For those of you not aware I am a little obsessed with technology. I blog about it, I read about it, I think about it constantly…Sad I know.

However advancements in robotics are surpassing expectations so much that any day now we could all end up with a “Johnny 5” of our very own or much more likely replacing us in the workplace.

To do this I always figure you need a few things:

1. Software that can think (like Skynet but friendlier)
2. A body that can move (Like Short-circuit but less wiry)
3. And self-repair, consciousness and the ability to communicate (like data from star-trek but less Pinocchio).

Whilst reading a number of different articles and looking at different developments in the field, I realised that we are probably just about there… If everything worked together and it was all in one machine. Lucky for us these master machinists tend to focus on one aspect of development, rather than putting everything together.

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We came across an issue today that had us puzzling for a while. We recently added the Enhanced Link Attribution plugin to a sites analytics account and saw the rather unexpected result of it stopping ALL analytics traffic from the site!

So head well and truly scratched we started to debug the issue. A great tool for this is the Google Analytics Debug extension for Chrome. Once installed you can turn it on an off easily from the menu bar and it allows you to seamlessly intercept the request the page makes to the ga.js file and replaces it for the debug version (you knew about the debug version right?). Once activated and you have your developer console open you will see the inner workings of the analytics plugin output to your console.

This proved really useful as we could see the analytics stopped work right after we’d requested the link attribution plugin. It seemed like our analytics was sitting and waiting for the plugin JavaScript.

We reviewed the code we’d been supplied and the analytics code was correct, the implementation correct and the plugin loading matched the code Google were providing on their own support pages. STUMPED!

We then checked the protocols used for requesting the plugin JavaScript and what transpired was that the protocols mattered little but the TLD provided by Google as .co.uk actually resulted in a server timeout. Replacing this with .com seemed to return the javascript as quick as you would expect!

Swapping the .co.uk to .com in the pluginUrl variable fixed the issue immediately and our analytics started working again.

Looking back this page was right around the 4th April as we had copied the code to send to another clients developers so this seems to be a relatively new issue. Hopefully this helps you out so you’re not as stumped as we were!

So today Leeds welcomed a brand spanking new shopping centre to our high street, Trinity Leeds

The eagerly awaited centre opened its doors for the very first time at 10am this morning and was greeted by hundreds of shoppers all waiting to catch a glimpse of its shiny new interior and hit the shops for the latest must have’s. Social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram has been going crazy all morning with 100s of picture uploads and commentary around the opening and it seems like the vast majority of the city are really behind the new development, which is great to see for Leeds.

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We’d like to reach out, as our friends across the pond would say, to Google as we think we have spotted an opportunity for them

During a recent ‘beer conversation’ with Paul, one of our good friends at Searchmetrics, we Googled the phrase ‘search engine’ – fully expecting Google to be no1 in their own SERPs. To our surprise we found Dogpile to be No1 – yes, I said Dogpile – you remember? They are indeed still out there – and doing pretty well apparently by using a mix of results from various engines including Google.

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Do you like the finer things in life? 

We are currently working on a very exciting luxury digital market research project here at EDQuarters and are looking for some volunteers to come and take part in an evening of tasty food, market research and inspiration.

The evening will be held on Wednesday 16^th of January in our Leeds City Centre Office at 6:15pm. The research focus group will last around an hour and a half and you will be asked a series of questions about your opinions of the luxury, beauty and leisure market, specifically how you use digital to access these things.  You will be required to answer market research questions and some of your responses may be filmed as part of the research.  The research group is open to both men and women aged between 21 and 50 years of age.

As a thank you for your time food and refreshments will be provided and also a £20 Love to Shop Voucher.

If you are interested please email: Kristal@enjoy-digital.co.uk or call 0113 389 9770 for further information.

My name is Liam Loughney and I am a 23 year old University Graduate. Like many graduates in my position I was finding it hard to break into the marketing industry. Looking at my situation realistically I decided that gaining some work experience would benefit me greatly. I heard about Enjoy Digital and the quality of work that they do and decided to get in touch to inquire about any work experience they could offer. I was delighted when Kristal Ireland – Strategy Director – threw me a lifeline and invited me into the fantastic Enjoy Digital agency/headquarters in Leeds City Centre.

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Who needs an App when you have creativity eh?

With all the excitement of the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, we have seen a significant uplift in Bond Classics and Bond “like” behaviour in the ED Quarters, so we decided to road test the latest Bond photo equipment and all we needed was a camera phone and the inside of a toilet tube.

Here is how you can do the same.

We would love to see your photos so tweet us @EnjoyDigital with the hashtag #BondPhotos  - the best one will win you a £20 cinema voucher to watch the man himself (or another film if you choose, but …. it’s really the best film out at the moment!)

To create the perfect Bond photograph you need the following items:

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There’s lots of excitement around ED Quarters today as we prepare for the British Interactive Media Association Digital Day that is due to take place tomorrow. We are very proud to be taking part in the day and will be partnering with the David Young Academy in East Leeds.

The BIMA D-DAY is an initiative set up to begin to address the digital skills gap in the UK today. Working with local schools, digital agencies from around the UK will spend the day working up a series of digital marketing briefs and introducing the students to the digital industry and the different careers on offer.

Alongside the David Young Academy we are also pleased to announce that we are working with the O2 Think Big initiative to introduce the scheme to the students and in partnership with local charity The LS14 Trust who will speak to the students about the opportunities on offer.

We will be reporting on the day via Twitter tomorrow so be sure to follow us for all the latest on what we hope will be an inspiring and great day!

We had a very busy week last week at ED Quarters with our team out and about in Manchester and Yorkshire, site launches and awards do’s.

First up on Wednesday we journeyed over to Manchester to Chair a breakfast briefing with Pro Manchester on “Digital Evolution in the Financial Services’. Our Strategy Director, Kristal was accompanied by Ben McKay, Head of Organic Performance for Money Supermarket and Peter Cobley, Commercial Director for Home James.  The session was well attended by professionals from the North West with Ben and Peter both giving solid presentations about the growth of digital marketing in the financial sector.

The standout statistic of the morning came from Ben at Money Supermarket who reported that since making a switch to a heavily content marketing led SEO strategy, Money Supermarket have seen a 29% increase in revenue growth from natural search in the last 12 months.

Our particular favourite piece of content marketing from Money Supermarket was “The Cost of Being Batman” Infographic which you can see here: http://pinterest.com/pin/35184440810087409/ 

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Being a bit of a retro gaming/graphic geek, I was delighted to see this video drop on my Twitter feed. There are plenty of 8-bit homages out there, but what struck me with this video were the level of accurate Commodore 64 references; the limited colour palette, the soundtrack and the loading intermissions. It’s not 100% perfect, but it’s ridiculously close. I think they’ve done a fantastic job emulating the look and feel of vintage computers and consoles as it’s notoriously tricky to get right. Reminded me of some of the fun and challenges we had putting in the animation routines for Boost Champions.

As much as I love the original Vice City, I’d LOVE for this C64 port to become a reality. Not sure if I could stomach this coming on two 5 ¼” floppies or four cassettes though!