Does your PC suffer from the Monday Morning Blues? If you find that your IT equipment seems to have a weekly meltdown right at the very time you need it to perform at its peak there may well be a good reason for it.

Ironically, rather than deliberately trying to frustrate your efforts to catch-up on business that’s come in over the weekend, your PC is probably in the process of improving its performance – albeit with the worst possible timing.

Windows-based computers have an automatic update system that from time to time allows Microsoft to update elements of your operating system. These are normally set to ‘automatic’ with the proviso that if the computer is switched off they occur the next time it is turned on. The same applies to browsers such as Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox, with all anti-virus software also configured to update and run scans of your system automatically.

The effect of this can be quite dramatic on a Monday morning if your computer has been switched off all weekend. All these updates and scans will start up and may cause the following:

1. A slow computer
2. Browsers that close on their own and restart
3. Browsers that do not work correctly
4. Printers that do not print
5. Alerts and popups asking you questions that appear more often than usual.

The advent of Windows 8 has brought with it the advice that computers and tablets using this operating system are continually left switched on, allowing them to constantly update themselves and all the new Windows 8 widgets that come with it.

Constantly leaving gadgets and equipment switched on flies in the face of energy conservation. However, when it comes to computers it is the monitor that sucks up the most energy and that doesn’t need to be on for your equipment to update. The advice from the LWS technical team is that to avoid the Monday Morning IT Blues you need to leave your computer switched on over the weekend. And if you are lucky enough to be able to take off from your business to have a holiday, try restarting your computer the day before you go back to work, to allow everything to update itself ready for your return.

There has been some press coverage recently regarding a new batch of top-level domain (tld) name extensions. You may have wondered what it was all about.

I very much doubt, however, that you will have applied for one; here’s why.

In the beginning, things were very simple. The Internet began in the US with the .com, .edu and .org tlds. Very quickly, the rest of the world were granted their own, hence .co.uk, .fr, .com.au etc. A few years ago, a whole new batch were created but never really caught on – .biz, .aero, .me.uk, .ltd.uk.

So ICANN, the international body that administers these things, invited applications for new tlds that could reflect brands, new genres and non-Latin characters. The catch? Applicants had to stump up £118,800 just to apply and face a minimum £15,000 annual renewal charge to keep any tlds that are granted to them.

ICANN have just published the list of applications received which include dear old Auntie, (.bbc), Sky and ITV. We can also look forward to sites ending with .wales, .cymru and .scot.

Google applied for 101 tlds including .google and .youtube as well as, strangely, .and, .boo, .dad and .new. However, they also applied for .music, which was also claimed by seven other organisations including Amazon (amongst its 76 applications), triggering an auction process to secure sole rights.

Other tlds attracting multiple requests include . sex, .art, .book, .news, .play, .app, .shop and .vip. Of 1,930 requests for new names – 166 were in non-Latin alphabets.

The new domains should go live some time next year.

There is some disquiet amongst online marketers about the new “brand domains” due to them being available only to very large corporations. If these companies have bought them to promote their brands, and not just to protect them, then the relative equality of domain names that exists at present will be lost. We shall have to wait and see if these domains prove to be worth the investment.

Ahh, that’s better. Spring is here and LWS’s beautiful HQ in Arundel is looking its best once more. But we haven’t spent the whole time shivering by the fire, oh no, most definitely not. We’ve been busy producing lovely new websites for our clients:

We love our pets, and if any of them could master a mouse and keyboard, they’d all be ordering cures for their ailments from the wonderful e-commerce Pet Vet Medical site.

By contrast, we’ve also produced two e-commerce sites for Favour Fairy which specialises in “favours” – small gifts for wedding guests – and other gift items.

We’ve also been “up on the roof” with new sites for solar PV providers Eco Innovation’s commercial business and for roofing company Cobsen Davis.

Very much back to earth is the new site for garden designer Louisa Bell, appropriately called “The Lovely Garden”.

And finally, how to link roofing to gardens to… finance and investments.

Never mind, I give up. We’ve also made a great site for stockbrockers MC Peat and Son and an investment site for our friends at Paladin Wealth.

If you’d like to talk to us about websites, social media training or SEO, why not email us at info@lwscreative.co.uk or call on 01903 790100?

Just before this gorgeous weather disappears we just thought you might like to see how hard we’ve been working this week…

See, flat out with our new Marketing2Go clients, Great Ballard School! On the left is headmaster David Williams, Sarah (Engerran) LWS’ client services manager in the centre, and to the right is school bursar Tracey Carr, standing knee-deep in a glorious field of daffodils within the grounds of the school. It’s a hard life…