simoncox.com sideblog

SWFObject: Javascript Flash Player detection and embed script

2007-07-02T14:26:40Z

SWFObject: Javascript Flash Player detection and embed script available from deconcept - thie is more of a reminder for me than anything else!

Feed builder using a badger

2007-06-04T11:16:42Z

Great app you can bung on your site in a jiffy - Badger from kentbrewster.com lets you quickly build a portlet to pick up an RSS feed and display it on your site. No caching but that should not be a problem as it uses the Yahoo Pipes as a back end and some wizzy javascript.

Blue Yoga Mat

2007-05-11T14:19:19Z

If your in New Jersey / New York go and see my friend Claire about Yoga at her site Blue Yoga Mat!

Train drivers strike called off

2006-09-07T16:49:29Z

A train strike which threatened to cripple services across southern England has been called off. Can we allow unions to continue to threaten passengers like this? Dolts.

Flaming heck!

2006-08-29T14:35:44Z

Journalists go to some extraordinary lengths, and sometimes illegal - yes there have been cases, to get stories. Intrusion upon the private lives of celebrities and ordinary people is now commonplace and sensationalism is the driving factor behind most tabloid headlines and is increasingly making its way into TV news bulletins. How far will they go though? Well 5 or 6 Indian reporters are being charged with assisting a man’s suicide by giving him inflammable liquids and matches so that they could get footage which was actually shown on national TV later in the day. Of course not all journalists are the same though are they.

Crazyegg useability MI

2006-08-24T10:35:16Z

Just launched is Crazyegg.com which allows you to track clicks and hot links on your web pages and its free for tracking 5000 clicks. It's this sort of on line app that gives Web2.0 a good name. The dashboard is beautifully crafted although a little basic on MI stats at the moment I am sure they will expand it further. Great tool!

Darren Sherman - loser

2006-07-29T10:12:20Z

So you take a girl out for a meal, she offers to go Dutch but you insist on paying the bill because you are either a gentleman or, perhaps, you think she will pay for the next one. But she doesn't call back. What do you do... Unbelievable story of real whiney loser Darren Sherman who has a great deal of growing up before he finds a partner who will tolerate his behaviour. Just found another site where it appears that none other than Darren Sherman may have been trying to get his name changed in the article - very funny! As someone has mentioned it has not hit the radio yet but this one is going to do a world tour. Darren Sherman you 15 minutes of fame are due very soon!

Get the Tshirt!

You can now get a Tshirt based on Darren's catch phrase "You ate the food, you drank the wine". How brilliant is that!

Is it all a con?

But the big question is - is this a wind up? Is it just a tiny publicity stunt goen extreamly well for PR Differently? It seems to be vey simular to an urban legend from New York details of which are over at Snopes.]]>

Drum Machine

2006-06-22T13:16:48Z

Just come accross a superb peice of Flash artistry - Drum Machine by Tokyoplastic. When Flash is done well it can be fantastic and I really like what they have done on Drum Machine. When Flash is done bad - like those very annoying popup ads that obscure the content you are trying to read, it can be very very bad but fortunatly there are good designers out there!

Google Spreadsheets

2006-06-15T13:02:19Z

Google spreadsheets are now available from labs.google.com as a limited test. What I have seen so far suggests that Microsoft will not be too happy but those of us in the majority who don't need a full blow package such as Excel will love the Google Spreadsheets initiative. If you have ever used a spreadsheet before then the Google interface will not faze you one bit. It has been really well thought out - almost to the point where I was forgetting that this is an online application (you can't do right button clicks and expect to get cell options - you get the browser options of course!). When you save a spreadsheet it is stored on your Google account so its accessible from anywhere and you can invite other people to view it and chat to them (apparently). It is no where near as comprehensive as Excel and personally I would not want it to be. If I need a hugely functional app I will purchase Excel or something better but what is actually available these days? I am not sure - could even be that Excel uptake has killed all spreadsheet competition. This is a cracking move by Google and if they follow up soon with an online slide show/presentation application then they may well not get a Christmas card from Redmond this year.

Google Notebook

2006-06-07T12:21:47Z

Google Notebook is released! Superb little Firefox extension that lets you keep notes - of anything you want. You can highlight text and click a single button in Notebook to add it. Google Notebook also allows you to set up several Notebooks and add headings. Essential kit for the web guru. Google Notepad from Google Labs.

Listamatic

2006-04-06T13:35:26Z

I keep going back to Listamatic but keep forgetting the URL so this is as much a prompt for me as it is an endorsement of the site for you all. Listamatic has a huge list of lists doing different listy things using CSS. Sort of like CSS Zen Garden but for lists. Stick it on your lists of lists!

Guide to css in emails

2006-03-31T15:47:02Z

David Greiner over at Campaign Monitor has posted a comprehensive guide to what CSS works in which email clients. invaluable to those who try and make email-outs look like thier website. It has tables of email clients verses the css proprties, selectors you can use and even web base support info for links. Also available in pdf format - which is very handy.

Broken home page

2006-03-23T10:52:17Z

We were discussing this at work today: if you had a website for broken homes and the home page was broken what would that be? A broken homes broken home page? Sometimes madness can prevail. Naturally there is a band site called Broken Home thier home page isn't broken at the moment - though its not very well coded.

Billion Page views

2006-03-04T21:59:26Z

So this guy decides to build a web page to get a billion page views and his chums will give him £1000. Never mind how much google ads revenue it will bring. A billin page views is a lot of bandwidth - not an issue if it's done over 10 years but my guess is that this thing will spiral and take about a year to get to 500 million and then it will stop. I already found an Australian site also doing a billion page views but its not as well designed as AJ's site. When I went to look at the site tonight it was already at 400 thousand page views. Not bad but a long old way to go yet.

simoncox.isa-geek.com

2006-03-01T14:22:42Z

I have just set up a new URL, http://simoncox.isa-geek.com, for use with my dynamic IP address at home so that I can serve up stuff from my home computer - Apple Macs have Apache servers built in don't you know! At the moment I have my Delicious Library as a set of html pages on there but expect that to change as it is over 20mb due to the huge images. Domain services to do this are free from dyndns.com.