I’ve been teasing her about how difficult if was for me to give up scrolls when the new technology of books came about and in a random wander online, I discovered the most marvellous YouTube video.

It’s called Medieval Helpdesk, had me and everyone else in the office rolling in the aisles, and believe it or not…  Suzanne now owns a Kindle!

Enjoy!

The issue:  If you’re used to displaying code snippets on your blog or website, you know that WordPress automatic formatting can be a pain for developers.

The solution is simple: Using a shortcode to remove the auto-formatting functions on certain portions of text.

Simply add the following to your functions.php for your theme:

function my_formatter($content) {
	$new_content = '';
	$pattern_full = '{([raw].*?[/raw])}is';
	$pattern_contents = '{[raw](.*?)[/raw]}is';
	$pieces = preg_split($pattern_full, $content, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);

	foreach ($pieces as $piece) {
		if (preg_match($pattern_contents, $piece, $matches)) {
			$new_content .= $matches[1];
		} else {
			$new_content .= wptexturize(wpautop($piece));
		}
	}

	return $new_content;
}

remove_filter('the_content', 'wpautop');
remove_filter('the_content', 'wptexturize');

add_filter('the_content', 'my_formatter', 99);

Then, when adding your misbehaving code, simply add [raw] before the code and [/after] to strip it of odd formatting.

See all 10 tips here:  10 incredibly cool WordPress shortcodes.

Design can have a positive effect on all business performance indicators, from turnover and profit to market share and competitiveness.

Whether you’re a design business talking to clients, or a business intermediary giving advice, these statistics could help you discuss the impact that design can have on performance.

To read the full article and learn what design can do for your figures, click here.

Facebook, LinkedIn and friends have changed the way we do business. Here’s how to make social media work for you.

Learn more here.

Learn more here.

On some level, we here at Future Makers believe that being too connected is not what life’s all about.  It’s certainly not what being an entrepreneur is about – surely running your own business is about doing what you love, helping customers AND also living the life that you want?  If you’re not sure about this, you may want to read “Hamlet’s Blackberry” by William Powers.

Anyway, assuming that you like a balance between having a life and keeping your clients happy, we’ve come across a fantastic little tool that may be able to help you achieve both.

This tool that we found is called “Tungle”.  Tungle allows you to set up a calendar and use a link to allow your clients to schedule an appointment in your available calendar – and that could be a telephone or face-to-face appointment!

It’s very simple to sign up (and did we mention, FREE), and you can then specify your availability, choose a direct URL (like www.tungle.com/futuremakers), add it to your website and away you go!  Once it’s live, visitors can request a call or a meeting with you and you can capture their details so that you don’t lose any clients.

This is a wonderful win-win situation.  You win because you don’t lose customers or contacts, and your visitors win because they can plan to speak to you.

We love this tool.

If you’d like to chat about it, feel free to discuss it, or, of course, do feel free to Tungle Us!

Two examples below, both owned by Daniel H Pink:

For full details, do visit the lovely Mr Pink.