December 2020 – Direction Forward

New website for C3 Post Trade

We are proud to present the website for C3 Post Trade, with huge thanks to Dan Buckley at Thumbcrumble for creative and design.

C3 Post Trade is an all-in-one exceptions solution – all in one place, all the time, in all locations. They offer an intuitive private cloud platform that enables handling of all post-trade exceptions on one user-friendly dashboard, so you can control operations, increase efficiency, reduce risk and scale your business with ease.

This site features modern design and strong usability, both deeply integrated with C3 Post Trade’s new branding. The site features particles animation on the homepage, layered gradient headers, and an integrated form for platform demo requests. It has a responsive design across devices and screen sizes, and includes a full CMS and Google Analytics, as with all our sites.

Visit the site at c3posttrade.com

We are pleased to present the new online store for Electric Gallery.

Electric is a leading art destination stocking modern, contemporary works from leading and emerging artists, showcasing a mix of limited edition prints, original works and photography. They have both an online store as well as a new gallery in South Woodford, London.

We were tasked with creating a customised site to best showcase the artwork and artists, which includes an easily manageable CMS – so Electric can update their collections. The Shopify platform was selected as an obvious answer to a reliable ecommerce solution.

Integrated forms for subscriptions, stock enquiries and newsletter are built in. The shop is fully responsive design across devices and screen sizes. And the products, pricing, tax, orders and shipping can all be fully managed in-house. There is also an API integration to allow automatic syncing of product details from Electric’s CRM, Artlogic.

You can see the site here: electricgallery.co.uk

Apple’s new Arm-based M1 Processor outdoes Intel’s Core Processor

Last month, Apple announced the launch of MacBooks with the new Apple Silicon, which use the new Arm-based M1 processors. It has since been claimed that the new M1 chips surpass Intel’s equivalent processor.

The M1 processor has an eight-core microprocessor alongside eight more cores for graphics processing, and is a system on a chip (SoC). This means it combines the processors, input/output, memory and security features all on one chip, which is pretty impressive! The cores are split between high-efficiency parts, ones to preserve battery power and others for high-performance.

The M1 is the first personal computer chip built using 5-nanometer process technology and is packed with 16 billion transistors; the most Apple has ever put into a chip. Apple claims this is the world’s fastest processor and says the M1 delivers up to 3.5x faster CPU performance, up to 6x faster GPU performance, and up to 15x faster machine learning.

Apple is switching over its Macs from Intel chips to the M1; potentially giving it a significant advantage when buyers compare battery life and speeds with Windows-based PCs. Recently MacBook Airs with the M1 chips have been released and are claimed to have the longest battery life, with up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing and up to 18 hours of video playback.

Please ontact us for information on MacBook’s with the new Arm-based M1 processor – as an Apple Partner we receive discounts and offers.

Presenting the new website for Tons of Help at Christmas, tonsofhelp.com.

Earlier this year, The Jack and Ada Beattie Foundation launched Tons of Help to lend a helping hand to those suffering in this time of crisis – for people and households currently struggling to pay for essentials such as bills, food and rent. To end the year, The Jack and Ada Beattie Foundation have decided that over the 12 days of Christmas, they will give at least 10 grants of £100 each day.

We are proud to have built the new seasonal campaign website for Tons of Help at Christmas, in partnership with Metric. The site features an animated narrative approach on the homepage, with entirely original animations and custom parallax implementation As with all our sites, responsive design ensures the site is consistent across all devices and screen sizes, and it includes a CMS and Google Analytics.

Find our more about Tons of Help at Christmas here: tonsofhelp.com

Microsoft is making updates to Teams to integrate more with SharePoint.

The new features make collaborations much easier. You can bring lists, libraries and pages from SharePoint into Teams as a tab, with the new Add Team button. You can navigate easily to documents via the Files tab, and you will be able to change your Homepage to suit your needs.

Users can also pin any page, document or news shared on Teams to SharePoint. To do this, click the + button in a channel and choose SharePoint to pin the content. Shared items can also be pinned as a separate tab in the Teams channel. There is also a new Recommended section within the SharePoint tab in Teams. This feature shows relevant content from the users SharePoint site to easily pin to channels.

The SharePoint pages app in Teams has also been improved. Now users can add any page from a SharePoint site link, and then paste the URL of the page or news post to add it as a tab.

To read more about these features, click here.

We are proud to present the new website for Moravia Yachting – developed in collaboration with our creative partner, Your Brand Matters, who are responsible for the creative, branding and design.

Moravia Yachting is the charter and yacht sales arm of the Hill Robinson Group. The depth of expertise and knowledge of their collective team is second to none – utilising industry-leading knowledge they are able to ensure clients receive the information needed to choose the perfect, luxury yacht.

This site features modern design and strong usability, both deeply integrated with Moravia’s new branding. The focus of this site is on delivering key information regarding yachts for charter and sale, and all details are easily editable within the full CMS. We have also ensured that content and images dynamically adjust to cater for different devices and sizes – e.g. a landscape photo of a yacht at sea may be cropped on portrait mobile devices, therefore there are options in the CMS to provide suitable alternatives

There are integrated forms for enquiries for different sales channels, which are automatically delivered to the correct teams at Moravia. There is an integrated sign up form in the footer of each page which automatically integrates with Mailchimp. And localised contact information is dynamically displayed (e.g. EU vs US). It also includes Google Analytics, as with all our sites.

Visit the site here:

We are pleased to show our work developing the Lamassu Capital website, which can be found at lamassu-capital.com. This was a very interesting project to work on, as the fruition involves multiple interlinking systems.

Lamassu Capital, previously Levendi Capital, are an independent investment and advisory firm, specialising in derivative solutions and structured products. They wanted to replace their old static information-only website with a new site featuring a completely updated look and focusing on the details of their product offerings. They also wanted to try to make use of the dynamic feed of financial data that they have access to.

We built an integration with the Investment Product Research (investmentproductresearch.com) API, which gives comprehensive analysis on structured financial products, to update the products on Lamassu Capital website in realtime. Each time a visitor loads the Lamassu Capital site, it fetches the latest data from the API and presents it on the website. This is combined with more descriptive information controlled by the Lamassu Capital website CMS, which we also built.

Further to this, we also developed a custom brochure generation system, which produces a beautifully presented PDF document for each product upon the user’s request – incorporating this realtime data amongst description of the product as well as the required compliance information. Again, in combination with the website CMS.

Visitors to the site complete a form to request a brochure, their details are delivered into Lamassu Capital’s CRM automatically, and an email is sent to the visitor with a download for the brochure as well as further applicable details and compliance documents (eg Key Information Document).

The website also features:
• A further form for enquiring about new investments, which is also automatically delivered to the CRM.
• An additional form to report on existing investments, which is delivered to their distribution partner, Global Wealth Management Solutions (globalwms.com).
• Fulfilment of compliance requirements with a pop-up on first entering the site detailing terms of use which visitors must engage with in order to enter, as well as policies covered on the site itself and editable in the CMS.
• GDPR compliance is also achieved in said policies and on all forms.

This project developed as it progressed, as aspirations grew as we were able to successfully achieve various aspects which the client had initially thought beyond scope/capability of a ‘first phase’ of development.

We designed and built this site along with its underlying systems with our partners Metric London, and we are extremely grateful for their invaluable input.

View the site here: lamassu-capital.com

First MacBook Air with Apple’s Arm-based M1 processor released

Apple has announced the launch of its 2020 MacBook Air.

The 2020 MacBook Air is the first MacBook Air to be powered by Apple’s new M1 processor. Apple claimed that with the new M1 processor, this MacBook Air is faster than “98%of PC laptops sold in the last year”, although some disagree. It also storms ahead of the earlier MacBook Air released this year in performance, being 3.5x faster and with up to 5x faster graphics performance, 9x faster machine learning workloads, and 2x faster SSD performance.

It is also claimed that the new MacBook Air has the longest battery life, with up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing and up to 18 hours of video playback. The design is very similar to the older models and has the same 720p camera as its predecessor, although it is said to deliver better results due to the M1’s new image signal processor (ISP), which should improve noise reduction, dynamic range, auto white balance, and face detection.

The new MacBook Air starts at the same price as previous models at £999 excluding VAT and includes 256GB of storage, as well as 8GB of memory. The higher model with a eight-core GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) – instead of seven-core GPU and 512GB of storage – starts from £1,249. Unlike other machines, there is no fan inside the MacBook air, so it should run noiselessly, however it is still to be seen if overheating becomes a problem.

The new MacBook Air is available to order now, please contact us for prices and discounts as we are an Apple Partner.

Apple announces App Store Small Business Program

Apple has announced a new initiative that reduces its App Store commission to 15 percent for small businesses earning up to $1 million per year, down from its current 30 percent. The new rate, Cupertino California, will come into effect on January 1st, 2021.

Comprehensive details of what is required will be released in early December, however the essentials of the program’s criteria are already noted:

Existing publishers who made up to $1 million in 2020 for all of their apps, as well as publishers new to the App Store, can qualify for the program and the reduced commission.
Publishers who surpass the $1 million threshold will be charged the standard commission rate for the remainder of the year.
If a developer’s business falls below the $1 million threshold in a future calendar year, they can requalify for the 15 percent commission the year after.

This is one of the most substantial changes to how services and sellers on the App Store can earn money. In 2019, the App Store generated an estimated $50 billion in revenue, with 70 percent of app sales going to publishers. Apple itself is said to have generated about $15 billion in revenue. An estimated 98% of publishers will be eligible for the new programme, however these publishers are claimed to make up just 5 percent of the App Store’s revenue.

Apple faced bad press this year, many of it focused on Apple’s 30% cut of all paid app sales and in-app purchases – and the many rules it imposes on publishers before it grants entry into the App Store. For example, the European antitrust investigation and big app makers such as Spotify, Tile and Match criticised Apple for exerting potentially monopolistic control over the iOS marketplace.

It is evident Apple’s relationship with publishers is on much shakier ground now than in years past, and this new commission reduction may very well help repair it.

Monthly Archives: December 2020

New website for C3 Post Trade

New online store for Electric Gallery

Apple’s new Arm-based M1 Processor outdoes Intel’s Core Processor

Website for Tons of Help at Christmas

Teams to integrate more with SharePoint

New website for Moravia Yachting

Website for Lamassu Capital

First MacBook Air with Apple’s Arm-based M1 processor released

Apple announces App Store Small Business Program