The World is Full of Idiots - Have a No Download Day

Strong words but it is true.  Every day we get e-mails, tips, product info on the latest gadget that we can use to make our desktop more productive.  Tools to do graphics, manage our to do lists, improve our surfing the internet experience We blindly download them,  play with them for a few days, weeks and then forget them and even worse then forget to unistall them and make our PC, laptop get more and more bloated.

My advice today is a productivity one.  Look at the tools that you already have on your desktop and learn a little more about them.  Looking for a Productivity App?  Use MS Word.  Create a List.  Open it every day - update ' print ' post save.

Need a note taking application - use Notepad
Need a graphics too - you actually don't - leave the graphics to the designers.  Need to draw circles, boxes and lines - your desktop publishing tools can do that already.

Learn about what you have stop looking over the horizon.  Save your self time learning new apps when you haventt even learnt the apps you have already.

Google Experts - Where are You

Absolutely everyone who uses the Internet now uses Google but so few people are experts in the use of it and can use the power to its maximum.  As part of my website design business in Cork customers often ask me how to get on the first page of Google thinking that as I am a web designer that I am also an expert in all things related to Google.

My short and sweet answer to them is that They cant get to #1 on Google!.

Well not actually true.  You can be number one on Google if the topic that you blog about or the site that you create does not have a lot of traffic.  For example if you write about Ping Tutus for Sheep farmers then you will be number one in Google in a couple of days (come back in a few days and Google this search term and I bet chances are that this post will be on the front page.

But if you want to figure on the hallowed ground for a more competitive area then you need to have some serious Search Engine Optimisation done (SEO for short).  What is SEO?  This is not an area I am expert in.  I know an awful lot about it but will never claim to be  expert as it is a full time job done by people with laser like focus on the topic. There are a large number of factors for getting good ranking here are only 5 that make a difference (not in priority just a dump of items)

1. Keywords on your main page and how they are placed and ordered
2. Your domain name
3. Your domain age
4. Links to your site from other sites
5. Ratings of your site on social networks

There are many many others but this is just a start.  Google Experts beware!

Why is there a Google Map Next to my Competitors Link?

If you have ever Googled a service or business or service you may have noticed a listing of results with a Google Map to the left with the business names next to them.  These results are generated by using the Google Local Business Center service.  Add your business listing and details to this service and put your business name into the appropriate category and it will be added to the listing. Google helps you to step through the process very easily with a video and help files.  As part of my Web Design business I do this as part of my service for all clients.

If there is a lot of competition for your market and related bsuinesses have already your site may not appear on the listing and you have to work on regular Search Engine Optimisation techniques to ensure that Google lists you higher.  However if your competition has not added their site then you may possibly be the only listing there.

Here are 5 tips for adding your business to the Local Business Center your site

1. Fill in all the categories that are there for your niche (research your keywords to make sure the categories are accurate).  You can create your own categories if you do not like the ones Google presents to you.
2. Ideally have a local number with the local prefix.
3. The closer your business address is to the city centre the better as Google checks this. 
4. If possible add some additional information, an image or a video as this shows up attractively on the map and also shows that you are not just a spammer.
5. If you have not done so on your site create your address in a hcard format which is an XML standard for writing your contact details.  The current buzz is that this makes your details more accessible to Google and the Business Center.

5 Twitter tools to Waste the Rest of Your Day

Here are some tools that you can while away the whole day on Twitter with looking at who is following who, counting your followers, grading your performance and so on.  One for a rainy day up a mountain with a broadband connection.

• Twitter Grader  http://twitter.grader.com/ - Allows you to calculate your Twitter Grade.  I played with this for a while and basically you have to be tweeting regularly (every day really  as if you stop your grade slides away down) and also you have to be followed by people with lots of followers.  Check out the site.  It is fun to see where you are in the ranking for your area.
• Twellow - http://www.twellow.com It claims to be a Twitter Yellow Pages.  It is built like a ?Yahoo search engine and looks at your profile and then puts you into a section.  Lion taming has no section.
• Doesfollow http://www.doesfollow.com/  Check who is following who.  Its like when you were (or are) a teenager and asked if X was dating Y.  Now you can do this all day long.  I check to see if @Oprah has seen the light yet but she hasn't to date.
• Twitoria - http://www.twitoria.com - Checks your (or others for that matter - strange) to see if they have been sending Tweets.  Useful for cleaning out inactive followers who may have been either spammers or just joined Twitter and  gave up when their fingers or brains got tired.
• Xefer http://xefer.com/twitter - Shows when you tweet and when you reply.  Cool graph if anything else.  No surprise that I don't tweet when I am asleep (well except when I slip in the odd feed).

PowerPoint Tip that You Will Always Use

I use this tip in most PowerPoint presentations that I give. Short simple and effective.

When you are in slide show mode and someone asks a question and you want to focus the audience attention on the question and not on the slide then either hit 'b' (for black) or "w" for white. The screen will go black or white.

This is useful if there is a pause in a presentation as well where the meeting goes off into another discussion but at some stage you will be returning to the presentation.

Try it believe me it is part of your tool kit that you will always use. Short and sweet. Let me know what you think of it.

1000 Updates - Confessions of a Twitterhollic

As this is my 1000th update on Twitter I had thought of doing a thoughtful well written piece on social media Twitter.  But I quickly gave that up as there are hundreds of sites out there shouting out this type of information so whoosh into the bin.

So I thought back to the places where I have sent tweets from to date.  Here are a few that I admit to at least (the bathroom story will have to wait)

In Hospital

I was visiting someone in hospital last week with my wife and as she chatted and my interest in the conversation lagged., my hand drifted to my IPhone and I quietly opened Tweetie.  I saw a Tweet that interested me and quickly re-tweeted it.  Fix complete I returned my dutiful stare to the conversation.  Fix complete.  They thought I was sending an SMS, dream on - SMS is sooo 90s!!

Stuck In Traffic

Most mornings I spend a little time stuck in traffic - same place every time - unfortunately it is in a 3G blackspot but I still manage a couple of Tweets as I edge along slowly.  Don't tell the police please, but my followers are screaming out for those critical stuck in traffic the updates.

First Thing  in the Morning - Last Thing at Night

I open up Twitter first thing in the AM and last thing at night (which is often the AM these days as well) and check my Tweets and more often not send a quick tweet or response to messages.  Right after brushing my teeth maybe even during.  When will they make an IPhone that brushes teeth?

Tweetdeck

Boring I know but in the evenings Tweetdeck is on all the time while I work on my web projects, study for my BA in Spanish or just plain surf the web. 

Beach

I tweeted from the middle of an empty beach last week in Kerry.  Beautiful view of Mount Brandon and of course had to be shared with my followers.  Snap picture.  Quick tweet.  Now back to the view.

What sort of places have you tweeted from?

Downloading Music

This article does not condone the illegal download of music.  It is merely meant to explain how content can be downloaded using the Internet torrents.

A lot of people ask me how to download music and content from the internet so here is a simple step by step tutorial on how to do this.

Torrent Client

First and foremost the best and non visur laden method of downloading content from the Internet is to use one of the many torrent clients that are out there.  I use Utorrent and find it reliable and intuitive. You can download this from www.utorrent.com  Downalod and install.

Find Content

There are many torrent web sites out there but I usually use www.torrentz.net which searches all the torrents sites.  Go to this type in what you are looking for and it will present you with a list of links to torrent sites that have the content you are looking for.

Click on one of these links.

This will bring you to the site.  Many of these sites have unrelated links that you are not interested in.  Click on the link that says Downlaod Torrent.

Once you have done this the link should automatically open up your torrent client (Utorrent in this case).

Download

The speed of the download will depend on the number of seeds that have this content.  The more seeds (or other computers on the Internet) that have the content the faster the download will take.  It can vary between minutes and sometimes hours and also depends on the size of your download.

You can monitor the progress of your download on the client.  From time to time a downalod will fail.  If this is the case go search for another source for your files and try again.

Have fun...

10 Second Tip

Today's Teky Tip is short and sweet they don't all have to be detailed with screen shots.  Its is using PDFs for presentations.  So often we try and convert a word document or an Excel spreadsheet to PowerPoint when if you just use a tool like PDFCreator it will easily allow you t oprint files to PDF and then allow you use the full screen feature of it to present a presentation like report.

Download it, Its free

Save Money Booking Ryanair Flights

Just a tip for those of you who use Ryanair often. The airline charges 10 euro per person when booking flights by credit/debit  card . There is a way around it though If you buy Ryanair vouchers on the website (very easy process) and then use the vouchers to buy your flights, there are no extra charges for using your
card.  When you buy the vouchers, you get the code immediately and then you  just use that to pay for your flights therefore dodging the extra €10 per person for use of a debit/credit card.

I Made the Mother In Law Happy

Yes I did.  Sister in law had a baby boy last Saturday all together aaaaahhh.  Went to hospital to see the arrival  - ooohed and aaaahed - but then father in law's battery went on his tin can digital camera died after 30 seconds.  I however was completely tooled up with the IPhone and took 40-50 snaps at all angles. But the in-laws went home with no photos.  Father-in-law definitely in spare bedroom last night.

This morning I got into top gear over making the breakfast.  Downloaded photos off IPhone.  Downloaded Photo Story 3 for Windows (free!!).  Created a Project in less than 10 minutes.  Slapped it onto a DVD with soppy music on background.  Sent it over to them this evening.  Big win all round, admiring glances from Mother In Law.  Sheepish looks from father in law - his camera charging quietly in corner.

The IPhone camera although 2MP took some pretty OK photos and because it is slim allowed me get into an angles typical cameras didn't allow me. Saw this on Twitter earlier about some excellent IPhone photos that I really enjoyed.

Have you a camera disaster story.

Are you a Bleeter?

I like Twitter.  I have a deep fear that in the coming months and years it might become a uni-directional place where people send Tweets hoping people will click on their blog/site and they can then monetise it.  Tweetdeck is helping there as I now have a group which I call real people that I grow as I create solid relationships on Twitter and another that I use to drag the uni-directional monetisation monsters.  I suggest we call them bleeters !!




I set up this and 2 other accounts recently.  One I use most is @kdaly100 another I cannot tell you as I use it exclusively for real friends and I don't want you to intrude and this one I am going to use for my web design business. 


I plan to put strong articles here that will really help people with web site design and technology in general.  And no it wont be on this site as this is just a fun tech blog full of various posts that I drop in occasionally.  So please go away and come back another day when I actually have something to say - grin -.

Are you a bleeter????

Microsoft Ignorant

Although I am moving to the cloud at the moment for personal documents I still use MS Apps in work but.

Every day and I mean every day I am amazed that people who sit in offices every day do not seem to have basic skills in the applications. Only yesterday I was in my bosses office and said copy that and then Crtl-V it into the other document. He looked at me blankly.

Yes he didn't have a clue what I was talking about. (Ctrl-V is keyboard shortcut for Paste). Now I use keyboard shortcuts much more than any other thing as when your hands are on the keyboard you can get more done and be more productive. I believe for instance that I can produce more content in an 15 minutes than 95% of other people. Here are some keyboard shortcuts that I use all the time for a number of applications that makes me more productive and allows me pound out content and then turn to it and fine tune. I see so many people grasping for the mouse and this slows you down. So here are some tips that can help you on a day to day basis.

MS Word

Alt -I Return Return - Inserts a Page Break.

I use this when I am either writing a header page for a word document or a table of contents or even when I want to delimit a block of Text.

PowerPoint

When you are creating a lot of slides with the killer shortcut key is

Ctrl-M - Inserts a new slide - Keep typing and you are in the header.

Excel

Alt-I - Puts you into Cell Format Love it

Other Keyboard Tips

Thanks to http://www.twitter.com/jonnyboydublin who reminded me of Windows +M which allows you to minimise all windows at once. Handy in certain circumstances when you have a lot of windows open.

Fianna Fail Mess Up Web Site Launch?

It seems that Fianna FAil raised the heckles of many yesterdayat the Camden Court Hotel in Dublin when they brought many press and bloggers together to present what was titled by Strawberry Media as a talk by Joe Rospars and ended up being a launch of their new web site.

It is clear post event that it was not advertised as a Fianna Fail event but ended up being just this.  THis is blatant false advertising and many people took time to attend.  What seems to have annoyed most people is that there was the way the event was presented.

It it also seems that an internal release by Fianna Fail to its people DID mention that it was to  launch the web site.

If you were not at the event there is some plan to release a video of the presentation but if you are thirsty for information about Rospars have a look at his blog from the campaign.

A Twitter Poem!

I must admit that I had always thought Twitter was a bit of a geeks tool. Even the name brought a wry grin to my face. Editors Note: What IS a a wry grin. But this month I sgned up to give it a try as if anything I am open to new things. I must say that I am really surprised with what a fantastic service it is and the features that are available to it. So I wrote a little poem to commemorate my first month.

Woke up this morning dead late for a meeting
'Cos I had been up late on my IPhone Tweeting

Started with Twitter just a month ago
100 people now following and that's considered slow

Now I use terms like Tweet and RT
People have started to look at me funnilly

Tweet from Web at work from the PC
On my IPhone it has to be Tweetie

Tweetdeck on laptop at night
Following interesting people at the speed of light (Editors Note: COME ON!!)

Expanding my social network every day
Twitter now is more than play

Now I don't just give out my e-mail to other people
As @kdaly100 is one of the Tweeple!!

B. G. - Before GMail (or any e-mail tool for that matter)

I use GMail as my primary mail tool for pleasure and personal web design business.  When GMail was briefly down today I thought about what I could use for sending messages and went back into the past to try and recall how we communicated in the past before mail tools (yes there was such a time!!)

The Inter-Office Memo:  Still strong in some older companies I regularly in the late 80s and early 90s spent a half day slaving over a one page inter office memo, printed it, copied it and then walked from desk to desk handing it out. Now this may seem antiquated (it is a bit) but it had some advantages.

• I got to in most cases get face to face with the person to whom the message was for.  For E-mail we get so much that people often only scan and don't process your message.
• It stopped me making too many copies as it meant I had to walk more so I focused on who the message was for.  We don't always do this in e-mail.
• It allowed me to deliver a better message as with a memo you can add a diagram and it is seen and understood straight away - proff of its success was when people pined it up on their wall for information purposes.  How many people of this for your e-mails.
• I got some needed exercise !!
  

The Phone Call:  An e-mail is often a cop out to a conversation.  A lot of people send a one line e-mail to eliminate the need to have a conversation,  Do you?  Practice picking up the phone and speaking with someone - momentary pause I just did this and had a nice sociable Project chat with a colleauge in the US -

Drop By and Tell: As it says Tom Peters spoke at length in many of his books of MBWA Management By Walking Around.  When you walk around and speak to people it makes all the difference.  Do it regularly and e-mails will actually reduce as you should also encourage people to drop by and update you.

Notice Board(s):  As an add on to the Inter Office Memo you can often communicste by a well written note and a visula and posting it outside youroiffice, on the work notice board or where people can see it and process it quickly.  If you want to publicise status on an ongoing Project this technique works extremely well. 

There is a time and a place for e-mails - I am a believer in it as a tool but it is not an absolute solution to everything.  In a future blog I plan to share how I use e-mail effectively in both personal e-mails and work e-mails.

AutoHotKey for Twitter

I have started using Twitter in the past few weeks and like what I see so far.  I use it mostly on my IPhone using Tweetie  (see Tweetie review) and Tweetdeck when I am on my laptop at home.  In the office I use the web version but I use Twitter mostly as a social and learning tool in the evenings .  This article is not about either as the blogosphere is full of articles about Twitter at the moment I and I am not going to crowd it further.

This is about my ongoing love of the AutoHotKey (www.autohotkey.com) tool which I use primarily for shortcuts and spelling corrections when I type quickly.  For twitter I created one which does this

::rthanks::Hi Thanks for following me I appreciate it. I have decided to follow you as well.  Happy Tweeting !!

I know you can set up autofollow messages but I do not do this with this account at least so I use the above for a quick answer tool. So I just type rthanksand the text expands to the text following. Cool.  Try it.  I have used the entire list of Wikipedia misspellings in an autohotkey script to correct hundreds of  misspellings and expanded it to add more like below which I also regularly mistype.

::mometn  ::moment
::mometn::moment
::pleae::please
::Desing::Design
::sued::used
::hth::hope this helps

hope this helps for the moment !!

Tweetie Review - Iphone Application

In recent weeks I have started using Twitter and am a bit addicted to it to be honest as with my IPhone glued to my hand nearly every waking hour I like to see what is happening out there in the Web 2.0 cloud (is there such a phrase?). I used to be a user of MSN Messenger but Twitter goes a lot further as it allows you form contacts with people with similar interests as you.  I was using Twitterific a free application on my IPhone but it lacked a few features that I needed which may not be ones that other people look for but I really liked.

I have not purchased a lot of applications for my IPhone (2-3 in total) but Tweetie caught my eye and for the price I thought it was worth a try.  Overall I am vary happy with it and here are some of the things I like and a couple I dislike about it.

1. Multiple Accounts

Tweetie allows you to have multiple accounts.  Before I got it I hadn't even considered using multiple accounts on Twitter but now I have a couple for different purposes (friends, blog updates and one for blatant pushing of my fab web sites !!)

2. Easy To Read

It is easier to read on my IPhone and clearly shows the different type of tweets that you have received.  So at a glance you can scroll through and see the relevant messages out there.

3. Search/Trends

It has a nice Search and Trends function with the Trends showing what are the hot to pics out on the Twittisphere.  I like this as with Search it helps me look for people interested in similar topics.

4. Go To User

It allows you to quickly to jump to a specific user and find out what they are tweeting about.  I use this if I see a speciic name that looks interesting and I then can see if they are worth following.

Tools for Virtual Teaming Web Design Projects

I am doing more and more web design at the moment and one of the areas that intrigued me was how I would manage a virtual team for a medium to large web design project.

In these days of multiple blogging tools, tools for interacting like Twitter, MSN messenger and so on and on I though of how I could use the most common tools to be effective in doing a project for a customer while making sure that everyone was in contact and keeping good records.

Google seems to have most of the tools out there that you would need to do the communications at least (storage is another days work).  The team as I would see it would be working on a small design Project and would like to gather requirements, post notes and feedback and chat on small issues aas they come across them.

For e-mail for instance you could use the already solid as a rock GMail and now with multiple Inboxes you can keep business, fun, other projects e-mail in separate locations in addition to using labels.  I have already started to do this so that I don't forget to put he correct mail address responding to different e-mails.

For Chat GMail chat works OK.  I have never used it extensively but it seems to suffice and for a small team it would do for informal communications.

Google Docs now has all you really need for basic and not so basic document, presentation and spreadsheet work.  I agree it might not give you the power of the paid applications but it would be enough for what a small Skunk Works type of team would need.  It allows you share documents and chat during their presentation and gather feedback.  I like the speaker notes function for presentations as well.

Today I was talking with a potential Mac customer (I use Windows).  Although we will do most of our work through voice and e-mail if I do need to send him a document or presentation then Google Docs will suit the level I want.  Example here is a typical list of requirements that I send to customer when they are in contact with me for web sites. I find that most customers may be technically literate but cannot process e-mail like a moretechnical person is and they need to have a document like this

The question of how you would post the prototype web site is another one that I do not have a quick answer to so perhaps others have experience of a low cost or free method of posting / hosting a design as you work through it... Let me know.

Some Things Are Free in Todays Recession

All is doom and gloom at the moment in Ireland.  Unemployment figures are rising and all is dom and gloom.  I have stopped listening to it as it is the same story every day.  I am not putting my head in the sand but in a couple of hours per week on a couple of good sites I can read news and updates not just for Ireland but across the world.

On top of that I though this evening of all the free pieces of Software that are out there that if you are an IT professional you can use to at least try and get out there and make some money.  For example as I type this I am upgrading the Lactation Consultants of Ireland's website to WordPress 2.7 (a bit overdue but I have been pretty busy with 3 web site launches over the past couple of days and trying to get a Google Ad Words campaign sorted out and that isnt even my day job). 

Anyway I digress - WordPress is a fine CMS and one I use most and it is completly free with lots of free add ons.  I am surfing with a free browser (Firefox my browser of choice for years) and typing this blog entry in ScribeFire which I would be lost without as I (try) and keep a lot of blogs up to date and could not do it in the traditional way of logging in and out. So again a nice light tool that is free.  I am not pumping SEO terms into this blog btw just impressed byt the free software community out there.  A list of other free packaghes that I use constantly on a daily basis are

• Notepad ++
• Filezilla
• Easy Thumbnails
• and a few others

If I had to pay for these I would have to use a lot of old fashioned methods to do this type of work (I could still do it but not as fast).  So there end of post - WordPress upgraded just as I finsihed typing so I am now on the latest version which is good for the users of the site as I do not have to maintain it as much for them with posts, links and so on.

I Hate Lotus Notes

Very strong statement but I have to use Lotus Notes for my e-mail in my job and it is one of the worst applications I have ever used.  Every day it frustrates me with its lack of flexibility and weak GUI.  Here a re a few of my top hates for it.  There are many many more.

Forward Meeting Invitations

If I receive a meeting invitation I cannot forward it to other people.  You can delegate but lose the meeting in your own calendar.  This is incredibly frustrating as I often want ot add other people and the only way is to go back to the original meeting creator and ask them to add particluar people to the invite.

Cannot see Full To List
If I receive an e-mail with multiple addresses on it I cant actually drag the pane with names in it to see all the names at once.  I have to scroll up and down.  So it slows me down in my job as I have to go through multiple key storkes to find out a simple piece of information.

Editing Mail Text
Unlike most Windows applications when writing an e-mail there is a completely crummy method for formatting text.  You have to hop around different tabs in a dumb ass pop up to change font sizes, add tables and so on.  For instance if I want to make some  text in an e-mail different colour I have to open up  this window to actually do the task.

Un-Accepted Meetings
In Outlook if you do not accept a meeting it sits unacepted in your calendar view.  Not so in Lotus.  If my mailbox gets busy I often forget to accept a meeting and it drifts off screen.  I have missed meeting because of this - I know I should process the meeting request on receipt but some days my Inbox goes berserk and meetings in two weeks drift off into the sunset.

Alt-Del doesn't Work
this may seem like a minor thing but Alt-Del (delete word forward) does not work.  I sue this hundreds of time a day in typing stuff and most every other application from a simple freeware editor to MS Word you can do this.  I still automaticlally try to do it from time to time but it justs sits there and grins stupidly at me when I try.

Doesn't Synch with My IPhone
There is an app for Lotus Notes Inotes 8.5 which allows you to do this but that is far off in the distance for me as we are still on version 7 here so it could be a while before we upgrade.

Colour coding E-Mails
You can colour code up to 4 e-mail types - after that it is tough luck.  In Outlook I used to colour and font code tons of e-mails to allow me to look at different types of mails easily.  Lotus is hopeless for this.

As I said above these are only some of my gripes.  I use Gmail for my personal mail and it is head and shoulders above this in terms of mail processing.  Even Hotmail which I abandoned about 2 years ago is better. 

Tips for a New Web Site

I often get asked by my customers what they need to do to their business web site to improve / develop it. Here are the some tips I have put together on this area. These are just my opinions.

1. Keep the Message Simple
All to often I get web site content that is too wordy and hard to read. You need to write simple well written text. People rarely get beyond the fourth sentence. Use links to expand for further readingas people will stay longer after the first click. Did you get to this sentence?

2. Contact Information
Make sure your contact information is easily accessible. Put your e-mail and phone number at the top of the page. A contact form may work but people are in a hurry and may not take the time if they are looking for a service. Make sure that it is prominent and easy to read. It is different if you are offering an free informational type service (did you get to this sentence?) as people may want to phrase a question in detail using a form.

3. Search Box
If your site is content rich and has lots of depth a search box is essential. If not sure how then use Google as you can integrate the Google search onto your site reletaively easily and saves you working out how to do it. Most CMS platforms have a search box as standard if you are that way inclined.

4. How Much?
This may seem obvious but the last two sites I did for people they had no prices on the site for their product / serviceas the business didn't want to put it on the site. This will not work. Put a price structure there at lease. People want to know a ball park figure. When you ring up a plumber/electrician the second or third question is usually how much. Why should a website differ. If you are offering a free product highlight it.

5. Traffic
You need to know how many hits your site is getting you might as well be on a desert island. Google Analytics does this perfectly. End of story (well the tracking part at least)

6. Good Free Information
You should post information to your site on a regular basis. It needs to be of good quality and worth reading. Good information proves your worth. Read and research in your field and post on it. Oh this is sentence 5...

7. Easy to use....
Just because you can write a bit of HTML/PHP/whatever does mean that site is usable. I am not a usability expert but look here for a good overview of usability guidelines. If this is too detailed think of your favourite web sites - think of why you use them besides the underlying content. Tehre are usually hundreds of web sites looking for your attention on most mainstream topics but some shine above the others. Some simple steps like in the link above can help you achieve a crisper, more accessible and useful site that people will come back to again.

8. No Flash - Popups - Tricks
No flash. IMHO flash is rarely worth the effort. Popups and fancy web tricks that look good once wont look good over time.

9.

Runkeeper - IPhone Application

I installed RunKeeper on my IPhone recently and below is a personal review of how I have fared with it so far.

First and foremost it has an easy to use screen with large  buttons for Start/Pause and Resume.  This is useful when you are all thumbs when running and just want to prod it and keep your activity going.

Starting off it can be  little slow in determining your GPS location and in one run it kept my previous location and I was not sure if the data was accurate. You can play your music while it is running while still retaining the RunKeeper interface which is a must have for me. 

It would be nice to be able to lock the buttons to avoid accidentally touching them and stopping it - this happened to me a couple of times. 

I  use it on my IPhone and I need to get an arm holder at some stage for it as it jiggled around in my jacket pocket when I was running which was mildly annoying.

It was easy to register on http://www.runkeeper.com a site that allows you to post (from the Ipod/IPhone) your routes and share them with others if you wish. There is a settings button that allows you set the GPS strength and your activty type.  This information is added when you upload to the
the web site.

I have only done a handful of runs with it to date but it has potential for me and is free which is great.  It has stopped me paying for a Nike+ type gizmo (it isn't compatible with the Iphone anyway) or buying an all singing dancing GPS watch.

The 5 Listens Test

I firmly believe that any CD of music is worth the 5 listens test.  Basically I listen to it 5 times through each time to give it some level of chance.  I often listen to an album once and twice and do not think it is great butjust about listen 5 it clicks.  I thought of this again at the weekend when I was spring cleaning my sister-in-laws house and we dug up a bag of LPs from the 90s and listened to 'Complete Madness' all the way through on vinyl.

It reminded me of when we used to sit in living rooms and listen to LPs 10-20-30 times in a row.  This never happens now but we can at least try the 5 listen test.  I am currently doing this with the new Animal Collective album Merriweather Post Pavilion