The American blog network Gawker Media (Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker…) launched a bold re-design of its websites last week. Gone is the fairly standard news/blog style website and in its place a single page website that loads articles without requiring the web browser to completely re-load a new page: us.gawker.com.

The redesign has not rolled out to all versions of its other sites with the UK and Canadian versions still displaying the old design.

The redesign has caused a lot of discussion both on the design itself and technical implications with creating a website in this manner.

It centres on the #! part of the URLs http://gawker.com/#!5759634/china-becomes-worlds-second-largest-economy – the ‘hashbang’. Twitter and Facebook have also started using them recently.

One of the problems with loading content without completely loading a new page, using a technique like ajax, is that traditionally search crawlers like the Googlebot would not be able to load and index the content. Google has since published a guide on how to make pages that load in this way available to be crawled. The crawler swaps the hashbang part of the URL with ?_escaped_fragment_= http://gizmodo.com/?_escaped_fragment_=5759634/china-becomes-worlds-second-largest-economy

The hashbang approach has received both negative criticism and more measured discussion on the reasons for resorting to this. This is due to the fact that the URL does not actually point to the true location of the article and requires JavaScript once you reach the website to then load in the correct content.

Regardless of the technical pros and cons, a difficulty for websites like Twitter and Gawker is to change users’ expectations for these types of websites. Few people have complained, with Google Maps and Gmail working without requiring full page reloads but, for text content websites that contain articles and information, adopting this approach seems to have agitated a large number of users.

My time wasting top ten…

1. Play with a virtual spider! http://www.onemotion.com/flash/spider/
2. Just bored? Try http://www.bored.com/
3. Feeling like you don’t know who you are or why you are here? Try http://www.allthetests.com/
4. Need to work on you IQ? Try http://www.braingle.com/
5. Really, really bored on a Monday Morning? Ummmm check this out http://www.chickenonaraft.com/
6. Like Captain Underpants? Help him save the world here http://www.pilkey.com/bionicboogerboy.php
7. Fancy becoming a member of the Simpson’s cast with Simpsonise Me. http://simpsonizeme.com/
8. Need to know what to say? Something silly, clever or just bad taste?
    Try these quotes online. http://www.witty-quotes.com/Clever-quotes/
9. Can’t decide what to do, ask the spirit in the Crystal Ball.   http://decidefor.us/
10. Ever wondered what happened to the 70s/80 Kung Fu Star Chuck Norris?

As I race into my 50th year on this world, I remember with a certain disappointed feeling back to all those I used to look up to.  Those that stood up to the establishment and made a stand for free speech and reform in society.

Unfortunately, the disappointment stems from seeing these guys selling out and doing “butter” ads and TV talk-ins for upcoming shows. Yep Billy Brag and, the “Public mage Ltd singer”, John Lydon, I’m talking about you selling out to the big corporations!

But then I can’t talk as it’s hard to be a “Left Wing, Militant Activist” when you come from Bournemouth!  I for one couldn’t be a left wing, militant singer songwriter, when the only thing that affected me here in Bournemouth was the “Blue Rinse Brigade” moving down here and taking over my hometown.  It’s a real shame we have more Bingo halls than Night Clubs, Pubs sell real ale and sherry more than alco-pops or lager and the empty parking spaces seem nearly always reserved for the disabled or elderly… It’s funny we also have more cycle lanes than most cities, but mostly go unused around here.. Even the students don’t use them….

But anyway, I would love to see where all those angry rappers of today will be in 30yrs time.  Probably selling double-glazing in a dodgy TV ad or co-staring in some soap opera, (can you imagine Eminem  co-staring in Corrie? I can hahaha).  Like the other sell outs, they will be just happy that someone actually remembers them .. As they were in their younger days!

Well good luck to them, Corrie with Gangsta issues, or Snoop-Dogy-Dog selling Activia… Ummm even Beckham selling Blue Rinse Hair Colour.. lol.. Looking forward to that…. NOT!

Yep, I am back.. It’s been a long summer working abroad in Korea. Burning hot days, even hotter nights and nothing but noodles and fish to eat.. (Good job I like noodles lol).

The worst thing about being away from family and friends was not being in a country that you can only talk to about 1/3 of the people due to the language barrier or even having to use your own poorly pronounced Korean to ask them for most basic of foods or services, it was… Wait for it… Wait for it.. Having to use Windows 7 and iPads daily!

Well OK, it wasn’t all that bad.. It did work, well most of the time. Getting over the issues with Cross-Platforming was “Interesting” (as Spock would say). Having iPads freeze halfway through training programs was annoying but, as Scottie would say, “Yer cannot bend the rules of physics Captain!” I also kept hearing Dr McCoy say, “It’s dead, Jim.” (Oops, he meant “It’s dead, John)”. At this point I wanted to chuck the whole damn lot out of the window and start the job again, with 386s and Windows 3.1! Well no, I am not that sadistic lol.

So what do you do, when the IT support can’t even get the Hardware to work?Well, go back to the one thing that always works… Pencil and Paper! Yes, Pencil and Paper. For me, with 30 something years in IT under my belt, it was refreshing to see a room full of potential IT Gurus struggling to work with paper and pencil. No Internet Explorer, no “cut and paste”, no spell checker,  laptops, calculators and Pocket PC put away and back to basics. Just man with pencil and paper for a whole day, while the support guys tried to sort out the issues with the hardware and software.

The thing that amused me was, they actually loved it! After the initial shock, and being told to write everything in English, they entered into the session with so much enthusiasm it was almost untrue. In fact, the next day when the IT hardware was back and working (well almost working), the students actually seemed disappointed.

I think the moral here is IT is good for some things, but should not be the “be all and end all” of IT life, either in business or training. This forced ad-hoc approach was refreshing to both the student and me the teacher. We accomplished more in that day than we did with all the Hardware present and working, and also achieved a greater understanding of what was being presented. OK, perhaps it was my teaching style that helped in this case, or it was their willingness to also improve their English and learn what was being presented, or it was just the fact that Koreans have a better approach to problems and solutions than European’s do? I don’t know.. You decide. Sad but true, too many rely on Powerpoint and Projectors to get a “Fuzzy” point accross!

Live long and prosper

Beam me up Scottie!

It still astounds me how amazing the web is! You can access pretty much any information about anything, anytime.

In a similar vain to one of Andrew Wilson’s first blogs What’s the alternative, I thought the blog would be the perfect platform for sharing information found on the net or online tools that we find useful.

Here’s my selection of top tools:

1) Colorcombos
Probably more suited for developers working for agencies for a number of clients or contractors who work on a variety of projects. This site will identify the colours of your / your clients’ websites and give you the HTML hexadecimal colour code.

2) Developer Fusion
A little source code converter from C# or VB .Net to Python, Ruby, etc…

3) Mindomo
I’m still playing around with how to use this properly but in theory it looks great. It’s a kind of online mapping tool but I think there are so many more possibilities than the obvious.

4) Salary Checker & Calculator Tools
IT Jobs Watch has the most accurate, up to date figures in my opinion, but ContractorUK also has a range of useful calculator tools. Obviously many of them are for contractors only, however it’s still worth a look.

5) Firebug & HTML Tidy

Two of my favourite free online tools, especially the html tidy. There were a few free online tools before, however you would have to go through and manually change any small mistakes that it picked up. This HTML tidy does it for you!

6) PDF 2 Word
Does what it says on the tin, works wonders!
Beware though, there are some pdf to word tools out there that randomly change the spelling of some words, this one seems fine but remember to proof read just in case!

7) Robtex
Provides you with detailed dns mappings for a given domain

Southpark Studio
Arguably the best free tool for fun – Southpark character creator

9) DropBox
Easily synchronise files across different computers or access from a web browser. Free version offers 2GB of space.

10) UML Sequence Diagram Maker

11) UML Class Modeller

12) Google RSS Reader
Basically acts like a dashboard for all your favourite online sites so you can see what’s going on and what your friends are sharing without having to log into individual sites.

13) Browser Shots
Get images taken of a webpage in different web browsers.

14) Voucher Codes
OK, so this is not really an online tool but when you’re a bit strapped for cash it can be handy when looking for cheaper alternatives for an evening out.

If you have discovered any online tools or just great sites that you think could be useful to others, please post them here!

Halo has been out for ages now and I’m getting sick of seeing adverts for it. OK, maybe there are super duper graphics but the whole violence thing does not appeal to me in the slightest. Is this a gender issue? Are there any gaming fans out there who would like to explain the appeal? What concerns me most is the fact that kids are so into the game as well.

I read in The Daily Mail that there are experts who believe that the increase in recent years of ADHD amongst children is due, in part, to the increase in the use of computers and television. The combination of fast moving images and means children now find it difficult to concentrate when reading a book for example.

Although it’s great kids are much more computer literate these days, an invaluable skill that will set them up for life, how can we get the balance right?