As a buyer, I think PayPal offers a great service - making it so so easy to get those latest gadgets I need, without even thinking about it, or having to dig out my credit card from wherever I put it...

As a seller, I'm not so sure.

Paypal advertise on their website that they Accept payments globally, safely and easily

Starting at the end, we have always found PayPal to be hard work to deal with - sending email to them is completely pointless - as you'll generally get back a reply something like this:

Dear ....,

 

Thank you for contacting us in relation to the status of your Buyer Complaint (XXagent to insert case IDXX). We can confirm that (XXagent to insert brief summaryXX).

 

It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing PayPal.

 

Sincerely,

 

.....

- This has been copied word for word from the last email we recieved from PayPal - and was the 6th in a series of more and more non-sensical emails for this case. (One of the previous emails had advice which we presume related to somone elses case - it certainly wasn't relevant for ours!)

So as far as we are concerned, the easily claim is an outright lie.

Moving on then, we get to the safely claim.

PayPal offers NO protection to sellers of non physical products and services

What this means, is that unless you have shipped a physical item, to the PayPal confirmed registered address (using an approved tracked delivery service) then you have no protection at all against fraudulent transactions / charge backs.

So anyone that is providing an online service using PayPal for charging customers (and it really does cost money to provide these services) has no gurantee that they will actually recieved the funds from PayPal, even when PayPal has instructed them that the funds have been transferred...

So, more acurately, I think PayPal's strapline should be:

Accept payments globally, safely (for PayPal not you!) and with extreme difficulty!

If like me you like your sites to be valid HTML then you may have been somewhat frustrated to discover that the code supplied by youtube to embed a video into a page is not valid HTML!

Fear not though, here is the solution, the code below will embed the video and validate.

Note, you must use the url supplied in the embed code, and the not the page's url.

As viral marketing campaigns go, I doubt this latest offer from Diesel will be bettered.  They say sex sells, well, if that's the case then they'll probably be preparing themselves for their best year ever.

All in all, a genius advert but don't expect to see this one during Coronation Street's commercial break.

AEGON Scottish Equitable asked Gencia to produce a viral quiz game to promote the launch of their new Income for Life plan.

With only a small budget, we produced a slick looking Flash based quiz game with a Formula 1 racing theme.

Henderson Rowe Limited is an investment management firm working directly with discretionary clients. They wanted a  clean, professional style for their new website.

They didn't have a budget for bespoke photography so we used some great London cityscape shots to theme the site and add some visual interest.

View the new site at: www.hendersonrowe.com

Gencia provide many and varied bespoke creative and technical solutions to suit the unique requirements of each of our clients. This post outlines the logical step-by-step process that we use to define the scope of a small to medium size development project.

At the beginning of the  process the client usually has one or more objectives in mind and a specific requirement, such as the development of a website. At this point the detail of the project has not yet been defined but, naturally the client wants to know what the solution will cost before they commit to the work. This creates a dilemma because it is usually not possible to accurately price the work without first completing a large proportion of it – namely the technical specification – which is the part of the project that informs the man hours and costs for development.

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It's official, Google and Flash are now friends. Google recently announced the introduction of an algorithm which will crawl your SWF files and index the text and links within.

No doubt many web designers who are partial to Flash will find their jobs will be made somewhat easier as they can begin to build sites safe in the knowledge that they can be picked up by the spiders, though the question for me, as a web developer with an SEO interest, is will the Google spiders find Flash embedded with SWFObject or FlashObject?

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If you're involved in SEO, or have the Google Toolbar installed in your browser, chances are you'll have come across Google PageRank.

It's basically a score for your website out of 10 based upon how important Google think you're page is in the whole scheme of interweb searchery.
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We recently created a new website for Gardner Berke

They are a traditional law firm based in Manchester. They're also two great guys who really enjoy helping people and I have to admit they have helped the Gencia team out with the odd driving related 'issue' with great success. I can't recommend them highly enough.

This is a story from their website which I had to steal for our blog because it makes me chuckle every time I read it:-

Two British patrol officers from North Berwick, east of Edinburgh, were involved in an unusual incident, while checking for speeding motorists on the A1 Great North Road.

If it’s produced well the answer is probably yes but there are a few things to consider before you go ahead with your first big budget Hollywood production.
 
I’m a big fan of video content on the web because it’s a great way to communicate lots of information and it doesn’t require any effort on the part of the viewer. Very few of the visitors to your website will take the time to carefully read long pages of text and understand the content. At best they will skim over the homepage in order to get the gist of whether they’ve arrived at the right place and if you’re offering what they’re looking for. It often pays to be repetitive with key messages in your copy and to use them in headings and bullet points. But what if you have a really complex message to get across that takes paragraph after paragraph of wordy copy to deliver? The answer could be a well executed video.
 
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