So, Apple's rumoured iSlate, or the iPad as it turned out to be called, is finally out in the open. All respect to Apple for being so good at keeping a secret - it must be a lot of fun watching the various analysts, pundits and bloggers speculating on what your product is going to be. Continue reading
Author Archives: Joe
Designers squabbling over praise
There's a curious sense of detachment that comes with observing a spat between a group of people you've no involvement with. This afternoon I've been enjoying Brendan Dawes' rant against sycophancy in UK web design circles. Here it is. Continue reading
St David’s 2: a new patron saint for Wales?
Two weeks ago my wife and I moved to a small village just outside Cardiff, Wales' capital, after many years of city-dwelling. Out of curiosity and (more pressingly) in need of a new watch battery, I ventured back into the city on Saturday.
Although I'm English, I've lived in Cardiff for 14 years, since I was 19. I stuck around after graduating from the uni because of work and relationships (in no particular order). In that time it's changed a fair bit, although not always for the better. Continue reading
Remembering Ellie Greenwich
Ellie Greenwich, songwriter par excellence, died yesterday in a New York City hospital of a heart attack, having been admitted for pneumonia. Continue reading
Adding Amazon ads for different countries
UPDATE, July 2011: I'm now using the WordPress-Amazon-Associate plugin, so much of what's written below is no longer relevant. WPAA seems to do almost everything in one easy-to-use plugin, so give it a go if you're interested.
Some time ago I started looking into ways to add Amazon products to help monetise a WordPress site. My major requirement was to automatically set my affiliate IDs for a range of different Amazon stores, with products appearing depending on a user's worldwide IP location.
I was working on a site with a potentially global reach (aren't they all?), and didn't want to limit the potential by pushing people towards just one Amazon store. Here's how I did it. Continue reading
Google, NY skanks and the right to libel
Model Liskula Cohen recently filed a lawsuit against Google because the company initially refused to reveal the name of the anonymous blogger who described her in defamatory terms on a Google-hosted blog, Skanks in NYC. Cohen then turned to the New York Supreme Court, which ordered Google to reveal Port's identity.
Now the blog author - Rosemary Port - has hit back with a $15m lawsuit. Her argument is that Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity". In plain English, this means she thought she was legally protected from having her identity revealed, regardless of what she wrote. Continue reading
Dental records, fingerprints and… breast implants?
Amid the shabby recent tale of the suicide of a man suspected of murdering his former wife in California, a detail caught my eye. The woman in question, Jasmine Fiore, was identified by the serial number on her breast implants. Continue reading
The wonderful Tenori-On
Something of a hybrid between a musical instrument and a sequencer, the Tenori-On is an innovative product from Yamaha that looks like a whole lotta fun. Continue reading
Adding h1 tags to your WP theme’s page headers
I recently coded my own theme for The Beatles Bible, which I documented elsewhere. However, earlier today I was doing a bit of reading on search engine optimisation, and learnt that many WordPress themes have the same h1 tag across the entire site - commonly linked to the site's name in the header.
I hadn't realised, but my theme was the same - the result of following a how-to guide I'd found on the web. Here's some information on how to make it work more efficiently and get that web traffic coming in better. Continue reading
Thoughts on buying and selling houses – part two
Earlier I wrote about the difficulty of supply and demand when buying or selling a house, caused by an unwillingness or inability to accept a market value for a property. But I wanted to write about one thing that struck me repeatedly when searching for a house to move to - the craziness of the UK's offer system. Continue reading