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The debate as to which is better, Apple or Samsung, in terms of Smartphone product is a long-running one which will possibly never be settled definitively. For that reason, it’s a topic we like to revisit from time-to-time, particularly as products develop.

So which is, currently, better? Apple certainly holds more brand cachet; there’s no doubt that there is a tactility and quality aesthetic to the product, and something inherently desirable about them. However, increasingly they’re being outpaced by their competitors.

Apple does suffer from some rather dubious commercial practices, and this certainly puts me off – they’re very quick to cease support for older operating systems, meaning that devices have built-in obsolescence and you’ll need to buy new ones more frequently. Plus their insistence on sticking to their own charging connectors, which change every few releases, allows them to milk customers for yet more revenue when these break or get lost.

Samsung may not hold the same cachet, but their product increasingly emulates Apple in it’s design focus, using glass and metal instead of plastics, so the models are rapidly becoming more desirable. Plus, you have a standard charger (micro USB) with replacements extremely cheap as a result, and a much better camera.

Call recording software is increasingly essential for any business now, from SME upwards. It is, of course, easy to record calls, but what is absolutely essential is an ability to retrieve those calls quickly and efficiently. Often you’ll find a dispute call will last for 35 – 45 minutes, and that is a lot of time to spend before you take account of having to wade through the many snippets.

For that reason it’s essential your solution links to your telephone database, allowing you to record and match the numbers people call on to your customer account records. I’ve sat there and waded through testing every possible given number of an individual to systems manually; immensely frustrating and a massive waste of time.

Any system you look for should have an ability to connect to your core CRM database to effectively ‘name’ any calls against the stored numbers for that individual. Alternatively, if you have multiple customer lines and agents, you should be able to search for calls to those lines and agents, and within specified timeframes. You’re not always going to know what number someone called on, but you may know who they spoke to or which number they dialled.

Computers are used by many of us on a daily basis, often for pleasure but also for work. They are such a big part of our daily lives that many people will little or no computer skills may struggle to do many tasks such as checking bank balance or viewing online statements for bills/making card payments.

It is important that if you are using a computer, especially if you are using it to access sensitive data, that it is secure. You need to ensure that all the updates that are available have been completed and that you have a good anti-virus program running. Updates are vital to a computer to ensure that it is running the most up to date and often secure version of the software.

You may be a little confused when it comes to updates, not sure exactly how to go about them. If you are using a windows computer then you need to check your update settings to see if your computer is set to do them automatically. If not, you need to turn this function on or schedule in time to check for new updates and install them.

Before doing any updates it is important to save and close any work you have open and ideally back up your work.

When you are looking for a new computer the options of what you could get are rather varied. To narrow down your search you’ll need to consider what you’ll be using the computer for and where you are likely to use it. If you are going to be using the computer in a fixed location such as an office then you may want to consider a desktop computer. With a desktop, you tend to get more for your money as they are not as practical as a laptop. A desktop can be easier to upgrade and can have more built-in memory and storage.
If you think that you are likely to want to use your device in a number of locations then you’d need to consider either a laptop or tablet type device. Laptops are great for any work where you may need to save data or run larger programs as well as access the internet. They are small enough to carry around with you to meetings or to wherever you’ll be working but big enough for a clear display and allow easy touch typing with a full keyboard.
A tablet type device may only be suitable for the more basic of tasks and in fact, most people own these in addition to a laptop or desktop computer.

Setting up a client’s emails can be a bit of a nightmare. If a client has their own domain name then they usually will want an email address such as info@ or name@. This usually doesn’t take too long to set up on the hosting account but when it comes to setting them up on devices, it where it often starts to get complicated.

You will need to know the email address, password and also the incoming and outgoing server settings for the hosting account. Not only that, but you may also need to know ports numbers. Often when setting up email you are asked if the server requires outgoing authentication and also if it should use SSL. You will need to obtain these settings from your hosting provider and be aware that these settings can often affect the port number you need to use.

If you want to be able to send and receive emails that can be viewed on multiple devices then you will need to set the email accounts up as IMAP, not POP3 so you can download them on to your pc and phone for example. Again using IMAP will require a different set of settings to using POP3.

As a programmer, you may be asked to take over or add on to websites that have been programmed by another company or a freelance programmer. When working with someone else’s code it may take you a bit to get your head around how they have done it and, depending on how they work, it may need a bit of tidying up.

When you are quoting for work to be done on a website that you have not programmed it is important to include additional time for this or to inform the customer that there may be additional costs should it not be as straightforward as it should be.

You need to take some time to familiarise yourself with the layout and set up of the website and try and figure out how the main elements work and have been put together. Understanding how a website has been programmed will often mean that all jobs on the site become a little bit easier.

When working with someone else code, never assume anything. If you have taken the project over then the client will expect you to take responsibility for it from then on. Always thoroughly test your work before it goes live and checks that any changes you do do not affect other parts of the site.

If you are looking into hosting for your website then you have a few options. Historically it used to be shared servers or dedicated servers but you can often now opt for a cloud server package as instead if you wish. All of the different types of servers have advantages and disadvantages and often your choice will mostly come down to cost. Dedicated servers are usually the most reliable and allow you to have complete control over how they are run.

If you decide that you cannot afford the monthly or annual fee of a dedicated server for your website (which can often be in the region of £100-£300 per month) then you will probably have to settle for a shared server.

A shared server means that not only will your websites be hosted on there but also potentially hundreds of others that you have no control over. Usually, this will not cause a problem but if one of the other websites causes an issue such as overloading the server, you will find that your websites will also be affected and go offline. If the shared server IP address gets blacklisted as one of the domains is sending out a lot of spam, then you may find that your genuine emails also start to be rejected by many recipients. This can also have an effect on your rankings on the search engine if you IP is thought to not be safe.

Pricing can be a tricky subject for a web developer or programmer. If the website is straight forward and has the usual pages and functionality then the chances are you have already worked on a similar project previously or have a template design that you can easily price. The issue comes when the website needs to be bespoke and has a number of complicated functions that will have to be written in from scratch. It can be tricky to know exactly how long it is going to take to complete the job so pricing can become complex.

You need to try and establish how many man hours of work you think there is going to be to get the job done. It is always advisable to slightly over estimate or put in a contingency budget in case you have under estimated. You can even say to your client that you will knock a certain amount off if you can get the job done quicker than you had priced for.

Do not start any work until you have agreed a price and have a detailed specification showing what is going to be included in the price you have quoted, this can save a lot of time and arguments later on down the line should the spec start to change.

When you buy a domain name you may think that you have everything you need to start to build your website. You may not have purchased any hosting with your name and until you do this you will not have anyway of adding a website to it.

Think of hosting as the space needed to store all the files (or pages)  that will contained in your website. You need to be able to rent space off a server in order to host your files. There are a number of ways in which to obtain hosting; you can buy hosting when you buy your domain name, you can also chose to buy hosting through a third party or you can chose to have your website hosted with your website developer who may have their own dedicated server.

You can chose to either have shared space on a server or a dedicated server just for your website / websites. The dedicated server will cost a lot more to rent, often around £300 per month as opposed to approx. £20 a month for a shared server.

If you are expecting high traffic, do not want to run the risk of your server being affected by other companies sharing your hosting and want to be able to improve your SEO then you may opt for a dedicated server.

If you have a business that services multiple locations then you need to think about how you are going to portray this on your website.

If your business is online only and you post or travel to many locations then you may just have one site but make pages relevant to each area within your one site. If you have different showrooms or offices all over the country then you may consider creating mini sites for each. It is important to ensure that the content that you put on your website is unique and this can be tricky when it comes to multiple locations. Some people think that they can just copy the content and replace the one location with another but this is simply not unique enough and you may find one or both of the sites get penalised for it. You need to create pages that are unique to that office or area. So it may be that you add in customer testimonials, News specific to that area etc to ensure that the content is different enough to get both sites ranked. If you do need to use some of the text then make sure you reword it and ideally add to it to get the best results.