Tech Trends of 2012

Happy New Year readers, hope you all had a lovely Christmas break.

We thought to share with you some of the best posts we have spotted on the WWW about tech trends people expect to emerge in 2012, enjoy:

Five tech trends to watch in 2012 from Mashable

Five key marketing trends for 2012: Are you being served, from Econsultancy

Ten tech trends that will be big in 2012 from Pocket-lint

Tech trends for 2012 Video from Reuters TV

We will also be joining in conversations with the IEEE (the world’s largest technical professional association) Facebook page next week as they will be posting news from the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and providing updates in the form of video interviews with IEEE experts about the top consumer electronics trends in 2012.

Our Technical Manager, Andy, also pointed out a few personal top items to keep an eye on;

• The increasing use of NFC as it becomes available in more mobile devices. This has many uses including sharing web addresses from posters or paying for items with a “wave” of your mobile.
• Glasses-free 3D TV which will be shown as CES.
• More mobile focused sites using frameworks such as JQuery Mobile, Kendo UI Mobile and responsive design.
• 4G mobile network

If you have spotted any further posts on technical trends that you would like to share with us, feel free to leave a comment below.

In summary: 2012 seeks to be a rather exciting year with more emphasis on sophistication on the tools we currently use. The Rocktime team are most excited about mobile-social opportunities for our clients, as well as increasing collaborations with niche communities and gaining access to a whole lot of channel data.

Integrated Digital Marketing campaigns with a targeted focus is a must to achieve true ROI. As a team, along with sharing updates on our activities, we are looking forward to sharing further insights with you on further technical trends, devise use, channel strategies and ROI this year, watch this space.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

SEM New Year Resolutions for 2011

This week the Flashlight Team will be sharing with you their Search Marketing (SEM) New Year's Resolutions for 2011, focused on SEO, PPC, Social Media and Mobile Marketing.

Sarah (@sarahgriffiths), 'Head of Search' at Rocktime says:

"We are very excited about our 2011 plans and throughout January will be setting some large ROI targets to grow the Flashlight division further, a large focus for our team this year is Local SEO/SEM and Mobile Marketing strategies".

The Flashlight Team hope you can steal some ideas from their 'Search Marketing New Year Resolutions' and would like to mention: where you don't have the resource in house, why not contact them to see how their online marketing expertise can fit in with your business.

New Year Resolution blog posts focused on Search Marketing, Social Media and Mobile Marketing will be delivered to you Wednesday to Friday this week.

In the meantime the Flashlight team would like to recommend that you visit this article over at Mashable, where they have listed 10 websites to watch in 2011, worth a look to gleam some inspiration for your own website development plans.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our blog readers a prosperous New Year.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Secret to light fluffy pancakes... add a little beer to the mix!

Dorset Food Blogger Wayne from the Credit Munch Blog invited his readers to share their Pancake recipes today. How did we do ? Well we came up with two recipes which were more than flour, egg, water, milk, sugar and lemon.

Our two pancake stars of the day are Dan & Alex with the below savoury pancake dishes:

Fit as a butchers Dog Pancake

Fill your traditional pancake with grated cheddar, grilled mushrooms and butchers ham. Then serve it with a side of Tomato soup and voila pancake-tastic.

Mushroom Surprise

Fry off 250g of mushrooms in sunflower oil
Add vegetable stock (200ml)
Add 4 spring onions finely sliced
Let the stock simmer and become thick (syrupy)
Add a couple of spoonfuls of cream fresh
Done!

For more pancake recipe ideas visit the Credit Munch blog post simply titled “Pancakes” and discover some more sweet and savoury pancake ideas.

While you're waiting for your pancake batter to cool (that is my top tip), why not find out a bit more on Pancake day traditions from the UK and the World ! over at the BBC Good Food website.

Enjoy your evening and your Pancakes....

Author: Sarah Griffiths