Internet Insight

Google Instant Search

2010-09-09T09:10:00.003Z

Poor old Microsoft Bing.
They spend a fortune marketing, improving and building up their search engine.
They try to convince mr and mrs public that their search is quick, clean and more importantly relevant when returning results the number of users begins to slowly rise again and then BANG! Mr Google from across the street releases Google Instant Search.

I pride myself on not being a geeky developer or blogger (perhaps thats a contradiction of terms though!) but when I saw Google instant search in action yesterday for the first time, I found myself saying to my wife "Look at this it's really damn impressive".

She looked at me and said "What? It's just searching for stuff, isn't it supposed to do that?"

It was at that stage I realised how for granted we take technology these days.

When I heard about instant search I was scepticle about how instant it would actually be, expecting a fair bit of lag but I have to admit Instant search is. . . . . well it's pretty instant.

For those of you that have not tried it yet, it returns and amends results as you type.

So if for example I start typing my name and from the very first letter I get a list of results, it updates pretty much as quickly as I can type until I find the correct results.

This could save up to 350 million hours annually based on googles weekly users of approx 1 billion!

To protect children and other sensitive people google instant search will also block any sites the are deemed violent, hateful or porngraphic.

Google at present handle about two thirds of all internet search results, microsoft and yahoo handle a majority of the rest and with this huge jump google are likely to mop up more of that in coming months.

How will Bing and Yahoo respond? I really don't know. But respond they must and to save their own skins it best be quick in fact in better be instant!

Google Geeks

2010-09-02T15:06:00.002Z

The guys over at google have released some pretty amazing tools and applications over the last couple of years.
But have you noticed that when you sign up for a google account and complete your google profile there's a question there saying "What superpower would you want the most?"

Apparantly this started as a discussion between some google engineers an developers who decided to open the question up to find out an answer.

What was the winning answer?
Well surprisingly to me it was the power of teleportation.
The obvious such as flight and invisibility were up there too but teleportation won the day.
I then got to thinking . . . . is there actually a superhero tat does teleport? Apart from DR Who who more timetravels than teleports, I can;t think of any but then again superheroes aren't really my thing!

Why your archive may be worth a small fortune.

2010-09-02T14:50:00.003Z

If you are a blogger or run a website that carries plenty of editorial content, such as reviews, articles and news and you have a good history of content the chances are you have something quite valuable.

SEO agencies are these days snapping up publishers, trying to use their sites as SEO hubs for clients.

How does this work?
Well if you have an article on a niche subject such as holidays abroad, that article gets indexed by the main search engines and ranked well, other companies for example a Travel agents may wish to use your well ranked page to get a link back to its own site. You could contact local travel agents saying the page gets x thousand of hits a month and see if they would like to pay you for a link added in to the article.
By having their url on the article their SEO is improved because it features on a page with an already good ranking.
It's a very simple and effective way to improve their own ranking by piggy backing your content.

The older the better
The other interesting thing about this kind of link is that your older content is therefore probably more valuable than your new content as it has a longer index. I.E. has been trawled by more search engines and achieved a greater ranking.

Your not going to get paid thousands per article but if you have thousands of articles you can quickly see why it could be a big money spiner to have these all available to sell.

Expect to see more SEO agencies popping up on the web in the coming months as people identify the prospects in comparison to traditional advertising mediums such as banners and mpu's etc.

It's been a while

2010-09-01T14:20:00.002Z

Hi all,
Well it's been WAY too long since I added any posts to this blog.
Both work and family life have been hectic and although that is not a great excuse, it's as much of an expanation as I can give!

So I'm going to try and keep it more updated from now on.

Nathan

Digital Editiors Network Meeting - Preston UCLAN 3rd Feb 2009

2009-02-04T16:20:00.005Z

Yesterday I attended the Digital Editors Network meeting at the UCLAN buildings in Preston (UK).

I have wanted to attend in the past with my colleagues Christian Dunn and Martin Wright but work commitments have got in the way. Christian and Martin have always felt the events valuable and I was glad to finally get a chance to get in on the act.

I was unsure of how much I, as a developer, would benefit from the event but wanted to go out of interest anyway plus the line up sounded good so off to Preston we went battling through snow drifts of up to ...... well about 3 inches!!

Mark Skipworth, Executive Editor of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph opened the event and I was impressed with Mark's honesty and openess where he discussed the way the Telegraph work and the challenges they have faced and in some cases still do face in getting people to change their working practices to fit in with web AND print.

Mark made it clear that they are very much a Web First company and do now see themselves as an Internet service first and foremost. With all of their copy being selected for Internet and then copy for print is selected from that list and expanded on where necessarry for in paper.

All subs are trained to put news online first and then subbed again for paper.

Second up on the agenda was Patrick Fleming from the British Library who was going to discuss digital archiving. Unfortunately though Patrick got snowed off which brought a laugh to the room as there where attendees there from South Africa, North America and of course people from all over the UK, who had managed to make it.

So the next speaker was Kevin Anderson, who was in my opinion the best speaker there. Kevin is the Guardian Blogs editor and recently covered the US elections by driving 4,000 miles across the states in 3 weeks updating the world with his journey via a combination of tools. Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and of course the Guardian blog.

His experiences really got me thinking and made me realise just how far we have come in the past 15 years or so.
Back in 1995 I spent a fair bit of time in the United States. My parents where working out there at the time so I went to spend a few months with them.
At one stage a friend of mine and I decided whilst in the States it was only right that we do a road trip. We didn't really look at a map or plan anything we just decided to head West!
Our starting point was a small town in Ohio called Willard. It was a great little town full of really friendly people and from there we planned to get to L.A. via Las Vegas. But that was the extent of our plans! The journey lasted just 12 days, but that journey covered just over 4,700 miles!

What struck home to me though was that apart from some great memories I have no record of that journey I made. Had I made that journey now I would have gone about it's record in exactly the same way as Kevin and would have that record indefinately.

However the beauty of the internet is that I can probably retrace my journey using those same tools which I intend on doing in the next week or two. I'll post the info on here for anyone interested.

Erik Ulken's presentation was hit by the dreaded live link problem of not being able to establish a connection. Which was a pity and obviously hindered would have been a popular presentation. Erik is the former L A times online editor and was talking about various forms of story building. I'll find some links to some of the things he's been invloved in and update on here later.

The meeting in whole was very good. I certainly hope to attend again.
I am not going to say I learned anything new and amazing but what I did learn is that the way we are trying to do things for our company is much the way others are trying to do things too. Christian, Martin and myself are trying to put together a great site for NWN Media and it was reassuring to hear that other larger businesses than us suffer the same niggles and set backs as us.
To hear that kind of thing from the likes of the names above, well it makes me believe we are on the right track.

Can even Google ride the recession?

2008-11-06T16:30:00.004Z

People see the internet as a living breathing thing. It changes by the second, advances by the hour and more and more people use it by the day.

Many people forget about the goings on of 2000/2001 (read more below) and seem to think that websites, due to relatively low overheads will be more immune to the impending recession we now face.

Well think that at your own peril!

Even google are at present preparing themselves for the recession.
Their share price is at a 3 year low and has halved in the last year.
Every company peaks! And maybe, just maybe google has peaked and is now seeing a downturn. It'll take a while for the boys like Yahoo and MSN to catchup but with google this past month reversing certain "Rules" they had, such as allowing gambling firms to take out sponsored selling and attempting to push You-Tube into E-commerce. They are seriously throwing their weight about trying to bring in extra revenues.

Established websites are cutting their marketing budgets and smaller websites are pushing less into google adwords and more into SEO, hoping the longer term effects of good seo will see their sites thrive or at least survive.

All of this will hit google hard over the next 8 months or so. Maybe they are big enough to ride the storm but the term "The bigger you are the harder you fall." has never seemed more apt!

In 2000 /2001 there was a big "dot.com bubble burst" which saw many websites, which had received millions of pounds of investment thrown at them, go POP!

The stock markets in western nations had watched stock valuations rise faster than usual and with less caution. This quickly turned into a gold rush.
Venture capitalists suddenly wanted a dot.com or a part of a dot.com.
Being dot.com's these companies where nigh on impossible to value, but simply based on the amount of investment received many individuals who had the intitial ideas for these websites, found themselves on paper at least to be suddenly multi-millionaires.

It didn't take long of course for the stock market to step back and look at these sites and realise they where never in a million years going to recoup the tens of millions invested in them. That's when it all fell flat on it's face!

The Dot-com bubble crash wiped out $5 trillion in market value of technology companies from March 2000 to October 2002.

Famously Boo.com set out to become a global online fashion empire. They spent about £100m in a space of 6 months, the site launched in Autumn 1999 and was placed into receivership in May 2000.

Yahoo went from a high stock price of $128 at the peak of the bubble to a low of $4 at the end.

Lycos where the "google of their day" and where sold to Terra Networks for $12.5 billion in 2000, they where sold on for just $95 million dollars three and a half years later.

Infospace stock price hit $1,305 per share in March 2000 but by April the following year the price had crashed to $22 !!

Facebook in the workplace

2008-08-08T11:20:00.006Z

It seems to be a trend these days for companies to ban the use of sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Bebo etc. for personal use during the working day. Understandable to a point I would have to say, but I would also add that I think it’s also important for staff to have a certain amount of freedom in the workplace and as long as they still produce results in their respective field a little surfing of the web is a small price to pay for a happier workforce.

The truth is that people will find another equally unproductive way to take up that 10 minutes or so of time, only in that 10 minutes they will moan to the person who they are nearest to about being unhappy in their work and the conditions of the place that they work being unbearable.

A former MD of mine told me that I should try and take a 10 minute break from my monitor each hour and break up the day by surfing the web when things where quiet. He added that in my role as a web developer it was good to keep up with popular sites even if they had no relevance to my work. His philosophy was that if I and the other employees where treated as adults and allowed to govern our own web usage we would A) be happier in our roles and B) be more likely to work overtime (which is generally unpaid in this profession) as and when required.

It resulted in me working 7 days a week at some periods to ensure deadlines where met and clients kept happy, but amazingly I still enjoyed and liked my job and the company I worked for.

In fairness I must add that my current employers attitude to web usage has been quite sensible to date although they have just announced a restriction, not a ban, on Facebook and similar sites.

I think also that Facebook in particular can be used as it was originally inteded as a networking site.
There are a lot of groups set up on Facebook that are good for business.

In my opinion people don’t need Facebook or alternative sites to waste time. They’ve been doing that since well before facebook or the internet as a whole was available to them. Whether it be going for a smoke break or simply chatting to a colleague for 10 minutes at a time there will always be ways to slack off.

Time to go mobile?

2008-08-08T11:20:00.005Z

With internet speeds ever increasing, mobile phone technology ever changing and people becoming more used to what they want when they want, the time to go mobile is finally upon us.

About 6 years ago I developed some WAP sites for the Battlemail gaming platform on the Siemens mobile phones. It was quite a coup at the time, we signed a deal with siemens and it was a buzz to be able to walk into a mobile phone shop and see something we’d actually worked on in the shops.

WAP though was not the perfect solution. This was before we had the full colour screens we have today, and well before having the actual internet on our phones was too imaginable.

Now though with browser applications such as Opera Mini etc there’s no need to develop in a different technology just to see your site on a phone. It’s all there in glorious colour at faster speeds than some people still get at home!!

I have heard the arguments that the internet on mobile phones will never really take off because the screens are too small etc. To those people I’ll say one thing “Wake up!!!” those problems are already being solved with phone browsers showing whole pages and allowing to zoom in to just the pieces of information you are interested in.

The good thing about these great little browsers is this, you probably don’t need to redevelop because they can read your existing site.

True mobile sites are in fact mini versions of our sites formatted for viewing through mobile phones and devices. all in all it’s just another nice big arena for us to show off our wares and we’ll ignore it at our own peril.

Internet development - where to start….

2008-08-08T11:18:00.001Z

When I started off in Web Development about 10 years ago, there weren’t too many resources to get good tutorials, code examples and just overall advice from.

These days with everyone and their dog developing sites in their bedrooms and calling themselves Web Developers, there are countless sitres offering tutorials and samples for people just starting out.

I thought it might be useful to list a few of my bookmarks.
Places you can get help, tutorials and advice on development.

W3schools

One of the best sites in my opinion on the web for developers is http://www.w3schools.com/
Here you will find tutorials on just about all web development topics.
When I was starting off I bought books such as the “For Dummies” range etc but even they where unclear. At W3Schools you will find all the Web-building tutorials you need, from basic HTML and XHTML to advanced XML, SQL, Database, Multimedia and WAP.

Even for those people who are seasoned developers will find useful reference guides there.

Aspin.com

http://www.aspin.com/ is a resource for all asp scripts and components which can save you hours in development time. If you are not developing using asp then it’s still worth going to the http://www.codango.com/ which is the group site for aspin as they also do sites for JSP, PHP and asp.net

Poll daddy

http://www.polldaddy.com/

Is a site that can provide polls and surveys for your site. Again a great time saver and so easy to implement into your own site.

http://www.wordpress.com

Remember that there are millions upon millions of people on the internet and a hell of a lot of them blog.
What I’m saying is that there are loads of people in the same boat as you, search wordpress or blogger for people who are writing about their experiences.

So take a look and if you have some resources that you think other developers may find useful then please leave them in the comments.

Domain names buying selling and building on.

2008-04-25T19:19:00.003Z

I can't begin to tell you how important a good domain name is.
Some people make a decent amount of living out of trading domain names, spending hours trying to find something thats not only short and catchy but sellable!

I myself have a portfolio of names. Some of which point to sites, some of which I hope to develop into sites in the future and some which I have bought purely because I believe I can sell them on for a profit.

Look at these domain names and the amounts they sold for:
Business.com was resold in 1999 for $7.5 million
sex.com was reported to have sold in 2006 for between $12 / $14 million US dollars

I haven't made anything like that but it goes to show that domain names are big business.
On several occasions I've sold domains that I've paid £1.99 for. For varying amounts between £250 and £750. Returns that I am more than happy with.

It's not anything that's going to allow me to retire but it's a nice bit of pocket money from time to time.

If you are wanting to buy domain names in order to sell them then you're going to need to find something that stands out from the crowd.
There are quite literally hundreds of millions of domains already registered, and to find good ones is not so simple anymore. Get yourself a thesaurus, think of a site theme youy want to focus on and start searching. The chances are 99% of the domains you try will be taken.
Combinations of two or three word domains without hyphens are your best bet these days.
I bought www.gettingpersonal.co.uk and www.ratemyface.co.uk some time ago and made over £1,000 profit selling them on.

Once you've found the name you want and have registered it you have

Free stuff. I love it!!

2008-04-23T19:31:00.002Z

I'm quite well known in our offices for my love of free stuff.
Only today in the canteen did our group technical director stand startled as I threw myself past him to pick up a deserted 10p under a table!
The great girls in our promotions department always keep me in my mind when there's a freebie going and I can't resist tasting the free samples in the supermarkets, even if it is something I wouldn't usually eat!

I don't though just love free stuff on a personal basis, I love to use free stuff in my work too.
Some of the best sites on the web today can provide you with content for your site, content that elsewhere would cost hundreds if not thousands of pounds.

Flickr is an absolute dream. You can create groups and collections on there of your favourite pictures and then display them direct in your site through RSS feeds, their particularly good slideshows or indeed use the Flickr API's to develop your own Flickr based tools.
By setting up a group on flickr you can also allow other people to display their images in your group, and if you set out your terms correctly and ensure you give the rightful owners of the pics credit, you can often get them to agree to have those pics displayed on your site too.

YouTube is another great site. I'm sure we've all browsed youtube on numerous occasions. It's a great source of video content, full of funny, wacky and sometimes disturbing clips. However amongst the madness there is a lot of serious content on youtube.
If you are setting up a site based around a particular topic you can quite easily find accompanying videos on youtube that you can embed easily into it, there are instructional videos on most subjects there. Search them out and use them, that's why they're there!

Print vs Web or Print & Web?

2008-04-18T19:40:00.006Z

First of all I'll apologise for not updating the blog recently.
It's been a hectic month or two both in work and at home.

Work is interesting at the moment, lots of different bits to work on, linking up with external companies to handle various elements of our business and also we have our in house builds to keep on top of.

We're constantly trying to think up ideas that will provide extra value to our customers and of course we want to make a bit of money along the way. As a newspaper publisher we have tried our best to keep up with modern trends and realise that we are now much more than a print publisher but an all round Media company. Print is still at the forefront of where we want to be and where we want to go, but our web offerings are really coming on and if we can maintain our momentum we can achieve great things I'm sure. We've got an enthusiastic and talented digital editor in Christian Dunn and in Martin Wright we have an editor who identifies the web as friend rather than foe, which breaks down a lot of barriers.

It's still tricky convincing a lot of people who have spent their life working with print that the web is an enhancement to our business, not a replacement, yet!!!
The web, should we use it correctly, should in fact drive readers to the paper and vice versa, afterall research shows that title websites have, if anything, a positive effect on print sales.

It's easy to blame the internet of course. In a climate that sees one medium decline and another increase you would think there was almost certainly some cross over. This is more evident with the nationals but still relatively unheard of as far as the regional / local paper is involved. The best way still to publicise in any town is a story in the local newspaper. And if you're selling advertising to local businesses, a lot of your clients still want to be able to hold that ad in their hands. Me included!!

It's an interesting argument, and one to which the is no definitive answer but I firmly believe in the sustainability of both print and web services running hand in hand for some time yet.

An interesting article can be found at the Times online.

How do you find the defendant?

2008-02-15T15:25:00.004Z

I arrived in work a couple of weeks ago to find a message on my desk reading:
"Nath, please can you build a set of pages for the Criminal Prosecution Service. They want people to be able to play the role of the jury and pass sentence on the person being prosecuted"

I knew little about the project and said yes I could do it but I was a bit snowed under.
It was then I was told it was required for the next day!!!

Anyway I worked away and "Your Justice" was born.

An interactive virtual courtroom scenario hosted by the NWN Media Ltd. in co-operation with the Crown Prosecution Service and local firms of Defence Solicitors.

You play the role of a member of the local criminal justice system making key decisions the like of which those in the Criminal Justice System make every day.

In the coming months there will be a number of scenarios where you will play the role of a Magistrate, a Prosecutor or even Probation Officer advising the Court. Each scenario will be fictional but based on real life cases that would be dealt with in Magistrates Courts all over the country.

It may come as a surprise to know that Magistrates are not paid. They are volunteers who want to help and play a part in protecting their local community. Although they do receive some training, they are not legally qualified. They use their life experience and local knowledge to make there decisions. You do not therefore need any legal knowledge to take part in these exercises.

Your Justice is brought to you in an attempt to make the local criminal justice system more transparent, we are of course funded by the taxpayer. We hope it gives you an insight both into the difficult decisions made on a daily basis and perhaps more importantly you can be assured that your taxes are being used appropriately. We should also highlight that no additional public funds have been used to create this Project. All the filming and editing has been done using personal equipment. All participants have given their time freely. Not only has this kept costs down but also the lower quality improves download speeds. You will need an up to date version of windows media player to stream the content.

After participating, feel free to post your comments on the Evening Leader Forum where members of the cast will try to respond to your comments and questions.

We hope you find the experience interesting and that you will return to try all the new scenarios as they are produced.

Anyway take a look at it and vote on your sentence, it's an interesting project and we hope it'll prove popular.

CLICK HERE FOR YOUR JUSTICE

SEO - Read all about it........

2008-02-12T21:28:00.000Z

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is big business these days, with people banging on the doors trying to get their sites to the top of Google, Yahoo and MSN etc.

Like most things in the internet world, it's one of those things that a lot of people think they can't do for themselves and they need to get a pro in to do.

The truth though is that with a bit of work you can get more than respectable results in all of the major search engines without spending any money at all.

There are numerous articles telling you different ways of achieving success, many of them contradicting each other and confusing to read about, but don't be afraid to play around with what you think will work for you.
Try different methods on different pages and monitor through your stas package what and where traffic is coming from.

One site I maintain was getting about 700 hits a week, which I appreciate is quite a low traffic site but looking through my traffic report for the site it was clear to see 95% of the traffic was coming from direct entry. In other words people knew the web address and were entering it straight into the address bar of their browser, hardly surprising when the web address is widely advertised in a local newspaper.

I talked to the owners of the site and asked if I could make a couple of suggestions and amend a few things with the pages.
Just 2 weeks since making the changes the traffic pattern to the site has changed tremendously and now there is a lot more traffic hitting the site. Only 48% of that traffic now enters directly by entering the url. The amount visiting from search engines is still low, approx 6%, but that will take longer than 2 weeks to have an effect, but the most significant change is the amount of traffic hitting us from other sites.

What did I do?? I hear you ask, well it's no big secret.
I amended all the usual, meta tags, changed the Title tag (much more important than people realise!), and wanted to begin the most important step........ link building.
Some people spend hours going into forums etc trying to post links to their site, I don't find this as beneficial as it once was and is just too time consuming to do these days, I figure if what we are offering is good enough our users will do that bit for us anyway!
Think of something that other sites will be interested in, run a competiton , that will get competition sites etc finding your page and their users will click through to you.
These easy steps will get you on the way, of course there's a lot more to SEO than this but it's a half decent start.

Some other ideas are to submit articles to the likes of digg or Fark.com
One site I work on which averages about 15,000 hits a day recently got 60,000 in one day to one story which got listed on fark!!!

Have an opinion and air it! People love the internet as a discussion tool, stir them up!!

A great site I've recently started reading through which can give you much better and much more information about seo is http://seonoobs.com/ take a look.

The Project

2008-02-08T14:57:00.000Z

Just stumbled upon this.

It made me laugh. I'm sure many of you who are developers will identify with it.

(Click image to view full size)

Test your web design in different browsers

2008-02-08T14:56:00.000Z

Most people test their sites in Firefox and I.E. but there are a whole host of different browsers out there.
I've quite literally stumbled upon http://browsershots.org/ by using the Stumble tool bar.

It's a good idea and not only has a range of Windows based browsers but Linux and Mac ones too.

Worth a look and a bookmark I think.

Explaining things to management........

2008-02-08T14:53:00.000Z

I'm sure we've all been in the situation where we are trying to explain our latest project or proposal to our superiors and are blissfully aware that they don't have the foggiest idea of what we are talking about but refuse to admit it. Most of the time we try to be very diplomatic and explain things again and again, more and more clearly until they finally ...... nope they don't get it!

I think this sums it up quite well.......

XML , What's that then??

2008-02-08T14:48:00.002Z

Whenever a manager or even other developers in my current business hear the letters XML the colour drains from their cheeks and they pass the buck. Usually to me!!

This is not because they've had a bad experience with XML, this is not because they think it's some kind of incurable disease that will infect them, their computers, their cars and lives in general. It's because of one thing, thye have not a clue what it is!

They then come to me and say something along the lines of "Ah Nathan I've been talking to the guys at xxxxxxxx xxxxx and they say that we can do it using xml, give them a call will you and hopefully we'll see it all up and live by end of day today." Then they walk down the corridor, glance over their shoulder and call back "Let me know how you get on!"

XML is nothing new! It's been around for ... well I'm not sure how long exactly but probably 6 or 7 years since it became a high profile subject.

Hopefully I can now try and clear up for them and some of you, what xml is.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a standard for creating markup languages which describe the structure of data. It is not a fixed set of elements like HTML, but rather, it is like SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) in that it is a metalanguage, or a language for describing languages. XML enables authors to define their own tags. XML is a formal specification of the World Wide Web Consortium. To find XML editors, see `Whirlwind Guide to SGML to ols' http://www.infotek.no/sgmltool/editetc.htm and also http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsga/linker/XMLtools.html.

I think most of the people I was talking of at the start of this article have searched google with the string "What is xml" and come out with a similar definition to the one above. Then they've gone back to browsing the web thinking "Blimey, I didn't understand a word of that!! We'll pass it on to Nathan!"

Let me try to make this clear for you, XML does not actually do anything.

XML basically just carries data, not too different to a excel document only not as complex.

XML is not like HTML, the tags are NOT predefined. When creating xml you specify your own tags.

If you are trying to work out an easy way to determine the difference between HTML and XMl I would probably put it like this:
HTML is all about displaying information where as XML is solely about carrying information.

XML Does not DO Anything

Maybe it is a little hard to understand, but XML does not DO anything. XML was created to structure, store, and transport information.

The following example is a note to Tove from Jani, stored as XML:

<note> 
<to>Tove</to> 
<from>Jani</from> 
<heading>Reminder</heading> 
<body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body> 
</note>

The note above is quite self descriptive. It has sender and receiver information, it also has a heading and a message body.

But still, this XML document does not DO anything. It is just pure information wrapped in tags. Someone must write a piece of software to send, receive or display it.

XML is Just Plain Text

XML is nothing special. It is just plain text. Software that can handle plain text can also handle XML.

However, XML-aware applications can handle the XML tags specially. The functional meaning of the tags depends on the nature of the application.

With XML You Invent Your Own Tags

The tags in the example above (like <to> and <from>) are not defined in any XML standard. These tags are "invented" by the author of the XML document.

That is because the XML language has no predefined tags.

The tags used in HTML (and the structure of HTML) are predefined. HTML documents can only use tags defined in the HTML standard (like <p>, <h1>, etc.).

XML allows the author to define his own tags and his own document structure.

XML is Not a Replacement for HTML

XML is a complement to HTML.

It is important to understand that XML is not a replacement for HTML. In most web applications, XML is used to transport data, while HTML is used to format and display the data.

My best description of XML is this:

XML is a software and hardware independent tool for carrying information.

XML is a W3C Recommendation

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) became a W3C Recommendation 10. February 1998.

XML is Everywhere

We have been participating in XML development since its creation. It has been amazing to see how quickly the XML standard has developed and how quickly a large number of software vendors have adopted the standard.

XML is now as important for the Web as HTML was to the foundation of the Web.

XML is everywhere. It is the most common tool for data transmissions between all sorts of applications, and becomes more and more popular in the area of storing and describing information.

So that's XML in a nutshell.

It is quite a basic subject when you get into it but one that is quite important to have at least a little knowledge about in this day and age, I took some of the above from the http://www.w3schools.com website.

ASP.net vs ASP

2008-02-08T14:48:00.001Z

I'm relatively new to asp.net, sure I've bought the fancy £30 books that tell you how to do it all, read them and vocally argued with them but I still have not cut my teeth on a juicy .net project.

Something I've been asked many times by people who are breaking into web development is this "Should I learn asp.net or asp? What's the difference?"

My response is usually this. If you are learning from scratch then I would suggest you jump in at the deep end and look at .net, if you intend to make a career out of web development it will stand you in a much stronger position for jobs out there and could improve your wage by a signifacant amount.

That doesn't outline what the main differences are between the two though and that is something I am going to try and clear up in this article.

ASP, or classic asp as it is now commonly known has served me well over the years, earning me some fun, high profile site credits to put on my CV.

For those of you that do not know what ASP is here s abrief overview:

Classic ASP (Active Server Pages) is a server side scripting technology developed by and for Microsoft platforms.
ASP 3.0 was the last version of classic ASP and is a free component with Windows 2000 that runs inside IIS (Internet Information Services).

If you have heard of other variations such as ChiliASP or InstantASP they are just different technologys that allow asp to run on NON windows operating systems.

ASP pages/files can contain HTML, XML and scripts.
Any ASP scripting is executed on the server.
For those of you new to web development this is what is meant when you see the words SERVER SIDE SCRIPTING.
An example of Client Side Scripting would be Javascript. (Something I'll talk about in another article maybe).

ASP can dynamically edit, change or add content on a website, access databases and return results to the browser.
ASP code cannot be viewed from the browser which offers a limited amout of security. (very limited!)
I would say that there are few things that can't be done using asp if you use it cleverly and learn all the available functions, however technology improves from day to day and prgramming has to move on too. That's where ASP.net comes in.

Firstly understand this, ASP.net is NOT ASP.
It is an entirely new generation and technology of server side scripting. It is NOT an upgraded version of ASP.

It has been developed from scratch and has no compatibility with classic ASP.

But I've also seen something called ASP+ out there should I learn that or asp.net?

They are the same thing. ASP+ was a working title microsoft used when developing ASP.net there is no difference.

Put Simply ASP.NET works like this:

A browser requests a ASP.net file and so IIS passes the request on to the .NET engine sitting on the server.
the .NET engine reads the file line by line and executes any files that sit within the file, the ASP.NET file is then returned to the browser as standard HTML

Differences between asp and asp.net

ASP.net has much better language support and a wide range of new controls and xml support.
Because ASP.net code is compiled, it also offers much better performance than standard ASP.

Those of you from a Visual Basic background will be glad to hear that ASP.net supports full Visual Basic rather than the VBscript that ASP supported. (VBscript is a trimmed down, quite limited, version of Visual Basic.)

ASP.NET Controls

ASP.NET contains a large set of HTML controls. Almost all HTML elements on a page can be defined as ASP.NET control objects that can be controlled by scripts.

ASP.NET also contains a new set of object oriented input controls, like programmable list boxes and validation controls.

A new data grid control supports sorting, data paging, and everything you expect from a dataset control.

Event Aware Controls

All ASP.NET objects on a Web page can expose events that can be processed by ASP.NET code.

Load, Click and Change events handled by code makes coding much simpler and much better organized.

ASP.NET Components

ASP.NET components are heavily based on XML. Like the new AD Rotator, that uses XML to store advertisement information and configuration.

User Authentication

ASP.NET supports forms-based user authentication, including cookie management and automatic redirecting of unauthorized logins.

High Scalability

Much has been done with ASP.NET to provide greater scalability.

Server to server communication has been greatly enhanced, making it possible to scale an application over several servers. One example of this is the ability to run XML parsers, XSL transformations and even resource hungry session objects on other servers.

Compiled Code

The first request for an ASP.NET page on the server will compile the ASP.NET code and keep a cached copy in memory. The result of this is greatly increased performance.

Easy Configuration

Configuration of ASP.NET is done with plain text files.

Configuration files can be uploaded or changed while the application is running. No need to restart the server. No more metabase or registry puzzle.

Easy Deployment

No more server restart to deploy or replace compiled code. ASP.NET simply redirects all new requests to the new code.

Compatibility

ASP.NET is not fully compatible with earlier versions of ASP, so most of the old ASP code will need some changes to run under ASP.NET.

To overcome this problem, ASP.NET uses a new file extension ".aspx". This will make ASP.NET applications able to run side by side with standard ASP applications on the same server.

So I hope that outlines the main differences between the two.
As I say I am still new to ASP.NET and learning daily but thankfully I was a VB user some years ago and it's all coming back to me now!!!!

If you want to learn more about asp.net I can recommend the books:
Beginning ASP.NET using VB.NET from WROX and ASP.NET Developer's Guide from Osborne.
Of course there are plenty of online resources and I always find a good starting place to be W3Schools.com

UFO spotted in Wrexham North Wales

2008-02-08T14:45:00.002Z

Happy New Year Everyone!

Useful Sites For Developers

2008-02-08T14:45:00.001Z

Useful websites are sometimes difficult to find. Here are some of those that I found and think they are worth bookmarking if you are a web developer.

Here is a list of which I think are very useful and a must for every Web Developer.

ProgrammableWeb

If you are developing a website and you want to reuse existing resources you can use so called API's. Websites like YouTube, Flickr and Google make it possible to easily integrate their content into your website. At Programmable Web you can find Websites that offer API's and example in different languages on how you can use them.

OpenDesigns

If you want to set up a website quickly or want to make a sample for your client you can reuse Designs. You can browse and download loads of templates which you can use for free.

Other Similar Websites: OpenWebDesign, OSWD

FamFamFam

Do you want to make your websites more attractive? Add some icons too it. People like icons. At FamFamFam you can find a selection of free icon. Brilliant.

TypeTester

You have a design but you are struggling to find the right font? Go to Type Tester who will help you making the right choice. You can compare loads of different fonts at the same time. Defiantly a time saver.

ColorSchemer

Are you struggling to get your colors right? ColorSchemer will help you to select your colors so that they match and make your website look good.

Other Similar Websites: ColorMixers, WellStyled

SXC

Sometimes it is difficult to find the right pictures for the right price. Try SXC and there is a good chance that you will find the right picture for the right price (free).

Other Similar Website: PublicDomainPictures

WebDeveloper

Stuck with a programming problem? Go to WebDeveloper and meet a comunity that is happy to help. Pretty much all programming languages are represented by developers that are ready to get you going again.

Customize Your MySpace Page

2008-02-08T14:44:00.000Z

Maintaining a visible Internet presence in the 21st century is becoming a more necessary marketing tool for businesses and savvy for everyone else. Customizing MySpace profile pages is a very popular pastime for millions of MySpace members and leaves a good first impression on all visitors. Add videos, music, games, cool layouts, backgrounds, and much more fast and easy, now.

So, who hasn't ever heard of MySpace by now? The last time I checked, there were over 112 million members interacting on the extremely popular social network owned by the leading search engine company Google. Not that's more cybercitizens than most countries and many nations combined. Now that is a huge cyberstate of differing personalities as proudly displayed throughout the millions and millions of MySpace member profile pages on the world's largest social network.

MySpace kindly resembles “King Arthur's Round Table”, because no matter who you are every new member starts out with a MySpace default profile page void of any personality and flare. In the beginning, everyone starts out equally and after that, it's up to the new member to creatively transform his or her profile page into something personal to him or her.

Since some members are more computer savvy or process a higher degree of creativity, many MySpace profile pages reflects the talent and hard work of these members. It is always entertaining to visit a profile page that employs fantastic background art and graphics. Coupled with interesting videos and music maybe followed with photos of people, places or things that is alien to other visiting members. All of this work translates into a very cool MySpace profile page.

The following list of websites are dedicated to provide quality and creative Internet tools and widgets to help make your MySpace profile page burst with personality and flare that will leave a good first impression on all who visit your MySpace profile page. Even if you already understand html, this list can make getting the job done a bit easier.

Freecodesource

This is the perfect online source of MySpace customizing Internet tools of both the novice and the advance computer user. Here visitors can choose from a enormous collection of MySpace layouts, graphics, cursors and games that can be used to customize MySpace profile pages. Membership is free and turn-on your popup blocker, because I did encounter popup ads.
Pyzam

This is a great website for anyone who has a MySpace, Facebook, or Friendster presence, because of its entertaining assortment of flash toys and games that can be used to add deeper and richer personality to any social network that they're involved in. These games and toys are 100% original and hand made by the talented designers at Pyzam.
Zoomza

If you are shopping around looking for some of the hottest layouts, graphics, backgrounds and proxies, then this is the site for you. Choose from thousands of professional looking layouts and graphics to add to your MySpace profile pages. Registration is required
SnapLayout

This is a great MySpace profile editor that makes customizing your profile page quicker and easier, then working with the default profile page that MySpace provides to new members. The drag and drop features that SnapLayout provides allows users to quick and easily change layouts, backgrounds, colors, patterns, and slideshows to their MySpace profile page. This is a wonderful tool for beginners especially.
Widgetbox

Games, games and more games, this is a beautiful website with hundreds of flash video games to select from and add to a MySpace page or a blog. Widgetbox offers more than just video games, but also offers an array of other useful widgets that can make any MySpace page or blog even more interesting and keeping the visitors coming back for more.
MyGen 2.5

This is probably one of the simplest MySpace profile generator Internet tools that I have seen. Its instructions are pretty much straightforward as all you have to do is select one of five tabs that represent, each of the five sections of your MySpace profile page and start editing it to your satisfaction. MyGen 2.5 will generate the MySpace code to be added to the MySpace account belonging to the user designing their profile page, once the user has finished editing. A very easy editing program to use whether you are a beginner or a pro.
Photobucket

This handy website is fantastic for anyone who desires to have more storage space for their photos. Members can store their photos, share them with the world on the web or keep them private it the user chooses or cut and paste a little code and add them to their MySpace page, Facebook, blog or include a picture into an email. Membership is free and required to gain access to the sites full benefits and tools.
Flikzor

This is an excellent website for anyone looking to add a little technology to their MySpace page or blog, so that they can send and receive video messages from their friends. Membership is free and required.
SNOCAP

This is an outstanding opportunity for musicians to expand their marketing and distribution capabilities on the Internet. Members of SNOCAP are given the abilities to sell their own music on MySpace and beyond. You set the prices that your music sells for, and then SNOCAP collects the money for the songs purchase and they pay you. Members can easily monitor their sells and the musician owns their copyrights to their music. Basic membership is free.
Sploder

You can never have enough games in the video game age and Sploder offers a unique collection of flash video games that users can add to their MySpace page, blog or even email to friends or family. The game quality here isn't the top of the line, but is more along the lines of many old DOS games, not pretty to look at, but fun to play. Membership is free and required.

This article was taken from http://www.webupon.com a great website where you will find tons of articles like the above.

7 Ways to screw up a blog

2008-02-08T14:43:00.000Z

Internet Insight is a source for useful hints & tips about website building and promotion.

Compiled by Nathan Fuller.

The content within Internet Insight is sourced from a variety of other sites which will be credited within the document.
This edition covers Blogs and more so how you can easily ruin what otherwise would be a decent blog.

This article was taken from www.harrymaugans.com which is a great read not only for webmasters and developers but for just about everyone. In fact if you want to see how a blog should be done, check it out.

Seven Ways to ruin your blog
Seven ways, because lists of ten are overdone, and seven was all that was needed (without losing quality, or having to think really, really hard).

1. Over-monetizing

Sure, everyone wants to make thousands of dollars a month from their blog, but that parallels elementry school kids saying they want to grow up and play professional football. It could happen, but the odds are stacked against you. People come to your blog for information. Without good content, there’s no reason for them to stick around. Blogs are much more useful to use them a promotion medium. Use your blog to gain weight in search engines and recognition in the community. That’ll help you much more than a few dollars a day from Adsense. For instance, if you build a blog up, then use it to promote a new product you launch down the line. You’re already starting ahead, since you can use your blog’s weight to give your new website a jump-start. Think Google… first build a quality site people will use and benefit from, then the monetizing aspect comes later on. One of the internet’s few exceptions to this rule is John Chow. There’s a man who monitized his blog inside and out, but still maintained a high level of quality.

2. Attention Whoring

There’s a few sides of this that tie together. First off all, there are those who attack a well known player in the industry for no reason other than the quick burst of attention and controversy they’ll get. Bad idea. The blogsphere exists through friendships and trust, and if you are blacklisted, it’s near impossible to grow your blog’s influence. Another side of this is people who brag or gloat on their blogs. There is a level of confidence that’s required, but we don’t need to read a 10 page post about how your name was mentioned in Hicksville’s Newspaper last week. Readers are selfish and greedy… post about what information they came looking for and they’ll be much happier (and maybe even keep reading your blog). On the opposite side of this, one example of an attention whore who can get away with it is, of course, Shoemoney. From the famous picture of his Adsense check, to his latest MyBlogLog drama, it’s hard to deny Shoemoney loves attention… but with a blog as interesting and high quality as he has… he deserves it!

3. Personal Life Rambling

A blog is a public tool that is not supposed to be used as a diary. I couldn’t care less that your fish turned four years old today. Don’t constantly clutter my RSS reader with irrelevant posts, as there’s no quicker way for me to drop your feed. Obviously, an occasional post about a major landmark in your life is fine and interesting, but a large number of blogger have gotten their blog confused with a diary. They market it as an Internet SEO and SEM blog, but they make one post a month about SEO. There is about 50 blogs I read everyday (through Google Reader), and one of the quickest ways to get nicked from my subscribed list is to consistently post about unrelated material. A perfect example of this, however one who can hardly be criticized for it, is Google’s own Matt Cutts.

4. Not Updating

One of the biggest aspects in distinguishing a successful blog from a dud is a fairly large readerbase… and readers can’t read your blog if you never update. This is one we’ve always been guilty of at one point or another, especially when first getting started, but if you take up the responsibility of writing a blog, and you actually want it to be successful, you can’t neglect it. Depending on your niche, at least one or two updates a week should be the barebones minimum. There are a few blogs I consider exceptions to this however… who rarely post, but when they do, I make a point of reading every word of their posts our of pure respect for the authors. Among those are Boogy BonBon and Lee Dodd.

5. Posting Junk

Following the previous point, no one is going to subscribe and read your blog if there is few posts of real quality. Sure, posting quick jokes or interesting websites can be fun on occasion, but without good, solid content, what do readers get out of your blog? If they can spend the time to read your blog, you can at least spend a little time yourself and give them something worthwhile to read. One example, is the blog I setup to post whatever junk I don’t want to post here, Decomprehension. Separating the impulsive posts from the quality posts allows me to be get more out there, and maintain the integrity and quality of this blog.

6. Limiting RSS to Snippets
As the number of quality blogs online increase, it’s becoming more and more popular to keep up to date with your favorites via an RSS reader. One of the biggest things I can’t stand about blogs are people who are so scared of giving away free content, they truncate their RSS feeds to a quick blurb. My style of reading blogs is skimming the RSS, then if an article seems interesting, I will usually open that post’s page in a normal browser window and read the entire thing plus comments. However when an author limits it to three to four sentences of a three page post, it’s near impossible to tell if the article is worth reading or not. For those worried about duplicate content, Google is very good about snatching up new posts via RSS (or HTML, depending on how much Googlebot likes your site), and flagging you as the content originator. It is extremely rare for Googlebot to make a mistake in a cross-site duplicate content issue. If your reasoning behind limiting RSS feeds is because less people will see and click on your ads, reread item number one… it’s much better to get a loyal reader than to make a few extra cents. One example of a blog who does this, however is an exception to the rule, is Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. He drives me crazy with his handicap RSS feed, however I still make a point of reading his every post.

7. Not Being Unique

There are millions of blogs out there (55 million according to Technorati), and every one is fighting for readers and rankings. What sets you apart? If you just syndicate every popular story to hit Search Engine Watch or Slashdot, what sets you apart from the other 54 million doing the same thing? Of course, occasional story quoting (with sources cited and your own personal thoughts appended) is fine, but blogs that do nothing but this everyday will have a difficult time getting themselves known. Don’t misunderstand me, by all means reference other bloggers and engage the community, however I’m speaking of blogs that syndk8 99% of their content and show no original, provoking thought or creative effort. To truly shine in the blogsphere you need to consistently write high quality, unique posts. Instead of copying all the time, you should be the one aiming to be quoted and linked.

So remember the points made above and you shouldn’t go too far wrong.
Web content development and blog writing in particular is a skill, work at it and you’ll have a powerful little, or not so little site.

That’s it for now, but I’ll get something else out soon.

Happy Birthday to you....

2007-12-20T14:40:00.000Z

I was reading earlier this week that BBC.co.uk was celebrating it's tenth birthday.

In the same week I was asked to knock up a site for someone, who will remain nameless. They wanted it yesterday and they wanted it to look great and be the best in it's field, attracting people from all over the world so that they could go out and sell advertising on the site based on it's great traffic. Their budget? .... well lets not discuss budgets it gets embarrasing.

As I read on through the BBC article one of the first things it said was: "Actually, it is nearer twelve years since BBC News decided on an internet presence, but it took almost two to launch News Online. The Corporation doesn't do much in a hurry, which is probably a good thing when there are big sums of public money at stake." This took me back to the good old days of the internet, when things where done properly. Sites where planned, sketched out, and designed first, it took several months to get through those stages alone and the build often took a further several months on top. Even then success could not be guaranteed.

I remember building the halfpriceorless.com website on behalf of the TJmorris group, it was a great website designed by Parker Design and to be built by me and a colleague Ian Oldbury, who now earns significantly more than me!! (How did that happen? Maybe there's a blog entry of it's own I can devote to that later!!)

The halfpriceorless website was laid out as shopping aisles that scrolled across your browser left to right and worked a treat. It took us months to get it right but when we did we where all delighted with the results. It looked good, worked well, had quirky characters and did what it said on the tin, sold branded goods for half of their retail price or less.

It all initially went well, there was a lovely big launch with the media where Joe Morris made a big speech about the process we'd been through, their vision for the companies future on the web and a nice chunk of the speech about me! How I had helped and worked my rookie little arse off getting the site developed. I thought it was the pinnacle of my career and at the time there is no doubt that it was.

In the weeks that followed traffic flowed well to the site, all of the UK's internet magazines featured the site with glowing reviews and the pats on my back where starting to hurt a little.

I was gutted some months later when TJmorris announced they where closing the site. A reason for which I never got to know, although Joe Morris was always very friendly and offered me glowing references!!

The site even won a Visa award for coming runner up in the Best Value website losing out to some small time site www.easyjet.co.uk !!!!

That whole project was run well by good people, broke the mould for websites of the time and cost TJmorris a fair few pennies, but it didn't last as has the mighty BBC.

Ok the BBC has massive public funding which enables it to stay at the forefront of technology and skillsets but I can’t help noticing lately how even they are starting to lag behind sites like Sky or even ITV. ITV are attempting to go more local and it’s getting a good response. The BBC have had local content for years but sometimes you can be ahead of your time, as was the Halfpriceorless site.

So happy birthday BBC and congratulations on what you’ve built and achieved over the years, but keep a look over your shoulder for the other big boys. They’re coming to get you.

Out of interest I just did a google search for halfpriceorless and it brought up lots of reviews from across sites like Ciao and Dooyoo etc and the lowest rating I’ve seen yet is 4/5. Gutted!

Online Grocery Shopping

2006-10-11T13:14:00.000Z

I love the internet!
I'm am internet developer by trade, I've managed to avoid the christmas queues in the highstreet for years by doing all my shopping online. I think ebay is the greatest site in the world and sell all the crap that's clattering up my house on their quite frequently, just to make space for someone elses crap that I buy off there even more frequently.
I love having the resource at my fingertips to search all over the world for information about anything from what the latest is on the North Korea nuclear developments right through the spectrum to finding out what size Keeley Hazells rack actually is (with pictures to back up the information).

So my rant today is not about any of those things but about a compnay who make billions in profit each year, no not Microsoft, nope not BT but.... Tesco!
My wife and I lead quite busy lives, we both work we have two kids to keep us more than occupied when we're not working so it's pretty useful that some of the larger supermarkets can now deliver your shopping direct to your door between designated times to fit your schedule.

Living in Wrexham, there's not a huge amount of choice, Asda are my supermarket of preference because they are pound for pound the best value.
Sainsburys are my second choice but I can't always get a convenient delivery time.
In which case we have started to use Tesco.
There's no doubt that their website is the best. It's easy to use, has some pretty helpful tools to help you build your list etc and once you are in is quite easy to navigate etc.

We were desperate for some shopping to be delivered but could only get a timeslot between 9pm and 11pm. We have never had a delivery be late and so were happy with that aspect.
Our delivery came at about 10:30pm . So far so good.

With it being quite late (10:30 is late when your kids have been up half the night before for the past 12 months!!) we just packed the shopping away and went to bed.

After work the following day I went to make our evening meal.
I opened the bag of potatoes to find half of them soft and mouldy at the bottom of the bag, "bollox!" I thought but never mind we also ordered some Jacket sized potatoes we can have them, I got the bag opened it and found that half of those had holes in the size of Anglesey!
I phoned Tesco, and don't get me wrong they were very polite and immediately refunded the items.
We also ordered some organic cauliflower and broccolli and carrots.
I thought well at least I can cook those and use some of our old potatoes.
I got the packs out of the fridge.
the organic cauliflower was tinged black and starting to rot.
The Carrots and broccolli were exactly the same!

I got back on the phone to Mr Tesco.
Again it was another very friendly customer service person who immediately apologised gave us a refund for the items and said they'd pass my comments back to the store.
I checked the use by date on just about everything we had ordered.
The order came to about £100, the use by dates were all for the day of delivery, or the next day!! Are we supposed to eat all of this stuff within a day?

Online shopping is making these guys £millions, and all they can think of is clearing their shelves of any crap they have left over.

It's not the cost of the items that were refunded that bothers me, what winds me up is that despite spending a huge amunt on getting their website done the infrastructure in place to be able to get the whole thing running smoothly they just do not "get it", the internet that is.

The internet is an incredible tool, which provides the likes of online shopping for convenience.
If I get all my stuff delivered then find none of it is any use I don't care about refunds, I don't care if you say you'll send me new versions of everything that was wrong, I care about the inconveniene it's all caused and totally forget about your fancy website and all it's tools and will remember next time to until there is a slot available at the sainsburys online shopping for delivery because in fairness they have never caused me any inconevenience yet!!!

Grrrrrrrrr Tesco, you just don't get it!