By Greg Kirk, gregkirk.com

About Greg Kirk

Greg Kirk is 27 and lives just outside of Leeds in the North of England. Greg is a web designer and has been working in web design since 2005. Greg graduated from The University of Huddersfield with a BSc in Multimedia Techonology. Greg got his first break in the industry at Moving Media Marketing. In 2006 he joined WPA Pinfold, and currently heads up all their digital media work.

The recent Tradingeye.com redesign was picked up by the guys over at Unmatched Style who thought the simple, straightforward style of the site to be worth a video review.

It’s always nice to receive recognition for hard work, and we’re so happy that out of all the web design galleries out there, Tradingeye.com has been picked out by one of the most respected.

We’d like the thank Gene and the guys at Unmatched Style for taking the time out to review our site. In their own words, “Unmatched Style is not just another CSS design gallery. We want to foster constructive design criticism as well as provide inspiration to our readers”.

Head over to Unmatched Style to read the review, and watch the short video of the Gene’s thoughts on the redesign. And don’t forget to rate us!!!

By Rob Mason, robmason.org

About Rob Mason

By day Rob is a top eCommerce professional for the largest banking group in the UK. By night he builds standards compliant websites.

Sponge Project is a trading name for Rob Mason and is all about web design and email design with web standards and accessibility for Tewkesbury. Rob a firm believer that a quality website starts with the bits the user cannot see, which means he looks after the mechanics of the websites as well as the aesthetics.

Mar 26 2009 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

It may sound like the name of a friendly Tyneside neighbour or an affable local shopkeeper, but CannyBill is a new piece of software which is expected to help a fledgling technology firm take on the world.

And such is the global appeal of the product – which is aimed at any company looking to handle online payments – it has already been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian and even Geordie by its Newcastle-based creators.

Digital company dpivision.com Ltd has already gained 600 clients from around the world in the five weeks since its launch and is now in talks with investors in the US over the possibility of setting up an office in North America to grow the business.

Dpivision flew to Texas last week to attend the South by South West Interactive festival – one of the biggest events on the planet for technology businesses which gives firms exposure to more than 29,000 key industry players in the US.

The company was chosen from hundreds of entries in a UK Trade and Investment competition to attend the event and its founder, Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, says he has met “hundreds” of potential clients and investors during the trip.

He said the company now plans to roll out other products under the Canny label in the hope of growing it into a global brand and is currently in talks to secure investment to fund expansion in the States.

He also said the firm had developed a special Geordie version of the software to highlight its commitment to the region and raise the profile of the North East.

Should any clients sign up to the Geordie language package, buttons which are usually labelled ‘return to the home page’ will read ‘gan hyem’ and rather than clicking ‘continue’, users will select the ‘howay’ option.

Mr Baranoff-Rossine said: “We’re proud to be based in the North East, and we called this product CannyBill because it does what it says on the tin, it’s a great piece of kit to sort out your billing process.

“The uptake so far has been incredible – and that’s even before its official launch.

“We put out a request for beta testers to businesses who were using our ecommerce system Tradingeye, and the response was terrific.”

“Our turnover has doubled year-on-year and we are looking into the possibility of setting up an office in Texas.”

Meanwhile dpivision recently won a place on the Crossover 4iP Lab initiative – an international scheme supported by broadcaster Channel 4 which gives digital entrepreneurs the chance to land financial backing for their innovative ideas.

The company has also been chosen to battle it out against 19 other businesses to be crowned European start-up of 2009 at the internet-focused Plugg conference in Brussels later this year.

The business fought off fierce competition from 126 businesses from across Europe to get through to the finals, where they will be giving a short presentation of CannyBill.com.

It’s official – our creative talents are beautiful and inspiring.

Our carefully crafted website has caught the eyes of top designers once again.

Our website, www.dpivision.com, has been listed in the top 22 most inspiring website navigation ideas.

http://www.wbdesignideas.com/2008/12/10/22-most-inspiring-website-navigation-ideas/

After searching the internet, Wbdesignideas, stumbled across ours and has listed it as one of its favourites.

Described as breath-taking, unique and artistic.

Commenting on their quest, Wbdesignideas said: “Ahh, the beautiful navigation…

“Apart from being one of the most important technical elements of a website, website navigation can also be beautiful, pleasant to look at, sometimes even breathtaking.

“I dug through a lot of websites and picked out these 22 navigation designs that I find to be the most inspiring, whether is will be for the artistic expression, uniqueness or just a good idea.

“There are more brewing for later but here are the 22 that I have ready to drool over.”

Our logo also made it onto a recommended list of logos to inspire designers before getting stuck into a project.

http://completephotoshop.blogspot.com/2009/01/32-beautiful-website-logos.html

Commenting on the project, Completephotoshop said: “After staring at the computer for hours and going through close to two hundred websites I picked out these awesome looking logos.

“This is a good list of logos to look through when you need to get inspired before working on a website logo project.”

Our creative website impressed top designer Patrick O’Neil so much it now features in his latest book.

Patrick has spent the last few years scouring the internet’s abundance of websites in a bid to hunt out some of the best and inspiring designs out there.

After cataloguing more than 5,000 sites on his website Design Meltdown, he decided to showcase the cream of the crop in a book for other designers to take inspiration from.

And our workplace theme and carefully crafted design to make www.dpivision.com replicate a notice board scooped us a space in The Web Designer’s Idea Book.

Patrick said: “I like to think of this book as a snap shot in time. It captures the web as it exists in 2008, showcasing the very best we have to offer at this time.”

You can get your hands on a copy of The Web Designer’s Idea Book by visiting amazon.co.uk for £11.99.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Web-Designers-Idea-Book-Ultimate/dp/1600610641

It’s official – we’re sexy, innovative and know exactly what we’re doing.

Dpivision.com has caught the eye of industry professionals who have listed us in a string of top websites.

Phil Renaud reckons we’re one of the top 35 sexiest designed websites ever and has listed us on his blog (www.philrenaud.com).

He claims Dpivision.com is “everything I like about minimalistic design. Has a messy/grungy feel to it, too, which is all the better. Dig the scribbled mouseovers!”

Squared Productions recommends us as one of 187 websites you have to see before you die and our seamless designs feature on the Web 2.0 how-to design guide (www.webdesignfromscratch.com)

And if you’re looking for another reason to choose our products and services, then we’ve also been listed as one of 23 innovative design firms (www.cssjuice.com) and also on TechFlaps under 25 inspiring web designs (www.techflaps.com).

Self-confessed cyber geeks, John Oxton and Jon Hicks, have praised Tradingeye in their pioneering podcast. The duo who are famed for The Rissington Podcast, recommended our award-winning shopping cart on their weekly show.

On their popular podcast, which they describe as the geeks version of Gardner’s Question Time, one listener asked them to recommend a simple ecommerce solution that uses Paypal. And it seemed that Tradingeye fitted the bill perfectly.

Jon Hicks, the brains behind the Firefox, Thunderbird and Miro logos, said: “Tradingeye is a good XHTML and CSS solution. It’s really got a lot of options and a lot of merchant possibilities. It’s a one off cost and you’ve got it on your server.”

John Oxton is a published author and expert in web standards. Him and Jon are also both speakers on the industry and have featured at conferences like The Future of Web Design.

We would like to thank our client Andrew Armitage for tipping us off about our mention on the show.

Why not check out the podcast by logging onto http://www.therissingtonpodcast.co.uk and clicking on episode 11.

The team at dpivision.com Ltd has gone and done it again. Our hard work, forward thinking and strive to push the boundaries in the online world has grabbed us a gong at the North East Digital Awards.

Our award-winning Tradingeye software caught the eye of the judges, winning top spot in the best example of accessibility category. They praised the project for raising the bar with online shopping and helping to make it accessible to all.

Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, project manager, said: “We’re delighted to have won this award and to have had our hard work recognised. “Dpivision.com prides itself on being inclusive and we strive to ensure that the online world is accessible to everyone.”

Tradingeye was released after dpivision.com Ltd noticed a gap in the global market. “There was a huge demand for an accessible XHTML/CSS compliant shopping cart, which complied with Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) so we took the lead and launched Tradingeye as one of the world’s first applications to achieve this high standard.”

Since then Tradinge has sold thousands of licenses world wide, has received international acclaim and has been praised by some of the industry’s leading experts.

Mr Baranoff-Rossine said: “We wanted to design software that appealed to everyone and was easy to use. “Tradingeye is also open source meaning it can be totally customised.”

And the good news doesn’t stop with us securing yet another award; the next major release of Tradingeye is due out later this year with exiting features like language packs, products attributes and a link to Ebay on the agenda. We also have the launch of Cannybill on the horizon. Keep checking out our blog for updates.

http://www.northeastdigitalawards07.co.uk/view/342/

http://www.onenortheast.co.uk/page/news/article.cfm?articleId=3081

By Andy Clarke, Stuff and Nonsense.

About Andy Clarke

Malarkey is Andy Clarke, a UK based designer, author and speaker who has a passion for design, CSS and web accessibility. Andy has been working on the web for almost ten years. He is a visual web designer and author and he founded Stuff and Nonsense in 1998. Andy regularly writes about creating beautiful, accessible web sites and he speaks at events worldwide. Andy is the author of Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design, published by New Riders in 2006.