The call centre application requires no desktop software as it is a standards compliant web application, this means it needs just a web browser to function. There are numerous advantages to this thin client solution; the flexible system allows upgrades and added functionality to be deployed any time and can also facilitate remote working as the application is not tied to a specific computer. As the application is compliant with web standards it works in any web browser which means there is no need for a costly upgrades to the Neilson holidays computer systems.

The call centre application is connected to the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database Vision, so call handlers can view customer bookings, brochure requests and customer survey questionnaires (CSQ). Searching for a customer takes just a second to return the right contact from the several hundred thousand contacts stored in the system, making accessing customer information very responsive. The fast response time is a great aid to the sales team as the customer is not kept waiting while their information is retrieved.

The call logging facility records every call with customers from which a quote can be produced and instantly emailed to the customer. These email quotes contain relevant holiday information and are partially produced automatically allowing the call centre staff to spend more time helping customers instead of writing emails. These emails can be previewed in real-time by the call centre staff before being sent to the customer. As with all other emails sent by the Vision CRM, customer clicks are tracked and conversions are recorded.

When a call handler logs into the system, they are presented with a recent history of calls made and emails sent along with a task list allowing the call handlers to keep track of follow up actions; all of these can be controlled by a supervisor.

The call centre application is also used to update customer details, such as a new address or phone number, and also manage data protection; with just a few clicks customers can be added, or removed, from the various forms of Neilson holidays marketing. The call centre application can also request brochures, the call centre staff simply input the customer's address, select the brochures they wish to receive and then send out the request.

The main focus of VSI-thinking's application development work was to increase productivity and efficiency for Neilson holidays while also providing useful information for customers. The call centre application has created a single, consistent, easy to use interface for the call centre staff to work with ensuring they can log, manage and handle enquiries and customers better than ever before.

The United States is the latest country to drop below the 1% usage marker, joining Finland, Norway, Austria, Poland, Sweden and Denmark which have also dropped their usage of Internet Explorer 6. The total usage of Internet Explorer 6 in the UK is at around 1.4% however other countries, such as China, still have a much higher usage.

Following the death of Internet Explorer 6 in the US Roger Capriotti, Microsoft's Director of Internet Explorer marketing, stated in a blog post "We hope this means more developers and IT pros can consider IE6 a 'low priority' at this point and stop spending their time having to support such an outdated browser,"

In an effort to prevent users sticking to an out of date version in future Microsoft will begin automatically updating users to the latest version of Internet Explorer through automatic software updates. Users running Windows XP will be upgraded to Internet Explorer 8, the latest version compatible with this operating system. While users on Vista and Windows 7 will get Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft's latest browser.

Globally, Internet Explorer is still the most commonly used browser, the two most widespread alternatives, Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox, are both competing for the number two spot. Some industry experts predict that 2012 could be the year the Internet Explorer drops with either Chrome or Firefox becoming the new browser of choice for most users.

On a full desktop browser the Neilson holidays website has a whole range of great features such as a search facility, user reviews and slideshow banners highlighting special offers. All of these features and functions are compatible with mobile web browsers and work in exactly the same way, delivering the same user focused experience across multiple platforms and devices. These industry leading features were also developed in such a way that no browser plug-ins are necessary; this means the Neilson holidays website displays correctly on Windows Phone, Android and Blackberry smartphones, as well as Apple's iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad which are notorious for their lack of compatibility with the Adobe Flash plug-in.

Adobe Flash has been the go-to tool for creating dynamic, interactive elements such as slideshow banners and sliding search bars. To ensure compatibility with as many devices as possible range it was vital that the dynamic elements were developed without plug-ins; making the new Neilson website compatible with older web browsers as well as mobile devices.

The Neilson website is even fully compatible with basic browsers such as the built in "experimental" web browser on the Amazon Kindle reader. While the experience is a bit slower there is still no loss of functionality, the search system, slideshow banners and web content all work and display correctly just like it does a fully featured web browser. This means that it's entirely possible to book a Neilson holiday on a Kindle...

One of the key reasons our websites are compatible with all web browsers, even experimental ones, is because our development work sticks to web standards. Web standards are a set of guidelines which ensure web developers create websites compatible with all browsers. All of the on screen effects, features and search functions used throughout the Neilson website are developed to meet these standards. The Neilson website was also developed to use the cleanest HTML possible, all content is added in clean HTML to ensure it's compliant and compatible with all web browsers; this also has the added benefit of being easily indexed by the search engines.

Take a look at how well the Neilson website runs on mobile devices for yourself on VSI-thinking's YouTube page; don't forget to subscribe to our channel so you can stay up to date with our latest work.

The rest of the search terms for the year were, in order, BBC, Youtube, Hotmail, eBay, how to, you, Google, mail and news. With the rising searches being, again in order, blackberry, twitter, daily mail, gumtree, lottery, barclays, how to, amazon and argos.

Blackberry had a massive spike in searches in October, during their service outage. Twitter has been getting increasingly more searches during the year. The Lottery had a spike in July when a couple from Largs in Ayrshire won £161 million in the Euromillions jackpot. Argos and Amazon are fairly predictable with the amount of searches increasing in the run up to Christmas.

However, if you decrease the amount of time to filter by to 90 days, you can see comparatively speaking, which searches have jumped up in popularity recently.

Gary Speed is at the top of this list, after his sad death in November. iPhone 4S is second after the latest version of Apple's phone was launched, and Skyrim comes third after the highly anticipated game was launched in November.

The HTTP Archive ran monthly tests on the top 1000 websites and noticed that the file size gradually increased through the year before sharply jumping up in October. There are a few things which could have caused the growth in file size such as increased user interactivity, more widespread adoption of analytical tracking software or the use of higher resolution images.

The HTTP Archive's statistics revealed that the use of Javascript has seen the biggest growth; this scripting language makes pages more interactive and responsive. In an effort to combat the growth of page file sizes VSI-thinking has put Javascript on a diet, minifying the file size by removing spaces and unnecessary characters in the code. This ensures the webpage loads quickly without having to sacrifice any features.

Maintaining a small file size is important, larger pages take longer to load which can annoy users and result in them visiting other sites. A small file size will also become more essential as the use of mobile web devices continues to grow. Fortunately our websites load quickly and work perfectly even on mobile browsers. Why not see for yourself...

From January, users using Internet Explorer will be upgraded automatically to the latest version for their platform, which for Windows XP is Internet Explorer 8, and for Vista and Windows 7 is Internet Explorer 9.

Microsoft is hoping this will finally spell the end for their 10 year old browser, which despite massive advances made in later Internet Explorer versions, and their rivals such as Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome, still has (as of November 2011) 8.3% of the worlds internet users still using it. Microsoft have even started a countdown to chart it's demise.

To avoid scaring enterprise users, who may have internal infrastructure which relies on Internet Explorer 6, there are patches available from Microsoft which will disable this automatic upgrade infrastructure, allowing them to stay on Internet Explorer 6, for now.

Interestingly in the latest stats from Microsoft, Norway is leading the way, with only 0.2% of them using Internet Explorer 6, however on the other end of the scale is China, where 27.9% of the country is still using Internet Explorer 6. The UK fairs pretty well at just 1.8% use.

iTunes Match

Got an iPod, iPhone or iPad? Then you’ll already have iTunes, the music software that maintains your music collection. iTunes works on both Windows and (obviously) Mac OS X.

So what is iTunes Match? Well iTunes Match costs £21.99 and allows you to match your music with the cloud. The keyword there is Match. The others at the time of writing do not allow you to match your music with their music, but more about that later.

iTunes Match scans through your music library, and compares it to their music collection on the iTunes Music Store. If a song matches up with one of theirs then it will be matched, and instead of having to upload the song to Apple’s servers, it just makes a note that you have permission to download Song X from the Music Store. Yes, that’s right; you can in many cases use this fact to upgrade the quality of music in your music collection. If all else fails, iTunes Match will simply upload your copy to their iCloud.

That's all very well in theory, but how does this work in practice? Well in my experience, echoed by users on forums around the world, the matching isn’t perhaps as good as we’d like. Some songs, which are definitely on iTunes aren’t matched up, instead having to upload the songs. In my experience, out of my 2000 tracks, just over 1400 were matched. Some of the songs which were not matched are a little odd, Oasis – Whatever, Rihanna - Unfaithful? However, this may be due to the album the song is associated with not being on iTunes for various reasons, and maybe these issues will be fixed going forward. Another issue I’ve had is songs being marked Ineligible because they are under 128kbps, these songs mark themselves as being 32kbps bitrate, which is wrong because they are much higher quality files, odd.

iTunes Match is obviously the best choice if you live in an Apple centric world. Have an iPhone you want to keep updated with iTunes? Then iTunes Match will be the best option for you. If you’re an Android user, then you’re out of luck and maybe this is where Google Music comes in.

Google Music

Google Music takes a slightly, but significantly from a user’s perspective, different angle. Google hasn’t made the licensing deals that Apple has, so Google are not allowed at present to match your songs. So how does it work?

Google Music provides you with a free Music Manager program, which uploads your music into Google’s cloud. However as you’re uploading every single song, rather than a portion of your music, this can take hours or if you have a bigger music library and/or a slow internet connection, days.

So why would you use it over iTunes Match? Well if you’re an Android user then Google have provided an app which you can download to access your cloud, so you can access it from your Android device. There are even apps for the iPhone to let iOS devices stream music from the cloud too.

It obviously doesn’t have the sheen of iTunes Match, and isn’t as integrated with your music collection, however, if you’re more open with your devices, having devices from different OS camps, then Google Music may be a better alternative. It’s also, during its beta at least, free. Also a nice side advantage is that while iTunes Match has its fair share of bugs at the moment, with Google Music (and Amazon Cloud Drive) it's so simple there is much less to go wrong.

Amazon Cloud Drive

Amazon’s system works similarly to Google's. Amazon’s cloud storage is free for up to 5GB, but like Google Music you’ll have to upload every song which can be a laborious process. However as Amazon has been in the music business for a while, maybe following the release of iTunes Match, Amazon in the future will offer a similar service. Time will tell. So at the moment which one you pick depends on your needs, and almost falls into two distinct camps. You use apple devices? Go with iTunes Match. You're an Android fan? Go with Google Music or Amazon Cloud Drive.

Managing Director, Mark Thomas, said "I am amazed the Neilson site ran on the Kindle's browser, which Amazon say is an experimental piece of software and uses a limited 3G connection. It is a testimony to the skill of our developers." The demonstration shows the site, with embedded web fonts, Javascript functions and able to make a booking.

Check out the clips here;
Neilson on the Kindle
Neilson on a mobile phone

Coming soon... Google's own mobile shopping app for mobile phones

Facebook Timeline makes every post you've ever made on Facebook much more accessible. The timeline will even show your birthday at the beginning, and can even add a photo to mark the occasion! It marks all major events such as starting/leaving a job and entering a relationship, with huge text and icons, really making them standout. It even marks, which perhaps for Facebook is their most important event, the date you joined Facebook.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had this to say on his new Timeline feature: "Millions of people curate stories of their lives on Facebook every day and have no way to share them once they fall off your profile page" he went on to explain "we have been working on ‘timeline’ all year… it’s the story of your life and completely new way to express yourself."

However, with Facebook expecting users to fill in the gaps, such as their life pre-Facebook, it has left critics with a bad taste in their mouths. By encouraging users to fill in more information about themselves, and start treating it as their online representation of their lifetime, Facebook is harvesting more and more data about its users which has a clear benefit of being able to improve their advert targeting. There is also the worry that it will drag up ghosts from the past, which Facebook has acknowledged by allowing the user to have 7 days to edit their timeline before it will be published, or until the user decides to hit a publish button.

In conclusion, it's an interesting idea, which will open a user’s history up for all to see, providing a new glimpse into old, and perhaps what some thought lost, data.

The sheer range of phone makers working with Android has played a massive role in it's success which now sees it leading over it's competitor iOS from Apple, an operating system that is used solely by Apple products such as the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The closest competitor to Android's share is BlackBerry which has a 22.5% share, Apple has 18.5%.

Another reason that Android is growing in popularity is possibly beacuse it is open source, allowing anyone to look at the code and make changes and improvements. This has lead to a huge community of Android developers who develop everything from new skins and layouts to improvements on battery consumption and screen resolution.