Twitter Patent = Death of App.Net?

March 21, 2013 | Comment

Screenshot_21_03_2013_13_59So Twitter have finally been granted a patent for, well, Twitter. They applied for the patent in 2007 and it has only just been granted given that these things take a while to work their way through the system.

From what I understand the patent is pretty widely worded and could be interpreted as many things and cover all multitude of sins, however, if it covered things that look like Twitter then APP.NET should be worried.

APP.NET looks and feels like Twitter and the only major difference is that it is a paid service with a limited free account also … Read the rest

What we did Before Google

March 20, 2013 | Comment

IMG_6372I was away over the weekend and spotted this on my in-laws book shelf – The Internet Atlas by Richard Dinnick. A guide to the “best 1,000 sites on the web”.

Even though the book is only a few years old, it was published in 2000, it is a fascinating snapshot on what the web was like only thirteen years ago.

It includes sections on the browsers available which besides Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape also includes the first alpha version of Mozilla.

There is also a section on search engines which includes Altavista and Ask Jeves along with … Read the rest

Documenting MySQL Tables in MediaWiki

March 11, 2013 | Comment

20130370_160381-CapturFilesThe last few companies that I have worked for we have setup an internal wiki that everyone uses to hold information about all aspects of the business including, of course, the technical team. We use MediaWiki for this mainly because it is easy to setup and is also familiar to users through Wikipedia.

One area that we try and document is the database structure. Having this on hand and searchable in the wiki allows new employees to quickly get to grips with it and makes us all more productive.

The issue is that creating the MediaWiki tables by hand is … Read the rest

Keep Your Cables Together and Tidy

March 10, 2013 | Comment


IMG_6293Having multiple devices that need regularly charging and no universal agreement on a standard connector for doing so creates a problem of having to keep track of numerous differing cable types.

Now I know that there is a European agreement to have the micro-USB as the de facto charge cable standard but none of the three items I have to regularly charge conform to this: my iPhone, iPad and Pebble watch.

I’m not going to get into the debate of whether manufacturers should be compelled to meet the standard rather than charging an eye watering £15 for an adaptor that … Read the rest

My First Two Weeks with the Pebble Watch

March 7, 2013 | Comment

IMG_6265I decided to wait a couple of weeks before writing a review of my Pebble watch and passing any sort of judgement as I felt that would allow the dust to settle a bit. So now those weeks are up here are my thoughts.

The Pebble, for those that have missed it, is a “smart watch” that is connected to your phone. iPhone in my case but it is also compatible with Android. Pebble was a project on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter where it set out to raise $10,000 to fund its project and ended up raising $10,000,000. This … Read the rest

Recognising the Opportunity: I Could Have Written WordPress

March 5, 2013 | Comment

Over the last few weeks I have been moving the content from one of my other sites, The Williams Database, to WordPress. This means that all my sites are now running on what I consider to be the premier content management system but if I had acted differently a few years ago that might have not been the case.

In 1996 I launched a fan site to the Williams formula one team. In those days there wasn’t much of an internet to speak of, connection speeds were slow and access was costly but it was new and great fun. … Read the rest

A Neat Idea to Stop you Standing on your Phone

March 4, 2013 | Comment

IMG_6276Here’s a neat little idea to stop you accidentally crushing your phone when it is left on the floor while charging.

This simple plastic device slips over your wall charger and has a platform that folds down onto which you can rest your phone – this is slightly angled upwards and rubberised to stop the phone slipping off if accidentally knocked.

Simple, cheap and effective.

photo… Read the rest

Hacker Monthly

February 22, 2013 | Comment

20130222-201903.jpgI have a voracious appetite for technology news which by and large is satisfied by twitter and apps such as the excellent Zite.

An even more hardcore technology news source is Hacker News. This is little more than a collection of user submitted links that are that voted up or down by other users. Eventually interesting and popular stories float to the top of the list. Unfortunately there is far too much stuff there to read it all and sometimes I just want a leisurely offline read. Enter Hacker Monthly.

Hacker Monthly is a curated version of … Read the rest