scrumpyjack

Chrome 6 - Efficiency Increases

I love Chrome 6’s new address bar. Finally a desktop browser that strips the hugely unnecessary “http://” from our URLs!

What’s cool though is, if you copy the URL to your clipboard it does prepend the “http://” part so you can easily drop it into web page links and such.

Very handy. And another reason why I believe Google are getting it right with the browser.

I Hate Adverts

Hate is a strong word. In fact, just last week I saw hate lift a whole elephant into the air. But when I say hate, I really mean it.

Well… there are some ads I like. They tend to be smart and not overtly trying to sell me something and so technically I feel they slip themselves out of the category of advertising (maybe).

Thinking about it though, I don’t know anyone who likes ads. On the radio, on the TV, at the cinema, on your DVDs, on Spotify, on the bus shelter… whenever they “appear” there’s always a disenchanted sigh… Sometimes it’s audible.

So I was quite shocked yesterday as I was watching/listening to the Apple “Fall” event, when Stevey J asked the audience if they wanted to see the ads for the new iPod range… I think the answer was a resounding “Yes!”

These people actually WANTED to watch some ads!

I would love to see Steve’s face when everyone just goes: “Actually, mate, can we give it a miss. Ta.”

I mean, who WANTS to see ads? Do you?

This is one of the reasons I’ve vowed to myself never to show ads in any of my apps. There are much better ways to make money in my view.

Unfortunately advertising does sell. Despite my view on matters, an amazing number of people still give in to ads, including me at times - clicking through, preferring one product over another, utterly convinced that Cillit Bang is better than soap and water. So it still works! Boo-hiss

FS Link Posts - A Simple Wordpress Plugin →

FS Link Posts is a simple Wordpress plugin that I started because I couldn’t find one that provided the functionality I needed, namely: to be able to manually associate a post with other posts of the same type in a really easy-to-use way.

It uses custom fields to store the IDs of manually-selected related posts (so there’s nothing proprietary here!). It just adds a nice UI to the functionality.

I’ve tested it on Wordpress 3.0.1. If you’re using an older version, please try it out still. I am intrigued to see how it holds up. Please feel free to send me all your niggles and ideas.

I hope you find it useful!

My very first article for ProgrammableWeb went live in the night! →

I will be writing for the popular ProgrammableWeb.com on a regular basis. This is my first regular freelance writing gig and it’s in an industry that I really enjoy researching and writing about.

This is going to be a great learning curve for me and a challenge. The team over at ProgrammableWeb are obviously doing a great job as they are attracting the attention of thousands of developers. Being a part of the team is a fantastic opportunity but also a responsibility that I intend to take seriously.

Are you a software or web developer? Do you use ProgrammableWeb as a source of information about APIs you want to use? What more would you like to see from ProgrammableWeb?

When other people don’t buy into your idea

If you don’t know, get a book!

I’m watching last week’s The Big Web Show. Andy McMillan talks about Build and conferences in general. I really enjoy attending conferences and I’m looking forward to attending many more, hopefully with a couple of people I work really closely with.

Andy raises a great point that I just had to reiterate. If you’re lacking in any knowledge about topics covered at a conference… perhaps it’s not the place for you to learn.

He makes the contrast that it’s probably better to view conferences as a place to be inspired and fired up for better things when you get back. I would actually argue that it could fire you up to learn, but that’s some expensive motivation to just encourage you to do something you should already be doing.

So for Andy, as he put it, it’s better for him to get a book and practice and learn from that first.

I just wanted to reiterate this to a few students and graduates I’ve been in contact with recently:

If you want to get into the web industry, you need to know your stuff. There are very few opportunities open to people who don’t know what they’re doing.

So grab some books on the topics you’re interested (HTML, CSS, Javascript, a programming language), spend a few late nights practising and come back knowing the basics. Once you’ve got that you’ll be much easier to work with.

Remember that knowledge can always be built on. And consider the possibility of part-time unpaid work in exchange for hands-on experience and mentoring.

hickensian:

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Fulltext Searching in MySQL

Finally got an iPhone - Totally worth the wait

Ever since the iPhone was announced, I’ve wanted one. At the time though I was stuck in a long contract. I had to wait.

But I’m so glad I did! I now have an iPhone 4 and I’m really pleased with it.

Finally having a gadget that I am confident can do most thing I may ask of it while I’m mobile makes me more than a little excited.

If you’re waiting for the right iPhone, get this one. If you’ve got a previous one: UPGRADE! (as soon as humanly possible) … You won’t regret it.

Posted from my iPhone

View high resolution

Gorgeous!