BeTheMiddleman.com, the private property portal we’ve been developing has finally gone live to the public.

The team has tried to capture the essence of the site through the slogan – No Agents No Fees No Fuss. Estate Agents may soon find themselves losing out to cost-efficient online alternatives that put the power of selling and letting back into their own hands.

The Price

BeTheMiddleman.com aims to be the best, to encompass the entire housing ladder and to always be free. The service is built on a Freeium model, where advertisers can start by adding a free property listing and then be offered premium features at a small cost to give their property maximum exposure. A simple Flickr-style premium account will be introduced soon that allows power users unlimited access to the amount of listings they can post. The free account will have no limits apart from the amount of listings they can show at any one time. On top of this each listing can be upgraded with targeted featured spots around the site. These premium features will enable BeTheMiddleman.com to compete with the major players and allow us to reinvest back into the business to fulfill our objectives.

Third party products and services are also been planned for inclusion including insurance, mortgage quotes, legal documents, contracts, HIPS, energy certificates and much more besides.

Help us promote BeTheMiddleman.com

The initial marketing of the soft launched BeTheMiddleman.com is relying on the online community to help us. Once we have road tested the service and the user experience we’ll be in a better position to crank up into a higher gear and market ourselves. Until then we’re asking for your support. We have developed a section dedicated to all kinds of banners and text link for you to put on your website. For those that place a banner on their site we’ll offer them a premium account, giving them unrestricted access.

We’ve soft launched the site to help us gauge the initial reaction, to give us time to sort any outstanding issues and to develop some more killer features.

Chocotemplates.com are giving away 4 free portfolio themed CSS templates under a Creative Commons 3.0 licence. Each template seems pretty well designed, include an array of jQuery transitions and could easily be modified and reskinned to your own design. Click below to check them out.

FREE CSS Portfolio template 1

This first portfolio template is actually a Wordpress theme that’s been given away for free from FrogsThemes.com to celebrate their launch. It’s the best free portfolio template we’ve found.

FREE CSS Portfolio template 2

FREE CSS Portfolio template 3

FREE CSS Portfolio template 4

FREE CSS Portfolio template 5

FREE CSS Portfolio template 6

FREE CSS Portfolio template 7

Have you designed some portfolio templates that you want to give away, let us know!

I’ve been using IETester for a few months now and find it invaluable in my day-to-day development or new and old websites. IETester is simply a browser that allows you to view your website in multiple versions of Internet Explorer while keeping your standard install of Internet Explorer.

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

So far IETester by my-debugbar.com has had over 750,000 downloads and so is a popular choice amongst web designer across the globe.

IETester has some limitations:

• The Previous/Next buttons are not working properly
• Focus is not working properly
• Java applets are not working
• Flash is not working on IE6 instance in user mode : A solution is to launch IETester as admin user and Flash will work.
• CSS Filters are not working correctly in user mode : A solution is to launch IETester as admin user and CSS Filters will work.

Macro photography allows photographers to get up close and personal with a subject, capturing detail and allowing the viewer to see the world from an unseen angle. This collection is themed on flowers and light and is a beautiful collection to both aspire and inspire, enjoy.

Wordpress is without doubt a powerful blogging platform and more recently it’s being used more commonly as a Content Management System. Amongst some of the big brands using Wordpress include Sony, Ford, Wall Street Journal, Samsung, Playstation and a whole heap of others.

Currently there is an abundance of Wordpress Blog Themes to choose from and setting up your own blog can be achieved in a lunch hour. What there isn’t a abundance of are Wordpress Themes targeted at businesses who want more than just a blog. Even those themes that are never seem to tick all the boxes on what a business really need, so this is what I need some feedback on. I’m planning on creating some nice, simple themes targeted at SME’s to get them online with the features and control they need.

What do you want?

Theme

• Business Wordpress Theme
• Personal Wordpress Theme
• Government Wordpress Theme
• Kids Wordpress Theme
• Personal Portfolio Wordpress Theme
• Blog Wordpress Theme
• E-Commerce
• Photography Wordpress Theme

Background

• Dark Background Wordpress Theme
• Light Background Wordpress Theme

Price

Would you pay a small fee? Would you rather it was FREE?

Please Give Your Feedback Below

Once I gage demand I’ll get cracking. Please leave your thoughts below with any links you think would be useful. Also any features or plugins you’d like to be incorporated.

Internet Explorer could be affecting how your clients websites are displayed…… and I’m not just talking about IE6! IE8 has finally thrown it’s hat into the ring and is a reinforced weapon in Microsoft’s fight to maintain their prominent market share in web browser usage. Web professionals, like you and I, code new sites to cater for the Ogre better known as IE6. Using hacks and fixes to make the website display as desired. We get these sites signed off by the client, the site goes live and we get paid. Now here’s something to think about… Do you support future versions of browsers?

The scenario

You build a site pre IE8, launch it without any issues and the client is singing your praises. Then one day out of the blue they call you up and complain the website is broken in IE8! What do you say? The question is do you support their website through future releases of web browsers? If you haven’t stated you don’t then you could be liable to fixing it, especially if you stated in your initial pitch that their website will work cross browser.

The effect

Now 10 clients call you up and demand the same fixes as in scenario A, and they don’t want to pay extra, I’d say your screwed! Big agencies have potentially hundreds of clients, all with the possibility of calling up and causing chaos. They typically are covered legally as their initial specification is water tight and covers future browser releases and support.

The solution

By being efficient and actively taking the first move to combat this issue you can save yourself a few sleepless nights. Make the first move and contact all of your clients detailing the news of this latest browser and the potential effect it could have on their website. A letter or email from you makes the client feel protected online and serves as a reputation booster for your company. Being proactive and offering the answer to some potentially bad news that is yet to occur can really solidify the relationship between you and your client. Within the email you can start with simple facts, like:

With UK usage estimated to be around 65%, Internet Explorer is by far the most popular tool used to browse websites – including yours! But beware, big changes are afoot. In reaction to customer demand, or perhaps just off their own back on this occasion, Microsoft have recently launched a new, upgraded Internet Explorer Version 8 (IE8).

new browser implications:

This new browser brings with it resolutions to issues Microsoft were aware of e.g. malicious viruses and the like, but it also brings with it potential compatibility issues affecting the viewing of websites. The main concern for many e-businesses is that the way the new upgraded version of Internet Explorer interprets their website has changed so that it won’t be completely “backward compatible”. In other words, it’s likely to have formatting implications for anyone with a website developed prior to the launch of IE8. Whilst we always build websites that are compatible across all major browsers (both current and older versions), this new development may mean that your web pages do not display correctly when viewed using Internet Explorer 8.

Then your solution:

As a valued customer and as part of our commitment to you, we’re offering to conduct a full IE8 compatibility audit on your website.

Now set your price:

For a fee of £xx plus VAT we will thoroughly test your site in IE8 and along with fixing any minor issues, we’ll provide a report detailing any changes that need to be made to ensure it works with the new version.

Finish with a clear call to action:

If you’d like further details or for us to audit your site, then please reply to this email and a member of our team will contact you.

The outcome

Being proactive in this scenario has enabled your business to overcome a common issue and could save you many hours of tedious work that could be unpaid.

New browsers typically thorough up a set of new issues can can learnt and used time and time again in an efficient manner. You can also fix multiple websites in one go and earn some extra revenue. The third important thing is that you’re communicating with your clients. Dormant accounts could be revitalised and further work could generated through simple being proactive and protecting both yours and your client’s business interests.

For further information about IE8 visit Microsoft.com.

The Floating Frog is my baby and has been for several years. Starting as a personal portfolio website it has now developed into a leading UK based Digital Design Blog, if there is such a niche? Lately I’ve been a bit quite as all my attention has been concentrated towards a very exciting project I’ve been working on, with Zoe, Doug and Nick. Bethemiddleman.com is it’s name and through all the efforts of the team throughout the last few months, it’s almost ready to go into BETA!

It’s an exciting exercise to see if we can use our expertise and industry knowledge and start an online property portal for private house sales that has the potential to changing the way the property market operates and how we buy and sell our homes in the future. It’s a subject we all feel passionate about and we want to shake things up a bit. For those who have never heard of Bethemiddleman.com before, here is a quick summary of the Bethemiddleman.com concept.

Overview: Bethemiddleman.com cuts out the middleman (the Estate Agent) and let’s you advertise your property for sale direct to potential purchasers.

The Offer: Bethemiddleman.com let’s you do this for FREE! No Agents No Fees No Fuss!

The whole housing market: Bethemiddleman.com doesn’t stop with just buying and selling, it links up the entire housing market. Landlords can advertise a whole property or a room to let. Renters can in turn search, find and contact these landlords.

Savings: Bethemiddleman.com is FREE. If you’re selling your home, you have the potential or saving thousands in agents fees by missing them out. While this new market develops, you can also use Bethemiddleman.com and your existing Estate Agent. The service is so flexible and will be a pleasure to use.

We’re going to have a countdown for the beta launch on the website as soon as date have been agreed so for this and everything else, stay up to date over on the blog. Also signup for free to get the VIP treatment.

Yesterday Patrick twittered about an article in The Times – apparently Your Golf Travel are advertising for a writer/researcher to travel the world playing golf and talking about it. Applications are encouraged from redundant ‘city types’ – city types are getting a bad rap at the moment so this does sound a little like charity from the company owners (also ex ‘city-types’) – but then, who better to go and work for a golf company than someone who knows about business and plays a lot of golf?!

Anyway, I actually quite like the idea. Remember the Wookey Hole job advert on Piggynap the other week? Well, they said that because of employment regulations and their lack of hard evidence for witches being female, they had to accept applications from men. This might be a tenuous example but I’ve never been one for positive discrimination – you should be allowed to hire the best person for the job. So Your Golf Travel are holding a golf tournament to find the best candidate. Yes! Interview By Tournament!

Entrants have to have a handicap of less than 14 (whatever that means) so presumably CV’s saying “I’m sort of okay at golf” will go straight in the bin. I applaud Your Golf Travel for choosing employees based on their own metrics, and I reckon they’ll get loads of applicants from people really well suited to the job.

In fact, this is an interview that could run and run, Apprentice/British Open style. There could be pictures and video of  ex-city men, wearing slightly ragged suits, playing ‘desperation golf’ with a set of sticks because they had to pawn their clubs, and instead of ‘You’re Fired’ they’re told ‘You’re Shit At Golf’…! When not playing golf they could be seen sleeping under old copies of the Financial Times in the club house, or hunting for food on the green.

Am I getting too much fun out of this?

fr0gsqu1d

A former oil rig worker spent 15 years building an exact replica of a North Sea platform – out of more than four million matchsticks. David Reynolds, 51, spent up to 10 hours each day painstakingly crafting the half a ton model of the Brent Bravo rig in his living room. The full article and image gallery can be viewed here.

A picture paints a thousand words and here are 10 that do that with flair. I love the photo of the storm over the island, such a tremendous image. If you like them why not give it a “Thumbs Up!”

Storm over an island

Massive Butterfly

Penguin Army

Clever cement advertisement

Crazy Soil erosion

Traffic deadlock in downtown hell hole

BIG wave coming

Weird Lego

Summit view

Massive Coconut Crab