I was very impressed to read WordPress’s accessibility out of the box. There are a few issues to iron out before AAA is reached but that’s pretty good going I think you’ll agree! So if you are looking for a blogging engine or a simple CMS go for WordPress.
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No this isn’t in reference to my recent lack of posts for which I can only apologise – most of my spare time (of which there isn’t enough of) is spent with my 12 week old son. A pretty good excuse I think you’ll agree so don’t be too hard on me.
An article in Wired says Blogs are so 2004 says blogs are overcome with a “tsunami of paid bilge” so “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.”
Hmm a little overreaction methinks. The Internet as a whole is full of paid and unpaid bilge so maybe that should be shut down?
Really it’s all a case of quality control which is also going to be the case of the other technologies mentioned in the article such as Twitter.
How do I find blogs? Well it isn’t a conscious decision on my part; I simply find them on my travels around the web. If I happen to surf onto a post of interest I will look at other posts in the blog and if they’re really lucky and I like what I see I’ll subscribe to the RSS feed. I’m the quality control and my quality control is tight – I subscribe to about 50 feeds in total which I don’t consider a lot as I’m a pretty heavy Internet user. This list is constantly reviewed if I don’t like the way a blog is going I hit the delete button – not really that difficult. Recommendations I like too as that web is a rather large place.
It’s just the age old web spam issue which the search engines are constantly fighting anyway – blog or webpages alike it makes no difference.
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I’m not an overly paranoid person and think some of the people who feel the need to delete their cookies regularly are probably taking things just a little too far. If people are tracking me around the web and serving adverts I might actually be interested in – fair play to them! I have nothing to hide and nothing to worry about.
However I didn’t realise that Flash provides a much more dangerous type of cookie that really needs to be addressed.
This Local Shared Object can:
The big thing I take exception to here are the last two points. Firstly I believe every technology should give the user the ability to opt out, for cookies the option to delete should be readily available even if for the most part it’s only used by a minority. But the second point is truly wrong - this kind of data should be limited as it is in other technologies such as JavaScript.
Come on Adobe just give an opt out button on the next version of Flash player or perhaps just make security settings a little easier to find for your average user?
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Well he isn’t actually but it’s a similar sort of headline that was taken seriously and reported by CNN. It would seem a blog reported Mr Jobs (High godness of Apple) had a heart attack and CNN broadcast this causing a drop in Apple’s share price.
A little bit irresponsible of CNN not to get this confirmed after all don’t believe everything you read online. It would also seem there are investigations to see if this story was published with the intention of pushing down the share price.
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I’ve been looking very hard recently at jQuery as it seems to provide such a useful lightweight toolkit. My background is Microsoft .net and I have been using the ASP.NET AJAX framework but jQuery has been on my radar because the buzz online about it is huge and it just seems to do some great stuff so easily that would fit in well with the AJAX features.
Well looks like Microsoft (and Nokia) have been keeping a close eye too as they’ve announced they’re going to make jQuery part of the official development platform. Excellent news and I’ll certainly be using jQuery in the very near future.
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I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but a certain screaming baby has been occupying a lot of my time.
A few weeks ago it was Google’s 10th birthday and they’ve made available the oldest index they still have so take a trip back in time to January 2001. It’s really interesting to see the results for some search terms – iPod doesn’t relate to anything Apple at all!
1,326,920,000 pages? Not a lot on current standards is it?
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No matter how much I think Google’s domination of online markets is dangerous I still have to say they impress me again and again.
Google Analytics which must be one of the most adopted web analytics packages by now is now available on Google Code. So now you can extend Google Analytics as you need meaning you can have a custom installation for each website if needed.
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I got a new mobile phone back in August which means I’ve at last got a quick enough mobile connection to surf on the move. It’s a Sony Ericsson W890i which packages up everything I need: a mobile, a half way decent camera, an MP3 player and mobile Internet.
Mobile web is reaching a proportion of the population that just can’t be ignored – the iPhone has reached 0.30% of global web traffic which might sound like not a great deal but as a new medium it’s a massive increase. You’ve also got to remember the different use of web browsers on a mobile phone – behaviour is very different to when using a browser on a computer.
I’ve found the w890i to be very good for the mobile web and recommend Opera Mini as an excellent mobile browser. It just means I can access information quicker but I only tend to skim information rather than doing more in depth searching / reading. This shows why even if the mobile browsers can render standard websites you should consider a separate mobile website.
Mobile websites should be really cut back to exactly what people will want on the move. Forget pages of text explaining your service just give them the ability to search quickly and get the information they want. For a lot of companies a location search and location details is going to the core of a website. Think out of box a bit here – you might even have features that just wouldn’t work on the standard website – how about a hand reference guide?
So start thinking mobile – even the glacial-paced W3C have a best practices document.
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The media have been ever ready to attack anything Internet related as either the root of all evil or a fad that will disappear after a short period of time.
Social media websites, being the “new” thing have been repeatedly attacked as a bubble ready to burst – a claim I’ve always thought was way off the mark. My opinion was that users were becoming more mature and using websites in a different way with just some flaky users just stopping use.
Well Facebook have announced their first 100 million users (although how many inactive accounts is a mystery) and Hitwise is showing Facebook traffic is up 50% year on year. Now these are hardly figures showing a bubble bursting are they?
People like to socialise and it’s only natural they’re going to extend this online if the tools are available.
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The outcry at Facebook “imposing” its new design on usershas surprised me. After all I thought people using the system might be pleased to see improvements. It would seem however that the usual fear of change you see in the general populous is pretty virulent in the Facebook community too. There are Facebook groups against the new layout and even online petitions.
Lets assume this is just a visual redesign - I’d still take Facebook’s side it’s their website to do as they wish. Why should they keep the overhead of running two designs that can mean maintenance and upgrades are more difficult?
But deep down the new layout isn’t just about visual appeal (although I much prefer the cleaner look) it’s all about usability and they’ve done a good job. Everything is still easy to be found but the tabbed interface stops everything growing out of control.
Applications and application spam for me and many others has been the bane of Facebook but they’ve handled it well. I can block applications permanently and even all application requests from certain people who I know are a bit free and easy will adding anything and everything to their profile (and sending it to all their friends at the same time) – you know who you are!
Now the new interface means the applications are moved to a separate tab so I no longer need to go onto friends pages and wait for the hundreds of applications to load or scroll for approximately 900 miles down the page to find their wall!
So what are the downsides of the new design? Oh yeah you might have to spend 5 minutes looking around to find where everything is. Five minutes is an exaggeration to be honest as everything is in a very logical position.
If these people got their way we’d still be living in caves.
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