Still As Life

I've been talking about it, so where is it?

The new Still As Life blog?

Well, the design is virtually completed, and setup for Wordpress, I just have a few more small things to sort out in it along with setting up the basis for the second half of the website.

That's right, there's a second half!

Don't all pass out at once, I have been working!

The new Still As Life design is, I am proud to say, in my opinion Web 2.0, though as Web 2.0 is as flexible as any other definition of a design style, that is open to interpretation.

So, I can safely say, it will be alive soon.

Since I'm changing over to Wordpress instead of Blogger, and the file paths will be changing, that does mean a different RSS URL along with other changes, but in the long run, I think it will be very beneficial.

That's all for now, catch ya.

Labels: code, design, internet

Well, as of today, the TerraMedia Email Exchange is up and running.

Using Microsoft Exchange Server, the TerraMedia Email Exchange provides email, contact and calendar synchronisation whether you are accessing your email from Outlook, via a web browser, or even via a smart phone. So you can access your mailbox wherever you are in the world.

Pricing starts at $29 a month per mailbox and includes 500mb of space and a free Outlook 2007 license. There is absolutely no setup fee, so the total cost to have your own Exchange email accounts are drastically reduced to a low $29 a month.

If you need more than 500mb, there are larger capacity options available to suit.

All of my email accounts are running off of the TerraMedia Email Exchange Server and it is proving to work very effectively.

Check out the news article on TerraMedia for more information as well as the TerraMedia Email Exchange information, key features and pricing pages.

Labels: internet, software, work

The past month, I have been brainstorming and experimenting with idea's on new and interesting (to me) things to do on the web.

So far I have a few things. Of course, high up on the list is to market TerraMedia and Ultralight more, but at the same time, there have been other things come up as a result of that.

Company and product image.

For example, I have been trying to come up with a new and interesting logo for TerraMedia. I did a subject at university first semester last year that was based entirely around product and company image, through logo's, packaging and so on. KIB101, Foundations of Communication Design 1 is the subject. Great subject, I learned a lot doing it. The problem is, I could not get past one of my early logo idea's which I realised after I finished it, that it was very similar to the old Sony Walkman logo which is a trade mark, and while it's not the same, I didn't particularly like the idea of Sony having a reason to come after me. Thus, I ended up with the current logo, which is nothing too special, I like it, but it's not what I would ideally like.

So, this is something I have been aiming to change. I still don't really have anything set in stone yet, but I have some idea's that I am working on since my mind has seemingly been freed of it's mental block at the moment. How long this will last I cannot say, but hopefully for a while yet.

In working on this new logo, I have also been considering redesigning the TerraMedia website, and reworking it to better fit my new marketing strategy (which is at the moment still in it's planning stages, so I can't give you details because it is not yet in an entirely logical structure and will most likely come across as a bunch of babble). I spent a couple of hours with Rhi on Sunday afternoon brainstorming possibilities in this regard, and along with things I have since come up with on top of our combined masses of brain power, I think we have some very interesting idea's that I plan on experimenting with. I'd show you, but that would ruin the surprise.

Rhi is also helping me out with the new logo design which is awesome as she is a fantastic artist! So a big thanks goes to her!

Portfolio.

Next on the list is a possibility I have been throwing around in my mind and have just begun experimenting with using Joomla!

Joomla! comes with a weblinks component when you install it, and that, combined with part of my new marketing strategies has thrown into the works a directory style portfolio. In a way, like a Yellow Pages of web site's by TerraMedia. Of course, there aren't that many at this stage, and it probably doesn't sound like much, but the idea's that are whizzing through my mind regarding this have me really intrigued about setting it up. I have something partially working at the moment. I'm hoping to get it up and running properly within the next couple of weeks.

This also is a reason behind the changes I would like to make in the design of the TerraMedia website. The current design does not incorporate any real portfolio the way I would like, thus it does not have one, which is not a good thing, in fact, it is a very bad thing.

Next up is email.

I have a Microsoft Exchange Server partially setup for TerraMedia. It's still in it's trial phases at the moment, but I am hoping to have it setup properly soon. This will make maintaining my email's, contacts and calendar (why does the spelling of calendar look wrong?) far easier from all over the world, not that I'm frequently all over the world, but you never know.

Once the Exchange server is fully setup and operational, TerraMedia will be offering it as a service instead of our current webmail/POP3 email service, if anyone is interested, pricing will be sorted out shortly. I aim to have this fully operational within the next couple of weeks as well to coincide with my plans.

Blogging.

I am planning on rearranging the news and client information blogs so that they are one and the same rather than two separate ones. I also accidentally blocked myself from allowing RSS, ATOM and OPML feed's from the news page, which is potentially problematic and another driving factor of a new design.

Blogging part 2.

Still As Life is still running off of what is essentially a standard template. Yes, I have changed it significantly. Background image, size, footer, menu etc, but it is still basically a standard template. This I do not like. In my brainstorming for TerraMedia, I stumbled across the foundations of a new design for Still As Life hiding in the dark, atramentous recesses of my mind.

So this is underway as well. I have it in progress, on the Still As Life server, but I'm not going to give you the link because that would ruin the surprise. If you can figure out the path to it though, enjoy and keep in mind that it is still in progress and the colours are far from final.

More Still As Life?

Yes, there is more. Still As Life was not originally intended to be solely the home of the personal blog of me, Matthew Brown. No, it was also meant to be a haven for my fractal gallery. Yes yes, there is my Deviant Art gallery, which does give me unlimited space and bandwidth for free. However, it is not really what I want. I have been tossing around ideas in my mind ever since I first began considering names for this blog. There is actually an installation of Coppermine Photo Gallery setup on this server and has been since I set up the domain. It's just one of those things that never quite went ahead.

Is there anymore?

As a matter of fact, yes! I just don't remember what else there was at the moment, that was actually part of the reason for this blog, so I don't forget everything. Oh well, I'll remember sooner or later. I actually have paper with stuff on it all over one of my walls for this reason as well, however this is one of the things that hadn't made it to paper yet. Though Rhi thinks the paper makes it look like I have gone mad with illegible scribble writing and drawings that look like they are part of the writing and so on. I am happy being mad.

Last but not least, in my creative and un-mentally blank mood, I have been doing some drawing (that does not look like scribble) as well. I have the outlines of a picture that I am quite proud of so far. Hopefully the rest of it will work right and I don't end up with, well, badness.

Labels: code, design, internet, rants, work

There are a few other websites now live that I have been working on as well.

You may or may not have seen the first two Domain Resorts websites that I worked on, if not, they are:

• Domain Resorts and Residences
• Domain Resorts and Residences Santai

Since completing these two, I have also been involved in working on five other websites for them through Webtrix™ Technologies.

The websites are as follows:

• Domain Resorts and Residences Drift
• Domain Resorts and Residences Beach Shacks
• Domain Resorts and Residences Mainwaring
• Domain Resorts and Residences Pandanus Pocket
• Domain Resorts and Residences North Stradbroke Island

For more websites that I have worked on, have a look at my portfolio.

Enjoy.

Labels: design, internet, work

The Swallow Fashion website has been live for about a week now. This is a website that I have been working on for Webtrix™ Technologies for some time now.

It was a very slow website to develop, however, it has turned out quite nicely. I was not the only person working on this website mind you, it was just one of those ones that takes a long time to get done, for no real reason.

Swallow Fashion have 3 stores in Brisbane city and do just about anything with clothes that you can think of. They mend, make dresses,perform alterations, dry clean, can work with leather and furs and so on.

I might be biased when I say I don't like some of the parts of the website that I didn't do. However, if you know what parts of the site they are, you can probably understand my dislike of them.

Labels: design, internet, work

Recently, Sun Microsystems purchased MySQL for $1 billion. A little late I know, but I only just read about it.

There are articles about it on both the Sun and MySQL websites.

With a gigantic customer base, MySQL is a very successful open source endeavour, so purchasing something like this, potentially brings millions of customers, including clients like Facebook and even Google.

Along with such a large client base, comes the potential to really screw up. There are plenty of other database systems out there, both open and closed source with similar features and performance to MySQL, in particular, PostgreSQL. This means that if Sun were to mess it up, there are systems waiting with arms open. For example, on the TerraMedia server, we have both MySQL and PostgreSQL running. Of course, for many larger clients, transferring to a different system would be a lot of work and for many, it probably would not be worth it. However, for smaller clients, or transitioning systems, there is a much bigger possibility.

Added to that, at the Queensland University of Technology students are introduced to databases and taught using PostgreSQL in the introductory database subjects, no doubt this occurs at other universities as well. This means other systems are in a prime position to take a piece of the market from MySQL if things go sour.

Having used both systems though, I can see there are many similarities, so even someone who has only used MySQL could pick up PostgreSQL with very few problems.

However, I can't point out the possible pitfalls without mentioning the benefits.

Sun is a giant in the I.T. industry with a large amount of finances available to back MySQL. Not to mention, Sun has been extremely successful in releasing the Solaris source code in 2005, and the Java programming language in 2006. Thinking along similar lines, you can hardly talk about Sun's support of open source software without mentioning projects like NetBeans and OpenOffice.org. Both of these have thrived under Sun as well.

Additionally, work conditions are not expected to change, including being able to work from home, and Sun have invited the current staff to continue work on the system, including the current leadership and executives.

It is clear to me that Sun understands the value of open source technology and the communities surrounding it and I don't doubt at all, that in adding MySQL to their arsenal, Sun won't screw things up and MySQL will continue to thrive from the added support.

For anyone reading that has heard my theories on the future of the I.T. industry, involving companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Google and so on, this move by Sun supports my expectations completely.

I will write up my theories one of these days, or copy a chat log about them, or something.

Labels: code, internet, software, technology

As you may recall from the 18th, I made a post about a Microsoft Excel security issue that had been brought up in the Sydney Morning Herald. At the time I could not seem to find anything on the Microsoft website about it. Evidently I was looking in the wrong place or searching for the wrong thing, as Tim over at Spy Journal has found the official Microsoft Security Advisory information under Microsoft Security Advisory (947563).

According to the official Microsoft release:

"Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a vulnerability in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Service Pack 2, Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2002, Microsoft Office Excel 2000, and Microsoft Excel 2004 for Mac. At this time, our initial investigation indicates that customers who are using Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or Microsoft Excel 2008 for Mac, or who have installed Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Service Pack 3 are not affected by this vulnerability."

So basically, the latest version's, Excel 2003 SP3, 2007, and 2008 are all in the clear. Everything else is potentially vulnerable.

Common sense should apply, as with anything received over the internet, if it looks suspicious, it probably is, unless it's me.

Labels: internet, software

I've been asked on a few occasions if it is possible to save YouTube video's to a local computer in a usable format.

Usable really depends on the definition of the person. There are a lot of free services out there such as www.downloadyoutubevideos.com or at Tech Crunch, where you paste the link to the YouTube video into the page, and it provides you with a link to download it. Then you have to rename it to a .flv file and play it in a player such as VLC that supports Flash Video files.

This method is all well and good except, a lot of people don't want to download a video player just to watch .flv files, and it really is a fair bit of work to get them this way. There are programs floating around to convert .flv files to .avi or other formats, but I haven't come across any that I particularly like, and again this is a lot of work for a single video file.

There is an alternative though. There is a website called vixy.net that that works similarly to the others in that you paste in a link to the YouTube video and it then provides a download link. This is the only similarity though.

When you put in the link you want, it gives you an option to choose what format you would like from a list:

• AVI for Windows (DivX + MP3)
• MOV for Mac (MPEG4 + MP3)
• MP4 for iPOD/PSP (MPEG4 + AAC)
• 3GP for mobile (MPEG4 + AAC)
• MP3 (audio only)

So you can pick what format you want based on what you plan on using it on. Then hit start and off you go. It is downloaded to their server and converted from a .flv to whatever format you chose and a download link is provided. This cuts out all of the other troublesome steps of the other websites that provide YouTube download links. In particular, it saves you the trouble of converting a .flv to an .avi or .mov or any of the other formats.

Of course because the DivX codec is used for the Windows option, you will need to have DivX installed on your computer, but then, you can play the video in Windows Media Player or whatever other player you prefer instead of being restricted just to VLC. Besides that, many people already have DivX installed so it's not a very big deal. DivX have both paid and free versions. The free version can be downloaded and provides everything you need to run the files from vixy.net.

There is also a free (with ads) download available from vixy.net of a PC based .flv converter if you already have the .flv files you want. I haven't tried this as of yet, but I gather it is based on the same software the website uses. It is currently only available for Windows but there is a Mac version on the way. Keep in mind that it is still only in beta so it isn't going to be perfect yet.

Alternatively, if you have access to a server you can upload the .flv files to, or if you have seen some on a website where the video url is easy to find, vixy.net will accept these links as well as YouTube ones, so it has a solution for a lot of .flv conversion possibilities.

I hope this helps someone with converting .flv files and downloading YouTube video's.

Labels: internet, software, technology, video clips

I have gotten a few months behind on Ctrl+Alt+Del, but I finally caught back up this evening which is most excellent.

With this catching up, I've decided to add a "Awesome Comics" link section to the navigation as well, of the comics I try to keep up with on a regular basis, and also regularly forget about.

Rhi sent me a new comic a couple of days ago called Questionable Content which she found and loves reading.

It's taken me significantly longer to get through the archives than it took her, probably because I've been doing a fair bit of other stuff, and I'm still nowhere near through them, but I have to say, it's one of the best comic's I've read in a while. Jeph, the artist behind it, has combined a lot of witty humour with words and in context's that would often not be understood. One such word that I came across in his comic that I love is defenestrate, which means to throw out a window. How awesome is that?

He has also managed to create a set of characters that I can recognise and relate to which is awesome.

It's definitely not an 100% family friendly comic, no doubt if it were a movie it would get an M15+ rating, but it is far better than a lot of the comics out there.

The third comic I currently have in the list is XKCD. XKCD is definitely not based around the art, as much of it is stick figures. XKCD uses science and creates humour out of it. It is really quite interesting and funny to read. It comes highly recommended from me, as do the other two comics I currently have in the list.

Note: They aren't listed in order of awesomeness. They are in alphabetical order.

Labels: art, internet

I'm a little bit late with this as it was announced over a week ago now, that Netscape Navigator support will end from February 1st and there will be no future development on Netscape Navigator by AOL.

It is interesting to read some of the things in the blog and in the comments about this. For one, I was totally unaware there was still much of a following of the Netscape browser. If you are like me and remember the days where Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were the two most common browsers, then you have seen things change, many of you probably remember further back than that as well. Since the beginning of the Mozilla Foundation and the open sourcing of the Netscape core, Netscape has gradually fallen further and further behind in its user base.

Given that Netscape came to be based on Mozilla and later, Firefox, it seemed to me that the continued development work on Netscape was somewhat pointless as it, in my eyes duplicated the browser for no apparent reason.

Something I found interesting were, in the blog, and also reflected in many of the comments, was this:

"While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer."

Why is it that Internet Explorer is the only browser recognized as controlling market share? Once upon a time this was true, but a lot has changed. There are other browsers such as Opera and Firefox that claim their own portions of the market, as well as Safari, Seamonkey, Konqueror and so on. Why is Internet Explorer the only target? If anything, Firefox and Seamonkey should have been the primary competitors as they are based on the same core as Netscape.

In my opinion, Netscape shouldn't have been competing with Internet Explorer so much, but focusing on Firefox and determining what Firefox didn't offer, and building on that. Netscape was once a very useful program, but it has been years since I have even considered it. I haven't used it to test websites in a long time as if it runs in Firefox, it should also be fine in Netscape. Perhaps this has been a bit lax on my part, but if I'm not mistaken, they use the same core code, so they should render the same.

In one comment the following question is raised:

"Netscape's rise and fall symbolizes why it is important for all companies to constantly innovate and litigate when others use unethical tactics to hasten their demise.

Both Internet Explorer and Firefox can after Netscape. Why are they still around?

How did they manage to get popular debuting after one of the most important additions to the beginnings of the World Wide Web? We all know about Microsoft's controversial tactics - but how does one explain FireFox?!

Why did Netscape not compete successfully? Was there internal politics?

We should all learn from this!"

I don't know what the level of knowledge this person has is like, or what experience they have had with web browsers. To me though, why Netscape did not compete successfully comes down to the fact that it was no longer needed. It was no longer a mainstream web browser and competitor to Internet Explorer. Opera and Firefox had filled that place. They both came after Netscape yes, but Netscape didn't compete successfully, because it was competing with itself under a different name, Firefox. I expect that if Netscape had not been open sourced when it was, it would have continued to lose market share to Internet Explorer, and when Opera came around it would have added to the mix, just as it did anyway, and take away more of Netscape's user base.

The open sourcing of Netscape gave it an avenue to thrive and evolve into Firefox through the effort and contributions of the global community.

There is no doubt in my mind that Netscape played a significant role in the evolution of the Internet and web browsing, but in the end it's time was up as an entity. AOL made the right choice to "hand the reins fully to Mozilla", after all, they are essentially the same browser.

If you are one of the Netscape fans, AOL have, as their final development salute, created a Netscape Firefox theme with Netscape extensions to go with. So you can have Firefox appear as close to Netscape as it will get.

It is sad to see Netscape drop out of the game, but since Opera joined the game and the Mozilla Foundation produced Firefox, it's days have been numbered.

A salute to those who kept it going for so long is well deserved, and everyone that has worked on it over the years should be proud to know they helped forge the internet as we see it today, by navigating rather than exploring.

Labels: internet, software, technology

I was just reading a post by Duncan Riley about the potential for banning of things that are commonplace and acceptable today, purely because of the possibility of porn being received via these channels.

Duncan outlines just a few possibilities, Second Life, Skype, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, Usenet, BitTorrent, Blogs, Twitter, regular Google searches and Image searches, internet archives including Google's caching system.

In addition to this, what else is there? If Skype has the potential to allow the receipt of porn and anything else deemed unacceptable, which it no doubt does, than logically so does MSN, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and so on. Any other search engine can potentially be used to search for porn as well as Google.

While I don't deny that a porn filter would be a great thing, if it could be done effectively, as I have said before, when you start this sort of mandatory filtering, not only does the question arise about where does the line get drawn on what content gets filtered, but where does the line get drawn on what methods. Duncan even offered up the fact that porn can potentially be received via email as well, and often is in spam.

So what things get filtered and what don't? As BitTorrent is often deemed as a means for illegal downloading, despite the huge amount of legitimate uses for it, the excuse to filter it out would no doubt be jumped at, but what about everything else?

To filter out all of the possible sources leaves us with practically no internet at all, and then at speeds reduced to up to 78% slower than our already slow connections.

Mr Rudd, you and your ministers need to let go of the controlling attitude and stop even discussing this possibility. When it comes down to it, the only viable solution is to let parents teach their kids and teach parents how to use software filters. If you want, provide education about it in schools. Don't try to filter out the vast majority of the internet though.

Labels: internet, politics, rants

Theres a great article on the Australian from yesterday covering the pitfalls and problems with ISP level filtering and various forms of filtering. It is probably the most accurate and reasonably presented article I've seen from a newspaper yet, even though the quotes are predominately from IIA spokesman Peter Coroneo's rather than someone from the current government.

"...he warned it could never be completely successful in blocking access to all pornographic sites, just the ones on the blacklist.

If new sites were launched that were not included on the blacklist the clean feed would not restrict access to them, he said. "You've got to be aware of the fallibility of the approach," he warned.

There were millions of pornographic websites and if all of them were included in the blacklist "there is a potential for slow downs in access to occur", he said.

"The more sites you attempt to block the greater the effect on the network performance and speed," he said.

This is because every time you type a request into your search engine it will have to be checked against all the sites on the blacklist, he said.

In Britain where a clean feed policy is being pursued, only between 200 and 1000 child pornography sites have been included on a blacklist.

But if Australia insisted on including millions of general pornography sites and others that include violence it could undermine internet users' speed of access to websites, Mr Coroneos said.

A 2005 pilot study carried out by the former Howard government found a clean feed approach could cut down speed of accessing the internet by between 18 to 78 per cent depending on what was being blocked.

The Rudd Government campaigned on a platform promising to speed up Australians' access to the worlwide web by rolling out broadband around the country.

Mr Coroneos said any clean feed policy would have to be carefully balanced.

He said households that really wanted to block out pornographic material would be better off investing in a home based filter system." - From the Australian

Labels: internet, politics

For anyone that is interested, the Ultralight web design service by TerraMedia is up and running as of today.

There is an official news release up on the TerraMedia website outlining the details, as well as a blog on the dev.terramedia website.

For full information regarding Ultralight and to see a demonstration, have a look at the official Ultralight website.

Labels: design, internet

With newspapers Australia wide running near identical articles on the latest announcement today from the Australian Labor Party, and blogs worldwide abuzz, I can't help but be astounded.

How is mandatory ISP level internet filtering a smart idea? Whether it causes a speed difference or not, which I believe it will, it makes me wonder how they can see this as viable at all.

What advice are they given? Do they not realise how rapidly content changes? How are they planning on maintaining the black list?

Will they ban IP's or IP ranges? Will they just waste my tax money paying people to trawl the ever changing, constantly evolving, millions of websites out there and individually choose what they think is appropriate for me to see?

Will my blog be inappropriate because I'm voicing my opinion about KRudd's failure to represent the people of Australia only a month into his leadership?

What a way to end 2007, but to announce a system that requires the citizens of Australia to opt out of a system that is not wanted in the first place.

I see the reason for it, there is the belief in some groups that the government should do their parenting for them but filtering content so that they don't have to actively monitor the activities of their children.

Okay, so maybe I'm being overly cynical, and sure, I can understand the desire for content filters for children, as exposure to unsuitable material is increasing in virtually every media, from television and radio, through to the internet. The difference with the internet is that it doesn't have a content rating on everything.

Really, in an unfiltered connection to the internet, a child could stumble upon virtually anything. A point in regards to this though is that the public school system already has filters in place for the internet connections through schools, or NSW does anyway, I am not 100% certain on other states. If NSW state education system can do it though, why couldn't they use a similar system in other states and throughout the various private schooling systems?

Then there are the public libraries, why can't they use this system as well? What other places can children access the internet? This just leaves the home. Who is responsible for the connection at home? Parents.

There are plenty of software filters available that can do this, but with the school kid that got around the system there's all that kerfuffle, but really, a kid could get around the ISP level if they wanted to. There are plenty of proxy servers out there that are relatively simple to use, though they can be slow and annoying.

So, if parents aren't taking the responsibility to actively educate their kids about what is suitable and what isn't, such as they would (one would hope), teach them when it is suitable and safe to cross a road. If the government has to take responsibility for this, then is it not telling parents that it's okay to not worry about what their children do on the internet, because there is a filter in place?

A filter cannot and will not block everything without effectively allowing only government approved websites and nothing else. So where does this leave us, well, for me, I see it as a waste of my taxes. Why on earth would I want to pay for something I don't want, then be required to opt out of it if I don't want it, then continue to pay for it anyway?

Should I choose to opt out, will that mark me as someone that should have my internet usage monitored? If i decide not to opt out, where is the line drawn on content filtering?

It is intended to be a porn filter, this is all well and good and I have to agree is a great idea, because even when actively monitoring a childs internet usage, there will no doubt still be some form of unwanted exposure. However, does it stop at that? Or once this method of control is in place, does it get taken further? Filtering out anything deemed inappropriate by those in power?

There are idea's thrown around all over the web, but something the springs to my mind is, regardless of whatever pressure is on the government for this filter, from whatever source, can they not see that if they put a filter like this in place, when it fails, it will come back on them? They are offering a sense of security. If, and I believe when, something that should be filtered isn't, who is to blame? The people maintaining the blacklist.

Duncan Riley makes an interesting point in his blog on TechCrunch, "Australia Joins China In Censoring The Internet" where he points out:

Notably Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was a former Australian Diplomat in China, and speaks fluent Mandarin; given Australia’s boom is fueled by mineral exports to China, it would seem that Australian Government policies are now by China in return.

An interesting thought, and is well and truly believable. Whether it is or not, who knows, regardless though, the day a filtering system such as this comes into effect is the day that the government is effectively given complete censorship control.

More information can be found on the Labor website.

Labels: internet, politics, rants

If anyone is interested, the TerraMedia website has a brand new News page! If you want to keep up with the latest TerraMedia News, when you visit www.terramedia.com.au simply browse to the News page which is second from the left, between "Home" and "Design", or head directly to news.terramedia.com.au.

Have a great weekend!

Labels: internet, work

I'm not sure how long iPrimus have been running their green broadband program, but it is a very interesting idea.

I came across an ad for this earlier today whilst reading an article on the Sydney Morning Herald website. The ad is very simple and when you click on it it takes you straight to a semi-cliche page, that is also very evocative. Straight up you are confronted with a Windows save prompt with the cursor hovering over yes in the foreground. In the background is a satellite image of the earth.

Almost the entire page is a link that leads you to more information on iPrimus' green broadband program.

There is nothing overly special about any of iPrimus' plans, none of them have unusually high bandwidth limits for the money, they are all very average priced plans, and are definitely not in the expensive end of the market, nor the cheap end. I don't have any personal experience with their service, or even with them in general, but neither would the majority of people they are marketing to.

Are the facilities used by iPrimus any more environmentally friendly, or green, than any other ISP's? Probably not. Do they use any less power? I doubt it.

What they are advertising is that for less than a dollar a month on each contract, they are partnering with Landcare Australia to plant an average of 5 trees a year per contract.

Is this making their services any cleaner? No. It is providing a solution though that is helping the environment, and this is a big selling point these days. With global warming and attempting to reduce greenhouse emissions and so on, people like to be able to perceive that they are doing something to help the environment. After all, this is what Blackle is selling using their custom black front to Google Search.

As I mentioned earlier, there is nothing overly special about any of the iPrimus plan's, but their green broadband plan gives them something unique to offer as a selling point over other ISP's. They appeal to people's emotion's and fear of global warming. In this day and age, this is a great selling point. The majority of people want to do their part, and in the I.T. industry, everything uses electricity, so other things have to be done to attempt to offset greenhouse emissions. Not every company has the budget to use solar or other alternative green friendly energy schemes to power their systems, so offsetting the cost of planting tree's is really a great idea.

For anyone that is unsure about what they are actually doing, they also provide a facts sheet that also covers statistics on water runoff and the effect that trees have on rain water and where it goes. This is a great way to build on their point and idea.

It doesn't cost much more per month, and people can perceive that they are making a difference. What a great way to sell an internet connection!

Labels: internet

Yay a step forward for Internet Explorer finally. According to the Internet Explorer development blog, IE8 now correctly renders the Acid 2 face!

This is great to see! For anyone that doesn't know what the Acid 2 test is, it is a web standards test that was designed by the Web Standards Project that is intended to pick up rendering flaws in browsers.

It uses HTML and CSS to test certain features and how they are displayed by the browser. Any browser that correctly supports the W3C HTML and CSS 2.0 specifications should render the test correctly. If a browser doesn't completely/correctly support the features that Acid 2 uses won't render the page properly.

Interestingly, the test itself doesn't actually use valid CSS. This is because it was also designed to test how a browser will deal with faulty code.

Labels: code, internet, software

I came across this nifty open-source piece of web-based software last night that is really quite an interesting and useful idea.

Created by Johann C. Rocholl, Browsershots allows you to submit a website for any of the available browsers on any of the available operating systems. You can also specify things such as with or without Flash, Java, JavaScript, screen resolutions and colour depths.

The website is then added to the job queue and allocated to a particular factory. The factory (computer) then takes the web address and loads it up in your specified browser with your specified settings. A screenshot is taken of the browser window with your loaded website and it is then uploaded onto the central Browsershots server for you to view.

I've used it to test a couple of websites now in various scenario's and it works great, it's helped me pick up a few things I would've completely missed otherwise.

Of course since it is all automated, you don't see things such as any mouse over effects, so you still need to test them manually, however for everything else, this is an excellent idea!

The factories used for it are all voluntary and anyone is able to add a factory to the ones used for work. As factories are provided voluntarily though, often there are some unavailable. Such as when I was doing some testing last night, only one of the Linux factories was online, so I was not able to test all of the different Linux browsers.

This is a bit of a downside, but I think, the more widely known it becomes the more factories people will volunteer. After all, if people want to continue using a free service like this, people have to be willing to help out.

There is a paid priority system. So if you pay 10 Euros, you will receive a month of priority processing which effectively means you don't wait in the standard queue to have your screenshots processed, you are put at the front of the queue.

Alternatively, if you don't want to pay for priority processing, if you have a factory or factories setup to help out with the load, when all your factories combined are uploading 1000 screenshots in the 24 hours before the time you are submitting a screenshot, you will get priority processing as well.

On their wiki they have all the setup instructions you need to get a factory up and running on Windows, Linux or Mac. It's all very straight forward and easy to follow. So if you are interested in helping out with the processing load, or anything at all, it will no doubt be greatly appreciated.

Apparently the bandwidth load for uploading these shots can range up to around 20gb a month. Downloads would be much the same as browsing to all of the sites. So there is quite a lot of bandwidth involved, but if you can spare it and have a spare computer lying around, I really think this is a worthwhile idea. After all, anyone that regularly has to check browser compatibility will know how much time it can take to test websites in a wide variety of browsers and this really speeds up that time and let's you test in even more browsers than most people would.

I don't doubt that you will find it as useful as I am continuing to find it.

Labels: internet, software, technology

If you are like me and have trouble studying with regular music, but like to have something in the background, then you will like ambient music. If you are even more like me then you are very, very picky about the ambient music you listen to and find it quite difficult to find decent ambient music.

I just came across this great netlabel called Ansiform. They have a great selection of ambient music available for download under the creative commons license, along with streaming music from their website and podcasts.

The music is all very much to my liking for ambient music and is really great for studying to.

They accept music submissions as well, however it should be within their area of ambient music which they describe as:

"The ansiform flavor of ambient is unobtrusive, beatless, finely textured, and stable. Many tracks in our collection demonstrate inspiration drawn from disparate genres such as noise, dub or pop music. It's ideal for sleeping, meditating, and cleansing the aural palate."

This is so true and this is exactly why I like it so much. If you like ambient music I really recommend having a listen to some of the music on Ansiform.

Labels: internet, music

I've just been visiting the Feng-GUI website after reading about it briefly in SitePoint's Design View Newsletter #40.

This is really quite an interesting tool. The idea behind it is that using the algorithm they have developed, it can work out what points of the website are the main points that would draw a user's vision towards them. It then works creates a salience heat map to determine which parts of the page are effectively the "hottest" areas. Or as described on their webpage it:

"...is an artificial intelligence service which simulates human visual attention and creates an attention heatmap."

How cool is that? As you can see in the little image above showing this blog, the hottest points are not even on the content. While I don't think this is 100% accurate as of yet, I would say it is actually getting reasonably close and is definitely still a very useful tool for a web and/or graphic designer.

If you use the tool found on their home page, you can upload any image that is a max of 5mb and it will run the algorithm over it and produce a heat map for you. Alternatively, you can use bookmarklets or there is a Firefox extension available. These two options produce a larger image than the tool on their home page and so these might be more useful for some people, however I did notice that their is a slightly different result using these options. I don't know if it is because they are larger images or if it is something else.

Personally I think the heat maps produced by the home page tool are a bit more accurate, however the larger images are definitely more useful, especially in area's that have a lot of detail. I noticed that the Firefox extension and bookmarklets seemed to time out less than trying to create a heat map through the main page as well.

The Feng-GUI Firefox extension is very simple to use and is my favourite of the options. Once it is installed, it just ads a little flame icon to the bottom right of the Firefox status bar. Simply browse to the page you wish to see a heat map of and then click the flame. You will then be taken to the Feng-GUI website with a completed heat map in front of you. Easy as that.

The bookmarklet code can be found on the tools page of the Feng-GUI website and I have setup a little example below so you can see how it works:

Make a heat map of www.stillaslife.com.

I know I've already found this useful, so hopefully you will too.

Enjoy.

Labels: design, internet, software, special interest, technology

The screen shot to the left shows a post that was made on Tailored.com.au by Brendon Sinclair indicating that his blog post that I had mentioned previously had indeed been indexed by Google in less than 6 and a half hours.

As I mentioned in my previous post, it was indexed in 4 hours. However, following up out of curiousity, upon another search now, only just under 4 hours after his new post, it has also been indexed.

"posted by Brendon at 5:25 PM on Dec 11, 2007"

As you can see on the clock on my computer, it is just after 9. While I had performed the search at about 8:50 when I first saw it, I hadn't realised that it was in fact the second post until now, so my time is a little bit off. However I think it is fairly safe to say that Google is indexing frequently updated websites in 3 to 4 hours.

Interestingly enough though, Brendon's following post has not yet been indexed that I can see, though it was made only 10 minutes after the one in the screen shot.

Labels: internet

I have been noticing over the past few days that Google has been indexing my blog within a few hours of my posting. I just Googled for my last blog post and it's not there yet, so it clearly isn't quite instantaneous. However, for a website that is frequently being updated, an index update thats only an hour or two old is clearly quite beneficial for everyone involved.

I had noticed how quick it was updating a few days ago. It was just today that I saw a blog post by Brendon Sinclair on Tailored Consulting about Blogger posts getting indexed almost instantly.

While the circumstances are slightly different and Tailored.com.au clearly has a higher pagerank than Stillaslife.com as well as no doubt getting many more pageviews and so on. Brendon also keeps the blog updated even more frequently than I update mine, so automatically it should be getting crawled more frequently than mine. However I thought I would check this anyway just out of curiousity.

Tailored.com.au has been crawled since his post 4 hours ago. I would like to watch this more closely and see if his website is in fact being crawled as quickly as it seems. As Brendon mentioned in his blog, even if it is only Blogger that is being indexed so quickly at the moment, if Google has found a way to effectively index websites, even within a couple of hours, this really puts them even further out in front of all the other search engines.

I have noticed it has been over the past couple of weeks that the speed has really increased so I wonder if it is something to do with Google's last major algorithm change. I am interested to see if the same thing is occurring on Wordpress and other blogging systems.

As I write this, I have also done a quick search, and now at 3:22, the blog post that was used as a test for this purpose by Brendon is number one when you search Google for "Raymond F. Sinclair".

Labels: internet

I have seen this ad a few times now come through Google Adsense and I find it really quite amusing.

I don't know who would click on it, but I suppose someone somewhere must be or what would be the point of it?

It is titled:

Internet Explorer 6

And the body text is:

Great deals on Internet Explorer 6 Shop on Ebay and save!

Funny, I thought IE was free with Windows, and even so, IE7 is newer and better, though still far from good.

Labels: internet

The new development blog for TerraMedia, dev.terramedia is now online. Of course it is only new and is something I've only been working on for the past few days so it doesn't have a great deal on it yet, and nowhere near as much as I would ideally like, but it will get there. It may still have a few bugs here and there that need to be ironed out, but as it stands, it is ready to be live, after all, it is about development in regards to TerraMedia and so on.

As I have been using WordPress.org for some of my newer content managed websites, I have decided to use it for dev.terramedia as well. The reason for this is based on a couple of things.

1. First and foremost, I love the latest version of WordPress.
   
2. In my opinion it rivals systems like Joomla! as far as simple content management goes. Of course more complicated things may need the functionality Joomla! has over WordPress, but when that's not needed, I think WordPress is great!
3. It is only logical that I provide a working showcase of one of the system's I recommend using and demonstrate it in one of my own websites.
4. I didn't want the Blogger brand on my development blog. As great as Blogger is, you have to keep the Blogger button on it somewhere.
5. I wanted the extra control I have over the source in WordPress, not that I have any intention of modifying the source at this stage, but I like the extra control I have.
6. I am considering transferring the main TerraMedia website over to WordPress instead of Joomla! and would like to use dev.terramedia as a way to facilitate that change.
   

That's about it really. Nothing high and mighty about it, I just feel that for what it is and for what I need it for, it surpasses everything else.

Labels: code, design, internet, software