Going mobile
18th March 2008, Design, Javascript, Trends0 Comments
I’ve been knee deep in the web for as long as I know. Abandoning my graphics and Flash projects for the semantic web and standards driven CSS. But the proliferation of Flash Lite onto most phones has got my head turning again.
I think my first project will be to port retro classic Manic Miner onto my phone. That should teach me the ropes. More soon.
Take, take, take
30th January 2008, PHP, Technology, Trends0 Comments
This breaks my heart. Mark has created a wonderful piece of software which has revolutionised the forum as we know it. He’s tried and failed to make money from it so has tried a couple of links and stuff to see what that generates - and from the sounds of things he’s getting cussed for it. This is a sad thing to witness. I’ve experience negative attitudes while contributing the GoogleMapDirectory and you have to wonder who these baddies are? They never seem to contribute just moan. Grrr.
Book of the dead
11th September 2007, Technology, Trends0 Comments
I had my first friend in the UK delete themselves from Facebook today. I’ve had others starting to moan that its a bit crap. This coming quite soon after they initially exclaimed how good it was. The web truly is a fickle place.
I’m not saying Facebook is about to join Tech Crunch’s Deadpool, but it does make me think the UK wave is probably peaking and it will receed in time. I envisage users won’t delete themselves as much, more simply login much less then eventually not at all.
I never liked the name anyway.
Hi, I’m a mac. I can copy things too.
10th September 2007, Design, Technology, Trends0 Comments
This guy loves his iPhone because it takes design elements from the Braun ET66.
However, all of these guys are listed under the ‘rip-off’ stakes without a second thought.
The myopic Apple brand love-in rolls on.
Do no evil?
20th August 2007, Technology, Trends0 Comments
I posted recently questioning the relevance of PageRank nowadays. Credo came on the first page of Yahoo & MSN, yet were buried down at 77th on the seventh page on Google. Having a higher PageRank and better quality of data, links out and links in compared to the site coming in at number one, I really couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong.
Then I signed up to Google’s Webmaster Tools in a desperate attempt to get some insight into what exactly Google was crawling, or more to the point what it wasn’t crawling. Anyway I signed up and it has the usual tips like “increase links” and “better content”, all stuff which I’d already done. I gave up for the weekend.
This morning Credo are suddenly back on the first page of Google. I’d done nothing other than simply sign up to their tools and added the verify meta tag they require you to add. This suggests that Google give preference to users more hooked into their services, rather than independently ranking sites based on their quality. Happy as I am with the new results that’s bad news. It’s very reminiscent of Microsoft’s behaviour in the late 90’s and early 00’s and certainly not something I thought the supposed benevolent Google would do.
Greatness
16th August 2007, Other, Trends0 Comments
Is it me or are even the greater blogs out there becoming rather banal these days? God knows I’m guilty of it.
“If you stack up a bunch of great little details you have a great shot at a great product.” - Jason, 37 Signals
No shit, Jason. Reminds me of another enlightening quote I read recently:
“It’s great that Chelsea are here. It’s great to have great players and a great team with a great manager here.” - David Beckham, LA Galaxy.
Great. Aparently Beckham went onto to say:
“The details are not details. They make the product.”
Ok, I made that last bit up.
Online communities
12th July 2007, Technology, Trends0 Comments
I love this map:
Is PageRank relevant anymore?
22nd May 2007, Technology, Trends1 Comment
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably not. A site for a consultancy I look after has been busily blogging and writing fresh content over the last couple of years and uptil a month ago had quite rightly earnt their number 1 spot in Google’s search returns for “credo group”. I check in occasionally to see how its doing and it had dropped out the rankings. Nowhere to be seen.
Confused I checked its PageRank. A four. Not setting the world alight, but respectable enough. Now I thought, why would it drop out the top rankings, as its PageRank hadn’t really changed. I thought perhaps the new number 1 return would therefore have a great PageRank. No, its a two.
So what does this say? Previously it was simple, put some effort in, get good current and fresh content up and Google will reward you with a higher search return. Now? I don’t know, it simply doesn’t make sense. When a PageRank of 2 gets the number one spot and a genuinely better page with a PageRank of four turns up as 60, yes the sixth page, the only conclusion is that Google aren’t using PageRank, or at best it now only contributes slightly to the overall index. I find this poor, if it resulted in good content getting to the top then fine, but it’s clearly not.
MyMaps, your ideas
26th April 2007, Technology, Trends0 Comments
So Google finally released its own front-end to its excellent Map API. Fair play to them, it is their technology afterall, but something feels wrong about the timing of it.
They released the API a long, long time ago and the community has been busy helping them develop it into a brilliant piece of software, almost pushing version 3 now. The wonderful thing about it on release was it being an API for anyone to build on. Cue a zillion mash-ups and small independent businesses based on the mapping capabilities suddenly available to them.
What feels wrong right now is that Google seems to have sat back and soaked up all the best ideas and now release their own interface to the API knowing full well that it will kill off almost an entire generation of mashup interfaces.
Is this the way things are done now at Google now? Release a benevolant API, watch the community rapidly mature it (like no money and time in one company could ever develop an API) then when they feel its matured, enter that very market from an unassailable advantaged position as the API owner and creator.
Let’s hope not.
Radio Silence
25th April 2007, Technology, Trends0 Comments
So it’s been nearly a month without a post. Pretty poor really. Obviously like others I’ll be citing the heavy workload as the reason but I’ve read quite a few things recently regarding less blogging, dead blogs and the rate at which the blogosphere is doubling - it has slowed from once every six months to once a year.
Apparently blogging could peak this year. Perhaps by the end of the year, once a month posts won’t be so bad.
A good commercial, minimal OS. Too much to ask?
31st January 2007, Design, Technology, Trends1 Comment
I’m a bit dissillusioned with OS directions at the moment, Unix, Windows and Mac.
I was thinking about upgrading my PC from XP to Vista the other day, but really all I want is the OS to boot up my software and then get out of the way. It seems the three big guns are hell bent on trying to do the opposite in the quest for the best consumer OS, and as ever, the end users suffer.
If Microsoft released a seriously minimal os (not just Vista Home as opposed to Vista Ultimate) that ran everything without that god damn “wow” they keep advertising, it’d sell like hotcakes. Unix is too much hard work and Mac suffers on the software front, and this is where Windows wins, but for the love of God, can’t they give us something we want for once?
Is this really where we’re heading?
9th January 2007, Ajax, Trends0 Comments
Now, I’m sure this has been very well coded and executed, but who the on earth needs an Ajax app mixing Tag clouds with To Do lists? Its so inane I almost couldn’t write this post for lack of words to describe it.
No offence intended to whoever has toiled over this but I’ve always found online to-do lists oxymoronic. I’m pretty sure by the time you’ve created your account, logged in, written up your list and then cleverly tagged them all, then waded through your tag cloud to find the damn task again, you could have just gone and done it.
Rustic Ajax
29th December 2006, Ajax, Trends0 Comments
I took some time out these holidays to get to know JSON, MooTools & Dojo better. What i realised quite quickly is that despite the enormous hype these things are receiving, like Prototype, apart from the draggable effects stuff, most of it I’d already rolled out in apps using my simple knowledge of javascript and browser DOMs. Clumsier no doubt, and not particularly easily reusable, but it worked and was quick, as i’d only written code I needed, instead of downloading an entire library of functions and severly under utilising it.
Its like making a homemade pie, rather than buying that Sarah Lee. So in true Web2.0 style, i’m coming out quick and coining a trendy new phrase: Rustic Ajax. Not perfect, a little burnt around the edges but satisfying when it comes out the oven and tastes far better for it.
Ruby on Rails mid-life crisis on the horizon?
3rd November 2006, PHP, RoR, Technology, Trends1 Comment
Obviously a bit early to talk of such stuff. RoR is most definately in its infancy and certainly here to stay. I’ve recently finished my first proper application using it and it is indeed a joy. While the project didn’t really get done any quicker, that’s down to learning RoR as I’m going, compared to knowing LAMP inside out. The sheer lack of lots of code in an RoR app is very impressive.
However, three things are happening which may give RoR some problems in maintaining its rate of adoption.
Firstly, Zend are developing a framework for PHP5. PHP5 gives LAMP developers a decent OOP language to work with certainly as good as Ruby when it comes to web applications with the added bonus of familiarity - we all know PHP. (more…)
Ajax saved my life!
13th September 2006, Ajax, Other, Trends0 Comments
Now, I’m enjoying emerging trends of the web as much as the next coder out there, but this morning something really got on my nerves. It was on the BBC breakfast, they’re basically taking a cutting edge internet theme each morning for 10 minutes and explaining it out in a non web-savvy manner for their audience. This, in general, I think is a good thing. There I am thinking my Dad could do with watching it.
Problem is they had an American Internet Entrepreneur on today. First thing that came out of his mouth? “Exciting things are happening everywhere - Ajax is a great new component that makes things like mySpace possible, they wouldn’t exist without it.”
Now I may be paraphrasing him, but what a tool. Don’t hyperbole when the target audience just wants a basic understanding. And his statement was simply untrue. (more…)
Looking the gift horse in the mouth
30th July 2006, Other, Trends2 Comments
So Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace but then insisted they wouldn’t start branding themselves all over it and killing the spirit of MySpace. In fact, a lot has been made of ‘the spirit’ of MySpace. Something about how tricky it is to make sense of the content into anything you could commercially target effectively, or at least, coherently ala google ads. But for now, in keeping with the spirit, they were just happy to be dabbling with something that made its own content, unlike the rest of the News Corp. media empire. I was left with the perception that MySpace would make money but would remain somewhat benevolent.
Then I came across a small article in Computer Arts, pointing to the Copyright licence. To paraphrase the article:
They can take your content and do anything they like with it, such as create a stock library, without any finanical remuneration to you
Alarmed, I took a look. Check out MySpace’s T&C’s down on point 6.1 you’ll see:
MySpace.com is not required to pay you for the use on the MySpace Services of the Content that you post
If I were hosting artwork lovingly toiled over on MySpace, I’d move it elsewhere. While the chances are it may never get abused by MySpace, I really don’t like the principle.
Online Tees
28th July 2006, Design, Trends2 Comments
They’re everywhere. T-Shirts, I mean. I remember many moons ago I got right into T-Shirt designs but there weren’t that many about back then. I even had a pop at hand-painted designs and flogging them on Camden Market around the early 90’s. It didn’t last very long.
Back then, cool looking T-shirt designs were mostly based around retro second hand shops. That random 70’s American summer camp one, the myriad of old sports logos, a mate of mine even wore a [Freddy] Laker Airways t-shirt that somehow had a charm about it. Then came the design wave and you can’t move for hip designs. I suppose the movement of design applications and the advent of cheaper printing all contributed. (more…)
Stock photography
13th July 2006, Trends0 Comments
Seems to me that finally, stock photography is getting more readily available without those shocking prices that Corbis and others quote. Maybe I just didn’t see them coming but I recently signed up to iStockPhoto and its great. You can get a good quality cheap photograph for as little as $1.
Another site I’ve seen with a similarly cheap pricing model is Big Stock Photo and then there’s ShutterStock, which has a curious monthly subscription and max number of images per day download limit, which while not as cheap, if you’re a real regular user still beats the crap out of Corbis.
