SPAREATHOUGHT LTD contracted the Munklefish Creative team to develop a revolutionary new idea in charitable giving and Corporate Social Responsibility.

This innovative and exciting project allows businesses and individuals to donate money to charity in a completely new way. Members can create promotional email campaigns using a choice of stylish templates, select who they want to receive the campaign, and then allocate a sum of cash. Now, select upto 5 charities from the list. These will be the potential recipients of your donation.

Finally use the free text area to add a message about how you raised the cash, and even a little self promotion, before pressing the 'Send' button. The system then creates the emails, does some clever sums, and then sends the email to each of your selected contacts. But dont worry, we make sure the emails are sent out at consistent intervals to ensure your emails dont trigger any spam filters.

Each recipient receives a customised email based on the details you created when setting up the campaign. By clicking their unique link they are taken to your special campaign page where they can see the available choice of charities, how many votes each has received and all the details of you and your campaign.

When a recipient selects a charity, their share of your donation is allocated to the chosen charity. With each recipients selection the pie chart is magically updated to represent how your funds are being distributed.

Still wondering how this service can benefit you and your business? Well, the answer is simple. You get to tell your clients, friends and staff, all about your C.S.R strategy and charitable giving. Furthermore, why not use the free text area to add a cheeky bit of advertising or simply just sing youre own praises. Eitherway, you'll be engaging your contacts in a way that will only put you in a favourable light.

The SPAREATHOUGHT.COM website is due to launch later this year, with PREMIUM accounts being charged at just £1000pa. Since the site is currently in its beta testing phase we are looking for new members to register for, and use the site. Any problems reported back to us, will help us improve the site for a greater experience. What do you get in return? Its FREE! Sign-up at SPAREATHOUGHT.COM for a free PREMIUM account and save £1000!

 

Some months back we spotted the tell-tale signs of suited men with clip boards entering and leaving a mysterious doorway just below the 'Fit 2 Dance' shop on Stevenson Square. This was soon followed by a planning application to turn the place into a 'basement wine bar'. "Who wants to sit in a basement and drink wine?"; was our initial thought. Shortly followed by "A wine bar? Isnt that a bit 80's?". 

 

Obviously, we welcome new additions to the bar and culture scene in N4 but were a little suprised at what seemed like such a bad location and concept. After a few weeks the signs above the entrace read something along the lines of "Lease available due to previous applicants backing out"! So it looked like the plans were off. However, there has been a flurry of activity over the last couple of weeks, and a trail of dust foot prints leading in/out of the doorway forming a river delta like suggestion of frantic actvity has been evident. This combined with what appears to be a fish tank at the bottom of the stairs persuaded us to do a little investigating.

 

So delving a little further we were pleasantly suprised to find that indeed a new bar is set to open just across the road from the no solong opened NOHO bar. Evidence that the Northern Quarter of Manchester is fit and healthy and expanding despite 'the recession'.

 

"Manchester’s independent bar scene will get another injection of youth this autumn, with Hula set to open in October, aiming to bring a bit of Tiki charm to Stephenson Square. Inspired by the bars that popped up in 1940s America as servicemen returned from overseas duty loaded with exotic souvenirs and a taste for a cocktail, Tiki will attempt to bring a little tropical nostalgia to this rapidly expanding little extension of the Northern Quarter. ‘Beach – kitch’ is the expression they use, while promising colourful drinks, good time vibes and reggae island sounds.

The 200 capacity venue will sit in the basement of 11 Stevenson Square, a refurbishment conceived and managed by Bernard Carroll, the man responsible for the interiors of many of Manchester’s other top bars, including Panacea, Sugar Lounge and Walrus. It’s meant to look like a beach hut, apparently, with wallpaper inspired by sand and palm trees, a stone fronted bar and many artefacts and trinkets from around the world, as well as a huge tropical fish tank, all aiming to make you feel like you’re a million miles from the wet, grey streets from whence you came.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, cocktails will be the main selling point on the drinks front, with manager Alex Johnson having created a unique menu. The likes of Pirate’s Booty (‘strawberries and watermelon, brought together with a slug of cane spirit overflowing with waves of fruity delight’), Head Shrinker (rum shaken through with coconut water and honey to give an unforgettably fresh experience with an intense punch’) and Sweet Leilana (‘rose petals and coconut rum with a whisper of lychee carried on the breeze’) will no doubt help the punters forget their week at work and relax into the tropical Hula vibe.

Available in huge vessels, intended for sharing, the cocktails sit alongside a drinks menu that offers over 100 varieties of imported rum. Owner Mark Andrew, who also runs Walrus, says, 'We hope that Hula will both compliment and propel forward Manchester’s alternative scene within Stephenson Square. Hula will be the only basement bar in Manchester where you can order a banana daiquiri whilst admiring the tropical fish!'"

Hula will be opening in October 2009.

 

Opening hours will be:

Sunday-Thursday: 5pm - 12am

Friday and Saturday: 5pm – 12am

 

 

The Homebrew Channel is a self-updating homebrew application loader by Team Twiizers which allows users to load homebrew applications without having to run the Twilight Hack every time. Once installed, users can access the channel from the Wii Menu just like any other Wii channel.

It can launch homebrew applications from an SD or SDHC card or via TCP/USB Gecko using Wiiload. You can install the Homebrew Channel as part of the HackMii Installer using the Bannerbomb exploit as suggested on the official website.

 

This is an excellent safe(as far as we know) modification, but it can be a little daunting if you aren't a techy type or your not too convinced you're not going to kill('brick') your Wii console. 

So if that sounds like you, or you have Wii system with the 'System Menu 4.0' or higher, you can use our neat little tool here. We've taken all the tools you need to install the 'Homebrew Channel' put them together into one neat package, and added the 'Homebrew Browser' for an out of the box experience.We've not actually added anything new, we've simply located the various files and placed them in an appropriate directory structure, so that you dont have too.

 

Afterall, working out which bits of software you need, and where to put them is probably the hardest part of this 'hack'.

 

INSTALLATION:

1. Download the installer from here.
2. Expand the archive to your SD card.
3. Ensure the boot.elf file is in the root of your SD card.
4. Put your SD card in your Wii and turn it on.
5. Go into Wii Options --> Data Management --> Channels --> SD Card.
6. A message should appear asking to "load boot.elf".
   • If it freezes or does not appear, download the next .zip file from the Bannerbomb website and start over.
7. The homebrew on your SD card will load. Enjoy!
8. Your system will probably reboot itself.
9. In the Wii Home Screen go to/ select your new 'Homebrew Channel'.
10. Once loaded you will see all thecurrently installed application.
11. Select the 'Homebrew Browser' and start downloading FREE games & apps.

READ THE DISCLAIMER! In the VERY unlikely case your Wii should be bricked by the installer, this will let you know where you stand in regards to Team Twiizers.

 

TROUBLE SHOOTING

Please note that Bannerbomb does not work for everyone at this time.

If your Wii freezes while trying to use Bannerbomb, follow these diagnostics:

• Make sure you're not trying to use the SD Menu on System Menu 4.0 (the little blue SD card button in the lower left).
• Check that you pressed the Channels button in Data Management.
• Make sure that Bannerbomb is the only channel on the SD card.
• Try a different version of Bannerbomb. Most people should be able to use aad1f, but some might need another version.
• Eject the SD card, go into the channels menu, then on SD where it says no SD card is inserted, then insert the card (works for Toshiba 256MB cards and Menu 4.0E at least)

 

 

*IMPORTANT NOTICE*

Using this hack and associated software will likely void your Wii warranty. I / Munklefish provides no guarantee/warranty/assurance/insurance/pestulance or lunch implied or otherwise with regards to this download &/or tutorial. If you use it you do so at your own risk. AT YOUR OWN RISK! OK? 

NOW GO FORTH & WIIify!

 

P.s. There is no real reason why this should cause you to have any problems. The warning above is for legal reasons, but i wouldnt let it put you off. If you use the method above there is an additional option to install a failsafe backup.

 Ever bought a shiny new monitor for you PC only to find its got dead or stuck pixels?

 If you havent then you are actually quite lucky. It seems that for the majority of retailers -and manufacturers- will only exchange a 'faulty' LCD monitor if it has 5 or more dead pixels.

 This means that if even the pixels are in the most annoying location on your screen, in ridiculously obvious colours, grouped together as one mass or even 4-5 randomly located pixels (which is just as annoying if not more so), its essentially 'TUFF!'.

 

 

 

 

So no refund, no exchange, just angry snarls. In my case i got a replacement only to find the dead pixel arrangement was even worse. My lovely new monitor was just a major annoyance, and caused many an argument with suppliers/ retailers, in a bid to get a 'working monitor'.

 

Anyway, the point is.... there is now a potential remedy at hand. UDPixel is a little piece of software that lets you detect and often revive dead and stuck pixels .

 

Firstly it comes with asimple interface that lets you change the screen colour to aid in locating the little buggers(dead pixels).

Then you create a small flashing square on the screen by pressing the 'start' button. Simply drage this square over the dead pixel(s) and leave to simmer for a couple of hours.

Essentially this little square of alternating colour bombards the surrounding pixels with signals to change colour. This in turn keeps nudging the stuck pixels with the aim that it will eventually free them up.

 

Download here: UDPixel
1. Click on "Download UDPixel"
2. Click on "Save File"
3. Double-click the icon "UDPixel22_installer.exe
4. Click on "Run"
5. Uncheck the box "Run at Windows startup UDPixel"
6. Click "Next>"

 

I'm in the process of trying it on my secondary monitor now, and will update you with the results later. In the meantime why not give it a go, since reports seem to suggest it is actually rather effective.

 

SqlBulkCopy is a really powerful & fast way to upload data from one source to another SQL based database.

Most examples are for use when uploading an Excel spreadsheet, however a common requirement is the need to upload a CSV file, yet strangely there is little info on the web. More importantly since we the asp.net FileUpload control doesnt like revealing the full path of the file it is uploading, it becomes near impossible to perform this action as required. This is because we need to know the location of the file inorder to connect to it and read its data.

Here i we show you a nice little work around. It works by first uploading the file to the server, transfering the data from it into the necessary database, before finally deleting the original file from the server.

More...

Manchester's St. Ann's Square may be completely flat - but an Alpine village-style Spring market will be offering mountains of goodies when it opens for business between Wednesday, May 16 to Tuesday, May 29.

The Spring market is the latest Manchester City Council offering for city centre workers, residents, shoppers and tourists.

It will be wallets and purses, not skis and snowboards, as a wide variety of stalls offer a huge selection of arts and crafts, flowers, plants and bulbs - just in time for keen gardeners to add to their displays at home.

Dutch flower man Dirk Van De Wardt will be encouraging shoppers to spruce up their gardens while Lynne Geeson will be selling everything with a fairy theme via Forget-Me-Not-Fairies.

For those with an eye on environmental issues, the Good Bag Co will be selling biodegradable jute bags.

But there will something for everyone with traders ranging from leather goods to jewellery to paintings, plus fashion accessories, speciality foods, toys and gifts.

There will be several new features, including the Dutch Kibbeling Factory. Proprietor Claus Van Der Goot will be selling cooked fish kibbeling, a Dutch favourite of fried white fish pieces served in a special garlic sauce.

The Executive Member for markets, Councillor Paul Murphy, said: "There's no doubt that our specialist markets are proving to be very popular. It's yet another reason to visit the city centre - if you can't find what you're shopping for in Manchester, it probably doesn't exist."

The Spring market will be open between 10am and 6pm each day.

For those of you that dont know what twitter is, its definately one of the following according to Google Definitions:

• chitter: make high-pitched sounds, as of birds
• chirrup: a series of chirps
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
• a succession of chirps as uttered by birds; to utter a succession of bird's chirps; (of a person) to talk in an excited or nervous manner
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/twitter
• twittery - that twitters
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/twittery
• twittering - twitters fundamental question is “what are you doing?” This is can be in its most simplistic for a one or two word answer, but when developed this is a tool that lends itself to developing understanding and potential starting collaboration.
  edorigami.edublogs.org/2007/11/05/blooms-digital-taxonomy/

 

If you're still not sure which one of the above we are likely to be talking about, the following top twitter tools recommendations will not be of much use to you at the present time.

 

Productivity Tools

 

PowerTwitter.Me

This new Firefox add-on allows you to view video & music embedded in Twitter post (AKA Tweets),  view & share images, search and track tweets, and see whats currently popular. furthermore you can also do cool stuff like Facebook updates, expanded urls, hashtags and peek.

Platform: Firefox. Chrome & Safari coming soon.

Twitter: @powertwitter

 

TwitterTools

Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Twitter Tools integrates with Twitter by giving you the following functionality:

* Archive your Twitter tweets (downloaded every 10 minutes)

* Create a blog post from each of your tweets

* Create a daily or weekly digest post of your tweets

* Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post

* Post a tweet from your sidebar

* Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens

* Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

Platform: Wordpress

More...

Just a very quick post to proudly announce that we have secured a major deal with Spareathough Limited. Munklefish will be working with this charitable company to build a solution to allow companies to responsibly administer their charitable donations. The main focus of the site will be in allowing corporates / businesses to allocate funds to charity, but giving their clients &/or staff the choice of where their individual share is donated.

More details will be announced soon.

Follow our 'SpareAThought' twitter updates here

The good thing about Twitter the micro-blogging service is that you get to connect with a wide range of people working and surfing in a wider circle than your own. As a result you can often be bombarded with a hourde of links to websites and online stuff that people think is useful, interesting, funny, or just pointless. Balsamiq Mockups is one of those rareish beasts that firmly belong in the 'useful' category.

 

Balsamiq Mockups is an Adobe AIR application that you can use to quickly build UI mockups for your website / software etc. With simple drag and drops you can quickly create some neat prototypes. Whilst this certainly isnt the first piece of software to help you do this is does have a fairly unique selling point. As far as i am aware Balsamiq is the only piece of software that deliberately makes your design mockups look like they were hand drawn.

 

Ever had a client who couldnt get past a small issue to see the bigger more important issue?  This sketch like apearance allows the viewer to use more of their imagination, something I think is a subtle, yet powerful advantage. By presenting the mockups in a more traditional 'hand-drawnesque' manner it allows the client -possibly even your manager- to see the mockups as a 'rough & ready' solution, and to focus on the more important issues such as functionality & applications design.

 

Admittedly, this software does, at first glance look a little basic and child-like. This, for the reasons above, is why its so good and why i like it so much. It also allows a little humour to enter the workplace on those dull busy busy days via its use of the Comic Sans MS font. Which again just adds to the charm of the mockups you create.

The navigation / controls are all drag and drop from the scrollable categorised topbar. For super-fast selection, use the quick add features: just type a couple of characters from the control or icon name and bam! select from the list of suggestions, and your control will be added in no time. Searching for an icon? Same technique! Try it and you'll be hooked!

 

When you select one or more UI controls, you’ll see a faint Property Inspector show up. It contains context-sensitive options for the selected controls. If you don’t need it, simply ignore it (it will go away when it needs to), but if you do, just move your mouse over it to use it. And if it's in your way, move it! Mockups will remember where you left it.

 

Another neat little feature is that Mockups uses 'human readable format called BMML (a flavor of XML)' so it's easy to duplicate a mockup and 'mash it up' with other applications. If you really wanted you could even write some scripts to transform BMML into actual code! Potentially very Useful!

 

Balsamiq Mockups isnt going to be to everyones liking, nor do i envisage it ever taking a significant share of the corporate office market. However for the smaller independant creative companies such as ourselves at Munklefish Web Development and other inhabitants of Manchester's Creative District, i see this being a very useful tool.

 

RATING: 8/10

 

 

Tags: BalsamiqMockups, UI Design, UI Prototype, Software, Design

I was recently asked to configure a site to redirect automatically from HTTP to HTTPS. By this I mean when the user types in http://www.yourdomain.com/* the browser will automatically redirect to https://www.yourdomain.com/*. This is commonly done via server sides coding such as asp or php. But this isnt the most efficient or robust way to deal with the issue.

The following is details how you can achieve the desired result directly on a Windows Server machine with IIS. You may also be interested in our previous post on Redirecting (301) to no-www Class B specification in IIS as it involves a similar process.

Select or create your website as normal. Now open the properties window and select the TCP port input box. Change this from the default port '80' to another externally accessible port such as '88'. The SSL port should be set to the default '443'.

Once youve done this open the 'Directory Security' tab > 'Secure Communications' > Edit. Select the 'Require secure channel'  and 'Require 128-bit encryption' check boxes. Now restart the website from the 'Application server' window.

Try browsing to your site using http and the port you changed earlier http://www.yourdomain.com:88, and you should be presented with a "The page must be viewed over a secure channel" system page. However access the site via the secure socket and it should work fine eg https://www.yourdomain.com.

If this is not the case then you need to check your settings. Is the port you selected accessible via the web?

The next step essentially takes care of the redirection from http to https. Create a new IIS website by right-clicking on New > Web site > Click Next and give the website a name such as "Redirect to SSL".

Click Next... For TCP port, choose port 80, the default HTTP port.

For path, point it to c:\inetpub\wwwroot. (It doesn't really matter as we'll be changing this in a minute.) Click Next... Give it Read permissions.

Click Next... Finish... to create the website.

Right-click, properties on the new website. Select the 'Home Directory' tab.

Select "The content for this resource should come from:" to "A redirection to a URL". In the "Redirect to:" input box, enter https://www.yourdomain.com.

You can also optionally select "A permanent redirection for this resource", which will cause bookmarks to update to the new URL. DO NOT select "The exact URL entered above" or "A directory below URL entered", as this will stop the redirection from working properly.

Restart the website.

Now browse to http://www.yourdomain.com and you'll be redirected to the site via the Secure SSL. Note that the path portion of the URL is preserved and only the protocol and server are modified. So http://www.yourdomain.com/* will redirect to https://www.yourdomain.com/* .

*TIP* You can combine this method with Redirecting (301) to no-www Class B specification in IIS to create a fully featured redirect. For example http://www.yourdomain.com/* will be redirected to https://yourdomain.com or any combination of the four (http, https, www, no-www)

Tags: http://, https://, IIS, Windows Server, redirect, redirection, SSL, TCP