April 2006 Archives
April 28, 2006
Internet usage trends in the EU
I posted last week about Greece having the lowest level of regular internet usage in the EU, according to some research published by Eurostat. Looking at the findings in the report across the whole of the EU, a couple of things stood out. It perhaps isn't any surprise that the newer members states of the EU on the whole have lower levels of internet access than the more established 'EU15', or that the businesses most likely to have a web...
April 27, 2006
The BBC launches reboot:bbc.co.uk
This week the BBC has announced a month long competition for people to design a new version of the bbc.co.uk homepage called reboot:bbc.co.uk. It is part of a wider project to re-invent the whole of the BBC's online offering to cope with the fact that the web is fast becoming much more than a bunch of hypertext links written documents, which takes its cue from Mark Thompson's Royal Television Society Baird Lecture at the end of March this year, where...
April 26, 2006
Taking a look at FeedLounge - part three
I've been auditioning online RSS readers as potential replacements for Bloglines. In part one of my look at FeedLounge I examined the default data views, and also came across a couple of bugs. In part two I looked at the tagging features of FeedLounge, and some of the different ways of manipulating individual entry items. In this final part I want to look at the way the service handles Flickr photostreams, how the associated bookmarklets work, and give my conclusions...
BBC advertising poll
So as someone with the International Edition of BBC News set as their default edition, and a wandering IP address outside the UK, I am eagerly awaiting my chance to participiate in the BBC's survey about whether the international news site should take advertising. A quick rifle through the Have Your Say discussion of the issue shows a load of the usual diatribe-without-reading-the-details comment from people who see red at any combination of 'BBC' and 'advertising' in a one sentence....
April 25, 2006
Taking a look at FeedLounge - part two
I've been auditioning online RSS readers as potential replacements for Bloglines. In part one of my look at FeedLounge I examined the default data views, and also came across a couple of bugs. In part 2 I will be looking at the tagging features of FeedLounge, and some of the different ways of manipulating individual entry items. I was intrigued to try out FeedLounge's tagging feature, which allows you to tag items at both a feed and an entry level....
April 24, 2006
Taking a look at FeedLounge
I've been using Bloglines as my web-based RSS aggregator of choice for some time, and found the only shortcoming of it to be that I couldn't integrate internal feeds from behind the firewall where I used to work, which was hardly the fault of Bloglines itself. However, coming back to working with an aggregator on a day-to-day basis after having been travelling for four months I got a little bit of wanderlust and wondered what else was out there. To...
April 22, 2006
Yahoo! points to the Firefox search box
I don't know how long they've been doing it, but if you visit the Yahoo! homepage using Firefox, after a short while a large banner ad loads at the top of the page, pointing out that you can search Yahoo! directly from the search box built into the browser. 1. Look for the search box in the upper right corner of your browser. 2. Click on the small triangle in the search box. 3. Choose Yahoo!. You're done! I guess...
April 21, 2006
UEFA.com podcasting the European Soccer Review
The UEFA.com website has been quite forward thinking in its use of embedded video and other multimedia, and recently has ventured into the arena of podcasting, with the European Soccer Review podcast. It could potentially be seen as yet another attempt by UEFA to dictate the media agenda of the European game. What intrigued me was the collision of a still niche technology like podcasting and the mainstream interest of European football. The podcasts themselves appear roughly every couple of...
April 20, 2006
Greek internet usage is the lowest in the EU
So I have moved to the country in the EU with the lowest use of the internet, according to some statistics released last week by Eurostat. As someone who relies on the internet to earn their money, that is either a very stupid move or a good business opportunity - time will tell which, I guess. Only just over a quarter of Greek people have ever used the internet, and less than a fifth of the population use the internet...
April 19, 2006
The travellers' internet: Designing applications for those on the move - part three
Over recent months I have been travelling through Europe and the Middle East, which has meant me using all kinds of web applications from internet access points that were not my usual domestic internet connection. On Monday I outlined some of the issues I encountered with browser compatibility, JavaScript and cookies. Yesterday I looked at some problems I experienced with one of the web's most talked about photo-sharing applications, Flickr which included the upload interface and the login process. I...
April 18, 2006
The travellers' internet: Designing applications for those on the move - part two
Over recent months I have been travelling through Europe and the Middle East, which has meant me using all kinds of web applications from internet access points that were not my usual domestic internet connection. Yesterday I outlined some of the issues I encountered with browser compatibility, JavaScript and cookies. Today I want to look at issues I had with one of the web's most talked about photo-sharing applications, Flickr. Internet session during travelling tend to have a very tight...
April 17, 2006
The travellers' internet: Designing applications for those on the move
Over recent months I have been travelling through Europe and the Middle East. This has meant me accessing my email, uploading photos, writing my blog, and making all kinds of forwarding travel arrangements over the internet at internet cafes, hotels and other access points that were not my usual domestic internet connection. Over the course of my travels I have made some observations about which types of web application are particularly suited to being used by travellers, and the kind...
April 10, 2006
Introducing 'A lemon tree of our own'
As you may know I have been travelling through Europe since December, and I have now reached my destination, Hania in Crete. Whilst we were on the move I was keeping up a travelogue using Yahoo! 360°. Now that we have arrived, and have found a place to stay for a year, I'd like to introduce our new site. It is a joint blog I will be writing with my wife about our attempts to set up home in Crete...