Month: January 2009

Its almost the last day for self assesment tax payments (and also pay day for many) and both HSBC personal and business banking sites are not working properly.Just a reminder that its not just us smaller companies who have problems with website availability!Also a reminder that the internet, as it stands, was not built with these kind of large scale systems in mind.If the government finally get round to getting broadband internet to every household in the UK (following their announcements yesterday), will these systems survive under the sheer weight of traffic?

It shouldn't really surprise me that this type of thing happens, but somehow I find the power of the mobile internet amazing - still. I've been posting the odd photo to my personal photo blog directly from my phone for a couple of years now and get a little buzz each time I do it. But when something really big happens, like a plane crash in the Hudson river and someone like Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida posts a photo of U.S. Airways flight 1549 on Twitter from his iPhone as he's on his way to rescue the survivors, it's still an amazing and powerful thing.Krums blogs the line: "There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy." - unintentionally deadpan I think. Just as people were amazed of live coverage of the first man on the moon in 1969, forty years later we're all turning into live reporters.

We have a new member of the Reverse Delta team. Nathalie Kusner joined us last week to assist with the growing project management responsibilities. She will also be helping with testing and day-to-day administration.Dave Bancroft worked with Nathalie a long time ago, on Ingres database product development at Computer Associates (now CA) and is really pleased to have her on the team.During her long career in the software industry, as well as managing software releases for a large international database provider (CA/Ingres), she has spent 11 years at a City bank supporting risk applications and systems.Nathalie brings her experience of project management, application specification and testing, operational support and Quality Assurance to Reverse Delta.Please join us in welcoming Nathalie.

All over the news today are reports of Marks & Spencers worst performance for 10 years. They announced today the closure of 27 stores and laying off of 1,230 staff.Meanwhile, M & S are also reporting record online sales growth of 29% in Q3.I can't help but think that high street retailers are not only facing the very real effects of a recession, but also the increasing threat from online.Even my parents generation admitted to doing some of their Christmas shopping online this time with M & S a favourite due to late delivery dates and ease of use. I'm guessing their Q4 figures will be very good.So while its doom and gloom on the high street, for some theres not been a better time to be trading online.

We have spent most of the last few years developing and optimising cutting-edge websites for recruitment companies (amongst other things!)We felt it was about time our FXRecruiter product had its own website.You can see the results here: http://www.fxrecruiter.co.ukWe will be adding more content as we add more features to the product.Any feedback gladly received!