Once you are up and running on Twitter it can be tricky to catch the best tweets or keep an eye on all of your mentions. TweetDeck and HootSuite attempt to solve those problems, with their user-friendly and functional interfaces really enforcing Twitter's place as a useful tool for businesses.

Update: Since we wrote this Twitter launched its new interface which is more user friendly to tempt people away from 3rd party Twitter clients.

The uninitiated may wonder what the fuss is all about, but these Twitter tools are highly addictive once you get started - the only problem is, which one should you use? Of course if you're new to Twitter and other social media platforms our social networking training in Brighton, Sussex, may be a help to get you started.

A Comparison of TweetDeck and HootSuite

These two tools have some shared benefits: keep on top of what's going on with customised and easy to manage columns; reply, re-tweet and direct message with a click; download a mobile phone application, and manage multiple accounts on Twitter or other social networks. The differences between HootSuite and TweetDeck are subtle, but may be key to which application you choose; read on for our comparison.

Once you are up and running on Twitter it can be tricky to catch the best tweets or keep an eye on all of your mentions. TweetDeck and HootSuite attempt to solve those problems, with their user-friendly and functional interfaces really enforcing Twitter's place as a useful tool for businesses.

Update: Since we wrote this Twitter launched its new interface which is more user friendly to tempt people away from 3rd party Twitter clients.

The uninitiated may wonder what the fuss is all about, but these Twitter tools are highly addictive once you get started - the only problem is, which one should you use? Of course if you're new to Twitter and other social media platforms our social networking training in Brighton, Sussex, may be a help to get you started.

A Comparison of TweetDeck and HootSuite

These two tools have some shared benefits: keep on top of what's going on with customised and easy to manage columns; reply, re-tweet and direct message with a click; download a mobile phone application, and manage multiple accounts on Twitter or other social networks. The differences between HootSuite and TweetDeck are subtle, but may be key to which application you choose; read on for our comparison.

UPDATE JULY 2014: Google has now withrawn authorship photos from SERPs. We still recommend implementing authorship as results will still have a byline and your content will rank better for your Google+ connections.

Google have just announced that they are going to start showing author information in search results. This is great for author awareness and can help Google raise the rankings of pages written by authority figures. It is also great for SEO's who are worried that al the great content they are writing is getting ripped off or assigned to the wrong author!

Even better, Google are replacing 'rel=author' and 'rel=me' tags and are instead automatically linking your Google+ profile to content you have written. All you have to do now is add the URLs of the sites you write for to your Google+ profile, and then when scanning those sites, Google will attribute any posts with your author name to you. Then when those posts appear in search results they will come with a 'Written by' box including a link to your G+ page. It should end up looking like this:

So why the need for this new change when Google first announced author tags last year?

The way we shop is changing forever due to Mobile Apps. New technology is blurring the lines between traditional bricks and mortar shopping and internet shopping and making it more important than ever for businesses to embrace the mobile revolution.  A developer last  Wednesday uploaded the one millionth mobile app to the market.

There has always been the view that internet shopping will kill off high street shops as consumers prefer the ease of browsing, comparing and paying online. If that's the case then why have eBay opened a physical store in Soho? Why do Amazon feel the need to promote a price check app by giving discounts to users who view products in real life and then buy online from Amazon? Why has Waitrose filled its shop window with QR codes for John Lewis products? What prompted Ocado to open a virtual store in a busy London shopping mall?

New!Have customers download your content straight to their phone by creating an App for iPhones. iPhone App Training will allow you to create iOS5 apps from scratch. Having a user download your app onto their phone or tablet gives you a direct connection to customers that a traditional website lacks. 

Websites are still overwhelmingly aimed at desktop users using a mouse and keyboard. However mobile and tablet use is on the rise and touch screens are starting to replace desktops as the number one way to surf the web. Should web design be targeted at touch screen users?

Breaking all analysts' predictions, smartphone sales beat sales of PCs in 2010. In 2011 you can add in tablets, netbooks and laptops - the sales of touch-oriented devices has far surpassed traditional mouse and keyboard desktop systems.

As user habits change, so should developers - by ensuring they have up to date web design skills, and thinking about touch-device users when they design. Stay ahead of the trend by taking one of our Web Design Training Courses including the brand new Mobile Web Design Course which provides a best practice toolkit for creating mobile websites.

The boom in native mobile apps  - especially games - has led to the development of a wide range of innovative new touch gestures, and as the mobile web becomes more dominant, we will start to see a wider range of touch gestures employed in web sites, as well as in native apps.

In this post we take a closer look at how can web designers design effectively for touch-screen devices - and provide some useful resources...

It seems like social media is accused of ruining the world on an almost daily basis in news and blogs across the web, for a multiplicity of reasons: it's causing the breakdown of relationships, breeding a culture of narcissistic and parasitic youths and shrinking our attention spans to the point that we can barely even finish a senten...

Awful joke aside, this is a serious barrage of allegations to be levelled against what is arguably one of the biggest communication technology developments there has ever been.

And it's just plain wrong. Social media is not ruining your life, my life or the world.

In a lot of ways, it's doing the exact opposite - it's making everything a whole lot better.

Although our Social Media Training focusses on the potential business and marketing uses of social media, it can be used for a whole lot more.

So let's take a look at some of the most often quoted reasons that social media is Satan in technological form and try to debunk these myths.

It seems like social media is accused of ruining the world on an almost daily basis in news and blogs across the web, for a multiplicity of reasons: it's causing the breakdown of relationships, breeding a culture of narcissistic and parasitic youths and shrinking our attention spans to the point that we can barely even finish a senten...

Awful joke aside, this is a serious barrage of allegations to be levelled against what is arguably one of the biggest communication technology developments there has ever been.

And it's just plain wrong. Social media is not ruining your life, my life or the world.

In a lot of ways, it's doing the exact opposite - it's making everything a whole lot better.

Although our Social Media Training focusses on the potential business and marketing uses of social media, it can be used for a whole lot more.

So let's take a look at some of the most often quoted reasons that social media is Satan in technological form and try to debunk these myths.

Last week, Google published updated guidelines for Mobile SEO, essentially that if your mobile site is configured incorrectly then you won't rank in mobile search results. In the wake of this announcement, SEO blogs have rushed to claim that if you don't have a mobile friendly site then you won't rank in mobile search results. Notice the difference?

How did they jump to this conclusion? Is it based on fact or fiction? In this post I'm going to take a look at how an SEO rumour gets started, and hopefully show that even respected industry bloggers can get things wrong sometimes.

By its very nature, SEO relies on the sharing of industry information. Those new to SEO or those without the time to test themselves rely on bloggers and industry experts to share their findings so they know what to spend their time on.

This word of mouth sharing is what makes things so interesting - you hear a titbit here and give it try, read an article there and experiment on your own site.

The problem is, this industry has a serious case of the Chinese Whispers.

What often begins as a harmless experiment or some words of advice can soon become "the next big thing" or a "shocking revelation".

And in an industry that, let's face it, has its fair share of navel gazers, when a rumour enters the mill, it gets ground up (or whatever it is mills do) for days and weeks on each and every SEO site, from the very best to the very worst.

Our SEO Workshop is based on facts, not rumours - we will teach you the latest trends but we'll also give you advice on sorting the truth from the guesswork.

Mobile SEO Ranking Factors

Take the latest Mobile SEO "revelation": a recent post on Google's Webmaster Central Blog outlining changes to Google's ranking of mobile sites.

These are pretty simple really: if you have a dedicated mobile site then make sure it is technically set up for mobile crawlers. If your site redirects mobile users to the wrong stuff (i.e. goes to the mobile site homepage instead of the article they want) you'll be devalued. If you serve up 404s instead of redirecting to a mobile friendly page, you'll be devalued.