Google gets the lurve bug

We've started to use Google Docs to manage the workload of our remote workers -which I have to say works pretty well, logging on today I was really impressed to see that Google Docs had gone all out to pimp out their interface.

I think it's really nice so for those of you who don't use Google Docs click the image to see the results :)

It's little things like the heart instead of the star...

Ok, back to managing peoples time :P

Britain's gone nuts

I don't know when Britain decided this but it seems that every time I read the papers at the moment I read yet another absurd idea from up high but this one had me laughing so I thought I'd share:

The Justice Ministry is calling for the removal of the word "prostitute" - which has been around for almost 200 years - from criminal statutes. Ministry officials argue the word carries too much social stigma and are pushing to replace it with the phrase "persons who sell sex persistently." Try saying that with a mouthful.

Amy Winehouse - the Birmingham gig

Ever since Amy Winehouse hit the UK music scene Stacey, her father and I have been wanting to see her live because there's no doubt she'll be entertaining so when the opportunity to go see her just down the road from here came up there was no turning it down!

If you're like me and don't have enough time to follow the latest celebrity gossip headlines you'll not know that her husband has been jailed, I'm not entirely sure why still but I think it's got something to do with her beating someone up and then him trying to pay them off to drop the court case. Anyhow I digress.

I spent the entire week looking forward to the gig as we don't get to see many gigs (the last was a superb gig by Jack Johnson in the NEC) though despite my celebrity news ignorance even I knew the gig would be controversial as the first time I saw her on Jools Holland's show she was wasted out of her mind swaying on the stage and the second time she was just as wasted at Glastonbury but I wasn't expecting what we got.

After turning up 40minutes or so late for her performance she was clearly in pain. She started rushing through her set, from past sets I've seen her perform she tends to introduce her band before starting but that didn't happen and even her songs seemed to be rushed. Within two songs I had a feeling was wrong.

After 4 or 5 songs she stormed off stage without any explanation and we were left wondering whether that was it or not -a few people got up and left but after a while she came back on stage and started again but she was in tears though most of it. I can't say her words were overly legible and at times it sounded like a bag of cats.

It was one of those historic gigs that was awkward to be at but I'm glad I was even if it was just to see what everyone was going to talk about the next day. I really hope she sorts herself out (or as much as possible!) but I really disagree with her management who IMNSHO were out of order getting her up on stage.

If you ever get the chance to go see Amy Winehouse I really would because the band alone is worth seeing and her two dancers come backup singers are great. If you want to see photos of her gig you can check out my photo album of the gig here.

Bartering for everyday items

It was recently that time of year again when my bank balance takes a massive hit as various premiums are taken out for things like car tax, car insurance, house insurance etc so I get a little anal about finding the best deal.

This year, my target was to get my car insurance below £1,000 which seeing as I'm now (boo-hiss) over 25 shouldn't have been an issue but I had a feeling it wouldn't be an easy feat seeing as I drive a sports car, heck I like a challenge so off I set.

As I didn't have an issue with my current insurer I thought I'd see what deal they could offer me so they were my first port of call. I knew what they had sent through the post (over £1,500) which I thought was a little steep so I'd give them a chance to knock it down. Success! They took over £100 off -only another £400 to go!

I then went through Money Supermarket's online insurance comparison site to see what else was on offer. It came back with a few closer to £1,200 so I started calling -once again I called my current insurer who came down to £1,100 so I called the next cheapest on the list (£1,200) and told them if they could match the other quote I'd be interested. They of course did and came in at around £900 which was pretty dandy!

This went on for a while, every time I got a quote I would call around each company and give them the chance to "beat" the other one until I was batting between two companies -one being my previous insurer. After careful negotiation I ended up paying just shy of £600 for my insurance and actually ended up with a higher miles allowance than I did at £1,500 -despite what you're thinking, the insurances were otherwise exactly the same! That's a whooping £900 saving for a little phoning around!!

This got me thinking, are we regularly unknowingly paying more for our goods/services? I tend to barter out of principle if I can, usually just as a challenge but is it the same as banks have gone with financing¹ in which case I wonder what other companies are doing it? I know companies often factor in a small % to accommodate the discount requests etc but does that mean we should barter for everything?

¹ I've found when looking for funding, if you want £100 and ask for £100 you tend to get £75 as the bank assumes you have over-inflated your request to accommodate their % reduction so the next time you go in, you ask for £130 instead and so it goes on, each pre-guessing what the other person is after in an environment of distrust leaving those people who don't want to play "the game" (or don't know about "the game") out of pocket.

Chip and Pin -is it really more secure?

We've officially been using Chip and Pin in all stores since around February 2007 in the UK which has made life a lot easier in many ways but ever since it's introduction, I for one have had concerns over the claims that it's safer. I agree that it is (or was) harder to find out someone's pin number but has it made shop assistants more complacent?

Stacey and I have a joint Egg Card -I know, what WAS I thinking ;), anyway, these two cards look identical and even had the same pin number and as a result, we recently got them mixed up. I can't say for sure when it was we got them swapped around but one thing for sure is that it was a good couple of months ago. Ever since, we've both been using the wrong card without being questioned, at a guess, I think this has gone on for around 4 months and I only noticed the other day when I looked down and read the name on the card when I was paying online.

This for me is pretty concerning, ok it's because I know the pin, the shop assistant assumes I'm the card holder and doesn't check the name (which the used to when they were forced to check the signature -if they bothered checking that of course ;)).

I think it's also easier to find out the pin too as people aren't overly cautious about entering in their number, I've even seen an old lady in a wheelchair type her pin in on the terminal which was on the desk while she remained lower down in the wheelchair, allowing anyone within about 10m to read what she was typing in. She then promptly put her card back in to her bag and hung it over the back of her wheelchair -where any unscrupulous person could come along and "borrow" the card. It's not just the elderly however, even the young allow other people to read the pin.

I would be interested to know the statistics in crime reduction, I wonder if they're as high as the government were predicting or whether these predictions failed to include the main weak link in the system -us.

On the whole however, it has made life easier and I like Chip and Pin despite these (human) errors, to an extent I think it has made it harder for the criminal to steal (though before he had to learn the signature) but I think people need to be more cautious.

Our beer making weekend

My mum gave me a slightly odd Christmas present this year -a beer making weekend. I like many 20 something relished the opportunity to spend a weekend trying out a multitude of different beers, learning what goes into making one and more importantly how I can concoct my own sweet ale. Why then did I start this post saying it was somewhat of an odd present? Well mainly due to my training and much to Stacey's delight I'm virtually tea-total which means my beer-drinking experience thus far in life has been vastly limited to the odd drop of Kronenberg Blanc or Corona (my two current favorite beverage choices) and I can in no way call myself a beer connoisseur (or indeed want to call myself a beer connoisseur). Always wanting to try new things however I went to the beer making weekend with a clear and open mind.

We arrived at Nether Stowey Brewery after a fairly straight forward journey (god bless in-car sat nav systems -they really do take the pain out of navigating) a touch later than planned which meant the other attendees of the beer making weekend had already had the chance to get acquainted with our teacher for the weekend "Ian". I don't know too much about Ian other than he enjoys beer, works -as and when he likes (or so it would appear)- as a very successful employment lawyer and that he likes good beer (I know I've already mentioned that but he really did like his beer...).

The weekend started with a short lesson in beer making, some of the different techniques/flavours produced and a little background behind beer, for instance, did you know that beer was drunk as the primary drink until fairly recently as water was not safe to drink? Or that pale ale was produced by running water through the already used mulch? It was then given to the children as a much weaker beer? Or how about: Most beer and wine is not vegetarian as they use "finings" to remove the impurities (cloudyness) which are made from Fish Liver...

Followed was a discussion on both which drinks we tended to drink at home and what sort of beer we were all looking to produce. There were 5 of us in our group, obviously we were all going to have different opinions of what we wanted from "our" beer. Before we made our final decision we had the part that I think everyone was looking forward to the most -the beer tasting.

The idea behind the tasting was not to get drunk or simply down a load of different beers, we were taught how to taste (and so appreciate) each beer's qualities. It's amazing how different beers that you would assume were similar taste. The names of different beers was also intriguing. My favourite was the acclaimed "Titanic". Having won numerous awards I thought it was going to be a delightful drink, but lets just say the drink went down as well as the boat...

Ian and his most hospitable wife Lynne also run a B&B (The Old Cider House) so your accommodation over the weekend is in very pleasant surroundings -and the food to an excellent standard, we quickly relaxed. It turns out that Ian not only runs beer making weekends, he also produces a selection of fine ales for the local pubs -some of which go down a storm, others not...

The Saturday was primarily spent mulching the various ingredients in a giant vat before leaving it to simmer for a few hours -during which we were left to our own devices -Sam, Pat and I resorted to wandering the streets and playing Pooh sticks of all things in the village's stream.

We then spent most of Sunday naming our new creation, I really dislike trying to name things, naming my company "The Site Doctor" was hard enough but something that came over time, we had a matter of hours to name the beer and create the label. We went round in circles trying to think of something witty yet meaningful, comical yet serious. In the end we settled on "That" with the slogan "Making Life Taste Bitter" -I can't say it was my first choice but the majority ruled.

It was a good 6 weeks before Nether Stowey Brewery finally sent us the products of our weekend of hard work. Carefully packaged in a large cardboard box were 12 bottles of fine ale. I for one (as I'm sure is true with the rest of the group) was not sure what to expect from them so decided to store them away for a special occasion. When I did finally crack one open, I was pleasantly surprised, I can't say it's something I would choose to buy in a pub but it was certainly more drinkable than I was expecting! I've still got a few bottles remaining so if you are -or were- the recipient of one of my bottles, you were either very much liked by me -or disliked, depending on your outlook ;) Needless to say the "Gaunt Brewery" will remain little more than a dream for now...

If you're interested in learning how to make beer, why not try out Nether Stowey's beer making weekend for yourself? I would think it'd make a good stag do. Check out www.4ale.co.uk for more information.

First thoughts on the BlackBerry Pearl

I’ve always been adverse to getting a BlackBerry for a few of reasons:

1. I don’t get away from work much as it is so I felt having emails on my BlackBerry on the go all the time would be one step too far.
2. The size of the BlackBerry –they’re ridiculous, I like my phone to be as small as possible so it interferes with my life as little as possible.
3. I’ve heard horror stories about the increase in bandwidths to manage the email push.

Then while we were looking at new contracts over Christmas Stacey picked up the BlackBerry Pearl which was small and sleek and suggested I gave it a go. As she didn’t want to change from her V3 we agreed I’d give it a go for a month and if I didn’t like it I’d have her free upgrade (a Sony Ericsson w810i).

I’ve had the BlackBerry Pearl for well over a month now so I thought I’d share my findings in case anyone else is thinking of getting one.

How does the BlackBerry “work”?

There are plenty of tutorials for the BlackBerry and far more advanced information on how the BlackBerry actually works but I thought it may be worth over viewing how it’s configured and the basic concepts.

BlackBerrys use something called “Push” Technology to retrieve emails, your email client (Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird etc) classically collects email from a server by contacting the server and getting a list of emails and then downloading the emails. BlackBerrys on the other hand have the email sent to it from the server.

When you first get your BlackBerry you have to configure your email accounts with your BlackBerry’s ISP (in my case O2), you supply them with server details for your mail account (POP3 settings). Your ISP will then periodically check your email account and collect the new email messages which are then encrypted and sent (or pushed) to your BlackBerry (in a similar way to an SMS message). The BlackBerry then decrypts the email and allows you to read it. Simple eh :)

My thoughts on the BlackBerry Pearl

Things I like about the BlackBerry Pearl:

• It’s size –it’s no larger than a lot of the other phones out there at the moment, in fact it’s smaller than my old Motorola V3 while it was closed (though it’s about 5mm longer)
• It’s synchronisation with Outlook. I used to have a Palm LifeDrive to manage my calander, address book and tasks etc and a separate address book on my V3 which didn’t sync correctly with Outlook so the three were nearly always different –that and I hated having to carry around the LifeDrive as it was just extra bulk... The BlackBerry Pearl however seamlessly manages it all which has meant that I’ve started managing my to-do list a lot more efficiently as well as my address book.
• The size and clarity of the screen.
• Today Plus theme –an extra download but well worth it as it summarises all the info you need to know at a glance on the home screen.
• Battery life –quoted at around 8½ hours talk time I’m certainly getting at least this. A lot of the time I plug it in via USB while I’m working which charges it but I’ve had a couple of weekends away recently which has meant it’s not got charged and it happily coped with the (for me) heavy use without an issue.
• The complete call log of all incoming and out going calls on a user basis –this is great for me if I need to know how long I spent speaking to a client etc (I tend to use my mobile for most outgoing calls as they’re all free ;)).
• The degree of customisation (though this is also a downside as it is somewhat complicated).
• The fact you can customise what the side buttons do.
• The standby button –why it has a keylock I don’t know as it gets in the way of the standby button.
• The voice dialler –that’s awesome.
• VoiceRecorder+ (a voice memo recorder for the BlackBerry Pearl from ShapeServices – www.shapeservices.com)
• The fact you can add delays into the number dialling to quickly and automatically navigate the IVR options for systems you regularly use.

Things I dislike about the BlackBerry Pearl:

• It’s pretty complicated. Unlike most phones these days each application has it’s own settings and finding where they are is sometimes a real PITA.
• You can’t set ringing profiles to activate at certain times of the day.
• You can’t send SMS messages from it through your computer.
• It doesn’t ring and vibrate at the same time.
• The ringer is a little quiet at times (though people suggest drilling holes in the back of the casing sorts this).
• The key lock which sometimes gets in the way of taking the phone out of standby –I expect there’s a way of turning it off but I’ve not found it yet.

All in all I think the BlackBerry Pearl is a superb phone and I’ll certainly be keeping it. I’ve setup a filter to ensure I don’t get spam coming through on it but I still get between 10 and 50 emails a day on it, the data transfer is still low (it’s still under 100KB) but I don’t surf the web etc.

O2 offer a deal at the moment where you can have unlimited data for £10pm on top of your bill, my thinking is if I start to use more than £10 of data a month I’ll upgrade but atm it’s all good. In regards the additional load on our mail server I’ve not noticed anything significant but I’ll analyse this in a couple of months as the calls should be clear. To avoid spam emails I’ve setup a separate mail account that the O2 server collects from, then from my main email accounts I forward any that are sent directly to me and without my spam filter’s headers added to my GMail account which then filters pretty much everything else missed by my server’s filter before forwarding it onto my BlackBerry account. I realise this is a slightly long winded method of managing it but it has meant that 99.9% of all spam has been ignored. There have been a couple of emails missed (i.e. where I’ve been CC’d) but I can live without having those on the go ;)

I had an issue when I first got the BlackBerry Pearl that all numbers would be dialled with the prefix of +44 and the leading 0. As it happens, the fix is pretty simple:

1. Open the call log
2. Press the menu key (the BlackBerry icon)
3. Choose “General Options”
4. Choose “Smart Dialing”
5. Change the country code to +44

WowWee FlyTech DragonFly -awesome!

I was planning on writing about this new gizmo that a friend of mine from the states Doug Setzer has got his hands on but then he asked me to and I didn’t really feel like it after that ;)

Just kidding, Doug’s bought a WowWee FlyTech DragonFly and I have to say it looks great fun. He’s written a review about the WowWee FlyTech DragonFly at www.mydragonfly.info which is worth checking out. As usual he’s pimped the site out with Google AdSense so before you start clicking on his adverts make sure you have a click on mine!!

Now I’ve got to plan a trip over to the states so I can have a play with his WowWee FlyTech DragonFly...

WebDD -I was there, were you?

What an awesome event, I was originally in two minds about going to the latest conference installment from Phil Winstanley, Dave Sussman (and all the other dedicated people involved with the other DDD events) but boy am I glad I went.

This time I decided to take it to the next level and rather than driving down and back on the day I’d drive down the night before with Stacey and stay over in a local hotel. This worked really well, not only did it mean I was awake for all of the seminars but I could get some work down the next day too ;)

Anyhow, back to the day, for once I had the foresight to choose the seminars I was going to attend before I arrived and decided not to attend all of Scott Guthrie’s talks mainly because of the following I knew he’d have but also because of the great alternatives available so here’s my breakdown of who I went to see and what I thought of their talk:

Microformats - HTML to API (Glenn Jones)

Read Glenn Jones' blog post about the day

GlenN Jones (not Glen Jones as was listed in the schedule ;)) presented a very interesting talk on microformats, it’s not quite what I first thought it was (for some reason I thought it was some form of HTML applets but lets not go there!). Microformats are certainly something I’m going to look into in the future but as Julian Voelcker has pointed out quite how practical they are to use in a CMS situation I’m not sure.

I think from an SEO point of view and also from an information sharing POV they’re very interesting and I’ll certainly be integrating them into various sites for testing purposes sooner rather than later (in fact if you check out my about me page they’ll be there with the new update coming soon … now I just need to re-work my tag output* using IISMods' URLRewrite).

*Glenn pointed out that  when using the rel=”tag” attribute the last “word” in the associated URL should be the tag itself -something I didn’t know but will be sorted as atm it’s along the lines of “CategoryView,category,Business,Business%20Start-up%20Advice.aspx” etc which isn’t very useful.

I think in principle microformats are a good idea for something like a blog or a semi-static site where the developer (or someone with knowledge of microformats) has control over the content but how you could role them out in a client managed site is a little more complicated and something that will need some more thought -do you offer buttons to insert the code markup for them? Can you offer nested content easily etc.

The other thing about them I’m not too sure about is (miss)use of the abbr tag -again that was only something I picked up in the talk so may have missed the point, I’ll need to look into it further.

Either way it was an interesting insight into a new concept that I’m going to support if I can :). Check out the main microformats site at: www.microformats.org

Glenn Jones is also the developer behind the back network site that was used to link all the delegates together, it’s an interesting concept that once again promotes a social network on the internet which is all the rage at the moment but also allows you to interact with other delegates before the event -this is something I’d have done had I had more time before the event!

Download the slides to the Microformats - HTML to API talk by Glenn Jones

Web Accessibility: What, Why, How, and Who Cares? (Bruce Lawson)

Read Bruce Lawson's blog post about the day

Making web sites accessible is something I’ve been interested in pretty much since I got involved with ASP.Net 1.1 and I get endlessly tired of hearing fellow ASP.Net developers complain that you can’t make web sites accessible using the ASP.Net platform -balls can’t you, ok it’s not something that comes out of the box and at times is a little awkward but a lot of it is just common sense and consideration.

Bruce Lawson’s talk was a breath of fresh air, it was great to see someone having the courage that I’m yet to muster (well, more the time but hey) to convince my fellow developers to make their sites accessible.

Why the hell shouldn’t your site be accessible to all? It’s not all about money, in my mind it’s just about being fair to others -following (as ever) Google’s moto of don’t be evil. I liked Bruce’s method of presentation as it was far more personal than the usual “you should care because it’s the law” or “you should care because you’re missing out on a ton of money”, when asking the question “who cares?” -using his words not mine- he said “rather than quoting facts and figures at you trying to convince you, -my mate Theresa does”. I think this in itself was a different method of engaging the audience and I certainly felt it worked.

The talk wasn’t particularly in depth (which baring in mind the audience I expected) but I felt it was enough to plant the seed of interest with those that weren’t otherwise that aware or interested about accessibility. I hope that they’ll now actively encourage fellow developers to take action -not necessarily by redeveloping their past sites as many clients can’t afford this, but by giving some consideration to accessibility in future designs -i.e. DON’T use buttons for menu systems!

I can’t hand on heart say all our sites are overly accessible but I’m learning and I feel each new site we’re involved in is that little bit more accessible. Bruce did share a very useful site called “Blind Webbers” where you can get in contact with screen reader users -I’ll certainly be checking that out with the new design for The Site Doctor, for others interested Bruce sent me the link: http://www.webaim.org/discussion/mail_message.php?id=9019. I’m thinking I’ll see what they think of Miss Mays adult store -could be a good introduction!!

The point that made me laugh the most was his demonstration of using “Click Here” as link text, his demo was simple but effective -you can check it out on his site: http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/index.php/2007/webdd-conference-slides-and-questions

One thing I do need to think about is the order of elements on the page, i.e. at present this blog layout has the menu appearing before the content -mainly because that was the quickest way I could get the layout sorted, but I think I need to re-order it so the menu comes last -that said I do have a “Skip to content” link at the top -how effective it is I’ll let you know. Another thing I also want to pass by Bruce is image replacement techniques as I’ve tried a few now and I’d be interested to see how they perform on screen readers and the like.

Download the slides for the Web Accessibility: What, Why, How, and Who Cares? talk by Bruce Lawson

Quick and dirty Usability tests - one week, no budget, and no usability facility (Zhivko Dimitrov)

Read Zhivko Dimitrov's blog post about the day

Again, interested in making my sites as user friendly as possible I thought that this would be an interesting talk but it wasn’t quite as it was portrayed -instead he went into how they perform remote usability tests with a budget. None the less it was a fairly interesting talk.

Zhivko is from Telerik and clearly has a fair amount of experience in usability testing, I was hoping he’d have some good ideas on how to offer usability testing on no budget but sadly he didn’t. There were a couple of interesting points raised however that I don’t think I would have thought of -firstly the re-use of testers, if you use a tester more than twice within a year they’ll start to know what you want them to say rather than what’s there. The other point raised was if you’re using remote testing, you loose the non-vocal indicators of frustration such as a furrowed brow or someone scratching their head.

Zhivko’s opening demo however was a recording of a guy trying to find a grid component on their competitors site, despite the fact they spent a fair amount of time laughing at the guy in the background I thought this was a great example of a poorly designed site and how important it is to highlight your site’s calls-to-action which is something that I’ll have to remember while optimizing our newest SEO client for online poker The Rivercard -one of the issues we have already highlighted is that many of their download links are below the fold of the screen which reduces the chance the user will click the link.

Download the slides from the Quick and dirty Usability tests - one week, no budget, and no usability facility talk by Zhivko Dimitrov

Connecting Design to Real Business Value (Brandon Schauer)

Visit Brandon Schauer's blog

As with Zhivko’s talk, this was another talk that wasn’t quite as it was portrayed by the title, but I was pleasantly surprised by the content. Brandon Schauer’s talk was more about business modeling and how analyzing the current business method can be improved with a little thinking (and design) -ok that’s obvious ;) but his methods were nice.

I found the talk incredibly interesting -especially following my mini-series on business start-up advice, I thought this was a really well timed and interesting talk. Some of the ideas he offered were simple and to the point so you can apply them to any business, the issue I have with it though is whether I can apply it to any of my clients -I’d love to take the time to go through Miss Mays adult store and help them improve some of their business processes but they don’t have the money to invest and sadly neither do I.

I do however think that I can apply some of the concepts he was talking about to an example business which in turn could then be a starting point to discuss business improvement with clients. This however will take a little time and I think Stacey will need to be involved as this is what she’s primarily trained in. Although I love developing and I don’t think I’ll ever get away from it (certainly not in the foreseeable future anyways) I am getting more and more interested in business analysis, it’s not something that I’ve really got any experience in yet (having only been in business for a few years) but perhaps one day it’s an alternative career path I can choose…

Either way, Brandon’s talk was well worth seeing and if he’s ever at a future conference I attend I’ll certainly make the effort to see him talk.

Download the slids from the Connecting Design to Real Business Value talk by Brandon Schauer

WPF/E (Scott Guthrie)

Visit Scott Guthrie's blog

For the final talk I decided to watch Scott Guthrie’s talk about WPF/E and boy what a talk it was! I almost didn’t get in as we were hearded in like cows (which was most amusing I have to be honest), the woman stopped me right on the entrance -I think much to Julian Voelcker’s delight as he’d managed to get a seat. Luckily though the women on the doors (yes women -not burly bouncers!) took pity on us poor, desperate geeks in admiration of some Yank they didn’t know and let us line the sides of the auditorium -which meant I ended up getting a front row (floor) seat.

The talk was one of those “look at what’s coming” type talks but with a twist, it was something that I can see being of real use -and more than that gave you the urge to try it out. WPF/E looks like a really exciting new technology -even if Julian does think it’s just the same as Flash. As I don’t particularly like flash I think this will be a nice introduction to our development arsenal. That and the possibilities are far greater than those offered by Flash -especially where data interaction is involved.

Scott Guthrie did show an impressive demo of WPF/E which can be seen at www.vista.si -it’s one of those “wow, I can’t believe I’m seeing what I’m seeing” moments, the site is basically a replica (working replica) of Windows Vista -but on the web. It even works with Firefox!

The interesting point that I picked up on is their method of rolling out the WPF/E platform to users, rather than offering the usual Windows Update installer, it sounds as though it’s all going to be done in the same way the flash play is -a small (1.1MB IIRC) file will be downloaded the first time you visit a site that requires WPF/E and that’s it!

I do have concerns over the accessibility of WPF/E but Scott Guthrie did assure us that later versions of WPF/E will be made more accessible. At the end of the day however, I guess it’s just the same situation as entirely flash sites -those that want to offer them, have to offer an accessible alternative (and as Bruce Lawson pointed out -NO, IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE UGLY!).

It was also nice to see Scott Guthrie talk as there are so many blog posts around the net talking about how they saw him, now I can say that I’ve seen him talk -somewhat sad but hey!

The slides aren’t yet online but I’m sure Scott Guthrie will upload them to the Scott Guthrie's presentations page soon enough!

In summary

I always take a conference as a whole -there’s always going to be at least one talk which isn’t quite what you expected, if you can come away with at least one nugget of information that you didn’t have before -or- with a little of that zest for doing what you do back again it was well worth attending. In this case I got a real buzz out of most of the talks and have plenty of things to try out -now I just need to find the time!

And if all that wasn’t enough to get your juices going and wanting to do some more development, I (I think for the first time ever) won something in the raffle -I was in the queue hoping for the book on accessibility by Bruce Lawson but actually won a years subscription to ComponentArt’s Web.UI component set -I’m well chuffed at that, now I just need to find somewhere to use them!! Oh, I shouldn't forget the free copy of Microsoft Expression Web we were given, and the T-Shirts and, and... :D

I did get to meet up with a few people off the MsWebDev list but sadly not all -Mickey, I’ll have to say hi next time. The one thing that did amaze me was how long the lunch was, I don’t recall any of the DDD events being that long.

If you went and you’ve not already done so, you should go and leave feedback on the event -it’s the only way they can improve it ;) so go leave your feedback on WebDD (http://webdd.co.uk/Feedback.aspx). Apparently you can also review it on the back network site (http://webdd.backnetwork.com/reviews/editreview.aspx

If you missed out on WebDD 1, hopefully there’ll be a WebDD 2, I’ll post any news I have as soon as I have it -for my one blog reader that is :)

Allmightys launched

Before Christmas we pitched to develop a web site for a friends new idea, we didn't get the project sadly. However last night I got a mailer stating that it was launched so in an effort to help the site get into the rankings a little more and to show no hard feelings (GRRR) I thought I'd post a link here :)

Good luck Filip and Kon! I hope it works out for you.

The mailer he sent out is too wide to fit on here sadly but here's the spiel (typos and all :P)!

50% off at Yo! Sushi

I love sushi so a while ago I signed up for the Yo! Sushi mailing list and now I get all sorts of little discounts coming through, I thought I'd share their latest offering with everyone else. To get 50% off at Yo! Sushi, go to their website and fill out the form:

http://www.yosushi.com/sale.php

I know the sushi purists out there will start going on about how it's not "real" sushi, but it's good enough for me -and tastes that little be sweeter half price ;)

Now go, entertain and impress your clients at Yo! Sushi with your discount -I won't tell!

40% discount voucher for the Threshers Group

For those of you who like to dabble in a little festive cheer, I thought I’d share this 40% discount voucher for the Threshers Group. The main catch is you’re only allowed to spend £500 at a time –best get that printer started…

Download the 40% discount voucher for the Threshers Group.

The voucher is valid until 10^th December 2006

Update: If you're looking for some naughty fun this Christmas, check out the Miss Mays Adult Store discount voucher

Time Breakdown of Modern Web Design

After the fun and games we had with IE and sorting out an old CSS design for www.technikfloor.co.uk on Friday when I saw this pie chart I thought it was an excellent summary of a modern web designer’s life.

Personally I feel my Teal coloured slice is smaller but hey!

Originally posted at: http://www.dangerouslyawesome.com/2006/07/02/throwing-a-wobbly/

Gazumped

As some of you know, we’re selling our lovely house 68 Campbell St (www.68campbellst.co.uk). The house has served us well in the past as there’s an office at the rear of the property that we can run the business from and plenty of room for all my CD’s and Stacey’s shoes.

We’ve also found our next place and all was progressing fine until the other day (now a couple of weeks ago) we were called and told that the buyers had pulled out just before the point of exchange. Obviously they’re perfectly at right to do so but man it’s got my back up. We’ve done all the surveys on the next house, sorted all the legal mumbojumbo and were ready to complete within a week, that left us nearly at square one.

A couple of weeks have now passed and luckily we’re in a position to keep this place to rent it out and still buy the next house which is great news, but if you’re out there reading this, you’re really lost out on a lovely house and I just don’t believe the excuse “It’s an old property” –well der!

I feel sorry for anyone else out there who has been gazumped, I hope it all worked out for you in the end.

Giant Bug Invades Germany

I was sent this link by Craig this morning, it's most ammusing and yet another reason not to goto Germany... :)