June 2007 Archives

• Les bonnes tables sur la route de vos vacances
  could comme in handy this summer...
  (tags: food resto vacances holidays)

From the Eurostar frequent traveller website

Dedicated ticket desk & express check-in

Glide through the formalities at our seamless Business Premier priority ticket desk and 10 minute check-in, again, regardless of the ticket you have.

Unless there are humans in the terminal in which case you might find yourself pushing on a door which has been remotely locked and missing your train and ending up on a strapontin because there isn't an empty seat on the train.

There is nothing more pathetic than the hordes of lumpen business travelers desperately waving their various badges, tickets and 'club' memberships in a vain attempt to get The Upgrade that is their due... And yesterday, I was one of them (hangs head in shame).

Still, on the bright side, I've discovered that the fold-down seats on the Eurostar have more legroom that the normal seats. Might have to try this again;-)

Last year I built a couple of sites for a guy that I frequently collaborate with. The sites talk about diamonds, the diamond industry and luxury more generally.

He was wondering about SEO issues and to illustrate a point, I'm posting this link to De Beers diamonds. We were curious why the De Beers consumer website fares so poorly in Google. I did a search on "They are the ultimate gift of love" a sentence from the introductory paragraph and the string "De Beers" appears nowhere on the first page of Google results. Weird;-)

Actually, not so weird as the html is pretty much not semantic even a little tiny bit. In any case, I'll check the position of this post in a few day's time and see how it compares with the corporate site.

More activity on the old Is BT still shit? post. A chap called Carlos has left a comment about his experience with BT and it sounds pretty spectacular...

Please keep your feedback coming in and if you find any ways around the system (such as that 'secret' phone number posted on the first "BT is shit" post) please do share them.

You know, I just twittered this, but I get the odd S60 developer reading my nonsense here so I thought I'd put the question on the blog.

My current S60 wish list:

• I want to run software on my N95 so when I plug it into my mac with the usb cable, it emulates my iPod and causes iTunes to sync a number of playlists onto my phone memory. How cool would that be?
• and while I'm begging, has anyone thought about turning the N95 into a portable wi-fi to 3G bridge? Imagine the scenario, you all get to the meeting and no one can work out the wep password or find the right cable and it's all going tits up (I'm always amazed at how difficult large corporations make it to get on the internet). You whip out your N95, turn on wi-fi and the base station triggers a 3G data connection. All your co-workers go into their wi-fi menus and connect to "dug's phone" and voilà, we're all online!

I don't know enough about radio transceivers to know if that second one is possible. It could be that the wi-fi card in the N95 can't be configured to be a base station. Still, it does two-way traffic so you could see how that oughta work...

...and here's a link to something interesting NRC - Mobile Web Server

Mike Butcher points out that new European legislation will make astroturfing illegal.

Which of course is a good thing, but how are they going to enforce this? The higher end PR firms are creating great thinking about their clients by actually participating in the debate or even initiating it themselves.

I guess the Barry Scott test is going to become this law's Turing test;-)

• Flickr: factoryjoe's photos tagged with pagination
  another nice collection of Chris messina screengrabs. In this instance we're looking at the rights and wrongs of pagination interfaces... Thanks Chris:-)
  (tags: pagination interface design ajax)

So we've all been using the logo-in-the-top-left-corner as a link to the start or "home" page for years. Perhaps as a nod to the brand guidelines, it's always seemed like best practise not to tamper with the logo in any way. I'd sort of parked this issue in the never think about it again department until I noticed this:

So simple, so effective... Not a big deal, but nice work:-)

Parmi les Sept Merveilles du monde figurent les jardins suspendus des Batignolles.

Et qu'est ce que j'ai galleré pour le passer, mon bac... (Les perles du bac)

• PSFK conference notes
  Lynetter's notes from PSFK07
  (tags: psfk technology conference advertising trends)

Yeay:-) She wobbled it for what feels like weeks and she's soooooo unbelievably psyched she can't sleep.

• Digital Urban: How to Stitch a Panorama with the Nokia N95
  more N95 geo-magic from a guy who actually knows what he's doing (unlike me...)
  (tags: n95 nokia Photography tools photo flickr)

• Gridskipper, the Urban Travel Guide
  Well, it might be steak-frite time again soon and a little variety never hurts...
  (tags: foodblogger food)
• macosxhints.com - Create a wireless network bridge
  (tags: sharing bridge share osx networking)

Good to see Serge the Concierge doing his bit to promote the Alex James talk on Thursday.

Remember, get those cheese names to Billy before midnight tomorrow to grab your tickets:-)

• 86 Mac Plus Vs. 07 AMD DualCore. You Won't Believe Who Wins
  (tags: bloat)

• Yotel Overview
  The man from "Yo" strikes again - love the idea, get the designer of the BA first class cabin and get him to sort your hotel :-)
  (tags: hotel pod japan)
• Padded Cell - Race Paint - Motorcycle Paintwork - Honda - Yamaha - Suzuki - Aprilla
  (tags: spam spammers)