It’s about time for another look at some basic mistakes that people make on the internet. Today we’re going to be looking at URLs. It’s important to design a useful URL scheme for your web site. The easier your URLs are to understand, the more likely it is that people with share them with their… Continue reading Basic URL Advice
Category: tech
Google Maps Error
I spent an hour or so this weekend working out my exact latitude and longitude so that I could see the Google Maps photo of my house. Now it seems I may have wasted my time as there is a margin of error in Google’s co-ordinate system. Lloyd pointed me at the Register story. Here’s… Continue reading Google Maps Error
MySQL 5
Earlier today I was at an internal company presentation about MySQL 5. There seemed to be a lot of fuss made about new features like stored procedures, triggers and views. Features that I was using in Sybase in 1992. Without features like these you don’t have a database – you just have a few datafiles… Continue reading MySQL 5
EuroOSCON 2006
This years EuroOSCON has been announced. It’s on the 18th – 21st September in Brussels. Last year’s conference was great, so I hope to be there again. Oh, and there seems to be another similar conference taking place in the US in July.
iRiver/iPod/iAudio
It’s over six months since I got my iRiver H140 and I’m very happy with it. Unfortunately I can no longer recommend it to new buyers as it’s no longer available and I’m told that the replacement model (the H340) isn’t as good. But this afternoon someone mentioned the iAudio X5 to me. It has… Continue reading iRiver/iPod/iAudio
Maps and Time
Dan Hill has a brilliant idea – adding a time slider to Google Earth so that you can trace the development of a map through time. This has to happen. Only possible downside would be the amount of time I’d spend exploring old maps.
Bad Bulk Email From ft.com
Here’s a good example of how not to run a bulk email list. Some time ago I registered with the Financial Times web site. At that time I must have given them my email address. But I’m certain that I wouldn’t have ticked any boxes marked “send me email”. I never tick those boxes and… Continue reading Bad Bulk Email From ft.com
Google Web Survey
See, this is a good example of what you can do if you’re parsing every page you can find on the web. Google has been examining the HTML used in the pages that it trawls and has published its findings. The results are interesting but not altogether surprising. The executive summary seems to be “most… Continue reading Google Web Survey
Computer Shopping
There’s an entertaining piece in today’s Guardian about the joys of shopping in places like PC World[1]. There is one vital rule to entering such a store: never, under any circumstances, ask a question. The answer will be 30% repetition, 30% wild conjecture and 40% utter gibberish. I also like the description of the sales… Continue reading Computer Shopping
Lineak
(Non-geeks will probably want to ignore this entry) If you buy a keyboard these days, chances are that it will have a number of extra keys on it. Ones for opening your email application or your web browser or for controlling the CD player. If you’re using Windows then your system probably came pre-configured to… Continue reading Lineak