Earlier this week we launched the latest extension to s1jobs.com – a portal targetting current and prospective Public Sector workers.   You can see it now at public.s1jobs.com.

Although the site is mostly static content, it still contains a number of innovations for s1.  Firstly, there’s a complete content CMS powered by Adobe Contribute that allows our SEO experts to tweak and add content whenever they like, without tech team intervention.  Secondly, there’s a new Flash-based carousel for employer logos that allows more logos to be displayed in a smaller space, and in a more interesting way.  Finally, there’s a host of server-side tweaks to make all of this possible — not least in the classification of all our exisiting Public Sector employers into their particular sector.

Hopefully the end result will prove popular with Public Sector workers, and with the search engines.

Today the Evening Times launched 12 new local community sites for areas of Glasgow.   The sites are based on the “s1local” platform I developed last year.  The first sites based on the s1local launched in December under the s1 brand, so we had to build in some customisations to allow the Evening Times to launch sites under their own brand.

I’m sure you can expect to see more community sites launched across Scotland in the coming months, both Evening Times branded ones in Glasgow and s1 branded sites elsewhere.

Next Monday (10th March) I’ll be handing over ownership of the local sites to our newest Web Producer, Graeme Smith.  I’m sure his team will extend the s1local platform and provide a lot of exciting new features over the coming months. 

Please take a look at the new Evening Times sites, and if you live in one of these commuities, join in:  Shawlands; Hillhead; Maryhill; Gorbals; Cardonald; Easterhouse; Partick; Robroyston; Whiteinch; Springburn; Dennistoun; Tollcross.

s1jobs.com, the recruitment site I’ve been working on since 2001, has just been independently reviewed by WhatJobSite.com.  The “secret shopper” review was conducted without our knowledge and the first we knew of it was when we saw the results published earlier this month.

The site got a lot of praise, in particular for the emerging technologies we use: “including RSS job feeds and a rather exciting new mobile phone application called txt2apply.”  It’s good to see txt2apply being acknowledged — I’ve always been proud of it as a piece of mobile innovation, and the fact that David McLaughin and I developed it from scratch in just a few days.

The company I work for, s1, has been nominated as one of the Best Ever Brands in Scotland, alongside Tennent’s, Irn Bru and Glenmorangie.  It’s fairly exciting company to be in considering we have just 30 staff and have only been on the go for seven years.

The awards are on the 26th of October and, in the very unlikely event that we win, I’ll be sure to post up a pic of the award.  Voting in some categories is open to the public, so please vote for us (on pages 3 and 7) if you have a couple of minutes to spare.

Read more on All Media Scotland: Newcomer Nominated Among Best Scottish Brands or on OnRec: Internet business s1 nominated as Scotland’s Best Ever Brand

I’m currently looking for an experienced CSS/HTML/JavasScript developer to join our team.   Since skills are more important for this role than qualifications, I decided to turn the job ad into a skills test. 

Applicants are invited to restyle the job ad on s1jobs.com using only a style sheet file — they have zero control over the HTML source or Javascript.  Take a look at the live job ad here:
http://www.s1jobs.com/job/205382458.html … or see it with a different style sheet here.

If you think you have the relevant skills and want to have a go, please take up the challenge — simply view source on the live job ad for more details.

The new TV ad for our recruitment site, s1jobs.com, has just gone on air.   It’s going to be shown on STV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 in Scotland. 

The ad is the work of The Leith Agency, animators Ink Digital, and our internal marketing team.  It’s a big departure from our old Lavvy Heid and Ice Cream ads, but I think it works quite nicely. 

Take a look - and let me know what you think.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxlx6nNJlIU]