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Minor update to Context Voice API
2009-08-22 03:15:00 I’ve finally got around to updating my Context Voice API Library to include the latest addition to the API. The new parameter for the reactions method of the API is “threaded”. When set to true, the API returns retweets (or reactions-to-reactions) as child elements of the original reaction. I’ve also updated the demo to include the new ... More About: Update
Unmasker Chronicles: Dawn of the Demon
2009-07-28 04:32:00 Ever get fed up of seeing the same phrases used over and over again? I was looking through lists of Twitter users on Mr. Tweet and started to get irritated by the number of social media experts, affilate marketing gurus and people who were “passionate” about everything from Twitter to printer cartridges. As a private joke, ... More About: Web Design , Design , Chronicles , Dawn , Demon
Context Voice API PHP Library
2009-06-26 18:30:00 Context Voice is the new name for uberVU’s web API, they recently released a new version (1.1) and I’ve updated my PHP library accordingly and written a spiffy new demo. Demo Manual Download New features New method getUrlReactions returns the indexed reactions (tweets, diggs etc.) it includes a number of optional parameters: since – retrieve all the reactions that are ... More About: Library , Context
UX Design for Developers
2009-06-16 00:30:00 I’m currently building a new application and one of the areas that I’ve been concentrating on is the User Experience (UX) aspects of the build. Often, the UX design is considered to be mainly a creative process, undertaken as part of the graphic or web design phase of the project. It is then down to the ... More About: Design , Coding , Developers
Pure CSS rollover for printable images
2009-06-11 14:32:00 This is a quickie but may be useful to somebody out there in the big wild interweb. I had a requirement to implement linked images in a page with a separate rollover image. Normally I’d be using CSS to switch backgrounds but the client wanted the normal image to be visible when the page was printed ... More About: Images , Pure , Rollover
uberVU php library
2009-06-02 19:11:00 uberVU is a conversation engine which aggregates conversations from social websites around specific URLs. They track services like: Twitter / FriendFeed Digg / Reddit/ Hacker News Major blogging platforms (Wordpress, Blogger, MT, Typepad etc) Major video sharing websites (Youtube, Vimeo) Flickr / Picasa Disqus Like any decent web based service uberVU are making an API available for us developers to play around ... More About: Library , Conversation
WWW and User Experience
2009-05-12 23:00:00 Which do you prefer? www.somedomain.com or simply somedomain.com ? The use of the WWW (or variously: wuh wuh wuh, dub dub dub, dubya dubya dubya etc.) in domain names is something of a debatable subject. A colleague recently stated that people feel more comfortable browsing a site which uses the www prefix – a “fact” which I initially ... More About: Experience , User
Swine Flu + Google-Fu = Monkey Wank Fever
2009-05-05 18:30:00 I think something must have clicked in my brain when I read this tweet: If it was Monkey Wank Fever going around, rather than swine flu, I think the national mood would be a lot more buoyant. Graham Linehan I knew that I had some code sitting around from playing with the Google Ajax Search API. Within a ...
Social Media Stories
2009-04-29 18:27:00 I stumbled across this presentation from Seth Goldstein via Kyle Lacy’s blog. The information presented here is very valid for anybody working in social media, whether PR and marketing or application development. It’s also presented in a fun and attractive way, the designer in me fully approves, well done Seth. Social Media Stories View more presentations from ... More About: Social Networks
Google Analytics API Launched!
2009-04-22 11:07:00 I ranted about the lack of an API for Google Analytics back in November last year, now at last we have an easier way to use our analytics data. A Google Analytics API has long been one of our most widely anticipated features. Today we’re pleased to announce that the Google Analytics Data Export API beta ... More About: Launched
Twitter?s new web interface
2009-04-17 15:36:00 I was setting up the Twitter account for a new project which I’m working on (more about that some other time) when I realised that the Twitter page looked a little different. It seems that the real-time search capability which Twitter purchased with the aquisition of Summize is now being integrated into the main user interface. The ... More About: Interface
Handy WordPress hack ? changing javascript library location
2009-04-14 10:00:00 Here’s a little hack I worked out to solve a dilemma that didn’t appear to be particularly well documented. My problem was that I needed to use jQuery 1.3 for some script but the default version in Wordpress 2.7 is v1.2.6. It also makes sense to load the library from a common source such as the ... More About: Library , Java , Hack , Javascript
15 Social Media Discovery Tools
2009-04-12 01:22:00 One of the key activities in getting the most out of social media is finding relevant people, blogs, conversations, wikis, forums etc. This is a list of sites that will help to find those shiny needles in the giant haytstack of the web. Unified Social Media Search These sites aggregate search results from multiple sites and services. SocialMention ... More About: Tools , Discovery
Web agencies and their clients are getting it all wrong
2009-03-30 14:00:00 It’s a bit of a confrontational title, but this is a bit of a confrontational post. The disparity between what a client should get from their web agency and what they do get is all too often down to the established process of client brief / agency proposal. Paul Boag spoofed this situation with his tongue-in-cheek ... More About: Web Design , Clients , Wrong , Agencies
Online shopping with added cleverness ? Woya
2009-03-27 14:07:00 I was recently invited to review a website, Woya.com – a consumer electronics shopping site. At first I didn’t really think that it was relevant and was going to politely decline, but I diligently went and took a look at the site expecting to see familiar price-comparison features. I was surprised to find something that ... More About: Shopping , Online , Online shopping
New WordPress theme
2009-03-24 21:44:00 I finally decided to go live with my new WordPress theme – it’s still something of a work in progress so expect changes on a regular basis. The main design aims that I focussed on were: Remove clutter to clarify the main content Improve readability Retain essential page elements but keep the page clean as possible use CSS to progressively ... More About: Wordpress , News , Wordpress Theme , Theme
Building a YouTube Dialog
2009-03-11 17:38:00 For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working with the YouTube API in order to build some new functionality into Ackura PressRoom. The aim was to build a dialog to browse or search videos from YouTube in order to select one for inclusion in a Social Media Release. I started by building a quick wireframe ... More About: Youtube , Building , Dialog
My 4 most wanted iPhone features
2009-02-24 14:55:00 Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone and wouldn’t be without it but it’s frustrating sometimes to know that despite it’s myriad capabilities, there’s still more it could do. The fact that people are already managing to do this stuff having jailbroken their iPhones leads me to believe that Apple is witholding this stuff ... More About: Iphone , Features , Opinion , Wanted
Review: AIPTEK Slim Tablet 600U
2009-02-19 14:00:00 I’ve never used a drawing tablet, ever. I’ve always thought that I might like one but it seemed like an unnessecary expense when my mouse-wielding skills are if not prodigious, then at least acceptable. Last month, I was gifted some Amazon vouchers and instead of buying lots of books (my usual vice) I spotted the ... More About: Review , Tablet , Slim
Development tip: color coding UI by deployment platform
2009-02-16 13:50:00 For anybody who’s working in web development, there often comes the situation where you have multiple deployments of an application. I my case the normal situation is to have a local working copy, a staging environment and a live environment. I’m sure I’m not alone in having been in situations where I’ve made an update and ... More About: Web Development , Color , Development , Coding , Platform
Social Media Data Mining with FriendFeed
2009-02-05 15:24:00 FriendFeed have just launched an advanced search feature, Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb has written an interesting article on how these options can be harnessed to assist with cross-network monitoring and data mining. The nice thing is that all of the advanced search functions are available via the FriendFeed API, making it possible for developers to ... More About: News , Social , Media , Mining , Data
Win a BRAND NEW Dell Netbook and 3G Subscription
2009-02-02 12:52:00 My good friend Paul Fabretti is giving away a Dell Netbook with a Vodafone 3G subscription. All you need to do is follow @paulfabretti retweet the message about the competition and bookmark his blog post. What have you got to lose? go to it! More About: News , Brand
Tagged by Fabretti
2009-01-29 10:00:00 Paul Fabretti chose to tag me in one of these tag-the-blogger excercises so in the interests of not letting anybody down, I’ll continue the chain. If you are tagged you should: (a) republish these rules Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post. Share seven facts about yourself in the post. Tag seven people at the end ... More About: Tagged
A new idea to hasten the demise of IE6
2009-01-26 23:43:00 Last year I was discussing the idea that as web designers and developers are the poeple who suffer most from IE6’s continued usage, we are responsible for doing what we can to educate users into upgrading. 37 Signals also announced that they would no longer actively support IE6, a step in the right direction but it ... More About: Opinion , Idea , Web developer
Social Notworking?
2009-01-18 04:11:00 The phrase “social notworking” I heard from Justin Davies, however, the question posed by my employer is: “Where is the value in staff twittering in company time?” I would argue that if your work involves social media, especially if you are pitching the use of social media as a marketing and PR tool then it is vital that ... More About: Social , Steve Jobs , Opinion , Stephen Fry
Google shutting down services
2009-01-15 10:43:00 Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land writes: Google ?s announced they?re closing or ceasing development of a variety of products as part of analready continuing move to keep efforts focused on other products with greater usage. These include an end to video uploads to Google Video , closure of Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Dodgeball, the microblogging service Jaiku and the Google Mashup Editor. The closure of ... More About: News , Services , Twitter
A chat about Basecamp
2009-01-13 01:43:00 I had an interesting IM chat with my friend Jon Ward, a project manager with whom I recently worked. We were discussing the calendar functionality in Backpack and Jon brought up one of his pet bugbears – the lack of time-spanned events in Basecamp . Jon likes Basecamp but as a project manager he wants to be ... More About: Chat
MehWorld Expo
2009-01-07 17:31:00 I just don’t get all of the excitement over the Mac World Expo Keynote, OK, so Apple does produce some great products but the fanboy hype around the event seems a little too much. Probably the most exciting thing was the speculation about Steve Jobs ’ health. He’ll be okay though, “he’s like a god who knows ...
What I learned from writing the ?Web Advent? Series
2008-12-28 14:00:00 When I set myself the challenge of posting every day for 24 days, it was a spur-of-the-moment idea without any real consideration of what was involved. Having successfully completed the entire run of 24 posts containing 300 web resources of one kind or another, There are a few things that I’ve learned. Daily posting is not ... More About: Writing , Series , Learned , Advent
It?s Chriiiistmaaaas!
More articles from this author:2008-12-25 11:00:00 Merry Christmas everybody, after 24 daily posts featuring 300 things I hope that in each post there was at least one thing of interest if not some value. Thanks to everybody who got in touch to say they were enjoying my web advent series. If you missed them here’s the full list: Web Advent Day 1 – ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
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