You can create your own shreadsheet by downloading the XLS file / PDF.

Here is a map of the grounds.

Enjoy

If you’re not happy with Firefox 3 or if the add-ons, extensions you use aren’t compatible then check out the Firefox release directory and download your version of choice. Most likely you’ll want the latest secure version which is currently 2.0.0.14 (I believe).

Leave a comment or send me a message via my contact form and I will pass on Marc’s email to you.

Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant, has guest posted on Read Write Web about how Digg is okay, Stumbleupon is better but Reddit is moving into a potential slip stream to take its place as the #1 online news source.

Dave Child no longer loves Jack Daniels. Boo Jack Daniels.

Donncha has posted about kicking spam up the arse with some apache trickery. Sounds very interesting.

EdenWeb are looking to hook up one of their clients with a new graphic designer.

Darren Rowse will shortly be sending out an email digest about pro blogging and the like.

Rand talks about passing more link juice to increase indexation of large sites by using nofollow on links and menus.

James wants to know if you can noindex within <p> tags on the Irish Webmaster Forum.

Chris’ blog got hacked and he is going to dump Wordpress for a Ruby on Rails blogging system by the name of Simple Log.

I went halves with Christ (typo) Chris on a VPS  from Blacknight VPS a few days ago but I am waiting on PayPal to reconfirm my Credit Card after I exceeded my payment limit. They said it would take three days but today is the fifth day of waiting. Boo PayPal.

Katie Crowley’s errie and amazing picture of Ross Castle in Killarney.

The five day forecast for Dublin isn’t looking too good for Oxegen.

Punchestown is going to soak it up on Friday and Saturday and a little bit on Sunday but it does it get better as the weekend goes on.

Time to buy those wellies and rain coat tonight then.

For those going up early on Thursday you will enjoy some sunny intervals at around 19 Celsius. Great!

So it looks like Wet Wet Wet are going to be playing each and every stage this weekend. I hate Wet Wet Wet.

Here is MSN’s take on the weather for Naas, just to confirm the wetness

The Internet Explorer 6 browser was released back in 2001, and Internet Explorer 7, the replacement, was released nearly two years ago in 2006. Modern web browsers such as IE 7, Firefox, and Safari provide significantly better online experiences. Since IE 6 usage has finally dipped below a small minority threshold of our customers, it’s time to finally move beyond IE 6.

IE 6 is a last-generation browser. This means that IE 6 can’t provide the same web experience that modern browsers can. Continued support of IE 6 means that we can’t optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps. Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress. We want to make sure the experience is the best it can be for the vast majority of our customers, and continuing to support IE 6 holds us back.

So that means 37 Signals are going to develop without considering IE6’s restrictions. The article doesn’t mention how many 37 Signals users actually use IE6. I’m sure a lot of people would like to know the metrics behind their decision. What’s a reasonable figure for dropping a browser? 10%? 5%? Less than 1%? None?

Matt, from Wordpress, has replied with a post on his blog about IE6 support. He has posted a summary of stats obtained from the 787 million unique hits from the 1st of January to June 30th of 2008. I think it’s fair enough to argue that the stats gathered from Wordpress.com would reflect a general browser usage.

The stats from Wordpress.com

1. 59.41% - Internet Explorer (down 3.05%), sub-breakdown:
   53.42% - Version 7.0 (up 18.25%)
   46.28% - Version 6.0 (down 17.82%)
   0.14% - Version 5.5 (down 0.14%)
2. 32.82% - Firefox (up 2.08%)
3. 4.81% - Safari (up 0.98%)
4. 2.04% - Opera (up 0.26%)
5. 0.41% - Mozilla (down 0.11%)

The operating system breakdown for Wordrpess.com

1. 89.41% - Windows (down 0.95%)
2. 7.86% - Macintosh (up 1.13%)
3. 1.82% - Linux (down 0.37%)
4. 0.17% - iPhone (out of nowhere!)
5. 0.10% - PlayStation Portable (up 0.07%)

So as you can see, IE6 users account for about 27% of all the visits we saw. If I were building something for “the internet” IE6 compatibility would still very much be on my radar. Everyone’s users or customers are different, and if I saw IE6 falling below 10% on one of my sites I’d probably very seriously consider what 37signals is doing.

< 10%  usage is a reasonable cut off for browser support according to Matt. That seems quite high to me. I would hope that a graceful degradation support model would be put in place rather than a complete phasing out of browser support.

For the sake of some people being interested, here some stats gathered from this blog (I get a little less than 787 million hits).

My own browser stats

1. Firefox - 50.94%
2. Internet Explorer - 30.64%
   IE 7 -  19.34%
   IE 6 -  9.75%
3. Safari - 16.09%
4. Opera - 1.75%
5. Mozilla - 0.14%
6. Konqueror - 0.11%
7. Camino - 0.06%
8. Netscape - 0.06%
9. Mozilla Compatible Agent - 0.05%
10. Playstation 3 - 0.05%

Browser by Operating System

1. Firefox - Windows - 30.67%
2. Internet Explorer - Windows - 30.61%
3. Firefox - OS X - 19.11%
4. Safari - OS X - 15.46%
5. Safari - Windows - 0.31%

Operating System Stats

One third of Firefox users are using version 3 while 10% of visitors to this blog are using IE6 and nearly 20% of IE users are using version 7.

Operating system wise, Windows are leading at 63.11%, OS X is amazingly close at 34.9% and Linux is above 1% at 1.34%. That number for OS X is quite high but if you look through the comments on this blog you’ll notice a large Mac user base. The amount of people I know who have moved to OS X is quite large. I think I could list 20 people who have ditched Gates for Jobs.

So what do the stats say? Not much really. Stats aren’t real. People are real. Support people gracefully. Not browsers.

But who cares, 63% of all statistics are made up on the spot anyway!

1. Ear Plugs - cancel out the noise of folk partying at 5AM when you’re wrecked.
2. Flash Light - I can’t see in the dark anymore.
3. Pillow - I have a nice little pillow which I bring with me on trains.
4. Disposable Plastic Cups - for Jack Daniels.
5. Booze - can’t bring in glass so need to pour JD into plastic bottles. Tough times.
6. Toilet Paper - for when the toilets at the festival get destroyed.
7. Radio + CDs - for listening to music in the morning.
8. Toothbrush/Mouthwash - if I forget either of these I will have a cranky weekend.
9. 2 Towels - small and big one for the showers.
10. Shower Stuff - shampoo and body wash.
11. Baby Wipes - for when you’re dirty but can’t fit in a shower or the showers are crap.
12. Suncream - hopefully I will need this.
13. Foldable Chair - going to bring up a cheap deck chair and leave it behind.
14. Wellies - have to have ‘em.
15. Bin Liner Bags - for my wet and mucky clothes.
16. 4 Changes of Clothes (cheap clothes) - God bless Pennys. Picked up loads of clothes for about €60.
17. Water - lots of water. 10 or 12 liters between a few friends sounds good.
18. Fruit - apples and bananas can’t be beaten for the old hangovers according to Paul. + orange juice.
19. Gun - a flare gun for a distress signal. A real gun for killing idiots who fall on your tent.
20. Blankets - Blankets keep you warm at night. The night can be cold.
21. Sunglasses + Hat - for defending yourself against the elements and starring at girls.
22. Raincoat - Ireland is no longer a hot tropical country.
23. Bags of Nudity - Eh? Don’t know about this one but don’t go to a festival with Phil. (see comments)
24. Passport - For proving your age. Some festivals accept coloured photocopies so that’s a better choice if they accept copies. Thanks to Dave for the reminder.
25. Glow Sticks - because you’re only young once.
26. Anadin - or other types of pain relief.
27. Mobile Phones - I’m bringing three charged up phones with me. I doubt there are electrical points at any festival so bringing a pack of charged up phones means I just need to swap around the SIM card to avoid being phoneless.

And before you say “tent”, we’re renting out equipment from Tangerine Fields. They’re supplying us with the tent, sleeping bags and some pillows. We also get bumped up to the ‘posh’ camping site as a result of using Tangerine Fields.

Check out the comments for more things to bring with you to a festival..

But what about all the other, less familiar bands? There are some great gems of bands propping up on various stages other than the main stage and here are some of the groups I am looking forward to most.

dEUS - The Architect. Taken from their 2008 album, Vantage Point. They’re playing the 02 stage on Friday from 7.30. They’re pretty much kicking off the festival as they’re the first biggish band playing.

My Morning Jacket - Off the Record. This is the commercial release from their album Z. It’s a catchy indie pop type number but the rest of the album is absolutely rocking. They’re like an older version of Kings of Leon in places. My Morning Jacket are playing the Pet Sounds stage at 4.10 on Saturday.

Black Kids - Hurricane Jane. Black Kids are everybody’s favourite Cure replica band. They haven’t released an album yet but there have been some free EP downloads from their website. Which is nice. They play Saturday night from 9.10 on the 2FM New bands stage which probably means not many people will see them. Shame.

Alphabeat - Fascination. Remember the 80’s? Remember 80’s disco pop? Remember multi-colour striped shirts and crew cut hair cuts? Here ya go, have a flash back… Alphabeat play before Black Kids on Saturday’s 2FM stage at 8.15.

MGMT - Electric Feeling. Don’t know too much about this band other than me liking this song. They’re playing at around 6PM on Saturday on the Pet Sounds stage.
Video is disabled so you’re gonna have to click to view it.

Friendly Fires - Paris

. FF played support to Interpol a few months ago. They stole the show. They’re playing at 10.30 at the 2FM new bands stage on Friday night. They’re unreal live. Like an electronic version of Hot Chip. They’re one of my favourite new bands.

Slam - Positive Education. I can’t leave out Slam :). This is an oldie from 1993. If you like your thumping dirty tunes then check out Slam’s DJ set on Saturday night in the Dance Tent (where else?) from 7.45.

Friday Night is probably the best night for Rock with Editors, Interpol and Kings of Leon all playing on the Main Stage. I’ll be taking a slight detour to the Dance Stage to take a look at UNKLE doing his thing live (hopefully live). Can’t wait for that performance.

Saturday is the ‘avoid the main stage at all costs’ night. REM, Stereophonics, The Verve, Amy Winehouse, Counting Crows, Bowling for Soup and Scouting for Girls will all be strutting their stuff on centre court! Eh, no thanks.

Saturday is the Techno night for me with The Japanese Popstars, Michael Mayer, Slam, Boyz Noise and Justice on show. Saturday also has the best alternative indie lineup with Hot Chip, Echo & The Bunnymen, My Morning Jacket, The Enemy, Vampire Weekend, British Sea Power, Ting Tings, Black Kids and Alphabeat all performing.

Sunday is a tough one for me. I need to choose between Rosin Murphy (who I love) and The Racounteurs (who are supposedly unreal live). A decision also needs to be made between Rage Against The Machine (YES!) and The Chemical Brothers (I am yet to see them live!).

The Dance Stage on Sunday night is very poor in my eyes. Cheesy euro dance DJ David Guetta is headlining. Boo!

There are some great acts on show throughout the entire weekend, however I have one complaint, not a single Hip-Hop act! Where are Common, De La Soul, Jurassic 5?

Below is a rough time line thingy of the acts I am hoping to catch.

Friday Night
19.30 - Deus - The O2 Stage
20.25 - Editors - Main Stage
22.00 - UNKLE - Dance Stage
23.30 - Kings of Leon - Main Stage

Saturday
14.30 - Japanese Popstars - Dance Stage
16.10 - My Morning Jacket - Pet Sounds
17.45 - Michael Mayer - Dance Stage
18.35 - Vampire Weekend - Green Room
19.45 - Echo & The Bunnymen - Green Room
19.45 - Slam - Dance Stage
20.15 - Alphabeat - 2FM New Band Stage
21.45 - Boyz Noise - Dance Tent
22.15 - Hot Chip - Pet Sounds
23.45 - Justice - Dance Tent

Sunday
13.30 - Subways - The O2 Stage
15.30 - Radio Slave - Dance Stage
17.30 - Carl Craig - Dance Stage
21.00 - Racounteurs - The O2 Stage
21.15 - Roisin Murphy - Pet Sounds
22.30 - Chemical Brothers - The O2 Stage
22.35 - Rage Against The Machine - Main Stage

They even added a Google search bar to their header last week. What’s that about? I know what Google is. I know how to get to Google.com. I know how to search. I don’t need a Google search within my feed reader. Netvibes claimed it was a feature longed for by its users but the comments on their blog post about it are very negative. Where are Netvibes pulling these ridiculous features from? Obviously they’re trying to get paid but it’s at the expense of users. Users like me who are now looking for an alternative.

Anyway. I’m looking for a new feed reader. I quite like Google Reader’s news ticker feature but I can’t stand looking at their UI. Bloglines? PageFlakes?

What do you use and do you recommend it and why?

In the time that has passed between applying for and receiving my invite I have completely forgotten what Strands is all about.  

Their homepage is a giant empty space of information too. I have being on Strands now for about a hour and I haven’t received any overview information to my personal email or to my Strands inbox. When I logged in for the first time I didn’t receive any introductory piece about what the site was about or how to use it. The below screenshot is the landing page you are redirected to after successfully logging in for the first time. Not too informative either.

I was in a bit of a panic at this stage to figure out what strands was about. It looks visually very nice. It asked me to add my RSS feeds / Twitter / Jaiku / Flickr / Digg / enter / more / 2.0 / apps / here / in order to syndicate my content. I began to assume Strands is similar to popular socialite app FriendFeed. It also provided me with a download which tracks the music I play in iTunes. I then thought that maybe Strands was taking a run at Last.fm by mining my listening habits in order to provide me with music recommendations.

The plot was begining to thicken but I still wasn’t satisfied. I checked out their footer expecting to find some links to explain what his company was about. I clicked on a link for OpenStrands to be greeted by this explanatory text: 

OpenStrands services allow you to programmatically perform many of the same functions available to you through the MyStrands website using a browser. The platform currently includes account, catalog, recommendation, playlist, tagging, and community services. Use of OpenStrands is free to registered MyStrands users.

Oh right. API is it?

In my quest for legible information I re-read the invite email which stated that “Strands lets you centralize your online activity in one place and provides tools that help you easily find the content that’s most interesting to you.” Ah, so it’s like a cross between FriendFeed and Last.fm then? Sounds interesting but the quoted text about doesn’t tell me too much about the product.

In the end the saving grace was a FAQ entry.

Strands helps people discover new things from people they care about. Strands gives users the ability to record their activities and keep track of their friends across multiple social networks and services. Based on your aggregated activities, Strands enables discovery of new things based on your own behaviors as well as those of your friends and influencers. 

With Strands, you just tell us all of the services and networks you use, and we do the rest. We create a single aggregated “activity stream” that others can track… your favorite videos on YouTube?, your recently played songs from Last.fm, your latest bookmarks from Delicious, stories and articles you have “dugg”, your photos from Flickr, your status updates from Facebook and Twitter. We pull it all together so others can have a single view into what you are into, up to and down with. And vice versa. 

Then comes the magic… we take all this information – from both you and your friends – and we pluck out the pearls that we think you’ll really be interested in discovering. What’s hot across the communities of people you care about – regardless of what services they use. And what you think your friends and followers should check out – regardless of where it came from. 

Stop searching. Start discovering. 

That bit in bold there in the end is kind of ironic

Strands, if you’re going to go to the bother of running a beta invite program then please make sure that your potential users know at the earliest stage possible what your website is about. I didn’t want to go on a magical mystery tour trying to figure out the ins-and-outs of your site myself but you didn’t provide me with any upfront and easily accessible information about how to use the site and what the site is about. You could have at least provided me with a default ‘Tom’ who’s profile I could take a look at! 

Anyway. Anyone for an invite? (I only have two).

…. is the best way to take and share screenshots of web and screen based design. Upload as many screenshots as you want, embed them in your blog, discuss them with your contacts and become a better designer!

The site enables designers to share their creations and receive feedback and/or criticism about their work. Some of the work which has been uploaded so far is quite impressive. Such as..

Quite a good resource if you are looking for some design inspiration.

Cad é TechLudd?

TechLudd is a free monthly social networking event for Irish start-ups and those interested in them, from founders to funders to fans.

TechLudd was founded on the idea of nurturing a network around start-ups, building the same kind of ecosystem that the Paddy’s Valley crew discovered helped nurture entrepreneurs with access, funding, contacts and communication on their trip to Silicon Valley in December 07.

If you’re interested in attending, you need to register at amiando (strange name!) so that the guys can figure out the numbers in advance. There will be one of two of use from work, ammado (nice name!), in attendance. Only problem is that Spain and Russia are kicking off at 7.45 in the Euro Semi Finals. Hope they have TVs at the venue!

Constantines - Hard Feelings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS3d3bnK3-4

What is Jaiku?
- It’s like Twitter. But better.
- It syndicates your feeds from last.fm / blogs / flickr / etc /
- Take a gander at my profile.
- Want to learn more?

Update: I have no more Jaiku invites remaining but Alex over at Pixel Apes has a few invites available for those in need of a Jaiku fix.

Jaiku Invites dot com will be worth checking in on too.

It’s extremely rare to see Google change anything on their homepage. Today they added a link to donation splash page for victims of the recent Myanmar disaster.

Join the recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist cyclone victims in Myanmar. Your donation to either of these organizations will help survivors of the cyclone and other natural disasters rebuild their communities, and their lives.

Google are drumming up financial support for Unicef and Direct Relief International by providing a Google Checkout service for donation lodgements to both of these organisations. I wonder if Google will match the donations they receive via this service?

Either way it’s an excellent gesture.

You can read more about Google’s response to the Myanmar disaster on their official blog.

Iron man is outrageously brilliant. It’s an epic movie. Robert Downey Jr brilliantly portrays the flawed super hero. Jeff Bridges is excellent, as he always is, as Robert Stark’s right hand man. The special effects are unbelievable as well. There are times when you see CGI stuff and it can be quite impressive but the CGI stuff on Iron Man looks so realistic. The script is solid. The dialog is as you would expect. It has the perfect blend of action, adventure and light comedy.

The only disappointing things about the movie are the lack of a decent soundtrack and Gwyneth Paltrow. A decent soundtrack can make a world of difference to an action movie. Just look at what Rage Against The Machine did for the Matrix movies and Moby for the Bourne Movies. Sadly the soundtrack is absent from Iron Man. As for Gwyneth Paltrow, bah.. What is she doing in a comic book movie? Her acting was grand but every time she appeared on the screen I expected her to break out into Jane Austin or something.

This is the official trailer..

(sounds like Pearl Jam are playing in the background)

Related:

• Iron Man Rock Solid No.1 in Debut
• Iron Man, pure gold for Marvel
• Iron Man’s $100M-plus Debut

If only there was a quick way to search through all of that documentation, eh lads?

Any ideas on how a search box can be implemented? Maybe Google should ask these guys about putting a search box on their CSE page.

So far MSN have suggested that I search for ‘2008 Presidential Campaign’, ‘Mariah Carey’ and ‘Funny Pet Videos’. Why would I want to search for that crap? Surely it’s my choice what I search for, no?

What’s even worse is that a crappy flash animation is played over the search box which tells you how to use the search box! A magnifying glass shoots across the screen and gives a brief demonstration that you need to click the magnifying glass button to complete your search. Thanks for the demo guys! I would have never figured it out.

Unfortunately I have to wait until the animation stops playing before I can click in the search box to remove the auto populated crap. But what’s even worse is that the animation actually breaks the search box! If you’re using Firefox on a Mac, you can’t actually click in the search box at all both before the animation plays and once it completes! I had to switch browser to Safari in order to do my search.

Good work MSN. Nice ‘feature’.

I’m looking for a short ‘You’re listening to the ‘X’ podcast. Check out ‘website.com’ for more’.

Leave a reply if you’re interested or mail me.
 

It’s a bit of an irony then that Facebook don’t have Internet Explorer listed as a ‘cool’ browser.

The browser wars have never been tighter and I’m sure MS would prefer if one of their partners didn’t exclude them from a list which features their main rivals.

You must click on ‘Add Content’ followed by ‘Add a Feed’ and then finally click on the Export OPML link. Alternatively you can just click on this URL http://www.netvibes.com/opmlExport.php

It took me a while to find that link

Ting Tings - Great DJ

ah ah ahh ah ahha ah ah ah | ah ah ahh ah ahha ah ah ah
eh a eh a eheh a ehh ehhe | eh a eh a eheh a ehh ehh

Anyway, that’s a great song.

For some reason I can’t add ANY video to my posts. I have disabled ViperBond’s Video Quicktags plugin, switched from HTML to Visual mode within the editor and disabled the use WYSIWYG editor from the user options panel. In between all that tooing and froing (proper words?) I tried a multitude of video combinations but nothing is budging. I’m sad now

The watch, which is available for $395 from the Armani Store, was a steal at a mere $200/€125 from an Ebay seller.

I’m a big fan of watches. And an even bigger fan of sophisticated square faced ones. This giant chunk of watch is easily the nicest one which I have bought to date. My only concern is that it might draw attention to my feminine wrists!!

If anyone ever does mention anything about my tiny wrists, I’ll just hit them with my giant watch.

Keith Foster - RSS
Keith is a front end developer who recently moved from ammado to work with Future Brand. He will soon be moving to Canannanada to take up a similar role. He has a love affair with Opera on Mac (for some reason). His blog is focused on this love affair and other web development things.

Enrico Foschi - RSS
Enrico is also a front end developer. He moved from ammado to join some company called Microsoft. Never ‘erd of em! Enrico’s blog is full of nerdy tech stuff such as vegetarian food, pictures of cats and MS related goodness.

Me and My Mac - Ken Stanley - RSS
Ken finally moved from PC to Mac and is now officially a Steve Jobs rent boy. His newly setup blog documents his migration from PC to Mac. If you’re considering making the plunge then checking in on his migration might be a good eye opener.

Lick my Style - Matt Reilly - RSS
I lived with Matt for about four years when I went to college in Waterford. His Lick My Style blog is focused on Photoshop design and he provides the odd tutorial. Tis rather nice.

I think I have two or three additions to make to this blog post but my mind is drawing a ” ” at the moment. (did you see what I did there?, very smart so I am)