Category: Internet

Schmap’d

Back in April I had a stroll around Glasgow with Shakeel and took some photo’s. It was a pretty good way to spend a day and I plan to do some more winter shot’s around Glasgow during the Christmas break…weather and time permitting.

Anyway, to the point of this ramble. Someone at Schmap liked one of my photo’s and from today the Glasgow guide is featuring one of my snaps. Nice one. Even nicer is that I’ll be able to see if anyone clicks on the photo and visits my Flickr photo’s via their new stats service.

Stats and other Mince

Okay. My love of statistics knows no end. Three stat related topics, one of them seasonal, all of them useful..ish.

  • Google Zeitgeist 2007 has now been published. There is nothing too surprising this year although it’s great to see the Wii top the poll as Christmas comes around. Great stock management Nintendo. Definitely keeps people thinking you are the must buy games console.
    Where's Wii?
    Also worth noting that HD-DVD is more searched than Blu-Ray despite Blu-Ray disks outselling HD-DVD and that more people want to know what love is rather than who God is.
  • Flickr StatsMore stats can now be found on Flickr. If your a pro user, activate your stats and in roughly 24 hours you too can see who is viewing your photo’s. As expected nobody is finding any of my photo’s interesting but it did remind me to get my tagging and geo-tagging sorted.
    The stats are really well presented. Clear with lot’s of white space. You can also dig down into screens that show more details i.e. all photo’s. You can then sort by comments, date’s, your photo’s that have been added as a favourite by other members. Very informative and a great place to waste a few minutes. I even found some photo’s that I had put up that I had totally forgotten about.
  • Now onto a festive stat. Well, when I say stat I really mean reviews. My friend Roy has been road testing Mince Pies (not to be confused with mince rounds). So far the mince pie to beat is from Starbucks. I’m in shock. Having just sampled a Marks classic mince pie I really must seek out a Starbucks version over the holiday period. Anyway, if you have any more recommendations for Roy and his co-workers to test then add a comment below and I’m sure they will oblige.

I hope to have my own further stat/review post up this weekend. Stand by for startling revelations!

Flickr Picnik

Photo editing has arrived at Flickr. It makes use of Picnik and having a play around this morning it looks very easy to use and pretty feature rich. You can easily edit any photo, add effects, play with contrast and colours, resize and crop and also apply an ‘auto fix’.

Picnik Crop

It’s nice to have these tools online as opposed to on your computer. Not all photo’s need Aperture or Lightroom and it’s great you can do this editing from anywhere while easily saving results within Flickr. I wonder if it works on the iPhone?

Flickr Related Tag Browser

A great Flickr search tool – Flickr Related Tag Browser. Type a tag and watch the preview window fill. Move your mouse to the edge of the screen and related tags to your search will be shown – click and view those photo’s. A great visual way of searching through Flickr.

With updated map searching, video support and online picture editing all coming soon it’s looking like good times ahead for Flickr.

Falling Behind

Looking at these two graphs for broadband speed and price, the UK is falling behind not only world but European nations when it comes to overall connection speeds and how much broadband costs.

With more services moving to digital distribution and our ever increasing dependence on internet connections and services it’s critical that the UK’s infrastructure is improved over the next few years to give us a fast and reliable broadband service with a greater choice for the consumer.

Quickies

Not much time to blog, but enough to post some links…

  • Loads of iPhone coverage everywhere else but here. Posts I liked – iPhone stress test, iPhone Disassembly and John Gruber’s first impressions. Unless there are some serious issues found with the iPhone over the next few months then it will be my next phone. A Euro 3G version would convince me even more. Time to start saving those pennies.
  • Pownce. I have 5 invites remaining if anyone wants to jump on another web bandwagon – share chat, links and files with friends over the web. Site’s been sluggish for me although I’ve no intention of using it to be honest.
  • Flock. The web 2.0 media sharing star browser that’s been in beta for forever has now moved up to beta 0.9. There’s a fairly big increase in features available so I’ve given it another try. While the Media Bar is nice it still feels buggy and thrown together. It’s crashed fairly often for me and Firefox still feels quicker. At least you can now use nested folders in bookmarks. It looks shiny but Firefox still wins pretty easily for me.
  • Speaking of Firefox…there is a Firefox eBay edition. Only mentioned as I hadn’t heard of it and Roy’s too lazy to post anymore.
  • Tom Bihn bags rock! Been using mine for the last few days and it’s been great. Finally my laptop can leave the house in relative safety.
  • Sky have now stopped phoning me about broadband…although I’ve now received two mail shots since. Although if Virgin media don’t get their act together I could well be moving to pastures new.
  • Speaking of Sky, why are they now putting HD movie premiers on Sky Anytime first, sometimes weeks before they are broadcast on the HD movie channel? Sneaky swines.
  • Anyone want a Joost invite?
  • It’s stopped raining!

Virgin Traffic Management

Virgin media finally revealed details of their traffic management system which they’ve been trialling for the last few months. While it’s no big surprise that it was coming with so many other companies implementing it in some shape or form some of the limits seem a little low.

  • Broadband Size: M – download more than 350MB during peak hours (16:00-00:00) and your connection will be throttled to 1MB download, 128kb upload lasting for four hours from when it was implemented
  • Broadband Size: L – download more than 750MB during peak hours (16:00-00:00) and your connection will be throttled to 2MB download, 192kb upload lasting for four hours from when it was implemented
  • Broadband Size: XL – download more than 3GB during peak hours (16:00-00:00) and your connection will be throttled to 5 MB download, 256kb upload lasting for four hours from when it was implemented

While I’m not against throttling this seems to be a blunt instrument to address the problem. Instead of throttling back torrent and newsgroup ports to a slow speed they are dropping your full connection speed. For those on M & L, those limits are pretty easy to reach. Just one of the podcasts I subscribe to is over 400MB for one file. With some careful management throttling could be avoided but your back to downloading overnight and during the day to keep peak hours free for normal web use, VOIP, gaming etc which can eat into those limits fairly easier.

Put it another way, once 20MB connections are introduced just 21 minutes at full speed would take you over the 3GB limit. Not much, eh? However factor in that after the 21 minutes you are still getting 5MB and it’s not really too bad. It will be frustrating though if your hosting on Live and you pop over your limit, throttling back upload speeds and potentially dropping your friends. Also, does the new connection speed implement seamlessly or is there a drop and re-connect?

I can’t really see me having a problem on XL although I was considering dropping to L once the upgrades were completed. After these changes I’ll be staying where I am.

Joost

I have three Joost private beta invites to give away. I’ve used it a couple of times over the last week or so and while it’s a bit buggy it’s one to watch especially with the new content deals being signed. If your interested then leave a comment or drop me a mail. Note that Joost works on Windows and Macs.

Over The Top

While death threats against bloggers aren’t to be condoned and the people who did it should be found and punished by law in the same way that I could be if I made death threats in person in the real world, the call for a Bloggers Code of Conduct is a real over reaction. Tim O’Reilly has put together a draft set of rules with friends that he hopes will be adopted by the blogging community. Blog’s are all about freedom of speech, and with freedom of speech you do get people with extreme and sometimes controversial/unpalatable views. I’m fine with that and if something I saw posted here was against what I wanted then it would be removed. However I don’t need someone else defining rules nor do I feel the need to wear a badge that reassures people I follow a certain code. I’m sure the graphics for the badges are temporary but the fact one is a sheriff’s badge just sets the wrong impression…as if the blogging world has lost control and it needs to be policed.

Hopefully this will all die down and turn into some guidelines that bloggers are free to copy to their own site if they wish. I personally don’t see the need.

*Update* – This blog has now been upgraded with the Airbag Department of Security Blog Advisory System – see bottom right of sidebar. The blogging world is now a safer place.