Continue reading about "The Google Wave manual" on New Earth Online]]>

Now it's actually possible to say RTFM to people who don't understand Wave (if you don't feel like being polite and showing them). Unfortunately I don't think it's so much as people not understanding how to use it, but what the point in it is. I've been pretty vocal over my enthusiasm for this latest piece of Google technology and I hope more people I know will start actively using it. To try and explain to people how to use Google Wave and what it's all about a new book by Gina Trapani and Adam Pash has been released titled "The Complete Guide to Google Wave".

The preview version of the book's 8 chapters and 2 appendices are free to view online, but it will be possible to buy the book as a DRM-free PDF later this month. The final edition will be released around January as a PDF, softcover and hardcover releases.

Personally I don't think I'll bother reading the book as over the past few weeks using Wave it's proven itself to not be that difficult to use. I have seen some people take a while to get to grips with the UI (suggesting it may be a bad interface), especially with not understanding how to reply in-between other replies and how to create public Waves - but all this information is available on their help page.

Continue reading about "iPhone priced at Orange UK" on New Earth Online]]>

Orange UK have revealed their pricing for the iPhone 3G and 3GS when they hit their shelves on Tuesday 10th November 2009.On a 24 month contract the iPhone 3G will be free no matter which tariff you're on; but if you want to go for the better 3GS you'll have to pay anywhere between £87 and £225 depending on the storage space and the tariff you want to go for. Though depending on the tariff you can also get this one for free if you go for £44.04 tariff for the 16Gb model, or £73.40 for the 32Gb model. On the 18 month contract, as expected, it is a different story where there are fewer options for getting the iPhone 3G or 3GS for free.

The options for these contracts come with "unlimited" data transfer, which is in reality only 750Mb/month which is a bit evil to say it's unlimited if there is in fact a limit. This policy applies to both "mobile internet browsing" (presumably 3G) and to Wi-Fi. In the case of Wi-Fi this policy will be referring to the public Wi-Fi places that will be free for a period. Recent reports of a public outcry over this limitation are causing Orange UK to reconsider this limitation or at least the wording - but we'll have to see what happens by the time the phone is released.

Continue reading about "Mozilla plans for Firefox 3.6" on New Earth Online]]>

Mozilla are ever working towards building a better browser and to keep up (or stay in front) of it's competitors. For most Windows users if you've got a browser other than IE it's likely to by Firefox and with good reason - it's got some great features, it's reliable, and secure. In recent months though it hasn't been the fastest of browsers with competitors such as Safari and Chrome pushing in front of the performance war. Mozilla are hoping this will change when version 3.6 is released, but Beta 1 is already showing some promise.

Firefox 3.6 Beta is built on Mozilla's Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering platform, which has been under development for several months and contains many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers and users. This version is also faster and more responsive than previous versions, and has been optimized to run on small device operating systems such as Windows CE and Maemo.

In addition to this the Mozilla Labs product, Personas, is now built into the browser so the ability to apply themes to your browser is easily within reach without having to know about Mozilla's side projects. This move is probably to directly compete with Google Chrome's ability to easily skin the browser. There are also the following improvements:

• Notification for out-of-date plugins detected in use on a page,
• Native video can now be displayed full-screen or inside "poster frames" (HTML 5),
• Supports the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) for using your own TrueType or OpenType fonts,
• General performance increases (including to JavaScript engine),
• Improves support for new CSS, DOM and HTML 5 technologies,

It'll be interesting to see what the use of WOFF does to the internet and how designers use this to replace the sIFR methods they used previously. Of course though if everyone started using fonts similar to Comic Sans then it wouldn't be particularly good (though I'm sure most designers wouldn't use that!).

Continue reading about "Google Wave opened up for Federation" on New Earth Online]]>

Barely a day goes by at the minute where someone in the tech world isn't talking about Wave, or something new about Wave is being released. This is one of the days where there is something to talk about! Most of the recent noise has been about gaining access to Wave, and the various API's that people now have access to. Those who have access to the Sandbox however, get a something new to experience as Google have opened up Wave for "Federation".

The open source Wave Federation Prototype Server is delivered as a Java application that conforms to XEP-0114, the Jabber Component Protocol. In the examples below we show how to install the Wave Federation Prototype Server as an extension to the Openfire XMPP server, but it should run against any XEP-0114 compliant server. We also have instructions for using Prosody.

The release of Google Wave Federation Prototype Server means is that Google no longer have to worry about their infrastructure being the sole bearer of all the new Waves being created as people can now set up their own Wave servers to share the load. Apparently this is a long way from being the final release and they are asking developers to help them reach this endpoint. In doing this they are effectively taking into account the communities needs, and they are also letting their users finish their software for them which does cut costs. I expect what the result of Federation means is that you'll be able to brand your own Wave servers.

Continue reading about "Google Wave to get an app store?" on New Earth Online]]>

In a day where most companies have an application store for one product or another it should come as no surprise that Google, a long time innovater, would also want in on the action. According to numerous sites on the net it seems Lars Resmussen (@larsras) has more or less announced that a Google Wave app store is something which is inevitable - it's going to happen.

How an app store for Google Wave will work is pretty much just speculation at the minute but I would hope that there will be several tiers, including a free tier so that open source developers can show their wares to others for free. For the extensions that are in paid-for tiers this would generate more revenue for Google, possibly enough to offset some of the cost that the development and implemention of the required server infrastructure will have cost.

Once this App Store opens I think I'll have to write a few open source ones for people to use.

Continue reading about "Amazon to serve Databases" on New Earth Online]]>

I'm sure you'll have heard about Amazon Web Services's storage cloud (S3)and most likely their EC2 cloud as well, but now they're adding what they're calling RDS to the mix - a Relational Database as a Service. I think this is something Amazon will make an absolute fortune on as the reports are showing that costs will vary depending on storage space and the data transfer costs. On top of this they will also have an optional charge for backups, which can be retained for as long as the user wishes.

The way this works is a front-end layer which the user interacts with which makes calls to a MySQL 5.1 backend - each of these requests is also something which is chargeable by Amazon. If they do charge for reads and writes to the database on top of the charges for data transfer and storage then I think it's going a bit far as you're basically paying for the same thing twice. Hopefully that report will turn out to be incorrect though when their official announcement goes out later today.

Continue reading about "Raindrops keep falling on the web" on New Earth Online]]>

Mozilla Labs are at it again - they seem to be in the mode for churning out communication applications at the minute and from the looks of this one it seems they might be a little jealous of the eager anticipation from people wanting to use Google Wave. From the looks of this product it does seem that way, though if you look a little closer it does a little more than it seems. Whereas Google Wave is primarily a medium for communication to take place on, Raindrop is more of an aggregator similar in some respects to Friendfeed.

At present Raindrop can take feeds from Gmail, Skype, email (using IMAP only) and Twitter and collates this information into a single stream in what they hope is an easy to use, extensible environment. So although initial screenshots are reminiscent of Wave it is in fact nothing like it. What you'll also find is that it's not hosted service either - it's something you have to run locally which means having Apache, IIS, etc. set up on your system is likely to be a requirement unless the it uses it's own inbuilt fileserver (preferably with the ability to change the port number).

The whole system is built using modern technologies such as Dojo (a Javascript library) and CouchDB. I'm quite interested in seeing where this goes, but I'm afraid I can't really see a massive use for this at the minute though maybe this will change as their development continues.

Continue reading about "Barnes & Noble introduce "nook"" on New Earth Online]]>

For quite some time I've eagerly awaited Amazon to extend the release of their Kindle e-book reader to the UK so I can reduce the number of physical books that I buy (hence saving space and the environment). Just recently they've finally allowed us to buy Kindles from the US and to use them over here and they will soon be offering them direct from Amazon UK as well.

However a shiny, gorgeously shaped spanner has just been thrown in the works with the revelation of Barne's & Nobles nook e-Reader. It is possibly one of the nicest looking e-Readers I have ever seen and my first thought after seeing it was "want!" which is generally not a good sign for my wallet. At the time of release there will be over 1 million books available which can be purchased and delivered over 3G or Wi-Fi. One of the best features I can see in the feature list is it's ability to have additional storage (in the form of microSD) so if an average of 1,500 books with the standard storage isn't enough you can enough extra to store 17,500 books (on a 16Gb card). They've even thought about people wanting to share their books with others - they allow you to share a book with a friend for free (for 14 days) and there are also a number of free books available for download.

You can share nook to nook, but it doesn't stop there. Using the new Barnes & Noble LendMe technology... you will be able to lend to and from any iPhone™, iPod touch, BlackBerry, PC, or Mac, with the free Barnes and Noble eReader software downloaded on it.

Even the way you navigate books is brilliant - whilst the book part itself uses E-ink technology, the book browser is a full touch-screen colour display that shows the book covers. It's not going to be short on accessories either, at launch there are 30 different covers, and 7 different designer covers for keeping your nook protected in as well as a range of protective "frames".

The vital statistics don't look too shoddy either, 7.7" x 4.9" x 0.5" and weighing in at 317 grams. Even the battery does sound too bad as you can read for 10 days just so long as the wireless is turned off.

At $259 for such great features I've totally changed my mind about buying a Kindle. However there is the downside that it won't initially be available in the UK which is incredibly unfortunate. I do wonder though if I bought one from the US whether I'd be able to buy books okay whilst in the UK.

Continue reading about "New Apple releases for October 2009" on New Earth Online]]>

Apple have unleashed another new wave of products upon us. This time may favourite of them is the "Magic Mouse", a great new multi-touch device using similar technology to that used in the current Macbook and Macbook Pro trackpads.

The Multi-Touch area covers the top surface of Magic Mouse, and the mouse itself is the button. Scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through web pages and photos with two, and click and double-click anywhere. Inside Magic Mouse is a chip that tells it exactly what you want to do. Which means Magic Mouse won’t confuse a scroll with a swipe. It even knows when you’re just resting your hand on it.

The only real problem I have is that it's only available as a wireless mouse and I do get fed up with Apple's wireless devices and know a few people who got to the point of changing batteries daily. Despite my reservations about wireless devices I am still extremely tempted of getting one of these new bluetooth enabled mice as it will be great to try one. It would appear the wired Mighty Mouse is now referred to as the just Apple Mouse now as well. Anyone who buys one of the new iMacs will get one of these with it, but you can buy them on their own for £55 ($69).

Next up there is a new range of Macbooks that are lighter and thinner, using the same Unibody technology as the Macbook Pros. The trackpad is now made of glass, has a better LED backlit screen, and lasts for approximately 7 hours on a single charge. The Mac Mini has also been updated with more memory, a faster processor, and includes 5 USB ports, 1 Firewire 800 port, a mini display port, and mini DVI port.

The iMac range has been updated so that the basic model is a Core 2 Duo, and the top models use the quad-core processors Core i5 and Core i7. The screens are 21.5" and 27" LED backlit screens with an aspect ratio of 16:9 (so it's designed for watching movies on).

You'll also notice that there are some new Apple Remotes. I'm not entirely sure why these have been updated and I think they look a little ugly right now, but maybe the design will grow on me after a while.

Continue reading about "Surf Google Wave with Waveboard" on New Earth Online]]>

It was only a matter of time before people started writing their own applications based around Google Wave and the first one that's come to my attention is Waveboard. Waveboard is an application for Mac OS X (and soon the iPhone as well) that puts your Google Wave account into an application.

What I don't yet understand is the point of it - anyone who has Fluid installed can just create their own Google Wave application using that which makes some dedicated software seem overkill. Even the iPhone application is no different really to just opening it in Safari on your mobile (since you can create a homepage button to it too). Maybe eventually they'll add a feature or something that will make these applications worthwhile, but until then I'm a little sceptical.

A more useful tool I've been using is the Wave notifier extension for Firefox. All this tool does is periodically check to see if there are updates to any of your Waves and will display a count of the number of Waves with updates. On hovering over the indicator it will then list each updated Wave with a timestamp of when it was last modified.

Continue reading about "Tweetie 2 is out!" on New Earth Online]]> The first Tweetie application for the iPhone, and indeed the one for Mac, gained a lot of popularity despite it being one of the paid-for Twitter clients When the second version was announced by atebits, it did create a lot of noise, some of which was aimed towards it being a paid-for upgrade. Personally I disagree with those that think the price is outrageous - it's a £1.99 app and if you won't pay that for a worthwhile upgrade that developers have laboured over then there are plenty of free Twitter apps out there.

Tweetie 2 when you first launch it will ask you for your Twitter login - once provided it will add this account to the account list as it also supports multiple Twitter accounts using a iPhone Mail app style of navigation. The first thing I did after this was to see what settings were available. You can configure:

• Display name
• Date format
• Font size
• Image service 
• Video service
• URL Shortening
• Read Later
• Quote syntax
• Auto rotate
• Text expander
• Sound effects
• Tweet blocker
• Follow cost
• Favstar.fm
• Favrd
• Tweeteorites

You can also configure your login for using bit.ly's API service so that you can see the stats for your shortened URLs as you can for Tagal.us as well. In addition to this you can also configure alternate URLs for the Twitter API should you be behind a proxy server or if Twitter is down. The image services include: yFrog, TwitPic, TweetPhoto, Mobypicture, Twitgoo, Posterous, img.ly, and Custom (provide an API endpoint). The available video services are to upload to are yFrog and Twitvid. URL shortening is provided by: j.mp (bit.ly), TinyURL, is.gd, l.pr, u.nu, Linkyy, and Custom (provide an API endpoint).

When you open your account in Tweetie 2 you'll then see the tweets from the people you follow, and the tabs for @replies, Direct messages, searches, and more. If you want to refresh your tweets manually then you can drag the list down and then release it. A second or two later your tweets in that view will be updated. It's nice and easy to do, and isn't that hard a feature to find either but I did kind of like the "flick to refresh" feature TweetDeck for iPhone has.

Moving on to the searches tab you will find that there are a list of trending topics (which can be navigated to), saved searches, nearby and search. The nearby search is actually quite cool - when you tap it you will be presented with a map view and the request to use your current location. After agreeing to this the map will then zoom in to your locale and you will see tweets appearing all over your map. Clicking in the tweet will show a summary and the tweeter with an arrow to view the tweet. You will also see RADAR like waves pass around the tweet as it gets updates for the surrounding tweets. If you don't like the map view you can also view them as a list.

Composing a tweet is pretty much like any other twitter client on first inspection, but if you tap on the character counter it will flip round and the keyboard will be replaced by a 3x2 square of icons for inserting a picture from your camera, a picture from your photo roll, a geotag, username, hashtags, or the option to shrink URLs in the tweet. Tapping on the character counter again will return the view to the keyboard.

When viewing the list of tweets, if you swipe your finger across the tweet you get the option to reply, attachment options (open link, mail link, repost link, read later, etc.), view the profile of the tweeter, mark it as a favourite, or to repost it. Tapping the tweet will load the tweet up in a full window with more details.

The only thing so far I've not liked about this app are the available retweet formats - my preferred format of "RT username: message" is not in the available list of options which is slightly annoying - even their desktop version supports that.

Overall I quite like the interface and can tell that a lot of time and thought has gone into each of the design changes they've made. For the time being I will continue using this app instead of the iPhone version of TweetDeck just to see how it goes after a few weeks of usage. If you're looking for a Twitter client this is a great one to use, but there are many options out there to also consider.

Continue reading about "VMware Fusion 3" on New Earth Online]]>

Coming at the end of the month, just a week after Windows 7 is released into the world, is VMware Fusion 3. What is pretty amazing about this new release that makes it worth the upgrade is that it now offers native 64-bit support which means it should bring a small performance increase with it along with the ability to run 64-bit VMs. It also claims it should be able to support all the features of Windows 7 when run on your Mac. Sounds good to me!

I used to use VMware Fusion 2, though I did find on my poor old work Macbook it didn't run that well, certainly not as well as on my home, 1st gen, Macbook Pro. Due to this I switched to Virtualbox instead and have not had any problems since - I might give VMware Fusion 3 a go though to see what it's speed improvements are like. Fingers crossed.

Continue reading about "BBC reveal new Doctor Who logo" on New Earth Online]]>

BBC this morning revealed the new logo for Doctor Who. In the past it's been fairly common for the Doctor Who logo to change, but this is the first time the logo or the TARDIS has been changed since it returned to our screens a few years ago when Christopher Ecclestone wowed audiences as the 8th Doctor.

I actually like this new logo as it is reminiscent of how the logo used to look, but with a new metallic effect similar to what was used for the McGann movie back in the 90's.

Continue reading about "Flash for iPhone with Adobe CS5" on New Earth Online]]> Only yesterday I last wondered how long it would be before we see Flash support get added to the iPhone. It's been a popular request from iPhone owners, but this feature has remained ever elusive until now. Adobe Systems have announced that Flash developers will be able to create applications for the iPhone using their newly-arrived-in-Beta Flash CS5.

It's a shame you still won't be able to view Flash applications in the mobile Safari, but being able to create Flash based applications to run on the iPhone is a positive step forward, and not one I expected.  To actually have the ability to build iPhone Apps outside of Xcode yet still have them appear on your home screen is quite amazing and I'm intrigued about how they've gone about getting it to deploy to the iPhone and whether they'll also be possible to be submitted to the Apple App Store or not. I guess these questions will be answered in time though.

Continue reading about "PHPEM 2: Using Capistrano for Deployment" on New Earth Online]]> This month's talk by the PHPEM group was about different deployment methods for web applications, specifically Capistrano. This month the lecture was once again given by Tom Graham (@noginn) of Jadu due to the original speaker having to back out at the last minute.

The basic idea of the talk is that the method of deployment over (S)FTP can be tiresome and is not always the best method of deploying new releases of your web application. You can run into problems here with knowing what version from your repository is rolled out and when you do roll out it's not always easy to know what dependencies there are. This can lead to catastrophic problems when updating live systems and could easily incur more downtime than actually required.

One possible solution is to use Capistrano which was developed by Jamis Buck for 37signals as a way of deploying Ruby on Rails. The prerequisite for using this though is that the target server has the ability to accept connections over SSH and that the development environment you run this from must have Ruby and RubyGems installed. Once you have these technologies installed it's then really easy to install Capistrano:

gem install capistrano

Once you've got a project you want to use Capistrano with it's really easy to prepare the folder for use also - all you need to use from the source folder is:

capify .

This will then set the folder up to be used. Before you can use it though you will need to either configure the pre-defined commands or create your own. All the options available can be configured in a single file and you can specify pretty much any command-line tool you want which means the power of such a tool quickly becomes quite obvious.

set :application, "application-name"
set :repository, "/path/to/repository"
set :deploy_to, "/path/to/application"
set :deploy_via, "copy"
set :scm, :git
set :scm_checkout, "export"
 
role :web, "domain"
role :app, "domain"
role :db, "domain", :primary => true
 
set :user, "user"
set :use_sudo, false
set :ssh_options, {:forward_agent => true}
 
namespace :deploy do
  task :update do
    transaction do
      update_code
      symlink
    end
  end
 
  task :finalize_update do
    transaction do
      run "chmod -R g+w #{releases_path}/#{release_name}"
      
      # Create symbolic links to shared resources
      run "ln -nfs #{shared_path}/bootstrap.php 
   #{releases_path}/#{release_name}/application/configs/bootstrap.php"
    end
  end
 
  task :migrate do
    # Override, we have no migrations
  end
  
  task :start, :roles => :app do
    # Override but do nothing
  end
  
  task :stop, :roles => :app do
    # Override but do nothing
  end
 
  task :restart do
    # Override, no need to restart Apache
  end
end

The above example is courtesy of Tom Graham and comes from his work in creating a Capistrano deployment method for the Zend Framework. I recommend checking this out, especially if you're interested in the Zend Framework, as it will help you understand the configuration of Capistrano.

There is a lot more you can do with deployment software like Capistrano though, you could create an interface for it from PHP or .NET scripts to create staging environments. One possibility I can see with this is a server with some SCM software installed and Capistrano could effectively allow you to version control your content with very little effort. Of course this does pose the problem of how you search over the content if it's version controlled in files, but on *nix based systems you could also reference the grep command line tool to return filenames of what you're looking for. If this is done in the right way so only live versions (possibly referenced to via a database mapping table) then what you've got is some very powerful version control. Translating this to Windows is not as easy, but with Cygwin installed it does open up the possibilities somewhat.

When it deploys a new version to the live server it seems to work based upon the modified timestamp of both the intended version, and the current live version, possibly so that any local changes on the live server are not overwritten by a deployment. I'm not totally certain this is the case though due to how the deployment works - it will upload each new version to a different folder and will then update a symbolic link to indicate which version should be used.

There are other solutions though, such as Fabric. The difference here is that the software is written in Python which means it may be more comfortable for those who are more familiar with Python than Ruby. The way it functions is quite similar to Capistrano in that you can create different configurations (called fabfiles) and can then run them on multiple servers. It's not so much a deployment tool per se, but more of a general purpose tool for managing multiple hosts.

Unfortunately due to technical problems there is no video or podcast update for this session, but hopefully normal service will resume with next month's session. Next month I'm planning on giving a talk at PHPEM on how to learn Cocoa from the perspective of a PHP developer - the reason for this is that since the rise in popularity of the "smart phone" a lot of web-based applications are also getting native applications created for them. If you're interesting in attending this talk it will be on November 5th 2009 somewhere in Leicester (most likely at Demontfort University).

Continue reading about "Google Translate Gadget" on New Earth Online]]>

For those who work on their own websites or blogs, Google have released a tool to aid in getting your site to behave as multilingual. I can see why they think it would be useful, but there are already an incredible number of ways to use Google's Translation service anyway. If someone who speaks a different language to what your blog is in finds it via their search page then they get a Translate option, if they've got the Google Toolbar installed you've got a translate option, and let's not forget that you can actually go to their translation page and paste in text or a URL.

The advantage that this gadget has is that if a user finds your site through a means other than a Google search that they can then translate your site at the click of a button even if they don't have the toolbar installed - that is actually quite useful in reaching out to people who speak other languages as not everyone uses Google.

I think personally I wouldn't copy and paste their code verbatim - I'd take the two script tags and put them at the end of the page out the way rather than having bits of JavaScript floating around the mark-up of my site (I'd probably consider putting it in a load event inside an external file too actually).

Continue reading about "Twitter will soon get lists" on New Earth Online]]>

Twitter will soon be adding something I've wanted them to add for ages - lists. In TweetDeck you can create groups, but most other Twitter clients don't support this. With the addition of this new feature I imagine most clients will begin to add support.

Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you've created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.

What they don't say is whether or not you'll be able to message a list - that would be useful, especially if you want to Tweet all your work colleagues for example in one go. I can't imagine they'll allow this though as it would also "encourage" Twitter spam.

Continue reading about "Notepod" on New Earth Online]]> When I was planning my first iPhone app, Linnaeus (a wildlife observation app) I planned it all on paper first, drawing mockups with arrows between them to show interaction. After a few screens I stopped spending ages drawing out the shape of the iPhone and it's common UI elements such as the status bar at the top and they soon became rushed drawings that only just managed to show the basic outline of what was there.

A few weeks back a friend "tweeted" a link to Notepod, a drawing pad in the shape of an iPhone with the actual iPhone design on each page and graph paper on the reverse. What this means to developers is that you can produce mockups that will give a rough idea of how they are going to look on the iPhone without having to painstakingly draw the iPhone.

Even as a general notepad it's kind of fun just because it's the size and shape of an iPhone and still manages to have 100 pages per pad. The paper is 80gsm, so it's very basic copier quality paper which still isn't bad considering it's purpose is as a sketchpad.

Continue reading about "O2 iPhone exclusivity in UK is broken" on New Earth Online]]>

There has been speculation since sometime in 2008 that when the original contract with O2 ended that someone else would start selling the iPhone in the UK. I did think that this was just wishful thinking from people who didn't want to switch to O2 from their existing networks but it's finally happened - Orange UK have announced they'll begin selling the iPhone 3GS and 3G by the end of the year.

I wish there had been some positive sign that this was going to happen before I bought mine as I used to be on Orange and back then I had better network coverage and better 3G coverage than I do now on O2. On O2 I only have to leave my front door and start heading into the city to get a "No Service" message for awhile - I'd hate to think what coverage is like if I decided to head out into the nearby countryside instead.

I think considering the notoriously bad coverage from O2 it is likely we'll see many people switch from O2 to Orange when their contracts up, and I wouldn't be surprised if some even paid to end their contracts early. I imagine now that this has been announced it won't be long before exclusivity with AT&T in the US is broken and it's expanded to other networks such as T-Mobile.

I think the pricing and tarrifs should appear sometime in the coming weeks, so it'll be interesting to see how they compare. 

Continue reading about "Google ChromeFrame" on New Earth Online]]>

It's no secret, or no surprise, that many web developers dislike Internet Explorer 6 and wished it would disappear. As it turns out Google agree with you and have actually taken steps to help people who are frustrated at being stuck with the browser by offering an in-browser alternative in the form of Chrome Frame.

ChromeFrame is an addon for Internet Explorer which will then allow pages to be viewed using the Chrome engine inside IE so that sites actually look and work as they should in other browsers. To allow users to see your site using Chrome Frame you need to add the following line to the head section of your pages.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1" />

What this does is tell the plug-in that you've specified users of Chrome Frame should automatically see your site in Chrome Frame. If I hadn't specified this on my site then you'd still be able to view it using Chrome Frame by typing the following into the address bar:

cf:http://www.newearthonline.co.uk

So it is fairly straight forward to use, you just add cf: to the front of the URL you want to view. They also have a method for detecting and prompting users whether Chrome Frame is installed in IE and if not it can direct them to a download page for it.

As cool as it might be there will still be some problems - in some cases where newer versions of IE or alternative browsers can't be rolled out easily (such as at Local Authorities) there is a fair chance that their ability to install plugins will also be blocked. It also has a couple of features missed from the implementation of the plugin such as printing and file downloads.

Overall though it's a great innovation from Google and it could be a way forward for many who are currently unable to upgrade or switch. Nice work there Google.

Continue reading about "Google Sidewiki" on New Earth Online]]>

Google Sidewiki isn't a new concept, it's something that many have tried before. The concept is that you could be visiting a webpage and then you feel you've got something to add to the topic or to comment on the site and you can then do so by using SideWiki to leave comments that others can view. Being able to comment on a site from your web browser (specifically Firefox) is something other plugins have been able to do before, and what people using Google Friend Connect can already do.

So instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed.

What they haven't mentioned in their blogpost is that it also provide Google more information about a site when it comes to displaying the site in the search results. I'm half expecting them to change their search results page slightly to show which pages have comments left on them, similar to how it's done in Google Reader. Also, as a site owner you can leave a comment using Sidewiki that is kind of a like a "sticky" in forums - it will remain at the top of the list of comments if you want it to.

In principle, and in these early days as it's first released it looks like a cool concept that may well add value to sites. I think it could provide valuable feedback for both site owners and for people visiting the site who are interested in more information and it could be a step forward in this area for Google. Though for businesses I can imagine the worry this could create - if some disgruntled employee or client decides to be constantly inflammatory about your site or business using this then it depending on whether it will filter abusive comments could well affect your business. If you're trying to win a big contract then chances are your prospective client will visit your site to find out more about your company, if they see many abusive or unsatisfactory comments in SideWiki it could well put them off even if it's only down to a "one off". In all fairness though I can't see this happening too often without it being deserved to some degree.

So far it's only available for Firefox and Internet Explorer but they intent on having it ready for Chrome soon. If you're interested in accessing SideWiki data to use elsewhere then they do also have an API available with documentation for JavaScript and Java.

Continue reading about "Courier: A Microsoft Tablet concept" on New Earth Online]]> All of a sudden there have been huge waves of interest at what appears to be a possible concept for a Microsoft Tablet PC that could just beat Apple to a consumer release if some reports are to be believed. Now what the report is saying is that it's a leaked video and to me that just screams that it's either a forgery by a Microsoft fan who's trying to have a little fun, or some clever little market researcher has leaked it deliberately to test the reaction it gets. The tablet's current name is "Courier" which could either be a reference to the font-face, or to the profession.

If the current reaction is anything to go by then it has met with an astounding approval rate, even from Apple fanboys and fangirls. The video shows a concept which is really cool and some of the design elements I find are very reminiscent of UX elements from iPhone applications such as the Google Maps one (the black box it shows really does look similar). Even the home button and the gestures are so similar to the iPhone interface it does make me wonder if it's part of an elaborate hoax. One more thing that makes me suspicious is that Microsoft are not exactly well know for cool looking designs, and this does look pretty cool.

If it turns out to be a real product that does make it to retail I'll probably be very tempted to try it - those who know me best know I cannot resist a new gadget to play with. I probably shouldn't let a friend of mine see this who likes gadgets even more than me.

If you want more details, the video and photos then I recommend heading over to Gizmodo who originally broke the news.

Continue reading about "Locate Wi-Fi using Augmented Reality" on New Earth Online]]>

Since the idea of Augmented Reality (AR) on mobile phones was unleashed upon us it's been almost impossible to escape it. Even the iPhone is showing early signs of support as iPhone OS 3.1 includes some very basic support. Previously we've seen applications that helps us find out about where we are, or how to get to an underground station - but now we've got a way of easily locating and reading reviews of Wi-Fi points near where we are.

When WorkSnug is released it will work initially in London and then later in San Francisco. The idea is that when you're out and about and in need of somewhere to work you can use this application to see visually where cafes with Wi-Fi and any other work space which offers Wi-Fi connectivity to the public is complete with reviews of how good the coffee, and whether there is a power point available for charging, etc.

I quite like the idea, but until it expands out to other cities I don't think I'll have a great deal of use for it. What would help is if they crowd source the data so that other cities get data filled out fast - with scores averaged out across different peoples findings.

If you live in San Francisco or London and find yourself out and about and in need of Wi-Fi then it could well be a useful App for you to try.

Continue reading about "It's only an Apple event, but I like it..." on New Earth Online]]>

Apple's 09/09/09 event dubbed with the Rolling Stones lyric of "It's only rock n roll but I like it" kicked off with the Steve Jobs taking the stage for the first time since he took a leave of absence. Although people were already aware of iTunes 9's imminent release the first announcement was that the final release of iPhone OS 3.1 would be made available today (which after checking the ADC site it's not yet available as it's showing as Beta 3 still).

On top of this the first music related news is in relation to ringtones - they are releasing approximately 30,000 ringtones in the Apple store at an estimated prices of $1.29 (which is approximately £0.99). The next piece of news is that iTunes 9 is official and is now out although at the time of writing the Apple UK site is still showing the previous version - hopefully this will be updated sometime in the next hour or two. On top of this they are adding the Genius feature to Apps so that you can easily find apps that you might like based on previous purchases - personally I'm not sure how well this one will work unless it also takes ratings into account as you may download an app and not like it. If I download an app such as Runkeeper Pro, would I really want to download Runkeeper Lite? I hope it takes into account things like that. It also features improved synchronisation of playlists and albums, movies and photos with more control.

I think my favourite new feature has to be the ability to rearrange touch icons on your iPod Touch or iPhone whilst it is connected to your machine - this is something many users have hoped for due to how much effort it takes to rearrange icons by dragging them around on your device. I haven't used this App management feature yet but looking at the pictures of it I would imagine it's going to be intuitive and easy to use. One other feature which has surprised me is "Home Sharing" - this means that it is now possible to share your songs and other purchased content with up to 5 other computers on your network.

iTunes LP is yet another announcement that attempts to convert people from purchasing CDs to purchasing them from the iTunes Store instead. What this new feature brings is only to a select number of albums, but it provides a way to "visualise" the album that you're listening to in the form of animated lyrics, performance videos, and photos of the band. In a similar move for films purchased from the iTunes Store you can now get special features much like you would on DVD and Blu-Ray - I think this is a great step forward to moving people away from physical purchases and towards buying-on-demand.

Whilst they've been making all these changes to iTunes they've also made an improvement to the Store UI with nice new Snow Leopard style menu's and the ability to preview and purchase other songs from anywhere in the store using the new "Quick View" feature - this means if you're on a page with a number of artists on you're interested in you can preview and/or purchase their music without leaving the page you're on.

As many people speculated there are now social media features integrated with iTunes so that you can share what song you're listening to or what video you're watching by using the "Share with Twitter" and "Share with Facebook" options. I find it amusing and fairly symbolic that MySpace has been excluded from this - especially as the majority of the MySpace userbase are now bands.

After a brief spate of game demos for the iPod Touch / iPhone (which I'm sure was there only to increase the suspense and the expectation of another announcement) was some news on price changes for existing iPod models - we'll now be able to get the 8Gb, 32Gb and the new 64Gb iPod Touch models for $199 (£149), $299 (£229) and $399 (£299) respectively. I find it pretty cool that a 64Gb model is now available as it's now surpassed the capacity of the first iPod I bought (which was a 5th Gen, iPod Video). In line with these price adjustments they also lowered the prices for the iPod Classic, the iPod Shuffle (now anodised aluminium in 5 colours) and the Nano before the event and have now added a 160Gb iPod Classic to the line-up along with an iPod Nano that comes with an integrated camera capable of shooting video, a built-in FM receiver, microphone and speaker. The new iPod Nano is available in 9 different colours, 2 of which are exclusive to the Apple Store.

I'm not quite sure what to think of the camera announcement for the Nano as they haven't added it to any of the other models. The reasoning behind this is that there is now a broad range of iPods available and that they'd prefer people who want more expensive iPods with cameras to get an iPhone instead. I think the new iPod Shuffle headphones with an integrated controller will be welcome to those who don't like the existing ones though personally I've never been too keen on Apple's earphones so I've stuck with Sennheiser instead.

Changes to the iPhone OS 3.1 include:

• New features from iTunes 9,
• Gift vouchers and codes can now be redeemed in the App Store,
• Ability to download ringtones,
• Video from the Mail application and from MMS can now be saved in the Camera Roll,
• Trimmed video can now be saved as a new clip,
• Enabled bluetooth no longer impedes Wi-Fi performance,
• Telephone numbers can now be pasted into the keypad view,
• and Anti-phishing features added to Safari.

You can also read my review of iTunes 9 on RateItAll.

Continue reading about "PHPEM: Introduction to Zend Framework" on New Earth Online]]>

This week I attended a "lecture" held by the PHPEM group about the Zend Framework. It's aim was to introduce people to the Zend Framework for the first time so that their methodology and design patterns could be understood. The lecture was given by Tom Graham, who is a blogger for noginn.com and an engineer for Jadu.

To start with we were shown what the Zend Framework actually consists of and how it is not just a company maintained product, but is added to and maintained by a very active community. The framework itself follows the MVC structure although the model part of it is very loosely defined as you'll see from watching the video. The lecture also covers the basics of creating your own Zend-based application.

You must visit the blog post to see this video

I decided to tag along with my camcorder and recorded the presentation for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately due to Vimeo's filesize limits I've had to split the 40 minute lecture into chunks.

If you're interested in finding out more, or attending the next PHPEM session you can find details on phpem.org.

Continue reading about "Site design tweak" on New Earth Online]]> You may have noticed a slight change in the design of New Earth Online's navigation bar... in that it is now a black bar instead of grey boxes. I'm not too keen on it now that I've implemented it so I may revert to the old design. For now though it shall stay just in case I change my mind again. If you have any preference between the two please don't hesitate to let me know which you prefer... maybe I should start a poll.

Continue reading about "IE8 - Browser for the Better?" on New Earth Online]]>

This morning whilst browsing RSS feeds I noticed a post about Microsoft starting a new Internet Explorer 8 advertising campaign called "Browser for the Better". This one is slightly different though, what they have said is that they will donate 8 meals to "Feeding America" in support of the Hunger Action Month.

Only complete downloads of Windows Internet Explorer 8 through browserforthebetter.com from June 8, 2009 through September 30, 2009 qualify for the charitable donation to Feeding America. Microsoft is donating at least $1.15 per download, with a maximum of $2.30 per download by  users of Windows Internet Explorer 6 after August 24, 2009, to Feeding America up to a maximum of $1,000,000. Meals are used for illustrative purposes only. Meal conversion is effective until June 30th, 2010.

What Hunger Action Month is all about is to raise awareness for the number of Americans who do not get enough food to eat, and Feeding America is the US's leading hunger relief charity.

It's a worthy cause and it's good to see that Microsoft are willing to help people in need, but using it as a marketing tool for getting more people to download IE8 does seem a little underhanded as it seems like they're doing it purely for their own gains. Of course though there is a big difference between downloading the browser and actually using it so if you haven't already downloaded it and you use Windows you may as well download it (but not use it) in support of their efforts.

Continue reading about "Opera 10 is out!" on New Earth Online]]>

Today Opera Software have released the final version of their Opera 10, their latest iteration of a browser with a long history. It's initial release includes versions for Windows, Mac and Linux and is available in 43 languages - that should be enough to cover most people!

Amongst it's features is Opera Turbo, a web accelerator-like technology design for those with slow connections (such as people browsing using 3G) where it compresses the pages so that less data needs to be transferred - also saving you money if you happen to be on a contract that is priced per megabyte.

You'll also notice a number of GUI changes in the style and behaviour of the tab bar, and a customisable "speed dial". It has finally followed in the footsteps of Firefox by including a dictionary to show spelling mistakes as you type as well.

Other features include Opera Dragonfly - a web development tool, and Opera Mail.

Continue reading about "Is Emailing Content The Future?" on New Earth Online]]>

The idea of emailing content to a site to post content isn't a new one, and many people have tried this to varying levels of success. It's envisioned as a way of making it easier to post content from wherever you are; so if you're out and about you can just send an email from your phone and it will be added to the site automatically. You can probably instantly think of a few potential pitfalls with a technology like this, but they are ones that can be solved by adding a human element to the publishing process.

Typically when I think of publishing by email I think of problems with providing any properties about the content such as categorisation and any additional information that is required such as metadata. There are various solutions to this such as sending the content to a holding place where it requires further information to be added at a later date, but if you're good enough at coding then it should also be possible to categorise based on keywords picked up within the content you email.

Another potential pitfall is that of security, something which is usually handled by using the sender's email address to identify a registered user. If you want to allow unregistered users to post content then there is potential danger from spammers, but again there are ways around that such as making sure the email address uses a spam filter on the email server.

The latest site I've seen to go with the idea of submitting content via email just so happens to be one of my favourite sites at the minute; RateItAll. RateItAll is a consumer review website where anyone can register to submit their own reviews and can rate and comment on other peoples reviews to give consumers the best possible range of opinions for not just consumer items, but for hot topics. I've been registered for a few months now based upon the recommendation of someone I consider a friend who has great tastes. That's the thing about that site too, it's not just serious business of writing reviews, it's also a place to socialise with like-minded people where you can debate differences in opinion.

Now what RateItAll has done is to take the concept of how people review items and to turn it into something radical and worthy of review itself. To submit a review of an item by email it is so easy:

1. Open your favourite email client
2. Use reviews@rateitall.com  as the recipient email address
3. Type the name of the item into the subject
4. Type your review into the email body
5. Click send

That's all there is to it, and then it will try it's best to automatically categorise it, if it can't then a human will intervene and complete the process. I have seen some people mention that their reviews have ended up in the wrong place but I guess that will be down to generic item names.

What's great about how they've done this though is that you don't need to be registered to submit a review by email either. I look forward to seeing how this feature evolves over time. I think it's something more and more sites may begin to offer as people move away from solely browsing whilst at home or work, but begin to browse more from mobile devices. Since practically everyone has an email address these days why not use it for publishing? There's no need to fiddle about logging in, you can can just send an email.

Continue reading about "Internet Explorer 6 will live on" on New Earth Online]]>

For a while now there has been a campaign by web developers everywhere to try and kill the Internet Explorer 6 web browser. It seems however that these attempts are in vain as Microsoft have been reported as stating they will continue to support the aged web browser until at lest 2014, 4 years longer than previously reported.

"Friends do not let friends use IE6," said Amy Barzdukas, Microsoft's general manager for Internet Explorer.

"If you are in my social set and I have been to your house for dinner, you are not using IE6," she said. "But it is much more complicated when you move into a business setting."

"It's hard to be cavalier in this economy and say 'oh it's been around for so long they need to upgrade,'" Ms Barzdukas told journalists in San Francisco..

Web monitoring firms estimate that 15-20% of people still use IE6 to browse the web.

In some ways it is clear that what Microsoft is doing by continuing to support IE6 is to alleviate the costs of a forced upgrade by not forcing the issue. Most PC's running IE6 should be able to cope with running IE7 or 8 with no additional hardware of software costs, but in businesses and organisations the rollout of any software whether it is free or commercial will often incur a labour cost.

One example might be the use of Internet Explorer 6 in a hospital. If IE6 was no longer supported, they would eventually be forced to upgrade. Now take into account that most hospitals will have proprietary software to handle patient data (most of which I imagine would be built on Access), but lets just imagine their software interacts with IE6. By forcing an upgrade to IE7 they would have to divert resources in order for someone to go round updating their machines with the IE7 or 8, but before this they would have to do extensive testing to ensure that their software would not break under the new browser. So it's a process which could be quite pricey for some organisations.

So whilst I do despise Internet Explorer 6 I do understand why it is essential for Microsoft's support for it to continue. Whilst that is important, what I don't see as important however is for websites in general to develop with IE6 in mind due to the wasted time in getting your site working in it for the small percentage of your target audience who uses it. Of course though, there is the feeling that you don't want your site to look broken, even on an archaic browser such as IE6, as they could be a prospective customer and may be put off by a broken site. The problem here however is that business designing website then have to spend more time getting the site to work which does of course cost money also.

Probably for now one of the best courses of action to take is to alert users of IE6 on your sites that they are using an out of date browser and that they need to upgrade (as has been covered before). This way over time you may get to a point where when you look at your statistics you no longer have an IE6 users.