Finally, the Magic Web Solutions newsletter is here! Read the first one below - and sign up in the box on the left to go on our mailing list!

Hi there,

You know that Magic Web Solutions is a very unusual company, always up for a challenge, willing to take a risk and venture into the unknown. As a result we have always had something interesting to share. This is our first newsletter and we are planning to make it a regular feature.

The MWS Blog

Why not check out our new blog? It might provide you with answers to your questions about web technologies and doing business online. If not, why not let us know what you are interested in and we will write about it?

Concerned about security?

We have introduced some formal practices and a security audit to reduce the vulnerability of web applications we have built. We are happy to share this  information with you - just let us know! We also provide a security audit as a separate service. We have a hands-on approach to testing for vulnerabilities and utilise the practical knowledge of security experts, who have recently joined our team.

Another idea for improving security, that you might find useful, is using two-factor authentication with YubiKey. This will combat common ID theft issues including phishing, key loggers and other means of eavesdropping, and the device can be combined with a PIN or password. We have already implemented this in one of our applications and plan to roll it out on more systems.

MWS harnesses the power of The Cloud

Need to store a vast amount of files or do some resource-hungry calculations overnight? A combination of Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides a completely flexible platform for high demand hosting needs. We now run several commercial projects using Amazon services.

My Movie List

And finally, we’ve launched a new web site of our own. If you like watching good movies (and who doesn’t?) you can get ideas on what would be a good film to watch next and get your movie lists organised. As always the motivation for running our own projects is to explore new technologies and learn new skills. In this particular case it is a community site with social networking elements. Running it will help us to give our clients more help with their projects.

I hope you’ll find some links and ideas in this short update useful. Equally, if you know someone else who might benefit or be interested in this email, please pass it on!

If you do not want to receive future updates from us, however, please let me know and I will remove you from our contact list.

Kind regards,

Vlad

If our new web application were a movie…this would be the ‘pitch’. The ’sell’.

And we wouldn’t be web developers, no; we’d be the young, cocky scriptwriters, sure in the knowledge that we had the next box-office smash.

You? You’re the producer in the loud Hawaiian shirt drinking Margheritas, sunning yourself by the poolside (no offence, the shirt looks good on you). But - you’ve seen it all before and you need persuading. We get that.

Two sides of the same fence and…yet we’re not so different - you love the movies, we love the movies.

Meet the hero: an online service, which gives you an opportunity to set up lists of movies, arranged according to particular categories.

Is there a love interest, you ask? Why yes, yes there is - it’s the movies you love. Films you can watch time and time again. Films which you’re sure your friends would like - maybe they’re films you’ve watched together with your friends.

What’s the plot? The plot is simple, but engaging. We know you love movies and you want to share that love. But you want to find more movies that you’d love to watch - and this is where the plot develops.

You invite your friends (think of them as the supporting cast!), you recommend the films you know and love to them and they do the same for you. Pretty soon, you’re on a quest to see new films, to boldly go…sorry, we’re getting carried away.

But you get the idea - My Movie List is a place where you can share films and discover new ones.

And like your favourite director, you’re in control. You can add movies, create custom lists - anything you don’t like ends up on the cutting room floor!

Thanks for your time. See you on My Movie List!

Blogging has become an important feature of the World Wide Web and is now an integral part of other emergent Internet trends such as social networking web sites, online video and podcasting. The word ‘blog’ is short for ‘weBLOG’ and can be thought of as an online diary or forum, where the author can convey thoughts on any subject he or she chooses. In fact, blogs evolved from newsgroups (or moderated forums), when users began to post in a more consistent, serialised style. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s aimed at people who run a business or are responsible for their company’s site or application and who have a basic grasp of the technologies involved:

An introduction to CSS—and 5 good reasons why you should use it on your web site.

Here’s one of those things that sounds too good to be true—a simple, web-based language, which, if applied correctly, can save you money and enhance your website or your web application.

A bold claim, indeed. But what is it?

Read the rest of this entry »

This article introduces you to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)—and advanced technology used to build modern web pages and explains how this technique can be used to improve the quality of websites and optimise their future support.

As your business grows and develops, so will your website. When you build it today, you should already be taking into account how you might want to improve it in the future including possible modifications to its look and feel and even complete change of the visual design.
We view websites via so-called browsers—the software built to explore websites and make the best use of their functionality and features. The most popular browsers are Internet Explorer and Firefox, but there are many others. They allow us to see web pages as formatted text. The web pages are formatted using a special markup language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and the browsers interpret the HTML to present the web pages to us properly. HTML is also read by mobile phones, screen readers and other devices.
Read the rest of this entry »

Web-based applications offer a range of business advantages over traditional desktop applications.

What is a web-based application?

A web-based application is any application that uses a website as the interface (the ‘front-end’). Users access the application from any computer connected to the Internet using a standard browser, instead of using an application that has been installed on their local computer.

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If you are contemplating an investment in enterprise software, one of the first purchase decisions you need to make is whether to use a commercial package (proprietary software with standard features) or to commission bespoke software, that is, a system that is custom designed to fit the needs of your business. Read the rest of this entry »