Conferenceitis
When I were a lad web design didn’t exist. Well, it sort of did, but it consisted of programmers wrapping an <H1> in <FONT COLOR=RED> or, if they were really creative, using <BLINK> or <MARQUEE>. You crazy kids have no idea just how cool that was at the time.
Now there are web design conferences every month, in every corner of the world (almost) and, coming soon, a web conference which exists only online. There are even unconferences, like the upcoming BarCamp London. Who’d have thought it?
I don’t have the cash to fly around the globe to the big ones like SXSWi, although I did go to RailsConf in Berlin last year and I’d really like to be going to RubyFringe (just how cool is that website?) in July. Luckily, the UK, and in particular London, has more than it’s fair share, so I’m taking full advantage in the coming weeks:
FreeAgent is an official sponsor of both The Highland Fling and Future of Web Design this year, so we’ll all be there at both events, hunting down freelancers and trying to spread the word.
Posted by Olly on April 2, 2008 at 8:02 am in @media, fowa, news, thehighlandfling
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FreeAgent Universal
It’s been a while coming but we finally launched FreeAgent Universal at the end of last week.
But what is it?
FreeAgent is an online accounting and small business management service that simplifies the running of your freelance, contractor or consultancy business by effortlessly handling client and project management, invoices, bank accounts and tax.
Up until now, FreeAgent has only been available for UK Sole Traders, Partnerships and Limited Companies. The Universal version changes all that so now companies across the globe can start using FreeAgent to organise their business finances.
Universal supports configurable Sales Tax and VAT/GST and allows this to be reported on. What it doesn’t yet have is the full business and personal tax capabilities of the UK version (writing bespoke accounting engines for each country is no easy task as you might imagine!), but this is something we’ll be rolling out in different countries over the coming months, probably starting with one of Ireland, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.
Technology
This release gave us the perfect opportunity to upgrade our server hardware and we’re now in the right position to be able scale with demand reasonably effortlessly. I’ll be delighted when we have to test this out ;-)
We’ve also moved our main domain from freeagentcentral.co.uk to freeagentcentral.com to reflect our new ‘global’ status, although .co.uk will remain active for the time being.
If you’re a freelancer, contractor or consultant running a small business and you haven’t yet tried FreeAgent out, then head on over and sign up for a 30-day free trial. Your data is safe and secure and you can cancel whenever you like.
We reckon it’s the easiest way to organise your business finances and, to paraphrase one of our happy users, “it will make you feel smart, not stupid, about your company’s finances.”
Posted by Olly on February 20, 2008 at 9:49 am in freeagent, freeagentcentral, news
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Work in progress
I’ve started work on tidying up lylo.co.uk. Rather than spend weeks getting it all in order, I’ve decided to just push things out as and when I complete them. Note how that cunningly introduces a waiver for all the bugs and validation issues I’ve no doubt let loose this evening :-)
So, a lot of content has been removed for now but I’ll be incrementally updating the site as and when over the coming weeks (i.e. months).
Posted by Olly on January 4, 2008 at 10:40 pm in news
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About 2007
*Blows dust off blog*
Happy New Year, reader!
Here’s some music I loved in 2007 (which wasn’t necessarily released in 2007)
- Brett Anderson - Brett Anderson
- Chromeo - Fancy Footwork
- Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
- Róisín Murphy - Overpowered
- The Coral - Roots and Echoes
- Thurston Moore - Trees Outside The Academy
- Grantura - Waves
- Radiohead - In Rainbows
- Hot Chip - DJ Kicks
- Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
- Tommy Guerrero - From The Soil To The Soul
- Larry Levan Live At The Paradise Garage (Strut)
- Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther
- Cara Dillon - After the Morning
- Sigur Rós - Agaetis Byrjun
Fairly ordinary, I think.
I clearly haven’t spent enough time buying/borrowing music this year and I have no doubt that I’ll have even less time in 2008. Time keeps speeding up. I’m starting to see why most people (especially parents) just listen to whatever music features in the discount shelf in Sainsbury’s, and why Heart FM is so popular…
Posted by Olly on January 3, 2008 at 4:09 pm in music, news
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Turn off the lights
HSBC, the worlds fourth richest company (with an incomprehensible 1.8 trillion dollars in assets), is making the news by boasting about their newly-acquired eco-credentials. It dawned on them last year that they could boost their profits by automatically switching off desktop computers at night, which is a fantastic move (perhaps they could open source the software?), but it does makes me wonder when they’ll realise that switching off the lights at their 1-million-square-foot, 42-story, Canary Wharf skyscraper might be good for the planet (not to mention their bulging assets) too?
Posted by Olly on July 17, 2007 at 8:00 am in environment, london, news
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