Category: On The Web

I have always been pretty loyal when it comes to web-browsers. I own, somewhere, a fully licenced version of Netscape 0.9 (or was it 1.0) on floppy disc. Since that day I have been a Netscape user and turned to Mozilla when that became the non-AOL enabled version. Netscape/Mozilla has also been my mail program of choice for most of the time – although I did use Eudora for quite a while until multiple accounts became available in a Mozilla release.

Over the years I have had to use Internet Explorer. Primarily I use it for work where the software we develop has an interface optimised for IE.

I had a brief spell as an Opera user (and licenced a copy) but I never grew accustomed to the interface. Yesterday I received an email from Opera announcing the beta release of Opera 7.5. So, I downloaded it and two things struck me about it. Firstly, it’s fast. Despite the claims on Mozilla’s site about 1.7 Opera won (I haven’t run Firefox yet to compare that code). Secondly, Opera’s full-screen mode really is full-screen. No address bars. No scroll bars. Just full-screen browsing. I really must remember that because at times it’ll be very, very useful. And, what’s more, I still like Opera’s small-screen rendering option!

In other news, Take That are to get back together for the first time since their split in 1996. The article also notes, Mark Owen has been dropped by his record label.

UPDATE 25 April: Apparently Not.

UPDATE 30 April: It may be on again now but former member Robbie Williams will not be joining the band.

Perhaps it’s a little sad that the first thing that jumped out at me from this item at Engadget was the ‘phone not the car.

On Wednesday I read about the launch of Amazon’s new A9 search service so, of course, I had to go geekwise and try searching on my the word ‘musak‘ to find this site nicely up the rankings. Why did I waste a few minutes doing that?

In addition I searched on some other terms which would link to some of my sites and found a pointer to an entry I made at The Mirror Project. It seems the picture was chosen by a guest curator to be included in the Real Smooth Shave collection. In turn, that reminds me I have a new image to post there.

I have mentioned Bloglines before (here and here for example). Since I acquired a broadband connection this kind of web service is all the more useful and I have discovered many interesting personal sites because of it.

Earlier in the week I received the news that they have now introduced a daypop-like service which lists the most popular links in the sites Bloglines sees daily. Nothing too new (although I suspect there’s a ton of clever code beneath it) . What is nice is that you can reduce the listing based only on the sites you track. You can, therefore, see the most popular links by people who you actively read. This is brilliant because it should really highlight connections between the vast mix of sites I dip into over time.

Looking at today’s mix, however, doesn’t highlight any overlaps! Perhaps the collection of sites that I read are very different from each other. I don’t know if that is good or bad.

Catching up with the excellent writings of Chris at prosaic (who’s new design is simple and elegant) I was directed to an article at sfgate.com (The Obesity Crisis) which is fascinating and rings true. I am sure that, over the last ten years, the amount of food I have consumed has increased massively as a result of the size of the portions that I eat (rather than eating more meals). Anyway, methinks I should head off the the gym now and resist the urge to simplify the look of this site …

Things I should speak about but there’s too much happening in the world:

• The tories are holding a ‘gay summit‘ which is a shock to those of us that remember Margaret Thatcher’s rants. I am certain that, at one point, it was the Conservatives who wanted to round us all up shoot us.
• Andy points to a site for hot Brazillian men – which amuses for some reason that I can not explain.
• And over at Man of the Moment, I am receiving a lot of comment spam on Andrew Kinlochan which means I need to find the time to upgrade this instance of Moveable Type to implement some of the spam blocking features. In researching them, I notice there’s a whole raft of new functionality in the next release. I am, sadly, excited by this news.
• Six Apart, the guys behind Movable Type, have grown phenomenally this year. Mena’s written something about it which goes to show how difficult it can be communicating when you’re a small company.
• Lance Arthur has written 13 Reasons Why You Could Be My Boyfriend and, as always, it’s a very well written piece. But one of the items really struck a chord with me for some reason: ‘6: You Have Passion‘. It got me asking myself, ‘what subject am I passionate about?’ and, right now, I am not so sure (although I can go on about my new found love of the gym and roller casters if I am pushed). I don’t think that’s healthy.
• Dan Savage got legally married – but to a woman: ‘We emphasized to the clerk and her manager that Amy and I don’t live together, we don’t love each other, we don’t plan to have kids together, and we’re going to go on living and sleeping with our same-sex partners after we get married. So could we still get a marriage license?’ How fantastic.
• And I learned a new acronym today: SPIM (spam over instant messaging). You heard it here first (maybe).

What a great day.

Oh dear, technology is really getting the better of me. Reading my selection at Bloglines, Matt at Hit or Miss pointed me to his TV recommendations page. One of his recommendations is Hedwig and the Angry Inch – which I have been meaning to view for a long while. So, a quick search at MyDigiGuide and I see it’s on Sky Movies 1 this Thursday. Now, when Sky+ implements some kind of web-interface I will be away.

Did I miss much while I was away? I know I missed Tom winning a Bloggie or two – congratulations to him. plasticbag is always interesting reading but ‘Why do bloggers kill kittens?‘ must be one of my favourite posts of recent times. His idea of ‘a representation of a person online’ is a good idea about what a site is – including mine – but I have to say that I just plain enjoy his writing – regardless of if I agree with it or not.

The BBC is reporting on an interesting piece of research about the way people are using personal music players to claim back something personal from a world where we are surrounded by advertising messages:

Through interviews with Walkman owners and now iPod buyers, he found that listening to music acts as a shield, aura or cocoon … Using headphones helps to keep the world at bay and reclaim some space. [Source]

Yesterday I listened to my own choice of music in the gym rather than watching one of the televisions hanging from the ceilings. It was a very different experience and – to be honest – I almost caught myself singing along. I had purposely chosen a lot of upbeat pop/dance to keep me going and it worked. While my usual fare of Sky News and Chart Show TV are interesting, this time I knew my whole musical selection would be good and I would find the whole hour interesting and commercial free.

But what about the aspect of the walkman or iPod as a space definer? I think this is probably very obvious. I often ride the London Underground listening to music to cut me off from the rest of the people there. In a morning, it really does give you a sense of your own space when you are sardine-squashed into a carriage. In an evening it keeps you occupied – less likely to be engaged in a conversation with somebody who you might find threatening.

A few weeks ago, cityofsound pointed me to Traffic Island Disks – an interesting radio programme loooking at the music people are listening to as they wander around an area of London. It really is very interesting listening to how people define their own spaces through the music they are listening to (it’s also a pretty good idea for a radio show).

Do you know how hard it is to find the link to the Real Player for Palm devices? It’s not very well-signposted. Perhaps, if I post a link here, search engines will improve its ranking! If you’re looking for the Real Player for Palm connected devices (Treo 600, Tungsten C, Tungsten T3, Tungsten T2, Tungsten T, Tungsten E or Zire 71) then you should visit the Real Networks page devoted to it!

Additional note: the user instructions for the Real Player for the Palm are also available.

So, the official Phixx web site alerted me to two interesting facts this week. Firstly, Andrew is giving away his car. Honestly. In one of the most bizarre (and possibly desperate) publicity stunts for a single, Phixx are giving away Andrew’s car. How do you win? I’ve no idea because they won’t tell you until the single is out. And then, today, I received an email with the subject ‘Phixx Window Sticker’. The clever marketing bods have ‘put an A4 poster together for you to download and place in the back window of your car’. I thought that it might be a nice idea to go and look at it – except anybody could have knocked this up. What a disappointment. That’s the picture. The pdf doesn’t render properly on my machine (but the World version does). All in all that’s brightened my afternoon. So, despite the simplicity, I may now be forced to buy the single – Love Revolution is out on Monday. You may have seen the car stickers!

If you have an interest in UK politics then this could be right up your street or, at least, somebody’s street. The design is a little crude but downingstreetsays.org has just joined my list a Bloglines. Somebody’s got to keep an eye on what Tony’s saying!

I was mighty impressed that the report highlighting downingstreetsays.org at BBC News didn’t feel the need to explain weblogs to anybody. Hoorah. Happy Tuesday!

You know it’s a very strange world indeed:

Authorities arrested the mother of a 17-year-old boy who saw his picture on a missing children’s Web site and discovered that he was allegedly abducted from Canada 14 years ago. [Source]

It must be quite horrific to discover that you’d been kidnapped. My heart goes out to the kid who must be torn apart right now.