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Southstar Computers Limited

Southstar Computers Limited was founded in 1996 to supply information technology services to businesses. With expertise in software engineering and a strong base of analytical and meta-development skills, Southstar has a track record of taking on systems that have lost their original development teams, and documenting, extending and maintaining them. Where necessary, we have also guided the migration of systems to new environments and have used our code generation technology to trim development times by automatically generating large numbers of the classes required to manage system entities.

In recent years, Southstar has fostered a growing expertise in open source alternatives to costly and inflexible proprietary solutions. We have taken advantage of the cost reductions these offer to provide competitive, low cost (and sometimes free) services to a growing number of small, local charitable organisations.

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Southstar Computers Limited is pleased to announce the launch of a website for local heritage charity, the Worthing Antiques & Bygones Circle. The group organises a varied programme of entertaining and interesting lectures in the general area of antiques and bygones.

Known for its work serving businesses and the community since our inception in 1996, Southstar Computers Limited is proud to announce the launch, in September 2009, of its Print & Web Services Division. Said Director Jeff Best,

We have been satisfying occasional requests from local small businesses and charitable organisations for the supply of Print and Web services, so we have now formalised this process and established a division to market to and support this demand.

September 2009

Faced with the threat of being declared redundant, and denied any incumbent clergy for several years, the feisty congregation of the former Parish Church, Christ Church Worthing, have launched a series of initiatives to reinvigorate the church and reconnect with its community.

In 2007, Southstar Computers Limited was proud to sponsor an organ concert by the much-loved visiting Australian organist, Thomas Heywood. In July 2009, Southstar was again involved, but this time we just supplied the posters, flyers, programmes, tickets and a tiny laptop to run our Javascript number generator to supply the winning programme number. In the same month, Southstar launched a website for the church, bolstered with new Wikipedia entries for both the church and its organ's manufacturer, James Jepson Binns.

According to Director Jeff Best,

When a client asks us for a web site, we know that what they really want is a web presence. To deliver this, it is not enough to just buy a domain, put some web pages on a server and point the domain entry to the pages. It is not even enough to then ensure that the web pages are regsitered with all of the search engines and that they contain the keywords and other gimmicks needed to rank highly. To deliver a web presence, we at Southstar believe you need to look closely at the client - who they are, what they do, where they have been and where they are going, and all of this needs to be built into their web presence. For Christ Church Worthing this meant ensuring that they could be found in Wikipedia. It meant recognising the value of the organ and linking in to existing organ web sites and databases, and in this case, researching the manufacturer, James Jepson Binns and ensuring that he had a presence in Wikipedia. It meant recognising the wealth of monuments and history associated with the church and finding and linking to all of the existing web references and non-web reference material that exists. To implement the web site, we used open source tools. To develop content for the web site, we undertook an ongoing programme of research to track down appropriate material. Thus, the Church now has a website that starts to reflect some of the richness of its historical role in the town of Worthing while supporting its ongoing efforts to engage and support the current community.

July 2009

Southstar Computers Limited is proud to sponsor an organ concert by the much-loved Australian concert organist, Thomas Heywood at the threatened-with-closure, former Parish church, Christ Church, Worthing.

25th May 2007

Southstar Computers is pleased to announce the launch of a website for local heritage charity, the Worthing National Trust Association. This association of Worthing and district members of the National Trust has been raising money for, fostering interest in and supplying volunteers to the National Trust's Sussex properties since it was founded in 1971. With regular lectures at Worthing Library and Broadwater Manor School, Coffee Mornings, outings to National Trust properties and an annual National Trust holiday, the Worthing National Trust Association is a vibrant example of the once mighty movement of local members associations who have promoted the work of the National Trust for decades.

1st February 2007

The Southstar Community Support Initiative offers information technology support to local charities to help them foster and support the local community. This support may include sponsorship, Directorial support, or staff offering their skills, pro bono, to develop and maintain essential information technologies.

This century, Southstar Computers Limited has sponsored a celebrity organ concert at the former Parish Church of Worthing, now threatened with redundancy by the CoE. Southstar has also developed and manages websites for the same church, the Worthing National Trust Association and High Salvington Mill Trust "Friends of the Mill".

Brighton-based The OpenPoplog Association has also received founding sponsorship from Southstar Computers Limited, in the form of a permanently loaned OpenPoplog Macintosh computer and start-up finance. The OpenPoplog Association exists to promote the development of the OpenPoplog environment and its constituent Pop11, Lisp, Prolog and ML languages.

Download the Print & Web Services price list (98KB PDF)
Managing Director Jeff Best
+44 (0)1903 264409
Registered Address 30 New Road
Brighton BN1 1BN

Southstar Computers Limited was founded in 1996 to supply software engineering services to the business community. Our first contract involved analysing hundreds of thousands of lines of source code, in a mix of C, COBOL and PERL, in order to document for our client the mainframe emulation environment developed by a company they had recently purchased, on the back of which, an Austrian bank which had purchased their proprietary Unix hardware, were migrating all of their ATM network to run on Unix to replace the previous mainframe system.

In our first twelve years, Southstar supplied further analysis and development services for clients such as a British Telecom subsidiary, the mobile phone company One2One, Cable & Wireless, an NHS Trust, Xerox, Centrica/British Gas, Autoglass, Allergy Therapeutics, Northern Rock, NATS and ACE Insurance. We have also instigated the emergency rescue of software development for a research project working with ACPO and SOCA that enabled them to demonstrate a working identity management system that subsequently attracted independent venture capital to fund the development of the service required by SOCA, enabling the founding of K4R Systems "Kidnap for Rescue" "Personal Information Profile".

Southstar has an active Community Support Initiative, offering sponsorship and support to local charitable organisations that are actively engaged with the community and all staff are encouraged to participate in the provision of pro bono and cost-only services to an agreed collection of local charities. In recent years Southstar, through our Community Support Initiative, has actively supported the following local charities.

Worthing National Trust Association

Advice, design, development, hosting and management of the Worthing NTA website and liaison with the National Trust to keep the relevant pages on their own website updated.

Sponsorship of a Thomas Heywood Organ Concert at Christ Church, Worthing in 2006.

Southstar Computers advised on advertising, designed and printed posters, flyers, programmes and tickets, supplied free of charge under our Community Support Initiative, and funded all outstanding costs.

Christ Church Worthing

Southstar designed, developed and hosted a web site for Christ Church, Worthing, supported with extensive research to identify and incorporate content related to the history of and news relating to the Church.

Friends of High Salvington Mill

Southstar Computers Limited Director Jeffrey Best was elected to the Board of High Salvington Mill Trust and also appointed Company Secretary in 2007. His partner. Hazel, has since been appointed Guide Organiser, responsible for organising the rota of open day mill guides, keeping them in touch with developments and ensuring they are fully trained. Fielding comments referred by guides and questions about the mill and operations arriving by telephone and email, Jeffrey recognised a need for some mechanism to support better communication between the large number of open day volunteers, many of whom may only be present on site a few times each year. Jeffrey has engaged the Community Support Initiative to fund, design, develop and host a community website for the "Friends of High Salvington Windmill", where "friends" includes any member or volunteer who contributes to the survival and operation of the windmill.

Using the open source web content management system, Joomla, with additional functionality provided by some of the many free, open source Joomla extensions, Southstar has created a community website with a public face that anyone can access, offering some information about the mill and the Mill Trust, answers to frequently asked questions, news stories and referring users to the main High Salvington Windmill website. Behind the puiblic face, however, is a private members-only area, where "friends" may post their own stories, communicate via an online forum, access Trust training materials and procedures documents, raise request tickets for issues that need to be addressed, and generally keep in touch with other "friends" and share information, experiences and photographs.

The initial customisation and integration with third-party, open source components to implement the full functionality will continue into September, with review and approval by the Board during the closed season, in time for the new site to be launched for full use by the "Friends of High Salvington Windmill" in time for the 2010 open season.

Open Source Business Software

Southstar Computers Limited can recommend the following open source software.

Staff "Desktop"

Typically, staff members may want, from their desktop (or laptop) computer, to send and receive emails, access intranet and internet web services, create, edit and dispatch or present documents, worksheets and presentations, and update data in corporate databases. We can recommend the following open source applications to meet these requirements, most of which are also free of license costs.

Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
This browser is a superb browser, implementing a large proportion of the W3C standards. One of the first browsers to support tabbed browsing, Firefox also supports a rich eco-system of plug-in extensions offering additional security and functionality. We particularly recommend NoScript for controlling web site's ability to execute code in your browser and, for any staff developing web pages, Firebug and Web Developer.
Mozilla Thunderbird Email Client
OpenOffice
FreeMind
GanttProject

Open Day

Adults £1, Accompanied Children Free

Sun. 20th May 2012

2.30pm - 5.00pm

High Salvington Windmill

High Salvington Mill Trust

Open Day

Adults £1, Accompanied Children Free

Sun. 3rd June 2012

2.30pm - 5.00pm

High Salvington Windmill

High Salvington Mill Trust

Michael Harris: Isle of Wight Studio Glass

Mark Hill

Visitors £3

Tue. 5th June 2012

7.30pm

Worthing Library Lecture Theatre

Antiques & Bygones Circle

Concert for a Summer Evening

Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra

Overture to Merry Wives of Windsor Nicolai
Violin Concerto Bruch Soloist: Rita French
Symphony No. 4 Brahms

£8 - 15 plus concessions

Sun. 17 June 2012

7.30pm

Assembly Hall, Worthing

Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra

Open Day

Adults £1, Accompanied Children Free

Sun. 17th June 2012

2.30pm - 5.00pm

High Salvington Windmill

High Salvington Mill Trust

Show-stopping Songs

The Angmering Chorale

£10 unreserved

Sat. 30 June 2012

7.30pm

Arundel Cathedral

The Angmering Chorale

Open Day

Adults £1, Accompanied Children Free

Sun. 1st July 2012

2.30pm - 5.00pm

High Salvington Windmill

High Salvington Mill Trust

Pills, Potions and Patients

Peter Hill

Visitors £3

Tue. 3rd July 2012

7.30pm

Worthing Library Lecture Theatre

Antiques & Bygones Circle

Open Day

Adults £1, Accompanied Children Free

Sun 15th July 2012

2.30pm - 5.00pm

High Salvington Windmill

High Salvington Mill Trust

Classic Cars Open Day

(Morgan Owners Club)

Adults £1, Accompanied Children Free

Sun. 5th August 2012

2.30pm - 5.00pm

High Salvington Windmill

High Salvington Mill Trust

Charles F.A. Voysey

Ian Hamerton

Visitors £3

Tue. 7th August 2012

7.30pm

Worthing Library Lecture Theatre

Antiques & Bygones Circle

Open Day

Adults £1, Accompanied Children Free

Sun. 19th August 2012

2.30pm - 5.00pm

High Salvington Windmill

High Salvington Mill Trust

To advertise your local event in this space call 264409

Southstar Computers Limited
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