Archive for category Web/Tech
Just some if you’re interested
Well guys, I have a few domains up for grabs – check the list out below;
Future of print?
Just some though as I walked through a bookshop, open to comments and thoughts.
With the worlds resources being hit hard time and time again, and the global collapse of commerce, what about printed material?
All printed material is dependent upon trees to a degree, obviously recycling and alternative materials are used. But what struck me was the waste; what happened to the books, newspapers and magazines that weren’t sold? Waste! True may be recycled again, but hardly any printed matter will use 100% recycled – in most cases it’s just not suitable.
With Amazon’s Kindel2 on sale in the States I really think this is the way forward although it’s a shame the Kindle isn’t quite there yet.
Update: Amazon.com is now selling the Kindel2 on an international basis, this includes the free transfer of your electronic publications. For more information visit Amazon.
Ebooks of course have been with us for a long time but it’s only recently that Amazon, Sony and others have turned their focus to truely portable and usable products.
With a few years more development on the amazing low power epaper we can expect to seelarge full colour displays that take hardly any power at all – this I hope will be start of a slow end to printed matter such as books, magazines and papers. I believe of course that not all printed matter will fall prey to the epaper.
With the reduction of printed matter, delivery will be simpler, an RSS type feed will ensure you papers and monthly mags are delivered ok time with little in delivery costs.
I’m all for it TBH, so roll on Kindle 3-4-5…
What do you think?
Design in progress
The design of my new website is progressing well.
I’ve been using mind mapping software to aid the site development dumping ideas, thoughts and considerations into the graphical map.
Area such as content, revenue and of course the soul or theme of the site is also an important consideration.
Strangely (or not) design/layout or platform aren’t even in plan yet simply because it’s the content that’s important, design and layout enhances and presents the content. Of course the platform whether it be WordPress, Expression Engine or whatever.
I’m not expecting the site to be up and running anytime soon – it’s still just a twinkle in my eye at the moment, nut as they say "watch this space".
SoulTweet:: honourable mention
Had the pleasure of assisting in the setup of www.soultweet.com with Graham Smith; it was one of the fastest moving projects I’ve been involved in. Graham contacted me on the Sunday morning; within 30mins we’d agreed on the domain name, later afternoon and evening the basic site was online – an amazing idea.
Graham talks about SoulTweet;
“It’s nothing more than a regular dose of featured Tweople. Suggest, choose, ask, nominate anyone you feel could do with a Twitter lift. Give someone a chance to rise above the Twitter chatter for a few days. SoulTweet is all about singling out one person from the Twitter crowd. It’s a good karma thing.”
I was surprised on Monday morning that I was the first “SoulTweet” – an honour I can assure you; check it out.
Twitter Interview
Forgot to mention; a month of so ago I got interviewed by Jonathan Cutrell about my thoughts on Twitter – here’s what was said;
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
So here we go!
Why do you use twitter?
Martin Newham
Twitter is naturally social beast by design; it allows a single individual the ability to talk to 1,000′s of people at the same time; and that’s the difference between MSM. AOL etc… of course it all depends if anyone is listening
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Agreed. The last part is completely true, and I wonder if Twitter is so successful because it is so customizable as well; in other words, you follow who you want to follow, etc.
Martin Newham
Yes it’s not until you try a client like twittervision you realise how global twitter truly is..
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
And now is the first time I have looked at that. Wow!
Alright, well, Twitter has been called the "telegraph of Web 2.0". How has Twitter affected business as usual for you?
Martin Newham
Twitter is an excellent communications tools as we mentioned earlier, with "re-tweeting" the 140 characters between people information can be "broadcast" very quickly. This was evident when the news of Steve Job’s falsely reported heart attack hit Twitter, and apple shares dropped.
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Very true.
What does it mean for your business to have more and more connectivity?
Martin Newham
Communication between team members is more important than ever now, previously we would all work in a office and we could talk face to face – but with the internet and home working teams have spread out not only across the continent but across the world. Tools such as Twitter allow the "chit-chat" to continue, is far less formal than an email and more convenient that some IM clients.
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
And how about communication between you and your clients?
Martin Newham
A lot of my current clients aren’t quite switched on enough for Twitter yet, but I’m trying to train them. Typically a 1-1 is required, so a phone is more useful or Skype VOIP of course
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
With the expansion of Twitter through applications and with the creation of sites such as JustTweetIt, how do you think social networking will influence business as usual in the future?
Martin Newham
Twitter expands on a global basis the best and oldest advertising technique; word of mouth – only its digital. I will expect to see more applications, and automated systems that you can subscribe to via Twitter; already RSS updates from sites are pushed into Twitter and people be notified of changes.
Perhaps in the future, for example; Companies will squirt encrypted data into Twitter that you can subscribe to and with an appropriate client the information can be retrieved. Whilst to everyone one else it garbled
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
What a fantastic idea!
Martin Newham
Ha-ha, just an idea
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Well, obviously even beyond communication, people can expound on twitter at ground level;
Just as some have done with MySpace with embeddable stores, etc.
Speaking of MySpace, What social networking do you use, beyond twitter? (Blogs, Digg style sites, MySpace/Facebook, etc.)
Martin Newham
I’ve done a few guest posts on Styletime and one coming up on Graham’s site; I have my own blog but it’s more of a personal journal. I have a Facebook page and a Linkedin page obviously Twitter and Digg/stumble/design float to mention a few
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Obviously we all have online "identities" that we probably have even forgotten about! Ha-ha. ok, so, what do you think microblogging’s biggest contribution has been to the social networking scene? We know that WordPress gave everyone the ability to blog, and MySpace gave people the ability to have friends across the world. What has Twitter done, and do you think it will last?
Martin Newham
You mentioned WP & MySpace etc, these are all static (to a certain extent) but Twitter is very dynamic and operates fast! It allows you to talk to large groups of people at the same time and yet have a conversation with a single person if you want to either through the Replies or Direct and private mail.
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Can you give an example of a client or a path to a client that came to you as a result of twitter or another social network?
Martin Newham
Spoke to a friend over Skype regarding a website design for a aerobatic pilot, he didn’t have the skills to do it himself so he asked me and I built the site.
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Interesting stuff.
More of that in the future I imagine.
Who is your favourite Twitterer?
or Tweeter?
Martin Newham
Oh they’re all great, and unique in their own ways — hahaha, I only follow people I find interesting
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
How do you receive your news? Like political issues, local issues, etc.
Martin Newham
Mornings and when I’m working at home I generally have BBC News 24 on TV, in the office it would be Twitter/MSM/Skype and an assortment of RSS/Websites
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
What is your forecast for Twitter and the microblogging world?
Martin Newham
Twitter is still quite unique and it has a good foothold in the market, I don’t see its imminent end any time soon. The future; maybe more integrated clients for phones, PS3 Xbox, TV’s Fridges – Twitter maybe an idea medium for your washing machine to say "Help! I’m flooding; but I’ve Tweeted a local plumber"
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
I really appreciate you doing this interview. First off, any links you’d like to promote? This will be put into an article, and I will send people to wherever you’d like.
Martin Newham
My twitter one is fine, people can find me there.. I would like to see the article once it’s finished
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Yea definitely. It’s gonna mostly focus on the use of these different faculties.
Webcam:: Large Hadron Collider
Well we all know that Wednesday was a scary day for all for at 08:30 BST they turned on the “"Large Hadron Collider”. WIkipedia tells us;
The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border between the Jura Mountains and the Alps near Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The LHC is operational and is presently in the process of being prepared for collisions. The first beams were circulated through the collider on 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are expected to take place after 6-8 weeks. [Source: Wikipedia]
Many people watched the webcams located around the facility with their fingers crossed that all would be fine; but there is more to come at the numerous experiments being carried out continue. Below are two of the primary webcams their main site is here.
- Camera 7: looking at the Underground Experimental Cavern from the Saleve side.
- Camera 8: looking out of the window of the 1st Floor of the SCX building that houses the CMS Control room.
Click here to see what they’re up to now |
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Well quite a productive day
Been upgrading some web sites for ACM as well as the web servers GUI (Plesk). Backed all the files, FTP’d them back home which took most of the day, cleared down the old site, and uploaded the new version. Hit the update button and 3 minutes later it was done!
While I was backing up the site (yawn) and preparing for the update I discovered TweetDeck an Adobe Air application which works as a TWITTER client. I’ve been using it for most of the day now and its really great!
I especially like the search options where it will monitor the thousands of posts an hour for key words in the picture below “iPhone”, “Drupal” are shown. If you have a Twitter account give it a try…
First post
Well here it is the first post from the iPhone. 
Doing the British thing
… Yes, I’m queuing.
I’m at the Apple store in Kingston where I’m waiting for a 16GB Black iPhone.
There is 4 people in front of me, apparently it takes about 20mins to do the credit check for O2 (yawn) – it’s like they’re doing us a favour!
Jezz, you should be able to complete this online at home either before or after you’ve got the phone.