December 21, 2007

Fuser adds your MySpace comments to your Facebook

Jonathan Fren @ 5:15 pm 0 Comments

Way to go for sticking it to Myspace - Fuser, a company who’s main product is an online email account [and more] aggregator, has released a Facebook app that brings in your Myspace comments, messages and bulletins. I’m betting MySpace isn’t gonna be too happy about this, and the issue these apps. is it’s too easy for MySpace to just block access. We’ll see how it goes, but it’s a great idea.

Mashable has more..

Use Google Analytics? Update your code..

Jonathan Fren @ 3:51 pm 0 Comments

Ok, well you don’t *need* to yet, but Google is rolling out a new tracking code, which will replace the long-lived urchin.js script, to a new, lighter, more customizable ga.js script.

The new code will let you benefit from a bunch of new features now, and in the future, as they won’t be rolling out any new features to sites using the current tracking code. The current code will continue to function for at least a year from the time they release ga.js.

Among the immediate features are a bunch of customization options to the script, such as cross-domain tracking, file download tracking, better e-commerce tracking and better virtual page tracking as well as automatic HTTPS detection, and a smaller, faster loading source file.

All you need to do is change this:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js"
type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    _uacct = "UA-12345-1“;
    urchinTracker();
</script>

to:

<script type="text/javascript">
  var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ?
  "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
  document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost +
  "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
   var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1“);
   pageTracker._initData();
   pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

Obviously changing the red tracking number to your own.

Google has a more detailed integration guide, with info on how you can customize this code further for different uses here.

Important! Don’t use ga.js and urchin.js on the same page. They won’t work.

December 20, 2007

Digg Visualizes Photos

Jonathan Fren @ 6:35 pm 0 Comments

Digg just released a new photo application to Digg Labs for visualizing photos added to it’s new photos section announced last week. See the application here.


IE8 to be standards compliant

Jonathan Fren @ 6:17 pm 0 Comments

Ahh. Finally it looks like Internet Explorer will follow the rules. The folks at Microsoft have been working hard (well, they’re probably trying to reduce the pain), and they now pass the infamous ACID2 test (you would see a smiley face on the second link if your browser passes), which even the current version of Firefox can’t claim.

Microsoft’s channel 9 has more, including a video with IE’s GM Dean Hachamovitch and Architect Chris Wilson. Oh yeh, but you need silverlight to watch it. Doh.

Anyway, congrats to the IE team, and keep working hard at it. This is good news for both developers and users (which latest figures show are anything from 30% to 90% of web users).

Photo credit: Ben Crowder

December 19, 2007

Top digital cameras right now

Jonathan Fren @ 2:48 pm 1 Comment

I often get asked about what’s best e.t.c. when it comes to technology products, and cameras is one of the most difficult items to choose. Recently I’ve seen a few friends getting totally ripped off on camera purchases, spending a ton of money on a bad photo-taking brick, and I hate to see that happen. There’s plenty of good cameras out there, and more expensive isn’t always better.

So here are my current hot picks for various budgets, and they’re all good cameras. This isn’t intended to be a big list, more a hand-picked selection of the best. (more…)

December 18, 2007

Driverless “pods” coming to London Heathrow

Jonathan Fren @ 9:00 pm 2 Comments

Heathrow Airport will soon get the world’s first driverless personal rapid transport (PRD) system. Sounds cool.

They’ll be on-demand, with no no timetables, no emissions and no rails. They can technically be programmed to go to any destination, with touch-screens inside each pod to choose the destination. 18 of these pods will ferry you at up to 25mph to & from the business car park to the new terminal 5 building currently being built. It’s already under construction and should be completed in less than two years, at a cost of £25M.

According to the people implementing this, ATS from Bristol, the maximum wait time is only 12 seconds. Whats more, vehicles will have their own dedicated paths, with no congestion and no traffic lights, so they’re promising a non-stop journey. Sounds awesome.

Croud-Sourced QA from uTest

Jonathan Fren @ 8:16 pm 0 Comments

uTest has reaised $1.7m for it’s croud-sourced QA service, which is expected to launch in early 2008. It’s very oDesk’y, and if they pull it off, with the right testers, I can see it becoming popular within it’s niche market, which will likely mostly be web and software firms.

QA is something that is better done by people other than the team who built the application or website, and because in most cases there are little privacy/legal issues with outsourcing this element of a development project, it’s a popular option.

I’d still like to play with it before deciding whether I like it, especially how it covers the different levels of QA. E.g. I kinda doubt they’ll have a group of novice web users to test usability issues, I feel it’ll more be the Elance or oDesk crowd. But if they can do the former, great. Pricing will also be interesting to see. I’d like to see different depths of testing, say for 500 “general surfers” or one or two in-depth pro reports e.t.c.

Thanks to Roi Carthy @ TechCrunch

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December 17, 2007

BBC’s New “Web 2.0″ Homepage

Jonathan Fren @ 7:13 pm 0 Comments

The BBC have redesigned their homepage, in a much more web2.0, widgetized theme. You can drag modules around like iGoogle. They’ll also soon be adding the iplayer to the new page (which in case you didn’t know let’s you view the last 7 days worth of BBC programming online for free - streamed online).

From a purely design point of view, I feel the design is too “chunky”, large text, large buttons e.t.c. Overall, for the BBC’s audience, I think they’ve done a great job. Even the current BBC’s homepage hasn’t had it’s shortage of praise for it’s usability and functionality. The overall color scheme on this new design (green in the below screenshot) also changes when you switch between the 4 feature items which is a kind of interesting choice.

The homepage is in BETA right now - screenshot below, click it to preview..

December 14, 2007

Amazon WS Databases coming soon

Jonathan Fren @ 12:45 pm 0 Comments

I’ve just received an email from Amazon about a new service they’ll be rolling out soon. Amazon SimpleDB, which will compliment their growing range of web services, will work with Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to provide the ability to store, process and query datasets in the cloud.

This is something that many developers will find attractive. I know we use Amazon web services for some of our larger web properties, for a range of things from backups to image hosting, and this new addition could be useful for several uses.

Amazon Says “Traditionally, this type of functionality has been accomplished with a clustered relational database that requires a sizable upfront investment, brings more complexity than is typically needed, and often requires a DBA to maintain and administer. In contrast, Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database - real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data - without the operational complexity.”

This will be appealing to startups, as setting up complex database solutions can be costly. Existing companies can also reap benefits, but being web-based, if speed is of importance you’d be better off maintaining your own database infrastructure.

The private BETA will be available in a few weeks - I can’t wait to try it out. Drop a comment if you’re interested to hear about our experiences with it.

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December 13, 2007

New Jackass Movie To Be Offered Free Online

Jonathan Fren @ 11:35 am 0 Comments

“Jackass 2.5″, the latest of the Jackass movies will be released online first, free to view, before following the more traditional route of pay-per-view TV, DVD and iTunes. I think this is a fantastic move by Paramount pictures, who are calling it “the first studio-backed feature film to have its premiere online.”

The above video is a preview - the actual movie will be available online from Dec 19 for two weeks.

Via TechCrunch

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