and Facebook, I am now a total convert. I will be explaining how these sites are rapidly metamorphosing from merely being a great way to stay in touch with friends into potential cornerstone marketing tactics for companies and organisations.

Temparatures here in the Mojave Desert are at their midsummer most excruciating and it is simply too hot to do much outside right now. This week we have seen it as high as 114 degrees and it will stay like that now until around the end of August, when we normally start to observe a decline in absolute heat and the return by mid-September to a more acceptable overall climate.

The fall and spring are great times here because of the almost wall to wall sunshine and more sensible heat. Most Mesquite residents rightly think that now is the worst time of year and many go back to their other homes in the more Northerly states and return in the fall, disappearing again around April.

This seasonal fluctuation in population has inevitable negative consquences for local businesses and a key focus of future development here is to try and smooth out the peaks and rather severe troughs.

The effects of the recession are everywhere, with so many houses in foreclosure and the loss of a number of significant businesses. Being on the Nevada/Arizona state line, we have several casinos, all of which are feeling the pinch as the leisure dollar is in such short supply right now. Indeed, one large casino has been partially closed down until things improve.

Exactly when that improvement will arrive is still a major bone of contention on both sides of the Atlantic, but there have been encouraging signs. Property prices are stabilising and Sterling has been performing a lot better against a basket of foreign currencies - something that usually only happens in a positive worldwide investment environment, as speculators become less averse to risk.

These are mere shoots of recovery right now, but there has never been a better time to reassess your approach to market and get ready for the major tidal change back to prosperity.

The economic woes have taken place in tandem with a lot of Web 2.0 innovations that a lot of companies and organisations have yet to capitalise on. Contact me and I will gladly undertake a free assessment of your historical activity and demonstrate how you can exploit new media with high cost efficiency.

In my latest podcast, I take a close look at blogging and its potential for your business or organisation.

Please click on the above cover image above to download the podcast (about 5MB), which is in AAC format, for quality reasons. It can be loaded and played in iTunes or Quick Time player.

In my latest podcast, I take a close look at podcasting and what it can do for your business or organisation.

Please click on the above cover image above to download the podcast (about 10MB), which is in AAC format, for quality reasons. It can be loaded and played in iTunes or Quick Time player.

I am delighted to announce the launch of my first podcast.

Podcasting is now a mainstream market communications tool and I am now using it to spread the gospel of new media to potential and existing clients, with an emphasis on podcasting and blogging.

Over the next few weeks, the intention is to explore new media opportunities in detail. We'll see what direction the podcast takes from there.

Please click on the above cover image above to download the podcast (about 15MB), which is in AAC format, for quality reasons. It can be loaded and played in iTunes or Quick Time player.

I well remember the sheer terror of leaving behind all the accoutrements of salaried work and embarking on the rather less certain voyage of self-employment.

The most profound moment of revelation occurred just after my secretary drove me home in my company car on the last day of my job. As she departed from the driveway, I realised that life was never going to be the same again. I was right, but for largely good reasons.

I'm so glad I made the jump. Business life has inevitably had its ups and downs, but I've obtained a much wider knowledge and experience of market communications than I could ever have gained working for a single company. And the learning curve never stops!

The supreme irony of it all is that my move to America last year means that, ten years on, I am now in , more or less, the same building process as I was when I started.

I'd like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank everyone who has been a customer of CAWMC down the years. Roll on the next decade.

I've been giving a lot of thought to the direction in which to take this whole thing and have concluded that podcasting needs to be a part of the mix.

I really believe in the whole concept of podcasting and consider it to still be a massively underutilised medium in business to business communication.

The aim with The CAW Marketing Podcast, for that is what it shall (probably) be named, is to initially introduce myself and also to put forward some ideas that I hope you find useful in your business. Heck, you might even be sufficiently enthused to get in touch!

Right now it's a matter of getting my ducks in a row in terms of all the technical stuff - i.e. getting the mic voicing right, choosing appropriate intro/outro music and other small matters like actually deciding on the content.

The aim is to have something up and running by the beginning of May and then running the podcast on either a bi-weekly or monthly basis, to start with.

More soon.

Blogging has been one of the fastest growing aspects of new media. It is currently one of the biggest nails in the coffin of printed media, because it allows companies, organisations and individuals to post all kinds of news and information in a chronological sequence. Some blogs even include audio and video.

In essence, anyone looking for a public platform can achieve it with a blog. Blogging has liberated the journalistic world far beyond the realms of those working in media. Naturally, the quality varies wildly, but this form of writing has heralded a sea change in communications.

I am happy to go on record as saying that blogging is the single most important development in online communications since the rise of the website.

Think for a moment what it offers you.

I would argue that expensive printed newsletters are now obsolete compared to the immediacy of a blog. The same goes for companies that issue technical bulletins or even press releases. You might still need or want to appear in other media, but if you have trained your customers to use your website as a key information resource, then you are well on your way to being more or less self-sufficient. What’s more, customers are able to read information exactly as you want them to see it, rather than through the filter of a print media sub editor.

Properly deployed, a blog has unlimited potential to add value to your operation. Indeed it is more than feasible that each department in your organisation that needs to interface with customers can have its own blog. So, for example, it is quite possible for technical, marketing and customer services departments to manage their own output and be able to directly communicate with their respective audiences.

It is simple to make blogs secure and password enabled to control who views certain information. This can be invaluable if you need to regularly communicate with a distributor channel, for instance.

I am very keen that clients develop their own blogs and can offer a complete fulfillment service, including all editing and would be happy to discuss any aspect with you on this blog, via email at cawmktcomms@gmail.com or telephone on 01473 356348.

In the next edition of this series I will look at podcasting and will argue that it is still an under exploited medium in the business world.