Internet

A new website displaying the latest business news updates including finance news, travel news, olympics news, jobs and much more.

London Business News aggregates content from across the web displaying business news updates from top news outlets including the BBC and Reuters.

The site is built using Drupal 7 and only a small number of additional modules including Chaos Tools, EU Cookie Compliance, Panels, Share This and Beauty Tips.

Drupal recently launched its' redesigned theme and logo, which was about time, along with some new functionality and restructuring.

One new feature of the modules page is being able to filter the results by date, allowing you to see the latest modules available for download.

This inspired me to pick out 5 Great New Drupal Modules to share with you. I hope you like them.

Whether you are using Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla or similar CMS you will want to keep your site and module plugins up-to-date for security as well as functionality reasons.

This can be straight forward or a tricky and time consuming task depending on the size of your site and the amount of modules installed.

Updating the core site with half a dozen extra modules would, 9 out of 10 times, be straight forward but then again who only has that many modules installed on their site?!

That's why when it comes to updating your site and its' modules you should follow a set procedure to insure your site looks and works in the same way as it did before you updated anything.

This will be my first Follow Friday since Chris Brogan came up with an improved version that can help drive traffic to your own blog.

The new format below means you have more room to detail why you should follow someone rather than just plaster Twitter with a handful of tweeple with no explanation.

So without further a do here are 4 great people to follow this Friday:

@BWelford tweets about business online, seo and blogging on a regular basis with a well respected opinion, a must follow.

@nictinworth is my Far East correspondent for digital and web solutions.

@ruudhein Wordpress, social with a large chunk of SEO for good measure.

Up to this point in time I feel my participation in social media has been quite fruitful. I started my blog back in January 2008 and since then it has steadily grown with thousands visiting on a regular basis. 

I've been active in Digg, Sphinn, Stumbleupon, Design Float, Mixx, the list goes on, for some time and have had a Twitter account for a couple of years. All this time I think I've done my fair share of social media marketing, sharing content, writing blog posts etc but the busier my web design business has become, the less time I've had for other things.

I realize how important blogging and social media is to my business which is why I felt the iPad would be crucial in boosting my activity in both areas. Having previously used my iBook and iPhone primarily to tweet, share content on social sites and read feeds I saw the potential that the iPad offered me.

RSS Feeds

In my opinion the best way to keep up-to-date with industry news or what's going on in general is either with Twitter or an RSS feed reader. I use NetNewsWire on my iMac, iBook, iPhone and now iPad. It's a great app and one I use every day.

The only problem being is that I follow so many blogs, last count 60, is that it can be a struggle to keep the number of unread posts at a reasonable level. I'm probably not the only person who feels like this but the sight of 900 unread posts makes my heart sink!

I took the job, yes I used to see it as a job, of reading these posts quite seriously, keeping abreast of the latest goings on in the blogosphere, that was until I got the iPad.

To take a quick step back I used to open up NetNewsWire on my iPhone or laptop to read posts, mainly to get away from my main machine to stop my legs from thinking they were no longer needed! 

Yes that's right, I have an iPad, I can't quite believe it myself, I'm keeping up with the Fry's of this world!

This time last week I was only dreaming about getting one when they eventually come out here in the UK, luckily for me a great client was off to NYC to get their hands on one and managed to snaffle a second. Even better than that is the fact he didn't then put it straight on Ebay but instead offered it to me for a reasonable amount :o)

So enough of the fawning over actually owning one and on to the business of reporting my first impressions, which are blinking brilliant. Mainly because if you blink you miss it, the speed of the iPad is one of its stand out features.

The Basics

Speed is definitely of the essense when it comes to the iPad and start up doesn't disappoint. Opening and closing apps is as quick and efficient as you could ask for. Battery life so far is good although I haven't used it non stop yet!