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  1. 28 Apr 2009

    See you on the otherside

    Tomorrow I will be heading down with Kean Richmond to the Future of Web Design conference that is being held on Thursday. I am looking forward to it as it will only be my second Carsonified event I will have attended, and first Web Design conference (I attended Future of Web Apps back in October last year).I was fortunate to get the heavily discounted early-bird tickets to the conference which sold out quite rapidly from what I gather. The popularity certainly brought the booking system to a standstill. Whereas previously I attended FOWA with a lowly Expo Only pass, for FOWD I have a conference pass which will allow me to attend the speaking sessions held by industry greats such as Jim Coudal, Mark Boulton and Molly Holzschlag.

    Of the various speakers scheduled throughout the day I am most looking forward to ‘Designing Effective Mobile Interfaces’ by Meagan Fisher of SimpleBits. The premise of the presentation is to teach a few tricks that can be used when designing mobile interfaces. As I have maybe mentioned before, I think that the mobile web has great potential providing that you don’t treat it as a stripped-down full desktop web.

    A further presentation that has got my interest is Mark Boulton’s ‘Typography’s not on the web, it IS the web’. I bought the Five Simple Steps ‘A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web’ in both PDF and paperback format when they launched, and I have been thumbing through the paperback version with great pleasure. I am hoping for Mark to explain in more detail some of the typographic skills and techniques mentioned in his book, that as a non-graphic designer I wasn’t able to fully comprehend.

    The second part of this weblog article is to explain that there may be an absence of fresh content for some time. Upon my return from FOWD I will be moving to Sheffield in preparation of starting my new job at the University of Sheffield. I will be finding my feet and won’t have broadband (or even a phone line) upon moving into my apartment, and whilst I will make a concerted effort to get online at an internet cafe or like, it’s not the same of writing content from the comfort of your own place.

    I shall endevour to keep you updated as to what I have learnt from FOWD and I hope to pass on any information that I believe will be beneficial. It just might take a while before it appears here!

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  2. 21 Apr 2009

    BBC iPlayer goes HD but what about terrestrial broadcasts?

    Yesterday on the BBC Internet Blog Anthony Rose announced that the BBC iPlayer has gone high definition (HD) and has added higher quality streams in his article entitled BBC iPlayer goes HD, adds higher quality streams, releases iPlayer Desktop out of Labs.

    Whilst I am pleased that such development are taking place, I cannot help but wish development in the television industry specifically the television broadcasting industry would progress as quick. With the digital television  switchover taking place over the next few years with the whole of the UK switched over by 2012, if broadcast HD adoption is likely to take as long, the broadcast quality will never catch up to the technology available in the homes.

    I currently don’t have any equipment in my home to consume a HD source. This is because of the lack of sufficient terrestrial HD television broadcasts coupled with the baffling terminology and jargon used to confuse the consumer faced when deciding upon which equipment to purchase; HDCP compliant, 100MHz, 24p, contrast ratio, PIP, resolution are just a handful of examples. Only recently have I found HD ready and Full HD aren’t necessarily the same thing.

    I mentioned in my article posted in July last year, The internet has outdated the TV licence where I thought that the television licence fee in the UK was too steep, and the only benefit you really get from paying the television licence is the access to live television which, to my knowledge, isn’t currently available via the iPlayer. With the lack of significant advancement within the television broadcasting industry and HD content now being available to download, but yet the television licence fee increases (currently it is £142.50 for colour and £48.00 for black and white), I still feel that the television license needs modernising to accommodate content available online.

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  3. 20 Apr 2009

    Flash in a box

    I’ve never been a big fan of Flash, largely because I can remember the era of tacky, full-Flash websites that merely existed to boost the egos of their designers. However I am gradually coming round to seeing the advantages of the platform.sIFR for example has allowed for non-web-safe fonts to be implemented in websites, the underpinnings of Flex were built from the Flash platform and announced just today on ReadWriteWeb, Flash Comes to the Living Room.

    In the article Frederic Lardinois relays the following information,

    Adobe today announced that is has partnered with a number of prominent content creators and hardware manufacturers to bring its Flash platform to the living room. As a part of this initiative, Adobe will release a new version of Flash that will be optimized to run on set-top boxes, Internet-enabled TVs, and Blu-ray players. Among Adobe’s partners are Broadcom, Comcast, Intel, Netflix, The New York Times Company, and Disney. The company expects that these companies will release the first Flash-enabled devices in the second half of 2009.

    I see this development from Adobe being more significant that anything that has come before. Providing the content creators and hardware manufacturers play ball, it opens up a vast playground of ways in which information can be consumed. Imagine interactive weather and stock reports displayed as widget within your TV display, additional download-able content to supplement the content you are already watching, easily schedule TV recordings to your home cinema across the internet and the possibility to feedback on the programmes you like or more importantly dislike.

    Of course this may also make spying on your listening and viewing habits in your living room even easier for the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo to broadcast advertising targeted specifically towards you.

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  4. 11 Apr 2009

    Should you attend university for web development?

    For those considering going to university to study web development or a course related to the web industry, Jeffrey Way’s article over at Nettuts+ is definitely worth a read.

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  5. 10 Apr 2009

    The blog is dead, long live the blog!

    Over the past couple of months a lot has changed in my life; I went from working as a freelancer with my own clients to working freelance full-time at a small web agency here in York, to accepting a full-time permanent position at the University of Sheffield.

    Since being made redundant in October of last year I have been continuously searching for full-time permanent positions whilst working as a freelance web designer/developer as a source of temporary income. The past six months or so have seen me working with a broad range of clients showcased in my portfolio and whilst I wouldn’t wish redundancy upon anyone, I feel that working as a freelancer has enhanced my skills. Dealing with clients directly and providing solutions to any of their problems, budgeting and planning my workload to accomodate further work and chasing any late payments.

    So what has this got to do with the title of this blog article? Well I am hoping that it in someway goes to explain the absence of content on this blog for some while. The changes mentioned have meant I have neglected this blog and my regular readers. I intend for this to change from now on.

    Now that I have a full-time permanent position which is starting in May, I now don’t need to place as much emphasis on my portfolio items on this website which was intended to attract both employers looking for freelancers and permanent employees alike. So expect a complete redesign and restructure in the coming weeks.

    I am also looking into alternatives to Wordpressto manage this website. Wordpress is great for blogs, but not-so-great for anything more than. I need a platform that supports a blog as well as a ‘normal’ content managed website and Expression Engine seems to be the favourable solution at the moment, however suggestions are quite welcome.

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  6. 19 Mar 2009

    Trouble upgrading Wordpress on Media Temple?

    Are you having trouble using the automatic upgrade functionality of Wordpress on your Media Temple hosting? Try setting the PHP ’safe mode’ to off, and it should solve your problems of ‘Could not create temporary file’. Thanks to invi2003 for coming up with the solution.

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  7. 15 Feb 2009

    Domain names

    The chances are that the domain name you want is now taken, especially .com domain names. Which begs the question; are domain names that end in anything other than .com any good?

    My first choice for a domain name is always .com. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s because I like the notion of owning a ‘global’ entity that is implied with a .com. For some reason country-level domain names and purpose-specific domain names, such as .me.uk and .info just don’t appeal to me. They seem somewhat sub-standard and too ’specific’ with their intention.

    Of course that hasn’t stopped me from purchasing scottmallinson.co.uk which redirects to scottmallinson.com, and my first ever domain name was and is boardstupid.org.uk for which I am currently developing behind closed doors. I understand that the iPhone and iPod Touch doesn’t have a quick-key for .net either like it has for .com. Does this imply that Apple deems .net insignificant or of less value than .com domain names?

    I’d love to hear your thoughts on domain names. Are .com domain names the superior TLD (top-level domain)? Is there a certain amount of snobbery when domain names are concerned?

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  8. 13 Feb 2009

    Royal.gov.uk isn’t that… royal

    Yesterday the Queen unveiled the new “official website of the British Monarchy“. With the Queen turning to technology more in the past few years and the Royal website being a top resource for information about the British Monarchy it has an important role to perform as an information portal.

    I have to admit that I never once visited the previous incarnation of the Royal website so in that respect I have no before and after comparison. Though it is hard not to want to compare the website with that of the White House which has received spectacular praise across the globe since Barrack Obama was elected President of the United States of America.  On first appearance the website does not exude the feeling of importance or royalty, for me it looks more like an homage to the British Monarchy than anything else.

    Perhaps it could be the uncomplicated use of imagery and flat colours used throughout. No clever background images, drop shadow or gradients like we are used to from the White House website. Although The Royal website is trying and has managed to bring in the ‘youth’ vibe to the website with the inclusion of Youtube video clips from The Royal Channel, which was setup 14 months ago, as well as using Google Maps for future engagements in The Royal Diary.

    It was announced that Tim Berners-Lee, the ‘Father of the Web’ would be present at the launch of the new website. I’d like to know if he had noticed the invalid markup used throughout the website and if he was brow-beating the developers who built the website, what with him being director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) who try to ensure standards-compliant practices are used in web development.

    In fact I’m surprised that the website was even launched given the number of invalid markup errors within the code, the majority of which seems to be rookie mistakes; duplicate IDs and malformed URLs. Whilst I think it’s just passable for a personal website to contain invalid markup, I think high profile websites such as the Royal website should set an example of ‘how it’s done’ and pave the way for web development confirming entirely to the latest web standards.

    Whilst I’m no SEO expert, again I can see through the markup on the homepage that there is a lot that could be done better:

    <meta name="keyword" content="King" />
<meta name="keyword" content="Monarchy" />
<meta name="keyword" content="Queen" />
<meta name="keyword" content="British" />
<meta name="keyword" content="Official" />
<meta name="keyword" content="Golden" />
<meta name="keyword" content="Jubilee" />
<meta name="keyword" content="Royal" />

    Come on, really? Julian Sambles, Telegraph.co.uk’s Head of Audience offers his opinion on how well the new website will perform in search engines in his article The Royal Website: The Queen’s new website SEO review. You will see from Julian’s review or by looking through the markup yourself that there is little regard for heading hierarchy or search engine friendly URLs, often the most basic principles to get right in current web development.

    For me it feels that the website has been rushed out, or that the necessary care and consideration has been missed out. Whether it’s down to cutting costs (perhaps the Monarchy are feeling the pinch along with the rest of us) or they simply got it wrong, as Emily Bell concludes in her article All grace but no favour on revamped royal website, “Whilst it is early days, it has to be seen as a missed opportunity.”

    What are your thoughts on the new Royal website? Has it met your expectations?

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  9. 27 Jan 2009

    Migrating feeds from FeedBurner to Google

    A short while ago I migrated my RSS feeds from FeedBurner’s servers to Google’s. As I use MyBrand to distribute my feeds from feeds.scottmallinson.com the transition wasn’t as smooth as I liked.

    When requesting the feed a 502 error was returned prompting me to panic. I had followed the instructions Google had provided regarding MyBrand setup; adding domain names and changing DNS settings, but the error was still appearing.

    Thankfully Twitter came to the rescue and @jameswilliams90 posted the following link in a tweet, Migrating FeedBurner to Google? Read this first. In essence it suggests deactivating and then reactivating the MyBrand service. It solved my issue, and I hope it helps you.

    The FeedBurner team have also created The FeedBurner Status Blog for technical updates about FeedBurner in Google.

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  10. 19 Jan 2009

    Twitter tweets on your website; a good idea?

    I have seen a growing number of websites displaying the author’s latest tweets from Twitter. When I started looking at redeveloping this website I was considering doing the same, until I realised the potential problems it could cause.

    Twitter?

    For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, it is an open-forum for thoughts, feelings, opinions and discussion. In 140 characters you can talk about pretty much anything you want; be it what you ate for breakfast, what you’re wearing or what you are currently doing. It is used by people from various demographics; old, young, student, professional, even animals use it! I think a key to the current success of Twitter is the transparency of the conversations that take place, and how it has become a place to source information and help.

    Problems

    At the top of this article I mentioned potential problems with integrating Twitter into your website. Well consider this, you have had a bad day (it’s merely coincidence that I’m writing this article on Blue Monday) at work and you have had to do some work for a particularly challenging client. As it is so easy to post a tweet, you write a 140 character rant about your day. This tweet will eventually end up on your website because you have integrated it to do so, and so anyone visiting your website could read about the day that you’ve had.

    This could be disastrous if your employer, or even worse, the client reads your website regularly. Whilst it is easy to delete a tweet once it has been published, once read the damage is done. Obviously this is a worst-case scenario, but not an unrealistic one. If your website is used as a vehicle to promote your own work and services, then the damage could be lasting.

    Solution

    The solution is rather simple. Remove the Twitter-website integration so that your tweets no longer end up on your website. Alternatively you could ensure that you self-censor your tweets by restricting what you say and how often you tweet. I, personally am against the latter for two reasons; 1) it can take a consider amount of time and effort into training yourself to self-censor what you write, 2) I feel that it would ruin the flow of discourse within Twitter if everyone was to self-censor what they wrote and there wouldn’t be anything interesting to read or contribute to.

    I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

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  11. 16 Jan 2009

    Giddy Kippers website now live

    The new Giddy Kippers website is now live. Though it looks almost identical to it’s previous version, it is now powered by WordPress which allows the client to maintain the website with relative ease.

    Read more about the Giddy Kippers project.

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  12. 15 Jan 2009

    How to get that first web development job

    You’ve just graduated from university, or college and you want to get a job as a web developer / web designer, but it turns out it’s much harder than you realised. So how do you get that first job as a web developer?

    Some great advice from Phil Thompson, <img/> is everything,  on getting your first web development job. Read the rest of How to get that first web development job over at <img/> is everything.

    Popularity: 2% [?]

     
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  13. 15 Jan 2009

    Web Development Project Estimator

    The Web Development Project Estimator is a simple tool that allows web designers and site developers to quickly and thoroughly estimate the time and materials required for a proposed web project.

    A free, easy and simple tool for calculating costs for a web project (and it looks quite nice too!).

    Popularity: 2% [?]

     
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  14. 14 Jan 2009

    The new Firmstep website goes live

    I am pleased and proud to announce that the new Firmstep website has now gone live. You can read more about the project here.

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  15. 5 Jan 2009

    From Steve Jobs with love

    An open letter from Steve Jobs quashing rumours about his health.

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