New Yahoo! Product

Maybe ;)

Busy Busy Busy

Too much going on at the moment to even get my thought about @Media up. Excuse the brief break. Normal service to be resumed in the next couple of weeks.

Big business failing on accessibility

The team over at Nomensa have compiled an accessibility report on websites of the companies in the FTSE 100.

Only 24 sites achieve the minimum level of accessibility – and none go beyond that to double A or triple A standards. Out of those 24 sites that met some level of accessibility (single A standard), two companies stood out from the rest: the Daily Mail & General Trust and Xstrata. In fact, these two organisations only failed to reach the next level by one checkpoint.

This report just goes to highlight the importance of the new WaSP ATF Manifesto statement
I just hope big business start to get the message.
Either that or we could just send Bruce Lawson round with a baseball bat and and a hockey mask to kick some ass.

Hey you stole that design!

I have been working on a personal project of mine on and off for a long time now. It was first mentioned to other people during @Media 2005 and I had been thinking about it and preparing for a few months before that.

I have the domain name already in the bag, quite a sought after one as well I would be willing to bet, and I have the design comps. I always knew how I wanted the site to look and I had a decent idea as to what the sections would be. It was just the mechanics of the concept that were holding me back. In fact I am still quite unsure as to the format of the "competition". (Ed: Shh, don't say too much)

This site still isn't live and still isn't complete for may reasons including the fact that shortly before @Media 2005 my daughter was born and that combined with other work and educational commitments have got in the way.

Anyway, recently I have found enough time, and inclination, to revisit this site and idea in order to finally get it off the ground. I believe in the idea and I think it will work. Hell, if a celeb (web celeb not someone from Heat Magazine) did this site it would be a sure fire hit; I'd be willing to bet the mortgage on it.

I pulled up the old design comps and it reminded me of something. I puzzled it out for a few seconds and realised it was the same layout (bar the logo) as the new WaSP redesign.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The title of the post is a Joke. I am by no means accusing anyone of stealing the design. Please read on before hitting reply and telling me that I suck and Andy Clarke / WaSP Ownz me!

The point of this post is that whenever a new site goes live there will be comparisons with sites that are already out there. Similarities will exist between any new site and one that already exists. It's inevitable.

Aside from the Logo (duh) and the Navigation bar the layout of the rest of the page is very similar (Larger left column, 2 supporting columns dropping to 1 as and when required).

There are major differences as well though. The colour scheme is nothing at all like the one I did and the site, although along similar lines (Pushing web standards and CSS), content will be different

Now my first thought was that the site looks like the new WaSP design. What will people say?

Will I get loads of fanboys filling my inbox with digg style comments of "U Suck!", "My Granny could do better, get your own design loser" etc.

I guess my question is this: Can we be precious about the layout of a page when it is so generic or is it ok to use a similar layout to someone else however unintentional it may be?

Don't get me wrong I am not talking about blatantly ripping off a site that is very unique in design or content like the people that John Oxton discussed or the jokers Matthew Pennell had to deal with, I am talking about using a similar/same layout style as another site.

I have to admit that John Oxton's comments on that old post are what made me think about this.

The other thing to consider is it wasn’t too long ago someone found a design on template monster that you would swear was a rip off of mine but it had been done nearly 12 months before hand; had I ripped that design off? No, it was an unhappy coincidence and I would have been really pissed off had anyone suggested otherwise.

I would also be pissed if people start saying I have ripped the design when I have done no such thing. I don't want to have to redesign a site that I am happy with. Why should I?

Maybe I'm being paranoid but there are a lot of people out there quick to criticise. Just check out these comments on CSS Beauty. The guy had to go back and display an old version of the site to prove that he hadn't ripped the PGA design off.

The sad thing is that if I am honest I am still not sure I believe him, which is kind of what I am worried about.

OS X App: Tinker Tool

I have been toying with the idea for a while of switching 100% to Mac. General day to day stuff is no problem at all. office is available, as are alternatives, I can check my emails yada yada. The one thing that has been holding me back is web development which is obviously quite important to me and my job. No worries I though and I have even convinced myself to switch from my native ASP programming background to the realms of PHP.

Before I start I should point out that I am a Mac newbie so if I say something stupid then please correct me. I have managed to "turn on" Apache, Install PHP, Install mySQL and CocoaMySQL (Similar to phpMyAdmin I am lead to believe) and set up Wordpress. Before now I have used Windows, ASP and IIS exclusively and I have looked into Apache and most of the "magic" is done in 2 files: httpd.conf for general settings and .htaccess for specific directories.

The first problem on the Mac is that you cant get to either of these files. .htaccess files are hidden by default as in UNIX any filename that begins with a period is hidden. The httpd.conf file is in a hidden directory that you can't get to either. I tried using Spotlight but it doesn't find either of these files as it doesn't show hidden or system files :/

Also, It seems that there is no option in system settings to display hidden files and folders. Basically I needed a way to get to these files and make changes in order to take advantage of mod_rewrite and the clean URL's it can produce.

I googled the problem and it came up with an app called Tinker Tool:

"TinkerTool" is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system."

There is a full list of features that you can "tinker" with available on the page. Some pretty neat stuff, but the part that interests me most is it's ability to show and hide hidden files and folders by checking or unchecking a box. Simple enough even for a windows user to manage!

I still haven't managed to get mod_rewrite to work properly yet though, but thanks to Tinker Tool I am a little closer. So if your a Mac newbie like me then I can recommend you try it.

iPod Tip: Pod Player

Today I came across a piece of software called Pod Player :

"Pod Player is a freeware application to be used with your iPod. It allows you to play music from your iPod while it is connected to your PC. When launched, it will look for an attached iPod and when it finds one it will read the music database on the iPod. You will then be able to views your songs in a similar way as in iTunes (by artist, genre, album, playlist, etc). You can now also extract songs from it. There are a few little extra features such as iPod Hacks, checking for duplicates etc. You can play your music on any computer when you iPod is connected without the need to install any programs such as iTunes."

Now thats all well and good but if you have an iPod already then it's more than likely that your PC has iTunes or one of the other various programmes that perform the way iTunes does.

The beauty of this programme is that it's in a single exe file that can be stored on your iPod itself as it's only 454kb. It also allows you to extract songs from the connected iPod to the computer for all your backup needs ;) Now that makes it useful!

All you need to do is enable disk access on your iPod and copy the exe across then hey presto you have a portable solution to allow you to play your iTunes on any PC that has a spare USB port. The only snag is that the machine playing the files needs the right codec in order to be able to play the files. So in the majority of cases the files will be in MP3 format and there shouldn't be a problem although you may have problems with your AAC audio.

Quite neat though.

I'm not dead!

Just a quick note:

The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts a body on the cart]
Large Man with Dead Body: Here's one.
The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead

From Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Just incase anyone cares...I'm not dead!
Just busy with real work and real life at the moment.