"...in 2008, 40 percent of the 21 million Western Europeans who own business-centric mobile phones, 8.4 million users, will access their e-mail over their handsets. This figure is a considerable jump from less than 1 percent currently. Over the same period, the annual mobile service revenue generated by e-mail will increase from €49 million in 2003 to €2.9 billion."

Spam's gonna piss people off then, as paying for spam, rich in porno images is going to cost quite a bit to download.

1217 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:05:05 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Firms to spend big on mobile e-mail

Someone from Scotland is looking for bloggers to take part in an experiment, for his PhD thesis about writing styles in blogs.

"I am going to be looking for trends in style, as the relate to the character of the author. By style I mean linguistic features such as those used by the stylistics community for authorship attribution, such as sentence length, word bigrams and trigrams, and parts-of-speech. And by character, I mean just that."

 Source: owrede_log; 31/07/03; 8:04:21 am.
1216 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:58:22 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: English speaking bloggers

Mac's got a nice new pick me up!

Changing the server. Here Mac bashes the old hard disk out. We would have done the job pretty quick had we the room to put the fan in. As it is we'll either need to rob a new case or hack saw a gap large enough for the fan.

1215 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 3:23:36 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Upgrading a server

I've been trying to backtrack ping an article on MiFi, and damn, I've managed to spam their trackback four times.

How'd you manage that Steve? Well, It appears that you can only send a small amount of excerpt to MiFi as a track back or you'll get an error page from SQL like this. So, I figure that I'd try cutting down the size of the message, which worked but I still found an error message in my message table (see the image below). But this was because MiFi is sending back a general information page if you actually go to the ping URL stated for, I guess, any article. So I tried four times, then decided to make sure none had squirreled their way through... Arggg! FOUR! Oops. Gonna have to be more careful with this trackback melarkie. Soz Mat Howie ";->" Though I see others reporting the same.

1211 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:45:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 4 TrackBacks, oh no!

BBC: "Electronic mail is playing such a key role in companies that most people start to get annoyed after just 30 minutes without e-mail access, the study found.

But spare a thought for the techies in computer support. About a fifth feared for their jobs if they did not get the e-mail system back up and running within a day."

When fellow workers come up to the sys admin with distorted faces, to complain, then the best method of dealing with them is to mirror their feelings of loss and woe, and to pull faces back at them. So says, my insider who's recently been confronted just so.

1209 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:57:17 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Loss of e-mail 'worse than divorce'

4.) "The cool factor. These tablets evoke the future of hardware and easily wow the technology challenged in a meeting. As consultants and designers, that kind of mystique is as good an accessory as the black turtle neck and German accent."

Made me smile, had to blog it.

1207 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:40:55 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Forth reason for recommending tablets at Frog design studio

"Parser Loading Error Exception parsing: {E301} The value of attribute "dc:description" must not contain the '<' character."

Been testing my trackbacking, trying to ping Bill Kearney's article (see below), but find that there's an error in his RDF in the trackback data in his page. All because he started off the item with some angle brackets.

1206 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:58:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RDF Validator Results

Perhaps this may help me understand the power relationships in UK Governmental quangos.

Bill Kearney: "Here I'm making several statements. I'm saying that the 'wkearney99' node is a member of this group. I'm then going on to say that the wkearney99 node is known to the group via an SHA1 hash of it's e-mail address and that it has a FOAF file of it's own at the seeAlso URL. It's also saying the group has it's own URL. This helps if something else using the group wants to confirm things about the group"

Dan Brickley: "...We could come up with properties like 'chair' that relate groups to people"

I'm trying to understand the relationships and positions of all the people involved in the West Midlands (UK) Regional Innovation Strategy. There's two A4 pages in the back of the report full of names and contact details. They should mean something to me, but don't, and as I trawl through more brochures like this, I'm going to see both repeated and new names, new organisatons, new titles for the same people. Wouldn't it be lovely for me to be able to study the relationships, as if in a organisational chart, or family tree, one that uses my icons, colours etc., Which mixes in this group of quango boffins with this board of civil servants and so on. Then I could see who were likely to be the people I need to approach, possibly.

For sure, these people aren't going to be interested in doing this for themselves, not any time soon, at least. I suppose if I had the time I could make the FOAF files myself. But, alas the app that would make the visual sense for me is not yet written. I can see the day when these quangos HAVE to produce their FOAF files, so that we, the ordinary geezers, can see who the hell is writing this stuff. Long time off though.

1205 Also posted to: Home page , bis ,  At: 12:35:00 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Foaf groups and Governmental quangos

"...Will provide support for... new projects aimed at promoting innovation and developing sectors within 10 market facing clusters. These will include projects identified by the Regional Innovation Steering Group, Business Growth Task Groups and others involved with the implementation of actions identified within the Regional Agenda for Action."

Promoting innovation? Blogs promote innovation, don't they? Market facing clusters? Which are those? Can't find much info about these (shadowy) steering/task groups.

These websites are so light on real help and heavy with the acronyms, and jargon.

1204 Also posted to: Home page , bis ,  At: 2:52:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Regional Innovation Fund

Bloody useless I'm trying to discover the point of some of these new UK Government quangos. This one seems interesting but I'm not clear on what the hell it's for. Hardly any information within the site, out of date events pages, with wrong dates, anyway. Crap, 'quango' speak, that means everything and nothing. I believe they are a way to get money out of European and UK coffers, but where and what the money does after that is not clear, far from it. Walk with me through the site as I try and figure it's purpose: "...a two year initiative offering regional individuals and organisations a unique opportunity to experiment with the development and delivery of public support promoting economic development. " What's public support?

"...the programme has been designed by an extensive local partnership to help identify untapped regional knowledge, encourage innovative new ICT use and embed leading edge innovation practices in the public, private and 3rd sectors." What sort of regional knowledge? Peas and ham? Heavy metal bashing? What's a 3rd Sector? Google digging: apparently, it means the voluntary sector. "It will provide funding - on a competitive basis - to support innovative, different and imaginative projects. Projects will need to deliver significant advances in innovation or knowledge, have the potential to be influential in regional economic development or provide important lessons in partnership development." "Different" is a weasel word. But, this does seem to be the right project aims for a 'million Midlanders blogging.' Blogging with a more studious approach, rather than the teenagers angst squealing about boyfriends, can be deeply knowledgeable, and certainly a learning environment for all concerned.

1203 Also posted to: Home page , bis ,  At: 12:19:34 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Knowledge Management in West Mids' (UK) cranky quangos

"Amazon.com provides a style sheet for producing RSS, but there's no reason why you cannot provide your own. The Web Services Developer's Kit explains how to do this. One reason to provide your own style sheet is to embed your Amazon Associate's identifier in the permalinks."

Pretty clever. More micro payments for your own content (in blogs.)

1201 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:31:12 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RSS feeds at Amazon

"Jason Brome's RSS feed feed button on your web page. Just roll your mouse over the example above, and you'll be instantly greeted by one-click subscription links to the most popular aggregators."

Think I'll have a go with this tomorrow, looks neat. I'm surprised by the large number of RSS readers. NetnewsWire isn't there though, and to my mind it's the premier app, though only OS X,

1200 Also posted to: Home page . At: 8:47:50 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: quickSub: making feed subscribing easier

I've found an odd error on trying to ping an MT blog: error 1, Need a Source URL (url). But, stupid me! I go to their trackback url in the browser, and I get the same response! How can we look in the html for "<rdf:RDF" if that's all they're sending back. I deem her trackbacking bust. Bust I tell you! Well, maybe not, still looking.

1199 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:57:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post

It's my feed, I'll show you it, how I like. You don't like that? Go away.

And so you should, or look or ask for another type of feed.

I want to dress up some items, and put all sorts of HTML in there, it renders fine, as I test my own dog food in the Radio Aggregator, in NN7. So I release it. Not many read my RSS 2.0 file though, but I do.

"Should people style their RSS feeds? Should news aggregators give users the option to strip styles from posts when they're displayed? What is too much style? If there's an image with a post, it's nice to let that wrap right or left as the author intended, but should you draw the line at font changes?"

To draw the line is to unsubscribe. Do it if it disturbs you IMO.

1198 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:02:47 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Styling RSS Feeds? Yes please!

"The first section will describe the RDF model, which is its fundamental syntax. The second section will present the semantic aspects of RDF, the concepts and the corresponding vocabulary."

Where am I digging all this RDF stuff up from? Resource Description Framework: Applications and Projects.

Anyway, back to the gripping print out...

1197 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:12:31 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RDF Tutorial

"The MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative is designed to create a portable and flexible means of storing and exchanging metadata related to digital audio and video tracks. The MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative is a content description model for audio and video tracks on the Internet."

Everybody's shaking it, all about, yeah, yeah. RDF.

I like the extensions: "such as contributors, roles, lyrics, release dates, remix/cover information, etc."

1196 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:57:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative 2.1

"RSS 0.94/2.0 to RDF converter"

Burningbird's description of this: "Mozilla's mbox-to-RDF API proves that you can reap the benefits of RDF (using those 20-odd tools of yours) without recasting the format itself as RDF. Ditto Sjoerd's RSS2-to-RDF XSLT ( http://w3future.com/weblog/2002/09/09.html#a129 ). Those who want RDF can have it, but they should pay the RDF tax (by creating, maintaining, and executing the transformations from the simpler syntaxes that the rest of us want to use, into the RDF that their tools can understand)."

I forget about the translators. Just been reading the SSR background. A simple addition to RSS2.0 to make all sorts of wild and weird data formations, patterns and display. I love ODB scripting at the best of times, but this stuff just takes the biscuit.

1195 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:46:00 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Sep 2002: Sjoerd Visscher: RSS2.0 to fancy graph images

"The major difference between this syntax and RDF 1.0 M&S is that RDF edges correspond to elements, and RDF nodes are implicit. It is basically as the M&S syntax with parseType=resource is a default."

There's some heavy pattern making in here. [Out of the Semantic Web's Tool Box.]

1194 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:09:00 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Strawman simpler syntax for RDF

Describing and retrieving photos using RDF and HTTP I do like the idea of being able to pull thumbnails up like this, that would be so cool. Been talking in Radio's list re a photo tool for Radio with gheil. And my major concern was the descriptions or as they've described so minimally here: content schema. Nevertheless, I get the drift. I think that abouts wraps up the final jigsaw, pun intended. I don't think there's a need to embed it in the actual pic is there? I've got my contextual information about my kids' pictures, which is the only thing I care about categorising. Though trivial to write it in, I don't like the idea of having it in two places, the blog item, and the pic... Hmm, has to be in there too <slaps head> The blog item sits in the description, Dublin Core, and all that old chap.

. Here's a window in BBedit, with the nice colours, and the original

gheil also said: "PhotoMechanic http://www.camerabits.com/ is a good tool in the $ bracket. It manages database stuff (and hands editing over to PS), but has some annoying miscues in its DB i have not worked around yet: can't get the date to flow through, on either xml output or text output :-( " Photomecanic looks pretty damn good actually. $150 OS X, Classic, and Win. Writes some stuff in to the correct parts of a JPEG, but seems to be based on a competing standard at least something else, more about news: "Digital Newsphoto Parameter Record (DNPR) version 4 -- This is the lower level file format for encapsulating digital news photographic data. It allows for editorial and technical information to be carried in the same file." Well, I suppose, my kids are news to me, and the family that read that category. Interesting to know this stuff. Maybe it's slipped me by. FOAF I got well into a tool to build FOAF files in Radio, the other day, love to finish that off. Here's my very first. I'm Johnny no friends at the bar, eek!

1193 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:13:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RDF in thumbnails e.g. Verdon, Moustiers, France

I notice that some shortcuts aren't being added from weblogData.shortcuts.personal to user.html.glossary when they're brand new. Still have to find that code that marries up these shortcut tables, think it's at start up... Anyway, I've added another call to processMacros, this time with the shortcuts in weblogData.shortcuts.personal directly ref'd. If you're using the back log RSS tool and rely on shortcuts in your feeds, this fix will be important. Update your tool.

1190 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:14:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Further shortcut processing in Radio RSS feeds

Testing out Jake's ping in Radio's Trackback. I still don't know what all this means you, know ";->"

I'll go look for some reading and bring back the links here... BRB
How TrackBack Works
A Beginner's Guide to TrackBack
Trackback in the UserLand environment

1183 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:14:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick ping me post!

"The subpoenas are flying, and we're naming names. Are you on the list?"

Pretty strange to see a list of people. Kinda like they died in battle against the evil RIAA.

1181 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:21:32 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RIAA Hit List

Do I know what track back is? Nope! But determined to use it in my site. I'll have to transfer my comments and trackback to my own Manila machine... Should do that by mid next week... Still much to do.

1180 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:10:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Trackback testing

"Robb's Law: NEVER (under any circumstances) publish a weblog to a domain that you don't control."

Tee Hee.

1177 Also posted to: Home page . At: 6:35:59 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: J Robb's Law

"Beginner's guide to trackback. Old news to most here, but with even Radio Userland now implementing the technology, trackback has the potential to be another kind of spam, with gratuitous self-links popping up all over the place. When everyone can blog, will the Blogosphere be the next victim of Usenet's neverending September? Whether providing "community support" or "publishing tool", how long before popular bloggers are forced to implement Bayesian trackback filters?"

I remembered the never ending September: they were called Assholes On Line.

I haven't really been into Trackback, what I've seen hasn't been that useful. I don't switch on comments on my site because I don't want any comments from the great unwashed cluttering up my site. Though I'm looking forward to TrackBack in Radio, as a way of me, continuing a discussion, I guess I'll just have to suck it and see. I'll have power to delete those that contaminate the purity of my site, but that'll piss people off. Hmmm. Oh! The Angst!

 Source: MetaFilter; 22/07/03; 9:46:35 am.
1174 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:28:24 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: mF: Trackback to Guide Beginners

"News about Manila, Frontier and Radio UserLand"

Awww! That's nice, I'm mentioned in dispatches. Damn nice tool though, well, the Feedster service is really the point.

Not only that but Dave Winer also points to the "I'm a cool tool!" Such a nice chap, and I've always said so. ";->"

Doh, and I missed Dr David Davies' link on Saturday, never mind here it is.

1171 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:23:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: UserLand Product News and my new tool

"Growing numbers of married people are turning to chat rooms for sexual thrills, say US researchers."

No problems here. "Be careful out there," people :-)~~

 Source: BBC News | Technology | World Edition; 21/07/03; 10:45:16 am.
1170 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:59:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Cyber sex lures love cheats

And a quick test of Trackback for Radio. Here's a site I should link to.

1169 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:05:52 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post

Just testing a post from a mobile phone... Nothing to worry about, move along now, nothing to see here.

1168 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:08:50 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: A phone message

I think I'm very happy with Blog Patrol. I've moved off Radio's web bug because it was slowing down page loads. Blog Patrol's got a lot more stats too. As well as top 20 referers, last 10 referers (prefer last 24 hours), top search words, last 10 searches; OS, screens... Not bad.

Time to roll it out across all my pages. A whole site render, well there's a few new things in the templates, like a Feedster search, which is very useful for me to find past posts. All due to my new tool, Back Log RSS.

And, I've finally moved all my blog reads from the tabs of NN7 into Radio's aggregator. Lets see how good it is.

1167 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:01:33 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Radio's web bug V Blog Patrol

"The nightmare is not that New Labour's targets for putting government online will not be achieved, but that hitting the targets might make very little difference on the 'modernisation' front. Already, for example, over 50 per cent of services are online, but only ten per cent of the population have ever used them. The Inland Revenue has built a magnificent system for online filing of tax returns, but only 70,000 people (out of a possible 8 million) use it.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that those people who have most need to interact with the state (because of being poor, elderly or ill) are precisely the groups who feel most uneasy about using unfamiliar, online, channels. The battle to put government online has been won. But the battle to put citizens online has only just begun."

The digital divide, as it's called. This is the biggest obstacle, and to my mind, blogs are the answer. They're addictive for those who fall for them, involve life long learning, are a great communication platform for those who are ill, the elderly could blog to the past, building up a life of memories...

1165 Also posted to: Home page . At: 7:23:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Is UK eGovernment full of holes?

If anybody asks, about my new tool tell them it's late here, I'm pissed and going next door for 'summore.'

Please reply on the Radio thread, I'll pick it up there in the morning. Of course, you can email me... But wait till the English afternoon for my hang over to go and me to answer.

Hey, Lisa said it was amazing Now, that's worth all the tea in China. Cheers kitten.

1157 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:20:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post

"If you want Feedster to index your entire weblog, all you need to do is generate a new RSS feed with everything you've ever blogged"

It's a bit late this evening, well very, very late. But this is such a nice idea. I'll get a script sorted 'toot-sweet.'

1156 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:20:47 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Feedster total RSS search engine

I've number of birds to kill, hopefully with the one stone. So, I'm out lunch, meetings and to the servers all day today. If anybody emails, better to SMS, if urgent.

1155 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:34:45 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Out of office most of today

The most interest I had was at the pub, later. Mind, I guess I went to mix and network, so perhaps that's why I felt that the actual debate was humdrum. There I found several 'consultants' who were there to 'find out' about blogging and how they could profit from it. Though talking to some they were seemingly pretty clueless when it came not only blogging, but also technology. But then, that's what I thought of the night. There's me down from the sticks, grass still behind my ears, and the seat of power without an email address for the Prime Minister nor WiFi anywhere within. OTH, I was naive about the business that fed off politics. I mean did you know that the Government had earmarked £2.2 billion for broadband access for their rural operations centres, and that nobody had asked for any of it? Here's some background, not sure when from. It seems the Gov is full of angst, and indecision. The usual debate where technology is concerned. "Shall I wait till next year when the computer will be cheaper and more powerful or get it now?"

Stephen Timms, e-commerce minister according to Hansard (Dec 2002): "The Department of Trade and Industry has made available £30 million to the RDAs and Devolved Administrations for pilot projects to extend broadband access. Several of the recipients have used this fund to enable small businesses to access broadband via satellite technology. For example, the South West Development Agency, East Midlands, Development Agency, East of England Development Agency and Advantage West Midlands are collaborating in the Remote Area Broadband Inclusion Trials (RABIT) programme to trial alternative broadband Internet access to small businesses in rural areas using wireless and satellite. The scheme has been operating since September 2002. Some £700 is made available to each company. By the beginning of December, 264 applications had been approved, of which 75 per cent. to 80 per cent. involve satellite trials. About 1,800 to 2,000 companies are expected to participate in the programme to December 2003." From what I know about the RDA here (Advantage West Midlands) they are terribly risk adverse, and from what I gleaned last night this is endemic in e-biz sections of local Gov and quangos across the country.

Stephen Timms, e-commerce minister according to Hansard (Nov 2002): "My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced yesterday that the outcome of the Spending Review 2002 shows that a total of approximately #6 billion will be invested in electronic governmentÑincluding £1 billion towards high-speed broadband connectivity. Existing funds for regional economic development (and RDAs will have £1.8 billion in 2003Ð04 for this purpose) can also make a contribution where lack of broadband is a barrier to economic development. That is why I announced in June the intention to establish a regional broadband unit to use the public sector's spending power to boost availability and take-up in rural areas." Fuck loads of money! And fuck loads of reading about Rural Broadband Services. And loads to read on the Remote Area Broadband Inclusion Trial. And more here: Wired-up Communities. Have to say I'm not so interested in wiring up remote locations, not personally, more interested in the blogging opportunities for SMEs and blogging as a bridge across the digital divide and as a means of life long learning.

1153 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:28:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The money in politics

Anybody asks, I'm off to the Houses of Parliament.

Storming the citadels.

1150 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:20:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Off to London

"The "blogosphere" may never be the same after America Online releases free blog-publishing software to its 34 million members this summer."

1147 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:15:32 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 'AOL Journals' To Bring Blogs To Millions

" The MIT folks are building a system which will collate all publicly available information about all public officials in the US.

We could do the same for the UK. Imagine a site that would automatically collate information about MPs' financial interests, voting behaviour, Commons attendance, speeches, publications, campaign literature, friends, attentiveness to constituents etc and make it available on the web? Later we could extend it to cover corporate bosses and the quangocracy. "

Sounds a pretty bloody boring site. You still need journalists and bloggers to sift through that stuff to give it, life.

1146 Also posted to: Home page , warBlog . At: 11:58:05 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Don't get mad, get political

Another Labour bod, this time a local councillor starts blogging, about local issues: "when opposition councillors start realising what he is writing about them, they will set up weblogs of their own - but only if they can master the technology. "

And a prophesy: "within the next 18 months he reckons 200 councillors will have started a their own weblog, and within five years the numbers will have "snowballed" to 5,000. "

More power to Monday's Houses of Parliament blogging conference.

1141 Also posted to: Home page . At: 5:09:21 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Blogging for better bins, councillor blogs

"...If they had been presented to me in a way which didn't irritate or annoy me then I might well have looked at them properly."

Only ads I use are Google ads. When I'm searching for something, they can be quite useful. But now they've spread elsewhere, and I don't find them useful at all. They're not in context, nor am I looking for further linkage.

1140 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:59:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Why online ads do not work

You may notice some weirdness with my font sizes for a few hours as I 'live' mess around with them.

[Update:] nearly fixed it. Just MSIE 6 on PC that's not making my menus each the same size. And the line spacing between my buttons. On the Mac MSIE's buttons aren't showing the text. Fed up now, going to get some breakfast.

1128 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:34:19 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Bloody stylesheets

Easy bits and hard bits... I've been trying to add more combinations of stylesheets to my templates. Right now, I can move the menus to the, left, right or make them disappear.

But, I want to add text sizes. However, I can't, well, not the way I want. I can swap individual stylesheets, or even groups of stylesheets, or make one style sheet out of several.

I want to be able to select say the 'left' sheet, then the bigger fonts sheet. And for that to be persistent in cookies. I can, with the method of loading the @Import but this would require a new page load.

I thought I could write two cookies, one for the menus, one for the text. I'm not sure if that would work (if I spend hours on it) as it seems that the selection of link sheets is a either this or that, not some of these, one of those and an other of this. You cannot pick and mix, only pick.

Mark Wilton-Jones has a solution to select two sheets, but the rest are switched off. So, I'd have to have a user select, 'left, big' or 'left, small' and 'right, big' or 'right, small' and so on. But, when I want to throw in 'red' and 'orange,' I'm going to get into dumbass stuff.

How can I pick and mix from hundreds of tiny little stylesheets? I'll have to sleep on it.

1127 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:11:16 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Style Sheets in HTML documents

"Yahoo said the figures reflected the continued popularity of its sponsored web searches, which mention advertisers' names in conjunction with certain search results.

It also credited strong sales of fee-based services to consumers and small business users.

Sponsored web searches, introduced last year, have proved a runaway success with small business advertisers who cannot afford larger online promotions."

I've been wondering about Google's adsense. My mate put them on his football site for 4 days and scoped $175. But some of his click through rates were around 33% which is waaaay too high. So he's been kicked off. OK... Fair enough, though he's pissed off, obviously.

But, he wondered, well demanded, to me and I guess to Google in writing, that he be paid his $175.

I wonder if they will. I wonder also if it's the advertisers who paid, sometimes up to $2 for each click, who'll be paying or Google? I bet it'll be the advertisers.

I don't think Google adsense will last that long.

1126 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:22:58 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Ad sales double Yahoo profits

"Cut it with the bling bling and do something for the community, man"

They've also added some promo for next Monday's meet at House of Commons. I bet it gets packed out now. Lucky I put my RSVP in early.

1125 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:02:00 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: BBC catches the Westminster blogger

"Its purpose is simple: produce HTML documents that can be addressed at the paragraph level. It does this by automatically creating name anchors with static and hierarchical addresses at the beginning of each text node, and by displaying these addresses as links at the end of each text node."

I found this on Mark Canter's blog and apparently, some people have it working in Blosxum and MT. Looks quite interesting, this purple stuff, and from two years ago. Never heard of it before.

I'd like to add this to my Radio. And currently thinking it through. It's the versioning that could be the problem. If I create, say, a story, and add purple links to the paras. Fine. But later I move paras around... There's some info on the purple page about versioning... Hmmmm. Interesting

1123 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:50:57 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: An Introduction to Purple

That's a nice bit of fun. With my stylesheets re written to be left or right. Maybe tomorrow I'll make some different colours, or maybe with some completely different designs.

I used the style switcher at A List Apart. Haven't tested it on all browsers/platforms yet. I know there's problems with NN4 but, well, the stylesheet I'm using has problems with that old browser anyway.

1122 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:05:26 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Left or right stylesheets

"It is vital we realise this and move on."

1121 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:54:22 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The internet is shit

"Whereas in 2002 PDAs' main use was as a personal organiser, this year the top function is as a business diary."

1120 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:33:10 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Careless PDA users threaten corporate security

"Why Should Businesses Blog?

Simple. No one listens, anymore, to sanitized marketing messages."

There you go. Real gossip is far more interesting than wading through marketing speak. If you write marketing speak then you're scared of writing anything interesting. Maybe because your boss will tear you apart, maybe because you think your customers will tear you apart. Oh, the angst!

1119 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:27:20 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 5 key questions to ask about business blogs

"A chip makes it tough for the cartridges to be refilled.

Epson's microchip is known as 'Intellidge' and has become the norm for all new Epson printers. There are several versions of these chips, in different cartridge designs. Meanwhile, numerous companies are selling chip resetters for Epson cartridges, which programme the chips to factory specs, showing full ink levels and providing the same number of cycles as when the chip was new, but they are costly. "

You will be assimilated.

1118 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:39:44 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Do not to buy Epson inkjet cartridge printers

"People love things for free, and free is a hard price to beat,..

Games are heavily branded and not readily substitutable."

Ads in Opera, Eudora don't seem to be the answer to me. Offering a better product and better support seems like a good one, at least that's what I'd pay for.

1117 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:22:12 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Making software pay

"The Guardian is also planning a first for web-publishing - an advertising-free version of its site, which users will be able to view for £20 a year. Annual subscription to the Guardian will cost £98.57 a year or £10 a month."

That sounds quite expensive. Even though I read the Guardian, nearly everyday, It's too much at £99 a year. £20 is OK.

""The realities of web publishing mean that we also have to seek opportunities to maximise our revenues," said Emily Bell, the editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited."

In other words we spent a boat load on a content management system, and the fees and up keep of it is way too expensive, so we need to cream our readers a couple of £million a year to pay for it.

Oh, if only they had gone for a cheap blogging system.

1116 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:42:35 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Guardian to begin online charges

"We have a new room for the event, which holds up to 100 people."

One hundred red bloggers!

1114 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:43:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Voxpolitics Seminar @ Houses of Parliament

Rob Henerey posted how he creates a news item on the Radio discussion list. So, I thought I'd explain how I do it here:

It all starts here I'm normally putting together little stories about me and the kids. Normally, Radio isn't running, and I'm editing, colour enhancing, cropping anything from 2 or 3 to 50 or 60 pictures from my digital camera. It's only a Digital Dream 1.3MB (£87.00) but I won't pay any more that £100 for a camera. So, I'm saving pix into the folders directly from Photoshop. I've become good enough that I know what size I want them to be, and which will go next to each one. I mentally draw the news item post up in my mind. Each folder is a width size for the thumbnail. I could create any size I wanted. All I'd need to do is create a new folder, call it a number and that would be the size of the thumbnail. I don't want too many though, these have sufficed for a few months now. Anymore and I think things would look confused. In this illustration, I've dropped an image into the asis folder - that's "as is" or same size. With this special folder, there is no thumbnail, and all I get is the image ref, no javascript double thumbnail jobbie. It's a tabbed folder, it's always available so I can drag images from websites directly to it. I've also set up Default Folder so there's a keyboard short cut to it too from any application. I'm using a customised version of Dave Winer's myPictures tool. Now, it only works with Mac Classic. I don't know enough about scripting apps on OS X nor Windows. Each image in my tool is thumbnailed by using clipToGif. I need help with this little tiny part to make it work on Windows and OS X.

Getting the image tags Up pops the Thumbs for whatever window. (I don't know why I called it that.) This is the window that pops up when Radio is restarted and there's images in the bits to upload folder. Or, if I drop an image into my bits to upload folder. If there's a load of images in this folder then there's a corresponding amount of images in this window. You can also see there's a shortcut of the image (highlited in black). I'm having trouble with shortcuts being processed in some places, and as I like to be able to edit the image tags, the hspace and maybe the valigns I have it raw too and usually use that version.   If it's thumbnail then it's 'orrible javascript as above. They usually are, and all the ones of my kids are JS. BTW: I've got a bit of javascript in my headers in each page to make this work. I've also added it to all my manila sites, to make them work when I cross post to manila sites.   I see it as HTML in Radio, looks a lot easier to understand. That is, underlined links in blue, as above.

Quick post menu item Now, to create a post. I pull down my myRadio menu, this is my myRadio menu, nothing to do with Userland. I decide which category the post is going to be. I post everything into the front page as well. This post is going to be a cyberSaps post. I don't always create posts this way. Sometimes I use the aggregator, or the bookmarklet for Mike Krus's Radio Express when I'm out bear backed blogging. I then open up with the menu command: last post to outline, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

Fresh empty post Here's the fresh empty post. To edit the title, I double click on the title bar, where it says weblogData.posts.00001112. And the containing table pops up (see below).

Edit the title By default my menu creates a title Quick post Or at least that's what the cyberSaps menu does, other menus, like the service message create titles with the date and time in. Anyway, I change the post to be something more useful. And, if I want, I can add more categories, or take it off the front page.

Add one of my boilerplates With the fresh empty post, I add a table. I've got plenty already made up in my boilerplates. Ah, there's some other scripts and bits in this menu, I guess the most used is the Copy Address no GDB and the sweetest, is the Squish and save. The rest are of the type, "paste this stuff in the clipboard and do this to it before." And the others are the menus that I've cribbed from elsewhere in Radio and put here. Then I've just tidied up my bookmarks to scripts and places and stories and stuff.

Start editing my post To the left is the fresh post with the boilerplate. I just open it up arrange the table cells with the images and text, as you do. Here's me editing my post, this post. It's a thumbnail, just click on the image and the bigger, full sized on will open in a new window. I check back and fore with the local version of the page, just to make sure what I see in the outline is what I get in the web browser.

Publish right now! OK, so I'm happy with the lot. And I want it upstreamed now. Now! I said. This menu builds and upstreams immediately. I can pick which category I want to upstream, and I don't need any new news posts. This menu item will upstream the front page of the category regardless.

The only other thing to do is make sure your full text news items in your RSS 2.0 remove the javascript nonsense. I've a call back for that.

1112 Also posted to: Home page . At: 5:36:28 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post about quick posting

"When you remove the key-critical behaviour of search, you have moved from pull to push marketing, and everyone knows which of these is most powerful: pull"

I don't think Google will be able to keep this up for very long. I've clicked on several ads in Google's results pages, the ads have been useful to my search. But, so far the ads I've seen on blogs haven't been useful, so I haven't clicked.

I don't know if 'inventory owners' bloggers to you and I are paid for impressions or only clicks. If so, it's good for advertisers, as they get free eye-balls. Fraudulant clicks are not allowed either, and the click through is anything from a few dollors to 5¢, depending on the keywords.

I'm looking into this for me to advertise, and for me as 'inventory owner' of a blogging community - well, part owner. More a, sometimes, sysAdmin. If we can raise some dosh for a new machine all the better.

These are the ads that Google may use on the Villa blogs, looks like public (read cheap = 5¢) ads. Me? A socialist ad exec putting ads on blogs, never?

1110 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 1:06:48 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Does Google's AdSense Make Sense?

"14th July, 5:30 - 7.00pm
Committee Room 20
Upper Committee Corridor
Houses of Parliament

Drinks and Food Provided"

It's been a long time since I was last there. Possibly, 20 years. I fell asleep after a long party the night before, a long bus trip down, and a boring talk by Bruce George the Labour MP for Walsall. Something to do with the Humanities course my mate was on.

Anyway, free food and some chance to meet up with, I guess, some nice lefties, who want to change the world with their blogs!

Deffo, I'll be there. Anybody else wanna go, add your name and email them to RSVP

1109 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:44:36 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Bloggers storm the citadels

"The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site."

Oooo! I'm going to do that I don't want to be cached. Like the page says, if I want to delete stuff from my site I don't want to find that within google. Or have to wait what could be 60 days.

So, I add the tag to my #prefs at the top level.
<meta NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="noarchive">

But I don't mind Daypop so it'll just be google that I'll stop.

So my prefs is looking like this these days...

1108 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:42:51 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Google as Big Brother

"When the product does come out later this year, bear in mind that it's a 1.0, there are other new features on the way, and it's built for the AOL user in mind. That said, I'm not one who shies away from speaking my mind. There are some really cool features in the product at launch. RSS support will be in 1.0, along with a bunch of other stuff that I'm not going to tell you about. Ok, I'll tell you one - you can send an IM to a bot and have it post to your blog with rich text support and other cool stuff (like add titles, etc). "

We knew they were coming. I seems that this will be called journaling rather than blogging.

I think that there still lots of room to play in this area. JRobb thinks they spent $20m on this! And that's so far!

1098 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:17:30 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: AOL coming to blogs

There was a log in the word doc version of the WMD dossier, apparently 4 people edited it. Now the UK Government have wised up...

"Perhaps coincidentally, he said, many of the older Word format documents on the 10 Downing Street site have now been removed and replaced with PDF versions."

The BBC are really having-a-go at Tony's crack-pots. Deservedly.

1096 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:50:10 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Tools reveal secret life of documents

"Earlier in in the year, JVC announced the GR-HD1, the first camcorder to capture video in high definition TV standard."

I use my little 1.3 megapix digital dream to shoot little snips of video. I've a 64 meg card (I could go up to 560MB or so) and I can shoot maybe 15 minutes, I've never yet filled this new card!

Sure the quality's not so good at around 350 x 285 pix, but for handiness, and that I've always got it in my pocket, I cannot fault it. I've VHS-C camera too, but that's only for special occasions, not the little snippets of life that I like to shot.

One day soon, stills, video, video conferencing, phone, email, web, mp3, probably even editing will all be in one tiny device. We all know this. In the meantime the makes are trying to guess what's important to a demographic and squeezing two or three functions into a small enough device.

Now, why video cameras haven't a sim card hole for a phone, I don't know. And I don't see much in the way of Bluetooth in this article or in many others I've read so far. Why-oh-why can't we yet Bluetooth these devices together?

1095 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:39:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Uncertain future for the camcorder?

"The US government "remains concerned" that Microsoft is making it difficult for rivals to access Windows despite being ordered to open up its software." It's the rates, and royality structure, that's under question, plus the fact that they're dragging their feet. And some people are saying Microsoft has changed. Bollocks.

1093 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:58:56 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Judge may have to force open Windows

"The First International Love Hotel Moblogging Conference," Doesn't look like it took off very well, but still some very nice pictures there.

1090 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:47:06 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Tokyo Tidbits - Love Hotel

"When you display the permanent link for a post. You should link the title of a post which presumably contains words which indicate what the post is about instead of a [#] or the word permalink or, common amongst Blogger users, the date and time."

"Use the meta tags to help the Googlebot index only your permalinks, not your constantly changing front page. To do this, use:
this <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" > on your front page
and this <meta name="robots" content="index,follow" > in archives"

Two nice little tips there for me to clean up my Google. I've a nice robots.txt anyway but fear that my home pages are still being indexed. And I'll take a look at sorting out my permalinks, maybe using the title of the post for them.

1088 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:20:38 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Help the Googlebot understand your blog

And from a blog advertising company, Henry Copland writes: "Each product started out as a twinkle in the eye of some deranged entrepreneur, then got tested on the entrepreneur's friends and family and finally got popularized through -- cover your ears Steve -- advertising."

And these days, with the growing popularity of blogs, I think that entrepreneur will find his product becoming a meme, if it's worthy enough.

And I am not a bleedin' civil servant, I run my own business, have done for 20 years. I've built brochures and advertising campaigns, and know the half truths, and misrepresentations they contain. I work in sales too, and know what it takes to get the sale.

One line I didn't cross - I never slept with any clients. I nearly did, just to keep the project, but thought better or it. Was it principles or that she was 45+ and I was 24? I think it was that she'd want more, and I couldn't keep giving.

No, I won't run ads on my site. And I'll be suspicious of anybody that does. I don't put ads on my car, have them on the walls in my kitchen, I dislike fashion labels, though sometimes I'm tricked into thinking the cut is better... It's a tough world. My blog is my house. No ads.

[Update: nice guy Henry emails:] Ads has some weird and hard-to-define social value that goes beyond utility (Google Adsense) or price aggregation (eBay) and comes closer to the signalling value of a peacock's tail. Like the elaborate tail, they often seem like a waste of color and energy, but the market would work a lot less efficiently without them.

I like that description, but still, I don't want someone else's cocky tails in my house!

1087 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:53:15 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Blogads weblog: comments

After my yesterday's post re ads on blogs, Biz consultant: Rick E. Bruner: "Moreover, I honestly do believe ads play a worthy role in the consumer's decision process. Customers are increasingly savvy enough to see through most of the "trickery, slight of hand, bending the truth." "

If one works in sales/marketing/advertising, one knows that's not true. Some are, most aren't. That's why we have, in this country, The Advertising Standards Authority, and Trading Standards, where one can complain to.

He goes on: Give them a little credit.

No! Punters are stupid! If you buy from an ad, without checking from friends, or others, then you are stupid, and deserve to be burnt. This is why I think, and hope that one day, ads will cease to exist, utopian it may be. I get interested by what others say about a product, more, much more, than by the seller's sales pitch. Recommendation is far superior than direct marketing, and blogs and other FOAF/social networks will boost this. Sure, ads will always go where there's eye balls, but they'll become less and less important to the sales process.

And: In fact, where I see the industry going in the future is increasingly towards what I refer to as "invertising" -- ads that consumers seek out and opt to see, such as "advertainment" and "edutainment" (the ads on TiVo that people opt not to skip), search ads that correspond to users seeking out information, opt-in email retention programs, Ultramercials (e.g., Salon's free-pass for premium content in exchange for impactive ads), and so on.

Rick, my old mate, my old mucker, you live in a differnet world from me. MacDonalds does these things, damn, the kids like the place too much. Their quizzes, colouring in things, toys etc... I see through it, my kids don't and that pisses me off. Ads go for the lowest common denominator, the biggest bang for buck, if the business owner can get away with less and get more, they will.

Blogs don't survive like that.

1086 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:50:46 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: In Defense of Advertising

"European businesses will be worse off as a result because US companies hold the majority of the patents and the patent know-how."

Software is different from drug patents. It's built on prior art and to have to spend £300,000 fighting one's case is a non starter for any small company.

1084 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:27:15 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Patents to kill small and open source software?

Paolo Valdemarin: "Putting ads on your blog would suddenly make the monetary terms important as well. Will this influence the relationship between bloggers?"

Though I have a degree in graphics and advertising I've always been against advertising. Just my socialist background finds them distasteful. It's whoever can spend enough money fooling people that their can of beans is best, not that that can is best for the person. Trickery, slight of hand, bending the truth, that's what ads are for. Though the text ads on Google are quite handy. I don't really mind the ads on metaFilter they seem fairly harmless.

If ads start to plague blogs, the near-utopian world we have right now may disappear. The point of blogging is not to make money from eye-balls, not IMO. It maybe to make money from thought and intellect or reputation sure, nothing wrong with making money. But CPMs are eye-ball traffic, lowest common denominator.

Jeff Barr of Syndic8 rejected adult text ads. His site wouldn't suit such ads, for sure. But if he became desperate, if he was offered a deal he couldn't refuse... Say that to the common or garden blogger and soon, I see the day that blogs will become like so many tawdry sites trying to capture as much small change from ads as possible. That's not why I blog. Or, why I mainly surf around blogs.

I don't think I'd link to sites with ads. Or, I'd think twice about it. Anyway, what if I'm reading a blog through it's RSS feed? I'd never see ads, or would I? Ooooo! That would piss me off! Unless I wanted RSS ads.

1081 Also posted to: Home page . At: 5:00:15 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Weblog advertising