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Never heard of them I'm afraid. This isn't really the right forum for Asia advice, we are UK. Also can you refrain from leaving links in posts unless it's relevant (ie an article or source reference).

ta very much.

Sorry parasush, you've just made me feel really old  

Isn't monopoly the most popular game in history?

We are seriously considering it, so hope everything goes ok 

Hi Gail

If I remember rightly, didn't you say previously your business is based in Asia? So do you need an Asia based telecoms or are you looking at a VOIP solution? Can't help, but might clarify if someone like Colin is trying to assist.

It's that time of year again. As Alice Cooper said all those years ago, schools out for summer

It tends to hit micro and small businesses the most, with sole owners or small offices juggling child care and entertaining kids versus running a business. 

There are a lot of business owners that see it as a positive and running a business allows people to have the flexibility to choose their own hours and enjoy more time with family. Then there is the reality of maintaining customer service, manning phones, servicing clients while the office is empty or skeleton manned.

How you cope will no doubt depend on the type of business. A plumber or builder can't really work from home or in the evening. Even serviced based companies such as training or consultancy will be tied to normal business hours.

I know some firms that operate a factory shutdown style approach during the school holidays, while others back fill with temps or virtual assistants.

There are some bonus's, the morning commute is certainly quicker, with more spaces in the car park

So how does your business cope with the summer holidays?

Do you embrace it and work round it, or is it 6 weeks of disruption and pain?

It's amazed me for years how painfully slow it is to get served in one of these modern coffee chains. If there are any more than 3 or 4 people in the queue, you are scuppered, especially if someone wants a sandwich toasting.

Yet there always seems to be an army of servers, but the whole process seems painfully inefficient, especially when you are short on time. If I'm waiting for a meeting, I've gone to a supermarket or local cafe rather than wait for Costa Slowbucks.

Well it seems finally the head honcho's at Starbucks have realised there archaic slow mo model is annoying quite a few people.

According to Marketing Week,  Starbucks are piloting a new concept in Canary Wharf that aims to half the waiting time. It's quite revolutionary, here is the plan:

"When a customer enters a store, they will be prompted to order. A label will immediately be printed off behind the counter and a barista will start making their drink. As the customer then moves towards the till point to pay, their beverage will be ready for pick-up"

Source: Marketing Week

Genius eh? You do know they will have spent millions on outsourced consulting firms to do extensive research. When all they had to do was just go to any British branch and listen to the tutting and sighing as we all patiently queue waiting for a cup of coffee, while your lunch break ticks away...

Our man Clive had a good idea, why not have 2 coffee machines so they could make 2 at a time? I'm just hoping Clive now doesn't get poached CostaCoffee's R&D department... 

A spammy forum introduction left by an off shore based SEO. Is this really the impression you want left for your business?

Cheap SEO services, including "UK based" will invariably involve cheap overseas resource.

As per our introduction FAQ

SEO Peeps and Spam Meisters

The introduction threads are blocked in our robot.txt and any links are nofollow. So link dumping and spam dumping just for low quality SEO purposes are a waste of your time and ours. Accounts will be banned and auto subscribed to the Stop Forum Spam database. 

lol I forgot about your firefox issue. Still no idea why  Well that should be consigned to history as their will only be 1 site. But if I can get the Barney seal of approval then that's good enough for me 

I had a little spat with Yell last week, which came from a misunderstanding from their marketing team, and led me to have a bit of a blog rant.

But nice to see even David and Goliath competitors can be magnanimous, and spotted this earlier.

We have been working on our long awaited site rebuild behind the scenes for some time now, which has really been centred around the database, searching, speed and functionality. 

Now it's time to start looking at the visual and presentation of the new site.

Our first aim is to get away from the dated fixed width template which we currently have, and replace our separate mobile and desktop sites with a single responsive site. Visually, everything will be larger and clearer. 

Our second aim is move away from the current cluttered look and feel of the directory, while allowing more functionality, a much better URL structure for Google, whilst implementing our new database search.

I've got a couple of screen shots, the first is a directory search results page, and the second is the forum home page. I don't really want to tinker with the forum, so it will just be larger font, but will scale to your browser or phone. But we are going with a big and bold logo and name versus the current look. You can select each image to see a bigger version:

Bottom half of the search results page - big header disappears but search bar remains.

Footer is just a test at the moment.

Then below is forum home page with new header.

Obviously these are just images, so the page will be centred and fill your screen.

But honest thoughts? Does it make your eyes bleed, does it look ok, or do you prefer the current site?