Although we update our data daily, we do rely on the telecom operators to provide us with the most up to date information. We have noticed that the new 101 non-emergency number for police forces has not been updated yet by the telecom operators.
We have ensured that anyone searching for ‘police’ on ukphonebook.com will see the 101 number at the top of the list as you no longer need to dial the full phone number for your local police station.
There’s a lot going on in the UK this year with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympic games lighting up the summer calendar. It’s been recommended that we Brits skip our customary summer holiday to warmer climes in favour of a “staycation” in order to make the most of all the fun.
For our overseas friends who are considering a trip across the Channel/Atlantic/North Sea/Irish Sea this year, we thought we would come up with a few suggestions of essential London travel companions – for your iPhone.
1. British Airways – Free
You can view your check-in information, live departure times and gate numbers or can even book flights directly from the app. It provides access to your boarding passes and even allows you to check in with your phone. If you’re not planning on travelling with British Airways then check to see if your airline has a similar app.
2. London Tube Deluxe – 69p/$0.99
This is a must for anyone planning to brave London’s notoriously busy underground. You can use it to plan journeys and check the status of specific lines which are prone to weekend closures. Available in multiple languages.
3. iPhoneBookUK – £2.99/$4.99
Unlimited searching of residential and business telephone numbers and addresses for anywhere in the UK. The “near me” function allows you to find the post offices, banks, pharmacies etc. nearest to your current location. Definitely cheaper than calling the expensive directory enquiries numbers.
4. London Travel Guide – Lonely Planet – £3.99/$5.99
A detailed city guide with attractive photos and articles about things to see and do. It’s easy to use and beats carrying around a heavy guide book all day.
5. Hailo – Free
A bit of a gimmick but worth downloading just to see how it works. The app claims that you can hail a black cabbie with just two taps on your iPhone and then choose whether you want to pay by cash or by card. You can watch the black London cabs circling around you on a map and see when yours is approaching!
Remember me saying I was designing the website which was going to be launched alongside our new iPhone app (see this post)? Well they’ve both been launched now. You can find iPhoneBookUK in the app store now and visit the accompanying website at www.iphonebook.co.uk.
iPhoneBookUK provides you with an unlimited telephone lookup and address lookup. It finds both residential and business information and has a “near me” function which uses your location information to find results near to your current location.
Results are displayed alongside a Google map and you can add the telephone and address information to your iPhone contacts directly from the app. There is also an option to dial the number straight from the results page.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-check it out!
21 February 2012, York
A new application that provides unlimited searching of UK telephone and address information has been launched onto the iPhone app market. iPhoneBookUK has been developed by York based directory services provider Simunix which pioneered the UK’s first online directory enquiries service – ukphonebook.com.
In the past, directory enquiries iPhone apps have been notoriously poor performers with 192.com and BT’s apps receiving an average of only two and a half star reviews and a barrage of negative comments often relating to hidden costs and inaccurate information.
Downloading iPhoneBookUK costs £2.99 and provides unlimited searching (with a fair usage policy). Searches can be used to look up any business and residential telephone and address information at no additional charge.
The app searches a database of over 30 million records sourced from BT OSIS. The data is updated nightly with around 40,000 changes made every 24 hours.
Users are given the option to “find people” or “find businesses” by selecting the relevant tab. They fill in the information they have such as name and location, and then tap the big blue search button. The results are displayed alongside a Google map and users can add the telephone and address information to their contacts or dial the number directly from the app.
A function to find people and businesses ‘near me’ has been added that uses location information to find results nearest to a user’s current position. John Lewis, Managing Director of Simunix says, “For example, if you’re in a strange city and need to find the nearest post office you just type in ‘post office’, select ‘near me’ and search.”
John continues, “We have spent years campaigning to get people using online directory enquiries as online services are a fraction of the price of dial up 118 numbers. However, we realise you can’t always get to a computer. The aim of iPhoneBookUK was to develop an app that allowed users to quickly perform functions they would usually do at a fixed computer.”
“The user interface is very straightforward. It is a simple telephone and address lookup that provides both residential and business information. We envisage people using this app when they’re on the go and need to quickly find a phone number or address.”
Simunix have begun development of an Android and BlackBerry version of the app.
iPhoneBookUK is now available on the iTunes App Store: Click here to download iPhoneBookUK
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We are exhibiting at Venturefest Yorkshire 2012 tomorrow so please feel free to come and meet us!
This one day business event is an opportunity for entrepreneurs and businesses from around Yorkshire to showcase and promote their advances in science and technology. Exhibitors and delegates alike will find inspiration, innovation and motivation as well as exciting investment opportunities.
Simunix will be exhibiting as part of the Innovation Showcase alongside over 30 of the best science and technology companies in the region where we will be demonstrating our newest ideas and developments.
It takes place at York Racecourse on 8 February 2012 (8:30 – 17:00).
I was designing a brochure in Illustrator CS4 recently and wanted to create this effect but couldn’t find anything on the Internet that showed me how to do it. I ended up figuring it out myself so thought I would share how I did it. It may not be the most efficient way, but I got the effect I was going for!
1. Create the shape and the text you want to overlap and make two copies of each. I’ve just put this on a grey background so the text shows up for demonstration purposes.
For now, hide the copies of the shape and text that are lower down the list of layers by clicking on the eye symbol next to the layer you wish to hide.
N.B. When pasting, hold down Ctrl+F to paste in place.
2. Create outlines of the top text layer by right clicking on it and selecting “Create Outlines” from the drop-down.
It should then look like this.
Next, select the top text layer (which is now in outlines) and the top shape.
Find the “Pathfinder” window. If it is not already visible, click “Window” in the top toolbar and select “Pathfinder” or simply just hold down Shift+Ctrl+F9 to open it up. Now click the “minus front” button which looks like this 
.
3. You should now be left with three layers. Hide top layer but you can now show the other two. Ensure the text layer is above the shape layer in the layers panel.
Right click text to create outlines then ungroup by right clicking again and selecting “Ungroup”.
Select and delete all letters that fall entirely within the shape; in this case – E R L A P P I. Keep any letters that overlap with both the shape and the background (V and N).
4. Now is a good time to reverse the colours of the letters and the shape. In this case I have made my letters blue and changed the colour of the shape to white. Now bring the shape in front of the remaining text and make another copy of it.
Select one copy of the shape and then the letter V. This can be done while holding down Shift while you select the two objects. Again, use the pathfinder window to “minus” the front layer. Do the same with the N.
5. You will now be left with two letters that look like they each have a scoop taken out of them!
Unhide the blue shape (top layer) and you can see effect take shape.
Select all and group by holding down Ctrl+G.
6. Finally, set the shadow effect. In the top menu bar click “Effect” and scroll down to “Stylize”, select “Drop Shadow” and an options box will open.
You can set the shadow size, opacity and position in this box. Make sure “Preview” is selected so you can see how the shadow looks before clicking “OK”.
7. You now have a shape with overlapping, contrasting text. When saving, ensure you save on a transparent background so that you can see the through the punched out text on the shape.
I have been given the task of designing the website which is going to launch alongside our new iPhone app. To give you a little background, ukphonebook.com is an online directory enquiries service which Simunix developed 12 years ago. Owing to the success of this service, it has long been our intention to create an iPhone app version of it as we felt it would be perfectly suited to that platform, and so came iPhoneBook.
Before beginning a project like this, I always turn to Google to track down some inspiration. I started off by Googling, “best iPhone app website designs” and a long stream of best of and most beautiful lists appeared in my browser. Here are a few of the examples of good design that I picked out as my inspiration for the iPhoneBook app website:
Nice, muted colour scheme. It’s not cluttered but there is more information as you scroll down the page. I especially like the map shape at the bottom of the screen – a very clever and subtle touch. It’s not obvious how you purchase the app from the App Store though.
I love this. It’s so striking and immediately you are presented with the app icon so you know what you’re looking for on the app store. Hardly any text, just a few screenshots and a clear link to the App Store. Stylish, bold and simple – perfect!
My favourite combination of colours: grey, black, white and blue (very in keeping with ukpb/iPB). The stripes of colour are eye-catching, it’s not overloaded with effects, it’s neatly laid out and there are plenty of screenshots.
Clean and simple.
Apart from the logo and tagline, there is virtually no text. It doesn’t need it, just a QuickTime Movie of the app being used. Very cool B-)
Fresh and clean but the tabs at the top seem a bit out of place.
Vertical and horizontal stripes! Wouldn’t have thought this would work but coupled with the vivid green it looks really fun. Hardly any effects used which seems to balance out the bright colour scheme and bold patterns.
This is where I got most of my inspiration from. The black bar frames the image of the iPhone nicely, this was an idea I borrowed for my design. Colour scheme is soothing and elegant, just the effect I was trying for!
Super colourful, not too much information – just a brief description, a demo and a link to purchase it on the App Store. The texture of the background looks effective too (I also borrowed that idea for the iPhoneBook website background – did it using the noise filter in Fireworks).
The iPhoneBook website isn’t live yet so don’t judge my design skills on what’s there now! We will be launching the app and website in the new year.
We have been selected to exhibit in the Innovation Showcase at Venturefest Yorkshire 2012.
36 of the best science, technology and most innovative companies in the region are selected each year from a large number of applicants. They are each awarded heavily subsidised exhibition space in order to promote their new ideas.
The Exhibition will take place at York Racecourse on the 8th February 2010
We will be exhibiting ZoneSearch, our visual tool for extracting people, place and business information. We’re going to take our HUGE flat screen TV to give a live demonstration to anyone who’ll listen. We might even let some of the delegates have a go themselves!
Cloud 2 won the Innovation Showcase last year so cross your fingers for Simunix this year.
4 August 2011, York
The York-based directory solutions provider Simunix has become one of the increasing number of organisations to adopt Colombia’s most recent export by launching its new API on the .co domain which was made internationally available a year ago.
The launch of www.T2A.co marks the first time Simunix has made its full range of data available to other web developers and allowed them to incorporate it into their own websites and business applications.
Users of T2A can find, validate and verify data by searching the Simunix database of over 300 million records which includes BT and Royal Mail telephone and address information, UK Electoral Roll data, the TPS and CTPS registers, data validation records and Ordnance Survey maps.
T2A homepage
Managing Director, John Lewis said: “Businesses of all types and from all sectors have a need for directory information. We already provide directory solutions to a number of organisations throughout the UK so creating our own API was a natural next step for us and has meant that we can deliver our directory solutions right to the heart of our customers’ organisations.”
When asked about the reasons for adopting the .co domain, John responded, “T2A is such a simple and easy-to-use product. We wanted to reflect this simplicity in our URL; www.T2A.co is short, memorable and easy to understand.”
Simunix promises the most competitive rate of pricing for this type of data service and is offering volume discounts across all API functions available within T2A.
Ian Martin, IT Director at Simunix adds, “All the data is stored on the Simunix servers and we hold all the relevant licenses needed for the data supplied. Organisations wishing to use this data can access it without worrying about the practicalities of storing such a vast amount of data or of obtaining the appropriate (and often expensive) licences.”
Simunix has included extensive documentation and has built a developer forum into the T2A website in order to help users through the integration process.
Users can access T2A by visiting www.t2a.co
Simunix is the company behind the widely used online directory enquiries service ukphonebook.com, the corporate version of which is in use by almost half of the UK’s police forces in addition to numerous other public and private sector organisations.
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T2A has arrived! The API which can be used for finding, validating and verifying data has been launched along with its own developer forum, plus Twitter and Facebook pages in order to encourage interaction amongst users.
T2A logo
We’ve made the full range of Simunix data available to developers via this API which can be incorporated into any system to build professional websites and business applications. There are a large range of services that we provide, each of which fall under one of the following five headings: Location Services, Find People, Telephone Numbers, Address Information and Data Validation.
We have provided code examples and created extensive documentation to help with the implementation of T2A. We are also hoping that users will make use of the Developer Forum to share ideas and get help from an active community of developers.
The newly designed T2A website makes for easy navigation through the various search options and also allows users to have a go with an online demo of each service.
We are priding ourselves on the fact that we provide the most competitive pricing for this kind of service. The pricing page details the different credits packages available with information on the number of credits you get, package price and price per credit (we offer volume discounts). There is also information about how many credits each service uses.
Visit www.t2a.co to have a look for yourselves. We are always open to any thought or suggestions you may have about T2A so please don’t hesitate to share!