Creating Graphics for Mobile Devices

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Images and backgrounds are integral parts for online forums and bulletin boards and a bulletin board designer’s first problem might be compressing images to show properly in mobile devices. Mobile devices have smaller resolutions and image compression becomes a problem. Here are a few things you should know about mobile device graphic and bulletin board design.

1. Resolution
Only Apple iPhones have the same resolution for every version that it releases. As for Research in Motion’s Blackberry units, Samsung, LG and HTC units, the resolutions differ from one another. Specify the kind of units you are targeting your bulletin boards and research about the resolution of these devices. Their company websites usually show the complete specs of each model.

Here’s a list of common unit resolutions.

2. Flexible Design
Most phones now have gyrosensors, which allow the screen to change shape depending on the phones orientation. Consider making your design workable with landscape and portrait orientations. These are essentially effective with iPhones and tablets. Once again, your design depends on the kind of mobile devices you are targeting.

3. Colors
Every mobile device has a wide amount of colors that it could use to show your images. Most HTC and Blackberry units have 65,000 colors. iPhone and Nokia uses 16 million colors. The higher the mobile device’s colour value, the sharper, brighter and clearer the images are.

4. Formats
Mobile devices benefit greatly from PNG formats than GIFs because it has greater color depth, fully lossless and has adjustable transparencies. PNG’s also provide 254 level of partial transparent pixels as well.

Dangerous Machinery Accident Compensation Claims Facts

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The definition of a “dangerous machine” in the UK is any type of machine your employer has you use when performing your job. It is the employer’s responsibility to keep their employees away from the dangerous parts of a machine. This means they should provide fair warnings, safety equipment and training for handling the machines.

Employers should place a guard or barrier against the machine’s dangerous part. This can be done by the employer’s themselves by hiring another company to do this, or they could contract the manufacturer to make specialized models.

You could claim compensation against your employer for any injury you get from a dangerous machine. If you have used a machine at work, you place your hands at high risk. Dangerous machinery, often common in construction and building site areas, will have you feed it with the materials needed for construction, which involves the use of your hands.

If you intend to make a worker compensation claim for dangerous machinery accident injuries, here’s a list of the likely compensation you’ll receive:

Simple Thumb Fracture With Recovery – £2500
Loss of little finger – £8000
Ring Finger – £9000
Middle Finger – £10000
Index Finger – £12000
Thumb- £35000
Minor Hand Crush Injury With Recovery £2800
Serious Hand Crush Injury With Permanent Disability – £8500

PPI Claim News: Ex-Lloyds CEO Believes Not All PPI Policies Were Mis Sold

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Former Lloyds Banking Group CEO Eric Daniels believes that half the PPI claims Lloyds receives are all false claims and that many customers knew what PPI was before buying it. He also said that Lloyds had to pay out on PPI claims from customers since 2008 because it couldn’t cope with the great number of claims coming into the bank.

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Eric Daniels was Lloyd’s CEO from 2003 to 2011. Halfway around the “insurance boom” era, he said that most customers got the insurance value they deserved. Daniels even told the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards that PPI solved a fundamental customer need and made it a very competitive product.

PPI is an insurance policy designed to repay your loans, mortgages and credit cards in the event you get sick or unemployed. Around 3.2 million customers could not make use of the insurance due to its exceptions or because they did not really need the insurance. The banking industry has set aside a £13 billion compensation package, with Lloyds having £5.3 billion in provisions, the largest of all banks.

Daniels said that Lloyds always tried to impose the highest standards and always made it a priority to treat their customers fairly. He defends the past sales practices of Lloyds, saying that the bank took extraordinary steps to ensure they trained their personnel well.

He also blamed claims management companies such as fastppiclaims.org for the influx of so many fraudulent claims. However, data from the Financial Ombudsman suggests otherwise. The FOS estimates that around 158,000 complaints only had 6,000 fraudulent or faulty claims. The FOS also says that 98% of Lloyds-rejected claims were upheld in favour of the customer.

Design Basics: Designer and Viewer Compatibility Modes

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Designers cannot expect themselves to know what a viewer wants or feels with a GUI they designed for a bulletin board. While it might feel intuitive for the designer, it might feel otherwise for the user. The key to resolving the issue between designer and viewer compatibility modes is to allow a select number of testers to see and find any bugs in your design and programming of the bulletin board.

Once you have finished your design, allow some users to test it on the “beta” stage. This is equivalent to passing a first draft of design to your client. At least have five users find some bugs and any other qualitative trouble, such as if it doesn’t feel seamless or intuitive and allow them to explain to you why they feel such. List these down and take time to resolve the design flaws by yourself.

Second, have some other designers and programmers look at your code structure and designing techniques. Sometimes, your data storing scripts and other mechanisms may be consuming too much resource. Other programmers can advise you on how to resolve these issues ensuring capability without added hassles.

Third, implement your design, which may virtually be free of errors. However, allow the users to report bugs or make suggestions or comments about your design. No design is perfect, but it can always be improved for better use.

PPI Claims Deadline Proposals Must “Prioritize Interest of Customers”

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The British Banking Association and the Financial Services Authority had continued talks of putting a deadline to PPI claims to allow banks to restore their capital and provide lending amounts to the real economy of the United Kingdom. In total, the banks have set aside £13 billion for compensating at least 3.2 million customers mis sold the insurance policy.

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Many consumer groups and consumers expressed negative reaction over FSA’s consideration of the deadline. Martin Lewis of moneysavingexpert.com said that it is an unacceptable decision as banks mis sold PPI for a decade and to give all mis sold customers a year to make their claims is “immoral” and “illogical”. Peter Vicary-Smith, Which?’s CEO, said that customers already have a six-year deadline after banks inform them of having a mis sold PPI, but because banks did not campaign the repayment claiming very well and have delayed many customers in the past, a deadline of 2014 is too soon.

The BBA actually bargained with the FSA regarding the proposal of the deadline, stating that they would be funding a widespread advertising campaign in making claims and the development and establishment of more bank call centres to address with urgency all customer PPI claims.

The FSA has not yet made a final decision regarding the deadline, but it promises customers that the FSA ensures their protection and that each one will get their claim. The FSA also requires banks to place their proposals in the best interest of customers.

The Possibility of Having a Smartphone/ Mobile Bulletin Board Design

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Designers usually make bulletin and discussion boards compatible for most PC’s and other computer display outputs, but the possibility of building a mobile bulletin board design has never skipped the minds of most BB designers. BBs designed for mobile use is not quite easy, as you need to supply two or more versions depending on the units, but certainly, most websites implement such BBs in mobile phones today.

One trouble of smartphone BB’s is that it can display texts too small for users to read. However, this might vary depending on the design provided for units. Sometimes, some smartphone default text formats can have some characters or designs “bleed” into each other, causing great trouble to the overall design and scheme of the bulletin board.

However, the advantage of a mobile bulletin board is added traffic and sharing of information in the message board. It would greatly help more users to use the board given its anytime-accessibility and the ability to load it fast by omitting some images.

Another trouble is that advertising, if a moderator hosts you free, may not display properly. While you could fix this if this was your own web hosting, the moderators lock out the advertising designs based on your contract. Some moderators may allow you to fix it as long as it displays properly. Contact your moderator for details about such to clear up what you need to do.

In any case, the possibility of having a smartphone bulletin board is indeed great. Here is a good example of how a bulletin board can be made compatible for a mobile and a normal computer screen.

Making a Successful No Win No Fee Compensation Claim

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No win no fee means that you pay for your legal representative or claim expert’s fees only if they win the claim for you, or you find their services satisfactory as you postulated in your contract. The payment is usually 25% for every completed compensation claim. However, you could make your own injury, whiplash or accident claims without any aid from claims experts. Here are a few things to consider:

1. Medical Check Up
For every injury claim, it is best that victims first have doctors check their medical condition. Experts advise that you at least have two medical professionals look into your injuries and make a comprehensive medical report that you could use for evidence. The report should show the extent of damages and the possible long-term consequences of the accident.

2. Police Report
After your incident, file a police report with authorities on the day the accident happened so that a record of your incident exists. For work injuries and other off-road injuries, notifying local authorities and having them record the incident is important.

3. Estimates
Online, no win no fee compensation calculators can help you find the exact estimate of your injury claim. These often provide a chart of the common injuries victims suffer and the compensation currently given for the injured body part. You could estimate this by yourself or have a claims expert help you for free, contact NoWinNoFeeCo.co.uk.

The Things You Need to Learn to Design a Good Online Bulletin Board

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It takes more than good CSS and html skills to pull off a good bulletin board design. Bulletin boards need you to pay attention to all details from the borderlines to the images and advertisements you’ll be placing. A good online bulletin board design needs skills in the following areas.

1. Designing Principles
Interior design, graphic design and any other occupations concerned with design need to know the basic principles of interior design such as rhythm, texture, color, shape and symmetry. A bulletin board designed with only the basic lines and style without any good images or color scheme can be irritable to the eyes or boring.

2. Advertisement
Bulletin boards that web hosts provide free service often have advertisements, which they automatically put in place with their own design team, but if you have your own host paid for, you could place advertisements that you choose to affiliate with to gain income for your bulletin boards. However, the placement of advertisements in a bulletin board should always complement the design of the bulletin board itself.

3. PHP
A BB designer must know how to make scripts using PHP and java. This helps for a more interactive and easy-to-use approach with the Bulletin Board itself. Static pages can work, but PHP and Java helps increase the capability of the bulletin board and also complement its design.

What Makes a Good PHPBB Design?

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The most common PHP script used in website forums today is the phpBB, but, unlike website and webpage design, this can be very tricky to use, design or implement without good knowledge of the php programming language. If you have a knack for the language, you might lack design. So what makes a good phpBB board? Here are the bottomline points of a survey made from members of different forums about design and user interfaces.

1. Ambiance

Forum members of different phpBBs make mention of setting the mood of the forum, from the first line to the background image, to the mood, theme and focus of the forum. A forum is a discussion board where many users can discuss certain topics, and what can easily get them ideas in making discussion is by looking at the background image and feeling the website’s design. It is simple and sometimes considered unnecessary, but it does have an effect on users.

2. Reliability

Sometimes, certain parts of the forum, such as textboxes, help links and other details, bleed out of proportion, especially with different resolution. Sometimes, they also become inaccessible as it can be easily hacked by other users. Well-programmed php script in the forums is needed to ensure that reliability is achieved.

3. Friendliness

Why many people are turned off by the forums is because of their difficulty in navigating the different pages and topics they want to see. Forum GUIs should always ensure that it is uniform and intuitive. Designers should put a lot of effort in thinking “where will the user look for to find the help link?” or “how can they navigate the pages easily without trying to find a needle in a haystack?”.

4. Data Storage

Missing posts and replies are common in most phpBBs and it is most important that designers and programmers find a way that the forum design can also be stored properly. Graphics, especially 3D and flash mechanisms that the forums may have, occupy great data storage. The proper use of the design objects and data storage should be dealt with should issues arise.