A boom in Internet businesses could open hundreds of thousands of jobs in Britain within five years, a Google chief has claimed.

Philipp Schindler, the London based vice-president of Google Europe, predicted that despite the economic downturn 365,000 jobs could be on the cards by 2015 as more online firms emerge and grow.

Daily Mail article

Could new Internet businesses such as e-commerce websites start a new wave of employment in the UK, generating thousands of new jobs based around these businesses?

This is what Philipp Schindler, the London based vise-president of Google Europe seems to be suggesting.

If you’re starting up an e-commerce website or would like to do so and need some advice, feel free to contact us for advice and a quote on how much it would cost to get your new e-commerce website or idea off the ground!

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Although we are not offering dedicated Chromercise instruction here at Rapid Web, we are beginning to enforce these as part of our regular health and safety routine. If you would like further advice on these procedures, please see the relevant Chromercise documentation.

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In other completely unrelated news, Google have released a new motion control system, akin to the Wii’s controllers, Xbox connect and the PlayStation Move system. It is called ‘Google Motion’ and as per the majority of new Google products, it is currently considered beta. Take a look at the awesome video demonstrating Google Motion beta and its advanced universal gesture recognition system below.

Looks very impressive. We’ve already started making use of the new system for our internal development meetings. It both increases productivity and also gives us all a decent workout.

If you have any awesome April Fools’ jokes you’ve played this year on your website or in your workplace, feel free to put them in the comments. I’d be interested to hear what pranks have been played!

In terms of today’s customer service, as always, feel free to contact us. If you’d like to get yourself in on the April Fools’ day jokes and give your website an unexpected face-lift, feel free to give us a call.

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Although Sporting Kicks have been in business for many years, they came to Rapid Web for a fully new e-commerce website and redesign. We took their existing e-commerce solution and converted it to a completely new  and bespoke e-commerce system. To get to this solution, we offered consultation with Sporting Kicks regarding their existing web business and the best ways to move it forward.

Their database was migrated to a new format and integrated into our new solution. As part of this overhaul, many new features were added to the e-commerce experience. Below is a list of just some of the special features of the new Sporting Kicks website.

• Integration into Amazon Marketplace
• Automatic production of a dynamic Google Shopping Feed
• Developing custom areas to include customisable featured products
• Multiple payment options for the customer, including Debit/Credit card payments (via Moneybookers), Google Checkout and PayPal
• Category specific filtering options to allow the user to easily browse the entire product catalogue

If you’re interested in seeing what we can do for your e-commerce business, please do get in contact!

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There have been a crazy amount of April Fools’ jokes flying across the Internet today. Here are a few of the best from some of the biggest names.

Google Animal Translate

Google have supposedly released an ever so sneaky version of Google Translate that can translate animal noises in to English! This is a mobile application, suprisingly for the Android platform and is (not) available in the Android App Store.

Take a look at the video below or visit the ‘official’ Google Animal Translate application.

Firebox Do It Yourself Carbon Freezing Kit

Firebox is heavily known for its extravagant and crazy gadgets and gizmos. However, this one is quite a kicker – take a look at Firebox’s DIY Carbon Freezing Kit.

‘The freezing process itself is simple: just remove your clothes, lie down in the chamber, set the timer and…well, the next thing you know it’ll be 2040.’

Google goes into Nuclear Power Production

As part of a green initiative by Google, they intend to start producing super efficient nuclear power plants as soon as possible via a newly acquired company. Surely you will be able to Google Search the nuclear isotopes soon enough.

‘Google has acquired a company that has created a new process for highly efficient isotope separation, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. The primary use of this technology, say experts we’ve spoken with, is uranium enrichment.

Enriched uranium is a necessary ingredient in the creation of nuclear energy, and one source we’ve spoken with at Google says that this is part of the Google Green Initiative. The company will use the new technology to enable it to design and possibly build small, mobile and highly efficient nuclear power generators. “Google has already begun building an enrichment plant,” says a high ranking IAEA source.’

Sourced from an ‘exclusive’ TechCrunch article.

ThinkGeek iCade – An Arcade Holder for the iPad

In a bit of funny move from ThinkGeek, they have released a product called the iCade, which is effectively and arcade machine shaped holder for the new Apple iPad. Over recent product releases include:

• moodINQ – A programmable electronic Tattoo system
• Tell Me Your Secrets Bear – A cuddly bear which had a microphone and camera allowing parents to spy on their children and their secrets.
• Canned Unicorn Meat – Which is… well, exactly what it says on the tin, apparently.

Plenty more…

It is still April Fools’ Day here and as such there are plenty more April Fools’ Day jokes and pranks going on worldwide on the Internet. If and when we find more hilarious pranks, we’ll be sure to keep you up to date.

• Google renames to Topeka – ‘Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.’
• Google Annotation Gallery – GAG is a open source libary for Java that allows programmers to easily express their emotions in the code… ‘The Google Annotations Gallery is an exciting new Java open source library that provides a rich set of annotations for developers to express themselves. Do you find the standard Java annotations dry and lackluster? Have you ever resorted to leaving messages to fellow developers with the @Deprecated annotation? Wouldn’t you rather leave a @LOL or @Facepalm instead? If so, then this is the gallery for you.’
• Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he’s from the future – He’s a time traveller from the future apparently, come here to stop the LHC experiments. When asked which country he came from, he answered: “Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I’m here to stop it ever happening.”

Happy April Fools’ Day!

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SERPs are the pages you land on, as an Internet user, when you enter search terms into an online search engine. They present a list of web page results which are linked is order of relevance, from most relevant to least relevant, in accordance to the keywords you have entered. Obviously, having a having ranking in these results pages will increase your website’s overall web visibility, whilst a lower ranking will decrease its visibility.

If you want to increase your web visibility in SERPs, you need search engine optimisation. For more information about search engine optimisation, take a look at some of the following blog posts.

• SEO Tips
• Ideal Keyword Density
• Social Networking and SEO

Alternatively, you can view all our search engine optimisation articles, read about the SEO services we provide, or simply contact us directly.

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Last Friday, the Chinese government challenged Google directly, stating that it refused to compromise its censorship laws to prevent Google from leaving China. Google’s removal of censorship occurred after a number of ‘cyber-attacks’ has occurred to Google’s systems from an apparent Chinese origin.

Li Yizhong, the Chinese minister for industry and information technology, has this to say on the topic:

“If [Google] takes steps that violate Chinese laws, that would be unfriendly, that would be irresponsible, and they would have to bear the consequences.”

“[Google] has taken 30 per cent of the Chinese search market.”

“If you don’t leave, China will welcome that, if you don’t leave, it will be beneficial for the development of the Internet in China.”

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Google Buzz welcome screen

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Anyway, I’m here to talk about Google Buzz, which is a new social network that Google are releasing to all Gmail users. It combines elements of Twitter and Facebook and is integrated directly into the user interface of Gmail. Google started the launch of Google Buzz to a small selection of Gmail users yesterday (9th February 2010) and is continuing to release Google Buzz to more and more people over the next few days.

Take a look at this Google Buzz demonstration video. It is obvious from Google Buzz, that many elements of the service are inspired heavily by existing microblogging and social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter and identi.ca.

Google Buzz on Google Apps?

Google has stated that Google Buzz is not yet available for users of Google Apps for Domains yet, but it is being worked on. Based on this, it can be anticipated that Google Buzz for Google Apps will probably be released within a couple of weeks, towards to end of the Google Buzz launch for regular Gmail users.

Google Buzz and Search Engine Optimisation

I may be discussing Google Buzz more as this service develops and is released to more and more users. As Google Buzz listing will appear alongside Twitter results in Google search engine results pages (SERPs), Google Buzz may also create a buzz in the search engine optimisation community.

If you’re interested in search engine optimisation for your website from a team who really know what they’re doing, take at look some of the search engine optimisation work we do and see examples on our live SEO results page. If you just want some more about this intriguing new product from Google, take a look at the official Google Buzz pages.

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Speaking of search engines, Google, which I’m sure you have all heard of, prepared an excellent video which demonstrates and explain the concept of a web browser and attempts to explain exactly what a web browser is, and indeed, what it is not. If you are in any way unsure, take a look at the video below.

At Rapid Web, our best work is in our websites and our dynamic web applications. If you wish, you can find out a bit more about us, our web design and some of  the work we do.

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