scrumpyjack

All Done!

2010-03-05T21:57:00.000Z

So I'm all moved out now. Please catch up with me at http://flipstorm.co.uk/blog/

I will leave this site here for historical purposes - until the domain dies. If anyone wants the domain let me know!

Moving House

2010-02-22T15:21:00.001Z

I will be closing down scrumpy-jack.com. I had many hopes to make this my own personal playground for web design and development and of course my personal blog. I am still doing these things, but now all as a part of FlipStorm.

There are a number of reasons for this. The new FlipStorm site is almost completely finished. I've been toying with many ideas and in the end I plumped for a full-scale relaunch. As I've spent so much time on it, it made sense to have everything over there. It means all of my writing can be done over there - which seems more logical to me.

When I launch the new site properly, I will post here and I'll leave this blog up for as long as the domain lasts. However, comments will be closed from this point forward and no new articles (aside of announcements like this) will be posted.

Thank you all for your support so far. I hope you'll continue to support me in my 'new home'.

Don't Use Easyspace!

2010-01-12T23:41:00.000Z

A friend recommended me to Easyspace (a web hosting company based in Glasgow, Scotland - part of the iomart group). Their prices looked good, they were UK based, and I could handle almost everything online...

My VPS has been running silky smooth ever since. It's never been blindingly fast in terms of network speed... but I don't need a huge pipe onto the net yet.

Problems started as work slowed towards the end of the 2009 and funds dried up. I didn't even notice, but the December invoice didn't get paid. I had no notice or warning. Because of the holidays, I left my accounting until the new year.

While I was off, I received an email (twice, on 29th December) stating that someone from Easyspace had tried to call me (I received no such call), but they needed me to call back to sort out a problem with payment. This email stated that my services "have lapsed".

I checked that my server was still operational: it was. I checked my Easyspace Control Panel for recent, failed transactions requiring my attention: none. My assumption: their mistake.

As I came to do my accounts for December (a little later than normal), I noticed that no payment was taken at the beginning of December for Easyspace. Was I wrong to assume that this could have been an internal error? If you were a hosting company and a customer had failed to pay for your services, when would you contact them to sort it out?

While I was in my Easyspace Control Panel, I noticed that there was an invoice outstanding: dated 02/02/10... "This must be the one they're talking about," I thought. I paid this invoice there and then online (even assigning it a special code of their choosing so they could flag it up on their accounts more easily).

I had acknowledgement of this payment and my service seemingly continued. My server showed up in my account; all was well.

Skip to today. For various reasons I don't know from when my server went down, but it has now been down all day.

After two very calm and collected phone calls to Easyspace to sort this problem out, even paying the payments they had failed to take (December + January), and waiting very patiently (for now 11 hours from initial contact!) I am royally cheesed off.

So to recap: they didn't warn me that my payments weren't processed, the "warning" they did give was late and uninformative (it was an automated email after all), and even though I had attempted to comply to their wishes they still took my server offline (again without warning) and have so far yet to restore it, although all accounts are settled.

And to top it all, their automated telephone queuing service is rubbish. It simply rings and puts you straight into the queue; no "Thank you for calling Easyspace" to let you know you've called the correct number, just music until you hear the standard rotation message of "thank you for waiting".

Therefore, I am now looking to move my web hosting needs to another provider. So if you have any suggestions, I would be welcome to hear them! Stick your referral links in the comments.

While this may be painful for me, this experience has taught me a few lessons:

If in doubt, speak to a person - despite how difficult they make it
Always have a backup server ready to take over
Don't trust other organisations to do things the ideal way (no matter how easy it should be for them to implement)

Yet, despite all of this I am thankful for a couple of things:

At least this server wasn't running anything too mission critical
Other important services (esp. email) are hosted elsewhere, e.g. Google
I don't have to stay with Easyspace
I can go to bed without worrying or stressing because I'm so laid-back it's not ruffling my feathers all that much, in the grand scheme of things

Rant over, Simon out.

Goals for 2010

2010-01-06T14:59:00.002Z

So it's a fine new year. I have set myself some ambitious challenges for 2010. Let's compare notes and help each other out...

So here are my work-related goals:

Build an offline web app purely in HTML5 that is mobile ready
Build a native iPhone app
Get reactor launched
Meet more web developers
Grow my blog readership

And here are some personal goals:

Run the Bristol half-marathon
Try to lose some of the belly
Spend more time with Rach

Of course these last 3 are ever so much more important than the first 5. In fact the order that they're listed in is definitely no order of preference or priority!

I am quite excited by the prospect of this year. I'm looking forward to it. Now I just need to get over this cold...

What are your goals for 2010? How do you think we can help each other achieve them? Share your thoughts in the comments

Dawn Ascends! Ready Your Swords!

2009-12-21T13:20:00.001Z

I absolutely love coding in PHP. Sometimes I get distracted by the glitz and glamour of some of the more popular languages (and their associated frameworks) - and I agree, they have their place. But PHP is in a class of its own.
The truth is that for years PHP has had an active community - and this continues to thrive. Because it's so easy to get your hands on PHP, and get it installed, hosting is cheap, and there are no major licensing issues, uptake was fast.

The PHP site fast became the home of many PHP-related projects and spun off into package managers and extension managers (PEAR and PECL respectively). Literally thousands of developers write setup and "Hello World" tutorials. Loads of scripts and apps are open-source and open-licensed. No wonder it is the most popular language in use on the web!

However, we're moving into a new age. A very competitive era dawns. PHP needs to stand up to the impending onslaught of faster compilers and VMs. The competition will be tough. But I believe PHP can hold its own.

As we move into this era of greater web app interconnectivity, PHP seems poised to reign strong. With a flock of transport layer extensions (think JSON, SOAP, XML-RPC) and authentication modules (OAuth, OpenID etc) at the ready, it looks pretty solid.

One thing stands at the gates, pleading nervously and gently as we give out our warcry: documentation, documentation, documentation. And for good measure... DOCUMENTATION!

The PHP site is littered with it. The community add to it. But when it comes to third-party tools, especially PEAR libraries and other third-party code, we're pretty weak.

The area of most concern has to be client libraries for web service APIs. Some are just totally appalling: outdated, incorrect, poorly formatted or purely non-existent.

This is a bad show and something we need to improve upon desperately if PHP is to be the language of choice for web development in the next decade.

You might argue that it's not going to disappear off the map. You may be right. But there's no harm in making our lives easier and ensuring PHP's safety and continued popularity by writing better documentation!

Come on chaps... for GLORY!

The Joy of FirePHP: A Crash-Course

2009-12-03T17:52:00.000Z

Last month I proposed an article for NetTuts. And today it got published. Please have a look. Even tweet about it! Go on...

Wouldn't It Be Great If All APIs Followed RESTful Principles?

2009-12-02T17:35:00.001Z

APIs and connecting web applications together is going to be the next challenge of the evolution of the web. The next decade should see easier-to-implement, yet more secure methods for connecting the various web applications that we use.

We're already seeing this in simple ways: RSS, Atom Publishing, Web Hooks. But these are generally insecure. They have been built/conceived with a set of specific goals in mind and then adapted – shoe-horned – to fit a variety of other purposes.

We are making progress: APIs have flooded the web. Mashups threaten to implode the universe in their brilliance. But there are still hurdles. There are still no standards.

REST is just a set of principles (for many things, not just web app APIs). HTTP-REST for Web Service APIs is no definition of a standard method for implementation. It doesn't even begin to address the need for documenting or versioning APIs.

SOAP is better, but this is so wrapped up in corporate boggling and debate that real developers are reluctant to use it (as evidenced by the fact that 68% of APIs are built on RESTful principles vs 19% on SOAP) or simply want a more open standard.

Even if all web service APIs were RESTful, we still need a better method of standardisation and documentation (and implementation could be a lot easier with some other common features set down in stone).

What we need isn't another working group to start thinking about how to solve these problems, but rather, someone to stick their neck out and do something to tackle these challenges.

We are at a turning point. The languages and processes are in place. The standards that need to be ratified have been. The scalability challenges are fading away. The core building blocks of something brilliant are there.

This is why I am building reactor. It's aim isn't to create a formal standard that all others must obey, but rather to encapsulate existing and future systems, boil them down to their basic standards and provide a single, simple point of entry into every API out there.

My vision is to make it easier for API implementers (provider developers) to standardise and document their APIs and easier for integrators (consumer developers) to consume those APIs in a standard way.

"One API to rule them all"

Does this sound like something you'd be interested in getting involved in? If "HELL YEAH!!" is your answer, then sign up for the mailing list.

Impromptu Tweetup

2009-11-26T18:07:00.002Z

UPDATE: We're opening it up to a greater audience. So even if you're not tech/web related, feel free to come along anyway.

Yesterday whilst I was in the office (also known as The Vortex), I was reading my Twitter stream — as I so often do — and I came across this tweet from @bostinbloke.

As the office is not far away from where he was, I invited him over for a cup of tea.

To my surprise, just moments later, I got a tweet from @hollie_matthews — another Oldbury native.

To cut a long story short, this started a day-long conversation which resulted in our founding a new #tweetup and our first get-together is next Thursday.

Here's the full run-down:

9.45am Thursday 3rd December 2009 @ Network Si
3 Demuth Way
Oldbury
West Midlands
B69 4LT

Entrance is free, but we only have about 25 spaces so leave a comment or tweet me and I'll let you know if you can come along.

As this is the first meetup, we'll be starting with tea and hopefully biscuits :D and just see what everyone wants to do. Nothing too formal, just a bit of networking with a heavy focus on tech and web.

Let's see how it evolves! :)

Sponsored by FlipStorm and Network Si

I Learned Something Yesterday

2009-11-24T23:04:00.000Z

I met three ace guys yesterday: Sean Leigh, Jeremy Harding and Alan Mann. They are all techy/web entrepreneurs and are making big bucks out of big ideas. They know some crazy people in the domaining field.

It turns out that there a lot of wealthy people doing domaining. I found out yesterday that there are some people out there that own thousands of domains with no websites attached to them! Craziness! They obviously have a lot of money.

The reason I met these great guys though is because they found me and this brings me to a little tip: Get your name out there!

It turns out they found me through a service I signed up for and hardly use, Elance. The data from Elance was probably shared on a network of other services, which they stumbled across. My profile on this service is sketchy at best. But it was enough of a lead for them to do more digging.

Because I'm an active participant on a number of blogs, forums, Twitter etc. they managed to fill in the gaps pretty quick.

So if you want to be found, get active in your community! A word of warning though: Be prepared for a grilling (i.e. bring something amazing along).

Exciting Stuff

2009-11-21T03:46:00.002Z

I'm hugely excited by certain trends that are appearing lately. Ultimately it all comes down to how successful the goal of moving everything onto "the cloud" is becoming.

It all started a few years ago when the big software companies realised the potential of the web to take over the desktop. They put into place strategies which are now starting to see some fulfilment.

I've hidden the rest of this post away for a change. Go find it

Microsoft started putting a lot of emphasis on developing the .Net framework. Mozilla, Apple and Google worked hard on improving web browsers, developing and fostering earth-shattering web apps. But then came some major changes.

First: Google Chrome OS. I haven't had chance to get this up and running yet so I'm not too sure how successful it will be. Only time will tell. The biggest concern I have is lack of support for third-party peripherals. I'm sure Google will rectify this soon enough.

Undoubtedly it will start people thinking. Microsoft and Apple have put a lot of effort into improving performance in their respective OSs, but neither has drastically deviated from the beaten path like Google.

Then there's Go, SPDY, Wave... the list goes on. Google is really driving forward with cloud computing.

Second is HTML5. Some of the brilliant recommendations for this brand new version of everyone's favourite markup language are going to make the next iteration of web apps even more compelling. And with most modern web browsers conforming to some sort of standards and processing Javascript at a decent speed, we could see widespread adoption of these advances very soon.

So what does all of this mean? Well personally I believe that for many consumers who have no real need for high-spec machines running expensive software, an operating system that is inexpensive, fast, lean, and gets them online very quickly will be a real pull.

For people who need more advanced apps... we're not going to see the end of Windows, Linux or Mac OS anytime soon. But with some major desktop tools steadily moving to the web, it looks as though a web developer's job could soon be completely online.

As offline functionality starts to make an appearance in more and more web apps, I believe we're going to see certain apps including this as a feature in premium subscription levels.

Something else I'm intrigued by at the moment is the advent of single sign-on. Sadly I don't believe that it will ever catch on everywhere, but it may be enough to make the remaining latecomers ship up or ship out.

What's really interesting is how some people are using OAuth. It's meant as an API authentication system, but Elliott Kember and a few others are making the ingenious use of it. Some of his apps and ideas use the Twitter OAuth system to log users in.

So I don't have to create an account for his latest app, Chatrbox, I simply sign in over on Twitter.

This is an interesting approach and fuels the debate over whether OAuth and OpenID can get along or whether OAuth will simply kick OpenID's butt.

Whatever happens, it all adds up to a brighter web-based future, don't you think?

Announcing "reactor"

2009-11-13T23:41:00.000Z

Ok, so it's not a big announcement because the app hasn't actually launched yet. But I've launched the holding site.

So what's reactor?
Well it's a really exciting idea for a web app that I've had for ages. Now I'm moving forward with it. If you want more information, sign up to the mailing list.

If you really want a lot more information, email me or something. I'll send you out an NDA and whatnot (yes it's that official!).

w00t! My first proper big web app! :D

Hope you'll join me (*cough* developers)

I Hate Google Ads

2009-11-02T10:59:00.000Z

I officially hate Google Ads. Like me, you probably ignore them so easily. They're the bane of a web designer's life... and don't even start talking about the UX!

The simple fact is they're hated all round. But quite clearly they work otherwise Google wouldn't be stinking rich (enough to offer a free GPS satellite navigation product). So who the heck is clicking on these stupid ads?

Well, I don't care to be honest, because it's getting to the point where I could do with a bit of the money that Google get. So unfortunately I'm bringing ads back to this blog :( I know, it's a sad day. Rather than asking for donations (I'm certainly not doing anything worthy of donations), if you feel the urge to click on an ad, don't quash it with your educated supremism – support a poor blogger and give in to the click. Thanks :)

Putting My DBA Hat On... Again

2009-10-06T12:04:00.004+01:00

It's not often I have to worry too much about the minutia of database administration... well, I try not to. But this question on StackOverflow got me intrigued, so I put on my trilby.

labratmatt was having a bit of a problem with inserting data into a MySQL table with field defined as DECIMAL(3,2). Can you guess what his problem was? That's right.... 9.99! How did you guess?

This has got to be one of the most popular MySQL-related Google searches. The initial problem is easy to solve... correct the presumptuous field definition.

However, the underlying problem is really why his data was being truncated, even inserted incorrectly. You may notice the same if you run MySQL (v5.0+) from a default setup on other field types: VARCHAR for example, where you set a maximum field length. When you INSERT data that is too long it simply gets truncated.

Not hugely worrying you may think, especially in development and testing phases. True. But this wasn't enough for me, so I went on a hunt.

I found this interesting article by Robin Schumacher on MySQL Data Integrity.

It seems that there is a configuration variable in MySQL (v5.0+) called 'sql_mode' that determines exactly how strict MySQL should be when writing data to tables. The problem is that, by default, it's unset, which means MySQL uses its standard mode... fudged SQL.

It has a vast array of options, so read through and choose wisely.

The default MySQL setup essentially turns all of your INSERT and UPDATE statements into INSERT/UPDATE IGNORE statements. It is an unexpected "gotcha" for many... any self-respecting software developer would want the INSERT query to fail and for the DBMS to tell you why it failed, not automatically munge the data for you.

To achieve this, the general option to use for 'sql_mode' is STRICT_ALL_TABLES... but even this has some gotchas (VARCHAR and TEXT expect only string values etc...) and may need to be combined with other options.

Of course, if you write your programs to send MySQL the correct datatypes, changing this option shouldn't cause any problems :)

The annoying thing is that I've only just found about this now after nearly 6 years of database development.

Going Green Is Hard Work

2009-10-02T21:55:00.003+01:00

Now I know you disagree... all you have to do is become exposed to gamma radiation and get real angry, right? Wrong. You are not Bruce Banner, and you'll never turn into the Incredible Hulk. Plus you don't play with gamma radiation do you? Be honest now...

That's not the kind of green I'm talking about. It seems for the past couple of years a lot of people have gone crazy about being eco-friendly, saving the planet, greenhouse gases and whatnot.

Here in the UK, the government has set up and continues to fund the Carbon Trust and various green initiatives (which we should have been doing years ago). For most consumers this means changing lightbulbs from incandescent to fluorescent, with obvious benefits all round.

But there's an even better solution to CFLs: LEDs. That's right, those little plastic light bulbs you messed about with at school! A lot of research and development has been put into manufacturing LED lamps that match the usefulness of fluorescent bulbs.

There are some amazing benefits:

They last even longer than fluorescent bulbs (much longer than the old incandescent ones)
They give off a better quality of light, brighter and whiter
They come on immediately
They give off very little heat
They consume a quarter of the power of fluorescent bulbs
They don't buzz
They don't contain any mercury
They are 100% recyclable

Now I don't care who you are, that's amazing! These are the ideal. So what's the catch? Well at the moment they're ever so slightly more expensive... but once you've got them, you're saving money!

For commercial environments (particular suspended ceiling office spaces) this is a big winner. Couple these babies with some intelligent lighting systems and you might never have to change your bulbs!

Saving money + planet = the thrifty super hero... still not quite the Incredible Hulk though!

This is all from research that I'm doing for a new client. They're into supplying, fitting and testing these bad boys. More details coming soon!

You followed, you RT'd, then you clicked the link

2009-10-01T15:39:00.003+01:00

Well it turns out we want the same thing. And chances are neither of us is going to get it. So stop fretting about Google Wave and get on with some work.

Or if you really must procrastinate, watch my video from yesterday's post

I Want Google Wave

2009-10-01T08:58:00.001+01:00

Simple Usability Testing

2009-09-23T11:25:00.002+01:00

Silverback by ClearLeft is a wonderful usability testing application that makes it dead simple to record and manage your test sessions.

If like me though you can't afford to shell out $50 right now, here's a way to do some bargain basement usability recording.

All you will need is an Intel Macbook/Macbook Pro running Mac OS 10.6. This comes with Quicktime X, which now has screen, audio and movie recording built — so it can record what's happening on the screen, video from a webcam and audio through your built-in microphone.

Ok so it's not quite as polished as Silverback, but it works. Unfortunately, because you can't start both the movie recording and the screen capturing at the same time, they will be out of sync for a few seconds.

If you have some video editing software that allows you to match them up and overlay (iMovie doesn't do this yet), a quick bit of editing will go a long way when you need to review those test sessions!

The way I do it is:

Start Movie recording (this is the webcam)
Minimise the live preview
Start Screen recording

At the end of the session:

Stop Screen recording
Stop Movie recording

If anyone knows of a way to get the two to start at the same time, that would be great (an AppleScript would probably do it, but I'm a virgin at it). Also, can you recommend any good cheap/free video editing tools that can handle movie on movie overlays?

Waste of Time

2009-09-12T22:22:00.004+01:00

If you follow the link embedded in the title to this article you will be taken to a BBC report with a video on it about some of the latest trends in modern computing. Have a watch and come back here when you're done.

Now, I'm no Apple fanboy... they have their faults (oh yes!), but you have to appreciate the thought and conviction they show when you compare their products to the ones being strutted about on this video. Let's break it down:

First off, the netbooks. Apple has yet to show any competition in this market and a lot of analysts are wondering why they don't want a slice of this low-end pie. In my view the answer was always obvious: netbooks came and went years ago. The only reason for their return to fashion is the lower cost to the consumer.

However, it's a false economy as consumers want more power from these tardy devices and still have to resort to a "proper notebook" after all. Apple's answer: the MacBook.

Then there's the touch-screen netbooks and notebooks. I'm sorry but there's just no way that was ever meant to be and hence why Apple hasn't done it! It's not the golden egg we're looking for. Just because it's what we're told to expect and part with our hard-earned notes for doesn't make it any more useful.

This kind of technology really thrives in the mobile market (and I mean even smaller than a netbook). Moving away from the mouse and keyboard just won't happen on larger devices. Apple's answer: iPhone and iPod touch.

This leads to the third one: the net tops. Great idea! These should've been around years ago... let's get rid of the box and just have a screen, keyboard and mouse. Even this though they have to spoil with touchscreen. As can be seen from the video, this isn't ideal. Apple's answer: iMac.

Worthy of note in all these cases is Apple's timing and hence their true understanding of the market. The MacBook has been around for years, the iPhone and iPod touch came out just at the beginning of the netbook craze, and the iMac has been one of Apple's favourite products for over a decade.

Not only are these products years ahead, they show a great level of understanding. It seems to me that Apple aren't after the quick sale and jumping on the bandwagon to make a quick profit. They want to produce things that people will really use and use properly.

Some people complain about Apple's prices. I would argue that when you look at the through-life costs of owning an Apple product, compared to these fad-gets (my play on fads and gadgets), your overall expenditure would've been much cheaper.

Like I said, I'm no Apple fan-boy, but I can understand why so many are!

Dropbox on Ubuntu Server

2009-08-11T22:42:00.003+01:00

In our office, we have a small custom, headless 32-bit PC running Ubuntu Server 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). It's ideally suited as our testing platform web server, file server, SVN server... well you get the picture.

I've been trying to set up a VPN through a Linksys-Cisco router we purchased (WRVS4400N), but have hit one snag after another (thanks to Cisco's non-support of anything other than Windows).

Then it hit me: use Dropbox!

A few free Dropbox accounts is all we will need for now between us and it creates instant versioning and backups of all of our critical files - something we weren't doing properly up until now - plus allowing us to interact with the file system locally rather than over the network.

A super idea!

Problem 1: Dropbox is not officially supported for command-line-only Linux distros. Thankfully though some nice people have put together a few handy instructions and scripts in order to make it work.

Problem 2: This installed Dropbox in a location that I didn't want. Our server has a partitioned drive for security reasons. So all of our day-to-day files exist on one partition and the system files reside on the main partition. Dropbox was installed in the user folder I used when performing the install, which is in the system partition.

Without wanting to mess around too much trying to remove the current Dropbox install and then fiddle with Python code (which I have absolutely no experience with), I needed a quick method for getting some of our working files into the Dropbox folder in the system partition.

It turns out this is where Linux is super handy! Using standard symlinks to the folders in question was the perfect solution. Dropbox sees these as actual folders and synchronises across the link - up and down... meaning the files stay on the right partition, but now appear as part of the shared folder I wanted them in!

Win!

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

2009-08-10T09:42:00.000+01:00

There have been literally dozens (if not hundreds) of articles on the latest CSS3 styling techniques that you can use right now to "enhance" your web designs. I have a problem with them.

(I found this one this morning and this roundup from the other week is also very good.)

Some of these articles openly state that there's a good chance that you will find these new features unsupported by a number of browsers - most notably, of course, is Microsoft's latest version of Internet Explorer as well as stable releases of Opera.

So my first problem is the lack of universal support for these shiny CSS styles. Why is this a problem? Chances are, in order to use some of the newer styles found in CSS3's draft you will have to use vendor-specific code where those vendors apply the draft.

In order to achieve a fully backwards compatible design, your stylesheet(s) will need:

one set of instructions as a backup (for non-supporting browsers),
the current draft recommendation standards compliant code (for when it goes to official recommendation), and
each individual browser's vendor-specific code.

All of that for each style. This results in a bloated stylesheet and to a smaller extent, breaking the DRY principal.

Then there's the obvious differences in how the browser vendors interpret the draft recommendations from W3C and even in certain cases creating options that aren't a part of the draft. It can be hard to see which way is the right way to go from a design point of view at this early stage, especially if you're like me and you don't want to have to come back and fix broken designs later on.

We've come a long way in web design. Thanks to standards support in browsers like Firefox and Safari, Internet Explorer and others have had to adapt quickly to keep up. And they have.

However we're starting to tread over old ground. In the bygone eras of the web—when Netscape and Internet Explorer vied for supremacy—each had an array of browser-specific HTML. And we hated it. For example, if you wanted the benefit of layers in Netscape and you used it to the full, IE visitors were quietly asked to leave. Or you could hack around and find a solution that made your designs cross-browser.

That's why the W3C took over the evolution of HTML and defining an open forum for standards. Those days should be over, but it seems we're heading back down that old road.

The browser vendors will always put their own code in place, but it's only when we use it in the mainstream that problems start to occur. Then we blame the vendors for dangling that chocolate-covered banana in front of us when things get out of hand.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try all these new toys out, just go easy on the less well-supported ones. You'll save yourself a lot of hassle down the line when everything changes again.

Remember: If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

The Problem With Twitter

2009-07-21T23:17:00.005+01:00

An innocent prank? Not really. I think Ryan will not be pleased. It seems becoming even remotely popular on Twitter draws unnecessary attention from silly people.

Sad times. Perhaps I should only use Twitter-based apps that have successfully implemented OAuth

3G vs LTE-Advanced

2009-04-27T23:43:00.003+01:00

Does it make any sense to you? It didn't make any sense to me either a few years ago. But this little snippet from Wikipedia makes it all very clear:

LTE provides up to 326.4 Mbit/s for downlink and 86.4 Mbit/s for uplink. LTE-Advanced, in development as a minor update to LTE networks, supports maximum download rates of over 1 Gbit/s.

Basically, I want LTE-Advanced now. Interesting that it's only a "minor update" to existing LTE networks. Apparently there's only one of these planned and in production at the moment... in Oslo. I'm moving to Norway, b'bye!

Overcoming Professional Prejudice

2009-04-21T17:38:00.005+01:00

I've just been on the phone with a potential client. From our brief chat it's clear that they have experienced problems with "web" people before now. This has affected their view of our services at FlipStorm, even though they know nothing about us.

So, how do you overcome that kind of prejudice? You could turn to the salesman's pitch... tell them all the guff they either already know or don't want to know and spin it to make it sound like you're the best. If they buy in, they've got to spend some more money and they might just get lucky.

If they are smart though (and your client is always smart, no matter how stupid they are!), they won't go for any of that. So you need to toss them a bone. Prove to them that you are prepared to go that extra mile. Give them something for nothing... a favour!

Some of you may see this as flaring up the spec work debate, but before I start a urinating competition, I'd like to mention that there are absolutely no limits on how far you take this; it's entirely up to you, if you think it will achieve the desired result without costing you too much. If you make it clear to the client that this is a gimme and that any work as follow-up from that will be payable then you're in no danger of giving false impressions or cheapening your services.

Quite the opposite, in fact; it adds value to your services. It could be a deal-maker and something so simple to you that it takes you all of 10 minutes. Those 10 minutes are definitely worth a new customer!

Ah but, I hear you say, will that be a quality client? That depends largely on how strict you are with your freebies. Too much and clients get used to it, expect and eventually demand it.

We will have to wait and see if it pays off in this case, but I have found it to be genuinely worthwhile.

7 Steps to Reach the G-Spot

2009-04-18T12:19:00.008+01:00

By G-Spot I mean the first page of search engine results in Google. A couple of months ago I sent out this email to a friend of mine who asked me to analyse his website (Damian Brown Photography).

It's quite a specific analysis of his site, but it can be used as a basic framework for most sites out there:

First off, page titles (as i call it, the <title> tag):
This is pretty key. Most search engines use this as the heading for the search result listing, the link that you click to go to the desired site after performing a search. This is one of the primary places a search engine will look for keywords. However, it shouldn't be too long as it will get clipped/truncated and it should make some sort of sense. I know this may seem obvious, but there should only be one <title></title> tag on the page and it should always be inside the <head></head> section of the page.

META tags:
Right, to cut through all of the confusion, the only ones you really really really need are the description and the content-type ones. The description should be different for each page and should be no more than one intelligible paragraph about the contents of that page and if possible not just a paragraph that is already written on the page.

<meta name="description" content="Birmingham's best freelance wedding and portrait photographer, Damian Brown, shows off his portfolio and writes about his work" />

The content-type is a little more confusing, but suffice to say as long as it looks like this on every page of yoursite, you're ok.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

Of course, on other sites, this needs to be considered carefully. Web browsers use a number of methods for determining the correct content-type of the document and if they're mismatched, you may end up with the wrong one and certain characters will come out with extra glyphs, especially if you don't use ANSII code for special characters (e.g. &123;).

The rest of the META tags aren't overly used and in the case of the keywords one, ignored altogether. Any META tags should appear inside the <head> [in here] </head> tags.

Valid HTML:
This is extremely important to search engines. Clean code means it's easier for them to read your site and suggests that it will render well in the browser, which you'll score brownie points for. Code that isn't where it should be will confuse the search engine algorithms and they may even give up indexing your site completely until it's sorted.

This is a difficult one to achieve as there's a lot that goes into this. It comes down to having a good basic design and sticking to it. One thing I will say: make sure there is no code or content floating around in between the closing </head> tag and the opening <body> tag or after the closing </body> tag (except for the closing </html> tag).

Headings <h1></h1> through <h6></h6>:
Headings are also really important. If you think about the basics of print for a minute (this is where all this comes from anyway): When you open a book it has an index giving you a quick glance at all of the chapter headings. If you go to a chapter, you see its title in large, bold text at the top of the page. Then the content relevant to that subject is placed underneath and is generally organised by subheadings and paragraphs. This is so we can follow the train of thought without getting lost and easily pick up where we were if we do.

If we apply this principal to the web, it becomes very natural, but also meets some requirements of the search engines. So having a main heading on each page (the <h1></h1> tag, there should only be one of these per page) that re-iterates the title of the page and then structuring any text into paragraphs of single thoughts, just like you learned in English lessons, will go a long way to improving not only the ease of reading from a visitors point of view, but also the search engines.

Flash:
For the most part search engines can't read Flash content. A search engine basically sees what you would see if you did a "View Source" in your web browser. They use the text they see to determine what the page is about, how relevant and up to date it is etc etc. If that text is in Flash it won't see it. If there's any major bulk of text in a Flash file that plays on your site, it needs to come out and sit on the page somehow.

I don't think you've got this problem as most of the flash you're using seems to be image galleries, which is fine for the most part. There are alternatives to Flash which could improve your site in this regard, but it's not essential.

Links:
Firstly navigational links on your site should be clear and steady. By this I mean that as you move from one page to the next, they should stay in the same place. They can also serve as a visual cue as to what page the visitor is on, so links that disappear when you're on that page can be a little confusing.

Visitors should be able to get to almost any page from any page. So rather than having to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, they can simply see where they were when they read that really interesting part/saw that really good photo.

Secondly, links from other websites. Getting other sites linking to your website is another key from a search engines point of view. But rather than getting hundreds or thousands of links from websites all over, it's better to have even just a few that are more relevant to your field of expertise. And the more natural the link looks on the other persons/company's website, the greater the chance that it will improve your ranking. E.g.

<a href="http://www.damianbrownphotography.co.uk/">Click Here!</a> is not quite as useful to Google as <a href="http://www.damianbrownphotography.co.uk/">Birmingham photgrapher portfolio</a> or something similar. Can you see why?

If you can encourage people to link to your site or write an article about you or something like that, chances are it will be more natural.

Others:
Some search engines use a simple datafile to help identify pages on your site. It's called a sitemap XML file. This is a bit complicated and techie, but setting one of these up can complement a well-delivered website and make sure that you tick all the boxes from the search engine's point of view.

Also content freshness is an area to consider. Although I have found that this doesn't have to be too dramatic, some changes every now and then help to keep your site on the map so to speak.

The points here are pretty obvious if you've been doing SEO for a while. But they need to be monitored to make sure you continue to comply.

Of course, if you're site is built on a well-written CMS or other standards-compliant platform/framework/application - such as EDDy™, FlipStorm's web application development platform - it will tackle most of these steps for you, enforce some others, and encourage you to respect the rest.

Dipping My Toes In The Deep End

2009-03-04T01:51:00.005Z

Since the beginning of February I have been working long hours and putting in extra time to configure two servers (one virtual, one real) to function as the testing and live environments for FlipStorm's client projects.

This has involved setting up a VPN, opening all manner of ports on the firewall, learning how to do cron jobs, writing linux shell scripts, going back to command line interfaces, editing conf files, generating RSA keys... the list really does go on.

However, my crowning achievement is the 4-hour marathon that it's been for me to get a backup cron job to run from the live server (a VPS). My goal was to create a single tarball that held that day's changes to databases and files in the www root (aka Everything). Then to FTP that to the testing server automatically. Well, to cut a long story short, I managed it. All sorts of exciting things had to happen, but it was worth it. And more importantly I didn't screw anything up in the process! Bonus!

Safari 4

In case you haven't heard/hate Apple products, they released Safari 4 a couple of weeks ago. I've been using it... and then not using it. I'm back on Firefox for proper again.

While I like the "let's copy Google" stance, it's still not quite as good as Chrome. And thank heavens I'm not using Safari 4 on Windows... yuck! Can't wait for Chrome on the Mac. That aside, there are some definite, noticeable improvements.

Still, it's broken Gmail so that's minus-a-million from me... that's a deal-breaker. It's probably not Apple's responsibility, but until Google sorts it out I have to use Firefox for Gmail now.

UPDATE 18/04:

Found out that GMail wasn't working because I had set up Gears Offline functionality in my GMail accounts and Gears hasn't been updated to work with Safari 4 yet as it still in beta.

And I've moved the tabs back to where I am used to them being in Safari. So I have been using Safari 4 more regularly again.