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!

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:

Amble

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.

Attic

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!

edovia

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.

Dig Deep Fitness

Clean and simple.

ShakeItPhoto

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-)

NotifyMe

Fresh and clean but the tabs at the top seem a bit out of place.

TrackDebt

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.

Convertbot

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!

Read Me Stories

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 8^th 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.

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!

…hopefully. So fingers crossed, people will be able to search for our blog or posts by way of the tags we have associated with our Simunix “blog claim”.

We’re really hoping this will get more people reading our blog and encourage more interaction amongst us and users of our services especially since launching our newest development, T2A.

P.S. If you’re wondering what the random string of letters and numbers is at the bottom of this blog, it’s a super, high-tech method of verifying for Technorati that I am the real author of these blog posts…

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Our Managing Director, John Lewis, was a guest speaker at a conference last week; ‘Through The Cloud With Intelecom’.

Cloud computing is the buzz thing for businesses and consumers alike just now, but we at ukphonebook.com have been providing ‘cloud’ based services since our launch in 2000. For those that don’t know what cloud means, it describes the way in which software, data, services etc. are delivered to your computer.

It used to be that companies (and people) would have all their software installed on their own servers, PC or Mac and the data would also be hosted locally. This meant huge IT departments were necessary to manage the hardware and network infrastructure. Cloud changes this and the concept of Software as a Service or SaaS as it’s known becomes the norm. What this means is that, as Internet browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari become more powerful, very sophisticated programs can be delivered to your computer desktop via the Internet.

Taking it a stage further, thanks to high-speed broadband, your data (photographs, music, films, spreadsheets, databases etc) can also be stored and accessed remotely. There are massive advantages to this, perhaps the most important being that your data is completely secure and you can access it from anywhere in the world that has a good Internet connection.

At the conference, John spoke about the paradigm shift needed in the minds of Directory Enquiry (DQ) operators like BT and The Number to move away from the traditional call-centre based service delivery of 118xxx services to the concept of home-workers delivering the service using Simunix Ltd’s 118-Express solution.

118-Express works in tandem with Intelecom’s telephony platform to provide a full featured DQ solution that will work from any location. The potential cost-savings for DQ providers are significant as they can focus on service quality and value for money issues rather than managing huge call-centres and the associated hardware installations.

The average cost of a 118xxx call is now almost £2 compared to 50p before the service was opened up to competition in 2003.

I realise I may be starting to sound a little obsessed with how expensive it is to ring directory enquiries these days, but I feel it is important that people are made aware of where their money is going.

I conducted a little study recently to see just how much it can cost a consumer to ring a 118 number. Through previous research, I already knew how much it cost to ring two of the biggest directory enquiries providers (118 118 and 118 500) from a BT landline – £1.68 and £1.65 respectively. However, I had heard horror stories of people being charged even more extortionate amounts to ring from a mobile phone so that is where I focused my investigation.

This is what I found:

This table shows how much it costs to make a one minute call to each of these three directory enquiries numbers from the various mobile networks.

So the 3 network emerged as the most expensive for calling 118 118 and 118 500, charging £2.55 and £3.58 respectively for a one minute call. O2 has emerged as the cheapest charging £1.53 for a one minute call to either of these numbers (this is actually cheaper than dialling from a BT landline!!).

You will fare a little better ringing our cheaper than cheap 118 365 with one minute calls from a mobile averaging out at £1.15 across all networks. The cheapest networks to call 118 365 from are Orange and O2 costing 57p and 66p respectively for a one minute call.

Remember though folks, the cheapest way to find address and telephone information is by using online services such as www.ukphonebook.com which gives you 5 free search credits daily. We now even have a mobile version of the site so there’s no excuse to be paying the price for directory enquiries!

We installed the latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer yesterday, after it had seen official realease on Tuesday. After noticing a host of problems it was causing on our website (http://www.simunix.com) with whole blocks of content completely vanishing, we narrowed the problem down to the following CSS declaration:


h2 {
font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;
}


If applied to body, or html then the entire page vanishes as can be seen at http://validator.w3.org – Massive bug!

Changing the CSS declaration to put arial before helvetica in the font stack solves the problem, which seems to only occur on machines that have Helvetica installed. We are not sure whether it is a specific version of this font causing this problem or whether all machines with Helvetica installed are affected.

I’ve let the Microsoft team know on Twitter but no response yet… You can view a test page at:

http://simunix.com/helvetica_bug.html