Recently, I’ve noticed more and more people are using Flavors.me. But is it really the simplest way to build a homepage?

I’ve noticed Flavors.me URLs starting to creep into more and more email signatures. But as its userbase grows, what is the point of Flavors.me? Is it really the simplest way to build a homepage?

Flavors.me claims to be a way of making a homepage in minutes. The best way to describe is probably as an online business card – it brings all your social media feeds onto one page.

So what is the point of that?

It is super easy to set up a homepage. The menu is easy to navigate and it’s easy to pull in Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn streams. The simplicity and limitations of Flavors.me are exactly it’s differentiating selling point.

For a start, Flavors.me needs a UK branch so I don’t look like I can’t spell if I make use of it.

The other problem I have with Flavors.me is its overall use. I use different social networking platforms for different groups of people, such as work colleagues on Twitter, school and uni friends on Facebook and professional contacts on LinkedIn. Having all those streams brought together on one homepage isn’t something I’m necessary after.

I found it difficult finding the right size image to upload to fit the page. A little of guidance for uploading images wouldn’t go amiss. A tip if you’re adding a RSS feed link from Safari browser – replace “feed” at the start of the URL with “http”.

[Another annoyance -  you can add Instagram feeds. Instagram needs to develop apps for platforms other than Apple.]

However, I have created my own Flavors.me page. And it is a great replacement at the bottom of my email signature for all the profile links. I get it. Flavors.me is pretty cool.

I’d be interested to hear what you think about it. How are you using Flavors.me?

Here are some examples:

Hello, I’m Jess, I’m the founder of GaBoom.co.uk and this is my guest blog for the awesome Witch Tech!

As this is my first guest blog (ever!) I thought I would answer the questions that Witch Tech sent over to me rather than doing a potentially risky freestyle!  So here goes…

How did you set up GaBoom and where did you get the idea?

I first had the idea of creating a website where people could swap their video games with each other when I was 15…but sadly hired the wrong web developer and soon realised my pocket money wasn’t quite going to stretch far enough.  It all started because I used to swap video games with my friends and one day thought ‘what if you could do this on a massive scale?’

On starting university this year, it was then that GaBoom turned into reality.  I joined the Royal Holloway Entrepreneurship Society and it was there that I met James King (Find Invest Grow) who helped me turn GaBoom into a company.  It was then down to writing a business plan and raising investment, which turned GaBoom from an idea into a product and a business (all of which James helped me with). GaBoom Limited was formed on February 22nd 2010 and GaBoom.co.uk entered into open beta at the end of June 2010.  Since entering into open beta we have received some great feedback for the site and are now getting started with some exciting design changes.

What’s your gaming loves and hates?

I love it when you’re playing a game that you just can’t put down (and it may sound sad…) but when you’re playing a game and have no idea that three hours have just passed!  My favourite game at the mo is Assassin’s Creed II.  I’m a massive fan of action, adventure and RPG’s.

Ooh gaming hates… I hate playing a game and finding it’s a disappointment – especially ones that are so hyped up.  To give an example, I wasn’t a massive fan of Final Fantasy XIII and found it rather disappointing, despite the fact that the hype and excitement around it’s release was huge.

What are your hopes for the site?

I have so many hopes for GaBoom – my main hope is that is becomes a website that gamers love using and the place they go to, to swap their video games with each other.  We also have some exciting hopes and plans for growth, including international expansion…so watch this space J.

And that brings us to the end of my guest blog here on Witch Tech.  Thank you for reading and if you have any feedback or thoughts on GaBoom, please email me - I would love to hear them!

Game exchange is big business. Electronic Arts (EA), HMV and Game Group PLC are cashing in with in-store trade-ins and exchanges. But with pre-owned games costing up to £30 on the High Street, it’s no surprise that savvy gamers are going online in search of a game exchange bargain. While points-based systems and dodgy security has put some gamers off, new game exchange platform, GaBoom.co.uk promises to bring new life to online pre-owned games market.

And just at the right time. With EA proposing to issue a license for games with an online element, even if you buy second-hand, you could have to pay an additional fee to play online. Entrepreneur and gamer, Jess Ratcliffe, launched GaBoom.co.uk earlier this year, giving the UK a platform for trading pre-owned games in reaction to industry attempts to encourage gamers to buy brand new.

“We have developed a safe, easy and unique way of trading games online; providing users, not only with our automatic user-matching system but two secure and insured postage options to take the hassle and risk out of trading their games online,” says 20-year-old Jess.

“With approximately 12.4 million people in the UK currently buying their games second-hand, it is going to take something massive for all of them to switch to only buying their games brand new,” she Jess.

GaBoom.co.uk is now running in open beta and set for it’s official launch later this summer. With a little girl power, GaBoom.co.uk could bring an exciting twist to the pre-owned games market – despite EA’s plans to lure gamers back to buying brand new games.

What do you think? Do you prefer to buy games brand new or do a game exchange? Let Witch Tech know.

I got to ask about something close to both of our hearts: singing. Turns out she thinks everyone should sing, whether on stage, at the local karaoke or when you’re alone because it’s better than talking. Unfortunately, she didn’t sing her way through the interview. But this is what she had to say:

Image courtesy of Flickr user DasinDesign and used under Creative Commons licensing.

Singing is one of our god-given, joyful experiences and everyone should take advantage of it. Every religion in the world uses singing because it takes you to a higher place. Even if you’re crap, it lifts your soul because your voice is part of your physical body. We have an expression in the studio, “mind to tape”. It’s what everyone wants you to do instead of fucking around in the studio. But with singing, there is no ‘tape’; it’s physical and whatever is in your mind, it comes out.  When you walk up to the microphone and sing, there’s no interpretation of a musical instrument, your voice is just there and it’s just your emotional repsonse. Singing is better than talking. It’s the purest form of music.

I wanted to sing ever since I was about five. For some people, you just know all your life it’s what you want to do. But of course, I had no idea if I could sing and I remember praying to god that I could.

Growing up in the 50s, it was listening to stuff on the radio that influenced me. My family were musical but we only had three records in my house at home and I don’t remember them being played. I only remember the covers because Julie London looked hot on one of them, you could see her clevage, it was almost pornographic back then.

My dad had a harmonica and my mum played the violin, but they came from a traditional background and a time when people didn’t pursue their dreams. My brother, Terry, also played the clarinet and then moved onto saxophone. When I was eight, I requested a baritone ukelele for my birthday and Terry bought me a book of chords. Later, I got a guitar. I didn’t think I could be in a band. I had to wait because I couldn’t play with the guys, I was too shy, still just singing when I was alone.

You don’t know if you can sing until you sing in front of the microphone. The first time I did, it was a trauma. I was about 16 and in a band Sat. Sun. Mat. We played a few covers in a church hall like Traffic’s 40,000 Headmen, you know, quirky stuff. I wasn’t a natural, born show off, at least not on stage, so I had to overcome that. I had a long time to get The Pretenders together. By the time I did, I’d had so many different jobs: waitressing, modelling in art colleges, framing pictures, selling handbags, an architect’s assistant; the fear of singing was not enough to stop me because the fear of waitressing was always worse.

I’m not a musician but I am musical and I have listened a lot. People like Dionne Warwick, Iggy Pop (and all the english groups of that era), informed my voice. My inspiration was taken from the more androgenous aspect of the music. I liked the Shangri-Las but I was more influenced by listening to the guys in the bands.

I shut myself in a closet when I was learning to sing. I sang a lot of Jackie Moore and Candi Staton songs just to see if I could find the notes. It’s important to remember that the thing you find most embarrassing about your voice is probably the most unique to you. It’s natural to try and stamp it out because it’s too personal. Iggy Pop has an obnoxious American accent, like me, but he didn’t seem to care, he was just himself.

Sing, even if you just sing alone. Go to the karaoke where everyone is too busy getting drunk to notice what you’re singing. I went to a karaoke bar in Antwerp and I loved it. I think it’s the best type of entertainment. I went up on stage and I was Marvin Gaye. And that’s the beauty of it, you can be anybody. Everyone has a go. Singing just feels right. I hadn’t sung much before I was in my band. I’m totally untrained, I’ve had no lessons, I don’t do any special vocal exercises and I’m a rock singer. Everyone has to sing, you just have to.

Colin Firth in Julian Mitchell's 'Another Country'.

His varied career as a stage and screen writer has seen him launch Colin Firth’s career and even write a teleplay with The Kinks’s Ray Davies. Now, Julian Mitchell is returning to novel writing, as Jenny Williams found out

Julian Mitchell wasn’t always a playwright. In fact, he started as a poet and almost became a spy. “I was terribly pleased. I’d been in America for two years and I came back and didn’t know what to do,” says Mitchell, “I got a letter from the Foreign Office so I went along and met a man. It dawned on me he was asking me to be a minor collector of information. I said ‘Oh, you want me to be a spy!’”

Fortunately, Mitchell wasn’t tempted into a career with MI6 but continued to write numerous plays and dramas for stage and screen, launching many famous actors’ careers as well as his own. After great critical acclaim and success for his work, including the many episodes of Inspector Morse he wrote, Mitchell is returning to novel writing.

The 74-year-old writer has finished two of a series of novels set in the 1970s and 1980s about Monmouthshire, where he currently lives with his long-term partner. More so, he’s hoping to write a film about Lord Lucan and has been approached to adapt Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Solider for the stage.

Mitchell’s return to novel writing following the six novels he wrote in the 1960s has been met with limited success. “I’m suffering from what’s known as the ‘saga syndrome’”, he laughs, “which is, if you’re over a certain age, when no-one wants to publish you unless you’ve been published already. Nobody knows I was once published and used to be a novelist.”

People do know, however, about Mitchell’s stage and screen writing. One of Mitchell’s most renowned plays, Another Country, set in a public school exploring themes of homosexuality and Marxism won the Laurence Olivier award for the best new play in 1982. The also play marked Rupert Everett and Daniel Day-Lewis’s first West End appearances and Colin Firth was still at drama school when he replaced Day-Lewis for a role in Mitchell’s play. Another Country was then turned into a film adaptation in 1984.

Among other names Mitchell has worked alongside, Oscar-winning Danny Boyle directed one of Mitchell’s screenplay’s ‘Cherubim and Seraphim’ for Inspector Morse in 1992. The play was based on The Magic Flute by Mozart. “Danny had never been to the opera so we all went to the opera and he was very dubious about it,” says Mitchell of the research they conducted together for the episode.

In Mitchell’s other work, research was more readily available. Born in 1935 in Essex, Mitchell growing up gay in the 1940s and 1950s when the word ‘gay’ didn’t exist and many people, like his father, believed “gay people deserved to be shot” was a trying time. This and the Wolfenden Report of 1957, which legalised homosexual relations between consenting adults, formed the basis of his BBC drama, Consenting Adults in 2007.

Despite his screenwriting success, Mitchell prefers the theatre. “The audience makes the theatre. It may seem to be the same performance every night but it’s not. The actors are always responding back off the auditorium; whereas in the film or television it’s always edited and completed and done.”

Some actors, such as Colin Firth and Rupert Everett, have successfully moved from Mitchell’s stage to the screen. But Mitchell is dubious about the present ability of actors to move from screen to stage. “You’ve got to be heard. One of the great complaints from people who go the theatre now is that actors are not trained for that. They’re trained for television and film. They whisper,” he says in his clear diction.

“The greatest film actors are the ones who hardly move their faces,” he continues, “You ought to be able to, just with a flick of the eyebrow, just to convey a huge emotion. Not everyone can make that jump.”

As Mitchell knows. He has made several jumps between platforms but not always with success. Indeed, some of his works have never made it out of his attic. Arthur, a teleplay written with The Kinks’s Ray Davies about a carpet layer is one of these. “The producer tried to “busk it”, as they say in the trade and he failed it,” he explains, “I’ve never forgiven that man,” he adds frankly.

The apparent break he took between Inspector Morse and Consenting Adults was due to several films he was working on not being made. “One film in every hundred gets made,” he says,

“When they do make your film, they muck it up because it’s a commercial business.”

And commercial business is not something Mitchell finds appealing. “Do you watch Britain’s Got Talent?” he asks, “That fat father and son, weren’t they ludicrous? I thought it demonstrated without question that Britain has not got talent.”

However, despite Mitchell’s ‘saga syndrome’, it’s clear that Britain has got Mitchell’s talent for as long as keeps on writing.

Even the best of us can have a confidence crisis at times, as Jenny Williams found out when she met author Julia Gregson

There aren’t many of us who can claim to have progressed through life without suffering a lack of confidence in something at some stage. But you don’t expect an international bestselling novelist and former model to have suffered with a confidnece problem.

Author Julia Gregson is open about her own insecurities, “I did have a confidence problem for a long time,” she admits. But it is, at first glance, hard to understand why.

Once a successful full-time journalist and former house model for Hardy Amies, Julia has had a rich and varied career to date. She worked as a foreign correspondent for Sungravure (a consortium of Australian magazines), travelling to Vietnam and India, been a freelance journalist for such titles as Rolling Stone and Cosmopolitan magazines and interviewed the likes of Dalai Lama, Muhammad Ali and even Bob Dylan.

Now a full-time writer and settled in the Monmouthshire countryside, the 61-year-old’s most recent novel, East of the Sun, has enjoyed great success, being awarded the Romantic Novel of the Year award 2009 in February and being picked for the Richard and Judy Book Club last year. She is currently writing her third novel due for release next year. How could it be possible to lack confidence?

“When I was working for Rolling Stone, I had this period of thinking, ‘I can’t do this, I’ve gone beyond what I am capable of doing’,” she explains, holding her palms out.

“The same happened when I started writing short stories. There’s always a mental block with me that has to be overcome but equally I have to overcome the mental block or I become stale with what I’m doing.

“I wish I didn’t have it,” she exclaims, “But I think it’s incredibly common. I think everyone has it.

“I was talking to a friend of mine who is an extremely famous and successful writer the other day,” she continues, “and I said to him, ‘Well, it’s alright for you, you’re incredibly clever’ (he’s got a double first from Cambridge),” she adds.

“He said, ‘Are you joking? I’m frightened every morning. That’s my first emotion of the day!’ I find it comforting to know it’s normal,” she laughs.

Julia has managed to use these struggles to her advantage despite still sometimes finding writing difficult. “I find writing incredibly challenging in ways,” she says, “But I think what’s changed is I accept the struggle is part of the journey. I don’t turn it against myself and think I’m hopeless or obvisouly can’t do this.”

Julia has been persistent. Even when her debut novel only sold around 7,000 copies, Julia didn’t give up, going on to write East of the Sun, which sold over half a million copies in six months. It was also picked by the Richard and Judy Book Club. Julia says this was fantastic feeling. How did she celebrate? “I was in my pyjamas at home when the phone rang. My agent said, ‘I have some fantastic news,’ and my husband and I were dancing in the kitchen.”

But her success hasn’t been without its low points. When Julia’s first marriage broke down, she used her career to help her turn her life around, taking on a challenging new job with Sungravure.

Much like many of Julia’s characters, who leave their homelands for other places – such as The Water Horse protagonist, Catherine Carreg who runs away to London – Julia believes in challenging yourself. “Every now and then you need to shake it up and scare yourself,” she claims.

But her success hasn’t been without self-doubt. “When I was clearing up my notes from East of the Sun,” she says, ” I found a letter to my agent, which read, ‘I am so sorry to let you down but this is hopeless, I don’t think I can finish it. I’m not getting anywhere’. I thought, ‘Oh my god’, I’m so glad I’m on the other side of that.”

And the ‘other side’ seems to be the older side. Now approaching retirement age, Julia believes her increased confidence has come with experience. “There’s something about going through the process over and over again and learning what your weaknesses are,” she says looking to one side, “It’s like a muscle learnt to work or like anything else you learn to do; the more you do it, the more instinctive it becomes.

“I did have a confidence problem for a very long time but I definitely think my confidence is much higher,” she says resolutely, “I know that however stuck or bad I can feel, I’ll get it more or less right in the end.”

Julia’s third novel Jasmine Nights will be published in August 2010.