enotions’ long term customer Salisbury Bedding and Furniture Centres have begun development of their online store. Salisbury Bedding, who were first introduced to the web in 2003 by enotions, and whose sister gift company, Lulus, already enjoys using enotions for all their web and ecommerce needs are looking to launch their shop in the new year.

The shop will give them total control over their products, brands and categories, all through a simple to use admin interface. The site itself will mirror the same friendly, professional and expert experience you enjoy when you shop on the premises in Salisbury.

The ecommerce element will be the latest in a number of new modules for the enotions CMS which has been delighting customers throughout the second half of 2009. Updating web sites has never been so easy. We really need to find a name for it!

When I was at school, nearly 20 years ago (jeepers!) I was insanely proud of my collection of 200+ tapes and vinyls. All dreadful stuff. Boston. ELO. Trex. Aerosmith. Deep Purple. You get the idea.

After school, the collection swelled to 1,000 as I discovered Ben’s Collector Records (officially the world’s greatest music shop) in Guildford, and bought more inane middle of the road pop rock stuff. Rainbow. Genesis. Eagles. No need to labour the point…

As jobs paid better, the record collection mirrored the income and soon moving house became even more costly because of the volume of vinyl that had to be lugged.

With itunes my collection showed no sign of abating. In deed, with the instantaneous nature of digital, if I wanted it, I could get it, there and then. No journey to the shops, no waiting for the post for me. One click and 79p later and I had the track. By Christmas last year, I had 20,000 tracks on my mac mini and I was still insanely proud.

But since the appearance of Spotify my ambition to own every track I have ever desired has dissipated. Literally in the click of a mouse button, the longing to ‘own’ a piece of music is no longer there. I can count the number of tracks I have bought through itunes in 2009 on the fingers of one hand. Even the free weekly tracks are ignored. Spotify has killed my urge to actually own my record collection.

Spotify’s rule was always going to be limited by the availability of bandwidth to stream music tracks (for free, of course), but now that the Spotify app is available for WiFi access, the availability for free and limitless music you can take on the road is now a reality.

If itunes has been hurt by the appearance of Spotify, they are not saying. Apple, who own itunes, have supported (if not welcomed) the creation of the iphone app. However, I dont think I am alone in reducing, or even entirely stopping, my consumption of bought music in exchange for free streaming music, interrupted by adverts. (And don’t forget you can buy through Spotify now.)

Of course, Spotify are not out in the lead and cannot be touched. Their library is far from complete and prone to sudden artist removal. Artists come and go from Spotify’s ranks as quickly as music tastes. I noted that Bob Dylan vanished a few months back and has yet to appear. So they are, for now, at the mercy of the music industry’s might. But it cannot be doubted that they have had a spectacular first year or so and itunes must be eying them whilst nervously chewing their lip.

Over the years, enotions has seen its fair share of people come and go, but it is with great sadness we say ‘Cheerio’ to Jo, our account manager of three years.

It was in a childrens’ playground we were first introduced! We immediately realised she was really rather special. It had nothing to do with the playground although our kids seemed to be having a good time!

Over the last few years she’s looked after many of enotions’ Salisbury-based customers. Her level-headed judgement and good humour has always been a welcome relief in the bubble-like world we frequently find ourselves in here at enotions.

She’s moving on to undoubtedly bigger and brighter things and from all of us at enotions we wish her every success.

In response to Rob’s post regarding his unsightly working environment, I thought I’d show you all how an efficient Head of Development rolls…

But why, oh why, would one man need so many screens in his life?

There are many answers to this question; some might argue that I’m trying to look important, others (those that know me too well) might say I’m aiming for world domination - one website at a time. The truth, of course, is that there are many different configurations out there in the wild and seeing as our job is to cater for pretty much all of them, it stands to reason that the man at which the buck stops has to be in a position to emulate as many of these configurations as possible.

So, there’s the Mac for serious dev work and Mac testing, the desktop PC for most PC based browsers/rendering engines and finally the laptop for upcoming PC releases (such as IE8 etc). The laptop is also handy for those mornings you just can’t bring yourself to get out of bed. The iPhone is there for two reasons: 1). To show it off… I love it to pieces! and 2). because we all need to test our sites on this too!

For the record, I didn’t just tidy my desk for the sake of this blog post - the boss has seen my desk in complete disarray, so he might argue this fact - but as he says in his post, a clean desk facilitates high levels of efficiency.

To quantify, and as justification for my belief of “clear desk, clear mind” in a similar manner to Rob’s: I believe I have gone from 110% efficient to 125% - not only do I get all my work done in a day, but I also achieve a fair amount more than is asked.

Rob’s not far off, but as you can see from his picture he still has some way to go to catch up with me!