Microsoft could save 45 million tons of CO2 emissions with a few lines of computer code, need I say more?
Tag Archives: Tech
IE7’s Zoom Feature
I am of the strong belief that IE7′s Zoom feature is significantly flawed.
The problem is explained at boagworld.com.
The worst result is the that on many sites it will force a horizontal scroll bar! A well known no-no.
The other problem which doesn’t appear to be mentioned there is the fact that background images aren’t scaled, and this can result in illegible text if the colours aren’t defined – not always possible.
Ready for IE7?
The majority of (legit) Windows users may get a shock over the next 24 hours or so as IE7 is rolled out.
How soon until users stuck with IE6 start to get frustrated with ‘broken’ websites?
Will it encourage them to get legit copies of Windows?
Of course not, there are too many alternative browsers out there, notably Firefox (my browser of choice).
Have you seen any sites which break horribly in IE7? Or any particularly good examples of new designs?
bbPress
bbPress is a fantastic example of how the web should be made.
While there are of course a few (minor) issues, bbPress is still a beta / pre-v1 product (0.72 ‘bix’ in fact), and ‘issues’ may actually be simple matters of preference.
If I was to set up a forum I’d use bbPress. But what to talk about?
Blogosphere Could Change
I genuinely believe that the oddly (and uncatchily) named Real Time Matrix and/or similar services could significantly affect online publishing.
While aggregation and blog-search aren’t new, services like this could change the dynamics of the blogosphere – the big guys might find themselves getting less traffic as the smaller sites get more attention, and hopefully there will be less of the echoing effect recently discussed.
There could also be negative effects – the more underhanded blogs could try and cheat the system, in much the same way as keyword spamming affected early search engines.
What else could change? What else do we want/need?
RSS updates
It has occured to me that RSS (etc) readers should allow the user to refresh the post content.
This would mean that if the post is updated, which many often are, those edits would be visible from within the feed reader.
Better: get the reader to check the posts and notify the user if the content has changed.
Even better: allow the user to set a minimum-change threshold, so that if the edit made was for example simply correcting spelling they wouldn’t be notified. But if the update was adding new information then it could trigger.
If anyone knows whether this has already been done, please lmk so I can be suitably ashamed for my complete lack of research.
(Please accept my apologies for the rambling ‘style’ of this post)
Bounce Spam?
I, like a lot of people, get a lot of spam emails.
I get a lot of these via a catch-all, but I’m now turning that off. Should I bounce or just ignore those messages?
I’d like to think that the spammers would be put off by emails bounced back to them, but think I have to accept that they probably won’t even get the bounces, so I’d just be creating a little more pointless internet traffic.
Perhaps the ‘email tax‘ suggestions should be adapted to only make people pay for bounced emails?
Antec Fantastic
I recently got myself a secondhand Aria SFF case from Antec.
Unfortunately I found that the card-reader which is built into the front was missing, and the eject button on the optical drive fascia plate had been broken and was MIA.
I contacted Antec to see if it would be possible to get a replacement drive cover, expecting to have to buy it and other bits and pieces in a bundle.
Amazingly, I got a short, but very sweet, email back saying that they would send me replacements free of charge!
They even apologetically mentioned that it would be shipped from the States, so may take a while.
Just a couple of days later they arrived in perfect condition.
UPDATE: I’ve realised that I don’t have the cables to attach the front audio and card-reader to the mobo, so am going to see if they can help again.
UPDATE 2: (Aug 18) I’ve finally got round to asking, let’s see how it goes…
SUWiki
Cars Behaving Badly (Site Proposal)
I have been bouncing an idea around my head (and off a couple of other people’s) and would like to open it up to your thoughts, reactions and suggestions.
Although I drive very little (I work at home), I see a lot of bad driving. A lot of the time it’s simply inconsiderate, sometimes it’s downright rude, other times it’s downright dangerous.
I have also seen many vehicles in dangerous physical conditions, and sometimes with illegal modifications.
Instead of whinging to the gf, I figured it would be much more useful to make a note of these things.
Making these notes could be useful in discovering who is to blame, and what could be done to prevent the problems in the future.
Some of you may be thinking ‘Goody Two-Shoes‘ etc, but there are too many people who complain about something and then do nothing to make it better. (Think Honda advert – Hate Something, Change Something, Make Something Betterrrr!)
The features I’ve considered for the site include:
- Note of the:
- Crime / Misdeed / etc
- Vehicle Make & Model
- Vehicle Registration
- Driver description
- Age / Sex
- Location
- Using Google Maps API
- Rating of the ‘crime’
- which would also show which crimes annoy us the most
All Web2.0′ified. All written in swanky OO PHP etc etc.
It would be anonymous, but limited to one report per Reg per IP per day. (Or something)
So, what are your reactions? Would you be concerned (for me) about litigation over slander etc? Would you submit reports? Would the police (or other authorities) be interested?