Speaking Your Language
Posted on June 26, 2008
Filed Under Process, Web Programming | 1 Comment
I have a slightly strange habit when coding that goes back to when I started to learn programming.
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Back at last
Posted on June 25, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
What with family commitments, work commitments and study commitments (and then finally to top it all off host troubles) it’s been a while since my last post.
Watch this space for a new one though…
For 2008: Backup, Backup, Backup!
Posted on January 3, 2008
Filed Under Process | Leave a Comment
Still looking for a New Year’s resolution. SugarRae’s latest post coincides with events in our house.
Shortly before xmas my wife’s computer failed to boot up, failing the disk check every time.
Like SugarRae, my wife has irreplacable files on her computer, years of personal photos, files related to her worek and her studying. With great trepidation I ran the tool the error messages were suggesting I run but were also saying were virtually guaranteed to lose some data.. Read more
Telephone Numbers On The Mobile Web
Posted on November 28, 2007
Filed Under Browsers, Mobile Web | Leave a Comment
This lunchtime I had cause to try and find the phone number for a local restaurant. Rather than pay for directory enquiries I opted to do a Google search on my mobile (I have a flat rate data plan). Of course, I could only do this because I happened to have paper and pen handy to jot down the number.
Make It Easy For Mobile Web Customers To Call You.
While it may not be well used, there is a protocol for telephone numbers - the tel: protocol. Mark up your businesses telephone numbers like this
<a href="tel:01234567890">Call us on 01234 567890</a>
to make it easy for people viewing your site on a mobile to call you.
It should also of course be possible on a decent desktop browser to associate a VOIP program with this protocol. As VOIP continues to grow marking up your telephone numbers will become ever more useful.
Mobile Web Browsers
In the meantime of course, given the number of sites that do not mark up their telephone numbers in this way it would be helpful if mobile browsers had an option to highlight and make clickable and callable any part of a page that looked like a phone number.
Will Facebook Break The Bank(s’ Authentication Methods)?
Posted on November 27, 2007
Filed Under Data Protection | Leave a Comment
The recent loss of personal details on 25m people by HMRC has certainly raised the public profile of data protection and identity theft. Lots of coverage from the events themselves, to how people were personally affected, to its impact on the government’s proposed identity cards, even the standard of journalism over the issue.
One of the posts on the subject that particularly caught my eye was “Information As Money” on Chuck’s Blog. What did I find interesting?
The potential of severe consequences, understood up-front, has a way of getting people’s attention.
The problem of course is that word “understood”.
While there have been numerous lapses in data protection over the last year from businesses, on the whole I think business does understand the importance of data protection better than the average individual, even when dealing with their own information.
In “Phacebook?” I commented on how compromising the information in social networking sites could be and suggested people should be careful what information they gave to such sites.
Who Was I Kidding!!!
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What Do You Have?
Posted on November 23, 2007
Filed Under Analysis | Leave a Comment
No I’m not asking about anything that might be classified as contagious, but what do you call those who for whatever reason make a request of your web server to serve up a page.
On Website To Dos and the blog I have tended to use the generic “visitor” as I have no way of knowing what sort of web site my visitors/readers/whatevers might have. I associate readers more with blogs as other websites may have goals that do not involve repeat visitors (and I was interested to see Problogger also classify a reader as somebody who returns)
If you have a web application/service then you might have users. (And I have to admit that as my day job is as a programmer I frequently have to replace an accidental “user” with “visitor” in my drafts 
)
Any of the above can, I feel, be subsumed within the term “audience”.
What else can you have?
Log Everything (And I’m Not Talking About Weblogs)
Posted on November 12, 2007
Filed Under Web Programming | Leave a Comment
More specifically, log anything that could impact your visitor’s experience if it all goes horribly wrong… and make sure you are keeping sufficient detail.
The most obvious case would be the error codes in your basic access log. If many people are getting a 404 on a particular page then you know something is wrong. Perhaps you moved the page and your visitors have bookmarked it or are following an external link to the old address. In this case you now know that you need to redirect your visitors. If the page has never existed then you’ve likely created an incorrect link somewhere in your site. Look in the access logs for the page your visitors were on before they requested the non-existent page then view the source of that page and search for the incorrect link.
Remember, humans are capable of being stupid in far more creative ways than any computer (although the computers can repeat it faster)
An example…
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Launching Operation SaturatEng - Because I *Could* Care Less
Posted on October 29, 2007
Filed Under Operation SaturatEng | 4 Comments
I always find it amazing how successful certain memes can be. Amazing and, in the case of some memes (could care less, loosing etc), depressing.
I find “I could care less” to be the worst given that just a moment’s thought surely makes it clear that it actually means the opposite to what the poster meant to say.
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Does Google Need A Disclaimer?
Posted on October 25, 2007
Filed Under seo | Leave a Comment
There has been a lot of discussion recently about Google’s latest update and specifically about drops in PageRank (see Greg Boser, Andy Beard, Daily Blog Tips, TechnoSailor and, for a list of other discussions SearchEngineLand). Many assuming that it is some sort of penalty.
Many years ago I worked in a casino. Very few people who entered the casino were under any illusions. They knew that the amount they left with could be, and probably would be, less than they entered with. My day job now is as a programmer in the financial services industry. In fact, I work for a stock broker at the moment. An industry that has possibly one of the best known disclaimers around - Remember, the value of your investment can go down as well as up.
I have never really understood why such a disclaimer seems necessary. It just seems obvious from the very nature of the investments that the value can go up, or it can go down, and it can do either of these for reasons that are completely out of your control. Most people on losing in a casino do not claim that the casino is doing anything it shouldn’t be. Most people when the stockmarket drops, affecting their investment, don’t claim that it is a conspiracy by the stockbroker. The latest brouhaha over PageRank though seems to show that it is not obvious to everybody.
So perhaps Google needs a disclaimer next to that little green bar - “Remember, PageRank can go down as well as up.”
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Phacebook?
Posted on October 19, 2007
Filed Under Data Protection, Uncategorized | 1 Comment
(One word of warning before getting on with the post, don’t bother going to look at the .com of the title. It’s your bog standard parked page.)
I’ve just finished reading Sugarrae’s Updated Unofficial and Smartass Guide to Using Facebook. A great resource. Having only recently signed up to Facebook, and, with a baby in the house, having had little time to set it up so far, this guide will definitely speed up my getting in to Facebook.
However…
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