ESP Projects Renews ISO Accreditations

As you will have noticed, ESP Projects has been posting regular content relating to GDPR (General Data Protection). Which comes into force in May 2018. Recently, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has released new content aimed at charities. Adding to the ever-growing list of resources on its website. The documentation has been added to the Small Business advice and guidance section.

In a previous article, S.O.L.I.D Principles are mentioned but offers no further explanation to what they are. Worry not, for this article aims to cover what they are and what makes them so wonderful.

S.O.L.I.D Principles are an acronym for a design pattern that is adopted in computer science. Whose aim is to make the development of software systems more readable, flexible and easier to maintain in the long run. While they apply to any object orientated language, they can also be heavily utilised in agile methodologies.

What is Office 365? 

It essentially began as an online version of the collaborative Microsoft Exchange solution, which enables organisations to share email, calendar appointments and contacts with other staff members. There are now lots of other useful services thrown into Office 365 including Instant Messaging, voice & video calling and a website creation tool. Specifically, you get:

When you put a logo in an email you only need it to be a few centimetres high. Similarly, when you visit a website, you want images to appear quickly and not have to wait for them to download. You need smaller images both ‘on the page’ and in terms of ‘file size’. This is where image compression comes in.

What is image compression?

When printers and graphic designers create an image for you, it is very high resolution and huge in size (usually >2Mb), so that they can print in top quality and use the same image in any medium, from a letterhead to a 50-foot high projection.When these files get sent through the web, whether in an email or on a website, they need to be made smaller i.e. compressed.
Image compression makes the image size on the page and the depth and clarity of colour smaller, with no visible loss of quality.

With an increasingly small range of funds available, Charities, often overworked in this age of austerity, are being forced to work harder for the grants and donations they need to keep ticking. Digital marketing for charities hasn’t always been easy, but now, more than ever before, it is an essential task.  Publicity, positive image and getting a message across are all getting more difficult to achieve in an ever more competitive environment, with different charities online vying for attention.

It’s no secret that many of ESP Projects clients are charities and we’ll try to help them out wherever possible and however we can.   Support Dogs is an excellent cause, and we were delighted to hear that one of their dogs, Azerley, is in a shortlist of four for the Crufts Friends for Life award.

Azerley and Support Dogs will be featured on Channel 4 throughout Crufts (March 10-13) and the winner will be decided by public vote.   There is a lovely video about the difference Azerley is making to the life of one little boy, Cohen, here

Last week ESP Projects were at SheffEx, Sheffield’s annual business exhibition held at Pond’s Forge. We have visited before, but this was our first time to exhibit. It was definitely a positive experience but perhaps not for the obvious reasons. What was interesting speaking with other stall-holders at SheffEx is that, for many of them, the main benefit of attending these events is not to make sales to visitors, but to swap notes and ideas (and possibly do business) with the other companies and organisations in attendance. It was really interesting to meet people from other businesses in the region and it is striking how much potential there is for these local companies to support one another.

Microsoft Edge is the new browser coming bundled with Windows 10, being very similar to internet explorer but with new and improved features. Microsoft Edge now uses an extension system, much like rival Internet browsers Firefox and Chrome. It is now streamlined to be much faster than internet explorer.

Because this new browser has been completely rebuilt in a new engine, this browser no longer supports plug-ins such as active x. Internet Explorer is not being gotten rid of entirely. It will still exist as there will be a need for compatibility with older technology.