We are very proud to announce the forthcoming launch of Flaunt - a new service designed, developed and managed by Talking Pixels, that will enable professional photographers, artists and designers to showcase their work online - designing, building and managing their own portfolio website.

Pre-register to be updated
when the service is launched.

We have just launched our first site using Indexhibit, a simple content management tool which is ideal for creating simple image-based portfolio websites.

The site is for Kevin Plumb, a theatrical designer, sculpture, cenografia who works in Portugal and the UK.

We were impressed with how easy it was to create and customise the site using Indexhibit, and the CMS tools are simple enough for Kevin to use to update the site himself.

www.kevinplumb.com

Customization of Shopify has always been something I’ve wanted Talking Pixels to get it’s teeth into, and finally we have! Website to follow shortly, but here are some thoughts that the process has triggered…

Talking Pixels have always excelled at, and enjoyed, building custom e-commerce sites (particularly since Ruby on Rails came along). However, I’ve always been concerned about the large investment involved in building a really good e-commerce site from scratch, even with Rails. It’s fine for businesses who already have a reliable turnover, where the cost of building a solution from scratch is offset by the value of having features built around their (often rapidly changing) business needs. However, many e-commerce business ideas are more experimental, unpredictable, and started on a shoe-string. While in theory the web is ideal for this, the realisation of such ideas is often, let’s just say - ‘underwhelming’.

Trying out a business idea in the real world (well, real-virtual at least), while not having to invest large sums of time and money into software, is liberating, democratic and exciting. The idea that start-ups could be selling products to the world in a matter of days, even hours, through a professional looking and operating web shop,
is a revolution.

Services like Shopify allows business to try the market, selling real products, without busting the bank in the process. I’m sure market research still has it’s place, however, when the cost of deployment is so low, I have to wonder whether it still has such importance.

Of course, the idea behind Shopify isn’t new. In the dotcom days, I was involved in the development of a conceptually similar service for a UK-based payment processor. However, three things were wrong, in my opinion - firstly, the market wasn’t ready for it. Not enough people ‘got’ e-commerce. Secondly, web interfaces were rudimentary and painfully slow to use. The customisation options were either highly limited, badly designed or both. Thirdly, online marketing was a just a nipper. Tools such as Google Adwords and Campaign Monitor didn’t exist. And even if they had, few people would have grasped their potential.

I still believe customized solutions are the way forward, if you have capital to invest and a tried and tested business model. But services like Shopify are very usable for retailers who are just getting started.

So, I’ll end on a plug - if you’re looking for a customized Shopify site and you like the look of our work, we’d love to help. If you have grown out of your shopping cart, we’d also love
to help  : )

Btw. we’re based in Clerkenwell / Farringdon, London, UK if you’re looking for someone to design your Shopify site.

We’re excited to announce the launch of our first self-initiated project - Talks & Lectures For Londoners. The concept is simple - a site which provides a comprehensive, up-to-date and highly searchable listing of the large number of talks and lectures happening in the London area.

Visit the site at: talks.forlondoners.com

It’s still very much a beta site - currently with events only from the ICA, RSA and LSE. The list should grow quickly, but hopefully it’s already a useful resource.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the site. Please do send any to:
feedback@forlondoners.com

A Friday afternoon thought:

Everyone seems to have gone rather GTD (Getting Things Done) crazy. The fact that everyone is writing GTD software and blogging about it, surely indicates one of two things:

1. It really works and everyone’s got lots of time on their hands
or…
2. People are spending loads of time finding ways to avoiding actually employing the GTD methodology, whilst convincing themselves GTD is in the forefront of their mind … i.e. they are procrastinating

Can anyone clarify this for me?