FiddyP

I, for some reason, have a subscription to T3 magazine. I think I must have crumbled under the power of one of Future Publishing’s telesales reps and agreed to try a few issues for 1p, now I have a direct debit and get the magazine delivered monthly. It’s not bad though and there’s always something to read when I need a poo (sorry! it’s true though).

I was going to download and edit pictures of their fantasy Christmas presents and do my own write up but, I have been playing with Amazons widgets and came up with this.. it’s pretty clever and easy to build..

Not bad for a few minutes work, I think I can work on this some more, combining it with some decent write-ups and other value added information and it will look at home within a post and provide convenient links to the products.

I think this post still needs it’s own pictures and descriptions for the gadgets as well as the slideshow box, what do you think?

Popularity: 3% [?]

I’ve made an update to the CommentLuv plugin so it behaves better, the speed should be better too after rearranging the different parsing routines and I’ve added a bit of code submitted by Edward De Leau of http://edward.de.leau.net/ to handle web-log.nl blogs. Thanks Edward!

The second part of the AJAX series is coming soon, I’ve been literally worked off my feet this week so I’ll have to squeeze some typing in during the evenings this week to get it finished.

I’ve added some adsense code here and there to see if it has any potential, I’ll see how they perform before deciding if I want to keep them. Lots of impressions so far but no clicks and I’ve also added a couple Tradedoubler ads. One at the top for PC World and one to the right on the main page for special offers. A few clicks but no sales yet but it’s still very early to decided if they will be worth it or not.

I’m also trialling the Google search box instead of the Wordpress one, it can search the web and this site and display the results within the FiddyP template which is pretty cool. I’ll test it for a few weeks to see how that goes too.

AntiBarbie has prepared a holiday themed short story for here and it’s great! Look out for it on the 1st of December, she’s a dark writer that one. You’ll see why when you read it.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I had to fit in some games playing this weekend! all part of work of course

uVme are trialling out their new games this weekend and I got invited to beta test them. They are good, better than I was expecting. The gameplay is good, back to the old days where gameplay was everything!

In case you don’t know, uVme is the company behind the next web revolution, namely 2.0, social networking and game playing. The whole thing revolves around being able to challenge someone to a simple game and you both wager 50p or more. The winner gets their wager back plus 50% and can go on and challenge more people.

It’s like msn game zone or King.com but with small wagers, there will be an integrated multi messenger application that can be accessed over the web and on the same page as the games so you can challenge anyone in your MSN, Yahoo, Googletalk, ICQ messengers to a game.

I will be able to invite 3 people to beta test the games next weekend, you get a starting bank of 20 and all you have to do is try and beat some people! There is talk of real prizes going to the best players and those that provide the valuable feedback that beta testing is for.

Here are some of the games I have just played:

Darts - uVme

I like this one, it’s a simple game. It’s ‘around the clock’ popular in pubs. You start at 1 and continue to try and hit the rest of the numbers in order, if you get a triple on one of the numbers you can miss a few, sometimes all the way up to 19 so you only need 20 and the bull. Points are awarded depending on how many darts you took, how much time was left, bonus hits.

You use the mouse to aim the cross-hairs and then click and hold the mouse button to see the line move up and down on the right, let go when the white bar is in the middle and you get exactly where the cross hair is. Sometimes you still hit the number if the white bar is one up or down from the center.

I played for Fiddy P (or 50 uk pence) , if my score ends up higher than the person I challenged then I get the moolah! (I lost though)

Bubble Trouble

Infuriating! One of those games that starts off looking easy, just keep the bubblel (under you mouse cursor) away from the mines and collect the power ups and avoid the red bubbles. You really do have to have your eyes everywhere to play this, it pissed me off! It reminded me of Geometry Wars on the Xbox. I was never good at that either!

21 Shots

This is a game that can be improved with practice. You get 21 shots at the basket from various positions, click the mouse at the required height, rotate the pointer to the direction you want and then click to build up the power and click to release.

I was rubbish the first few times I played it and then I managed to get used to what power is best and what arcs to choose, I did pretty well on my last game.

Those are just some of the games, it would take me ages to explain them all! I can forsee some people getting very very good at some of these games, you only have to try and play a new game on xbox live to see how good some people are at games. The best thing with this is you can challenge your friends so you’re not going to always have to beat the best to do well.

I am really looking forward to how this goes, I have a pretty extensive network already with elottery and it’s a certainty that plenty of them will take uVme further and pay to be an affiliate so they can then earn a commission on every single play that their site and team generates.

You can still join for free by clicking here, if you’re a member then you get a chance to get a password for the beta testing, once you’re done then you can invite 3 more people. I will have 3 invites to give so I need volunteers to do some beta testing next weekend…

can you play games well enough? these are simple enough flash games so if you’ve ever played one of them when stumble’ing then you’re good to go. Let me know in the comments if you have signed up for free using the link in this post and I’ll put you in the hat to get the beta testing access details.

Popularity: 4% [?]

This is my new super great phone! I saw the reviews about it before it came out and promised myself I would get one. I now have 6 of the blighters! one for every member of my team at work. Here is my 3 Skype phone review

The cost was just 49.99 for a PAYG model, I didn’t even need to buy any credit because your first month of Skype calls are included for free. Sweet.

I have been using it quite a lot over the past 2 weeks and I thought I’d share my experience with a phone that can give you free calls to the world..
Buying
Easy peasy, just go in and demand one, pay the 50 squids and walk out with it. It’s that simple! (don’t forget your 1p change)
(You can buy one online here)
You can choose from 3 colours; Black, White with blue, White with pink.
I like the black one best, it seems more ‘rubbery’ which is important for me because I keep dropping my phones (I have too many) and this one was no exception.

Setting Up
Again, easy peasy Japanesey!
I was told in the shop that it would take up to 24 hours before all the features were enabled on the phone so the only thing I could do when I first got it was to dial 444 to activate the phone. Luckily, it only takes 5 minutes after the call for the phone to work with receiving calls.

I tried to set up Skype straight away but it kept getting stuck on the ‘connecting’ screen which is my own fault for not being able to wait for the 24 hours to pass before I tried so I decided to explore the other options instead.

Interface: Easy to navigate through the various options, I found the menu system to be quite intuitive and easy to change settings for profiles and other options. There is a button on the side of the phone which allows you to swap between running applications which is useful for finding a contacts info while you’re doing other stuff (like watching geek tv or calling through Skype).

Bluetooth: It works well, easy to scan for available devices and connects quickly. The quality and range is pretty good too, as well as the amount of different devices that you can bluetooth including a stereo headset. I was able to connect my laptop to the phone and use it as a bluetooth modem pretty quickly. The download speed was pretty darn good too (in a 3g enabled area).

Internet (bluetooth): As soon as I had connected as a dial up bluetooth modem, the first page I saw on my laptop browser was from Three telling me that I was about to start browsing the internet and will be getting charged per MB, there was also an option to pay £5 for a months worth of browsing. Pretty good value for having my laptop able to connect to the internet wherever I am.

Internet (phone): The phone can connect to the internet in a variety of ways;

• Through the menu button, go to ‘browser’ and you’re away. Just enter the web address you want to go to and off you go surfing.
• Use the ‘launcher’ and choose between Google or Yahoo search, go straight to 3’s music channel where you can download tracks and videos from 1.49 or pay 49p for a full days access to non-stop music, visit the TV channels page. Click straight through to ‘My3′ where you can check your balance and buy add-ons.
• Use the ‘Planet3′ button on the phone to go straight to 3’s walled garden style interface where you can check your balance, buy add-ons, see news articles, buy music and more

I was pretty impressed with the whole internet usability on the phone, the screen is a decent resolution and navigation is easy using the square button in the middle of the phone which scrolls through the available links one at a time. The speed of downloading and displaying on the screen was one of the fastest I have experienced on a mobile device.

Value Added Features: Live TV! at first, I thought this was going to be a gimmick with no real-world value. As it turns out, the live tv is fantastic! hehe, my missus was able to watch a full episode of X-factor while we waited in the car the other night. For just £2 per month, you can have unlimited access to the TV channels.

The quality is what you would expect from streaming content but on a small screen you don’t notice much in the way of mpeg artifacts (those blocky bits that happen on real player). The sound wasn’t too good through the phones speaker but that’s down to the compression used so it can be sent down the 3g connection, still definitely usable though. When listened to through the included headphones, it gets better.

You can watch a variety of channels;
BBC1, ITV1, FHM, BBC3, Nickelodeon, Kiss, BBC News 24, Comedy Channel, ITN, National Geographic, MTV and Kerrang.
There are also options to view Aardman Animations, Geek TV (yey!) and MTV Trax.

One thing I liked was when I clicked on a TV channel, it took me to a page with a TV Guide of what is on the channel and whether it was going to be shown via downloading or not (some programmes aren’t licensed for viewing online). The live-ness of the channels is almost realtime, just a couple of seconds difference between whats on my TV and what gets shown on the phone.

Three provide you with a lot of content that you don’t have to pay for like updates to X-factor which keeps the missus happy at work

Camera: The camera provided is a 2 megapixel affair, the button for taking the picture is on the bottom right side of the phone so you can take pictures in landscape format. The viewer display is surprisingly bright when taking pictures, the lag time between pushing the button and the picture being stored is not too bad (better than my N95 anyway). The pictures themselves come out pretty good too with not too much in the way of the white balance problems that you get with camera phone pictures.

Cellular: The phone picks up a 3g signal well enough and there’s always 2g if a 3g signal isn’t available, the quality of a cellular call is just what you would expect. The phones speaker is nice, it doesn’t distort the calls and is clear. Calls and text messages cost just 12p per minute flat rate to any network and at any time. You can stretch the minutes to get even better value 3p per minute calls by paying for an addon.

I just found out that receiving calls in Hong Kong is free if you’re using a UK Three phone. Cool!

Skype: The big kahoona, the reason why I bought the phone in the first place..
It works! and it works well, I’m impressed with it a LOT.
You can sign up with a new username direct from the phone without too much trouble, you don’t even need to enter any personal details like a name or email address which is pretty good for anonymous users. You can also sign in with an existing account (obviously).

You can add a contact and also store the Skype name in the contacts details as well as fax numbers, email address, picture, homepage, notes, voice and video ringtone and group setting. Pretty thorough.

Adding a new contact is pretty quick, the request came through to another Skype phone within a couple of seconds and took just a couple of seconds for the contact to show on the originating handset after the request had been authorized.

Making a call takes a few seconds to connect as it needs to initiate a data connection, the 3 lady tells you that the call is connecting and then you hear the ringing tone. Call quality was pretty good too, better than I was expecting even when I wasn’t in a 3g network. Also, the fact that 2 brand new phones can call each other via Skype (almost) straight away without any calling credit is an amazing feature and one that I’m sure is one of the major reasons why someone would buy a Skype phone in the first place.

The chat function is almost instant too, sending Skype chats between phones takes just a few seconds to go through and could save a text-maniac a fortune in charges if used properly! You can use a standard T9 dictionary input which speeds things up even more or use the multi-press method (for people that can’t spell).

Receiving a call shows up as an incoming mobile call from 3 and can be initiated from another Skype Three phone or in fact, from any Skype enabled device (pda, pc, mac etc). I was able to receive calls made from a Hong Kong Skype connection and the quality was just as good as a call from a local Skype. Pretty impressive.

Accessories: The phone comes with a mains charger, a USB cable (USB to mini-usb) to charge and connect the device to a PC for the sync software, a stereo hands free headset and a 256MB micro-SD card (upgradeable to 1GB). The manual is pretty easy to read and follow (typically I don’t even open the manual!) and everything fits nicely in the box.

When you connect the USB cable to the phone and PC, you can choose the option on the phone to Sync or use the phone as a USB mass storage device making transfer of music files and videos a snap to do. (and good for emergency storing of office documents)

Customer Service: This was the reason I (and many others) left Three the first time I used their phones, their customer service was pants!

This time around though, it is quite good. I had reason to call them because a music download I paid for didn’t come through, I managed to get through to someone with a good standard of English within a few rings. They were able to check my account pretty quickly and came back with an answer within 1 minute of hold music. The answer was what I was expecting, I should really wait 24 hours after activating the phone before trying any of the paid services but I can always go back to the same page and choose the option to ‘re-download’ the track and I wouldn’t be charged which was exactly what I did.

I have called them a couple more times to ask about features and they always had an answer for me, one person even suggested that I could take the phone back to the shop and have it exchanged without trouble or get a refund if I wasn’t completely happy.

The customer service in the shop was good too, there were enough helpful assistants available to see me straight away when I walked in and they knew their stuff well enough. Best of all, they were smiling! (much better than the Vodafone creeps who ignore you if they think that you only want information and therefore not earn them any commission!)

Summary

Overall, I am supremely impressed with the phone, service, features and support. It’s nice to have a slim little phone that is easy to use, long on battery life (320 hours standby, 270 minutes talk time (voice)) and actually lives up to it’s hype (SkypeHype!). I’m a sucker for feature rich phones that take up a lot of pocket space and battery power that end up disappointing me within minutes of the 14 day return policy running out but this phone surprised me and has made me consider transferring my 02 contract phone to Three.

It’s a small phone that fits nicely into any pocket, it’s not heavy and it does everything a phone should do very well. The extras like live TV were an added bonus and something that I find myself using again and again while I wait for clients/buses/the missus getting ready and at 2 quid a month - a real bargain!

Topping up is as easy as any other phone, you can do it over the phone, over the internet or at any PP shop (the ones that do electric keys and other phone topups). The top up is permanent, it says it never runs out which makes this phone ideal for buying an elderly parent or child to use as an emergency phone.

Charges, 12p per minute flat rate to any UK landline or mobile phone at any time of day. You can buy add-ons that allow you to call from as little as 3p per minute or pay a bit more and get inclusive minutes to any network.

Roaming is automatic when you go abroad so you don’t need to phone in advance to activate it.

Skype calls and texts are completely free as long as you have topped up at least £10 within the last 30 days. This is something that could potentially save you hundreds of pounds in charges. Ask your children (if you have any) how many texts they send to their friends per month and compare that to unlimited (subject to fair use) Skype chats you can have for a tenner and you’ll see why this phone is such good value.

Almost everyone I have shown the phone has bought one, my entire workplace now uses them and it will save us a bundle in text and call charges. The charges for calling other phones is better than my other PAYG phone (vodafone) and using it as a bluetooth modem will really help with my travels.

I give it 5/5 and I heartily recommend everyone to go and get one now! For 50 quid, it’s a fantastic Christmas present for a loved one.

You can get one at the Skype shop for 49.99GBP with FREE delivery or visit any Three shop and get one there.

Buy a Three/Skype phone online with FREE delivery here.

You can see the other colours available here

Happy Skype-ing!

Popularity: 9% [?]

This is the first in a series of tutorials about AJAX and how to use it on your site. Each new tutorial will take the subject a little bit further and hopefully, it wont be long before you start creating your own AJAX applications for your own site and revel in the wonderness of geekdom

It seems more and more people want to use this type of programming method to bling their blog up to 2.0 level including me!, so come along as I traverse the wonders of AJAX. I am learning this as I go so it’s not really fair to call it a tutorial series but you get the idea!

First off, we need to know what AJAX is…

Part 1.
AJAX Introduction.

The first thing to know about AJAX is that in fact, it isn’t actually a programming language. It’s just a way of using other languages together to create an ‘application’ style of interface for a web page.

The word ‘AJAX’ comes from a contraction of ‘Asynchronous’, ‘Javascript’, ‘And’, ‘XML’, it’s purpose is to allow a web page to send and receive small bits of data ‘asynchronously’ while the user is still on the page and change the contents of parts of the page with the data received.

It could be something simple like automatically updating a shipping charge after a customer enters their postal code in a form or it could be something more familiar like the Google auto-guess/complete that happens when you start typing in a search term.

As soon as you start typing something in the search box, the javascript on the page detects each key press and sends it to the server which then sends back any terms that have the same letters starting the term, as you continue to type it shows a narrowing set of options and how many results they each have. You can try it out yourself at http://labs.google.com/suggest

Here are some other examples of sites using AJAX.

• Google Maps
• Flickr
• Meebo

The important thing to remember is that AJAX is the term used when the page needs to send and/or receive data to the server asynchronously, whereas a sliding DIV or a dynamic menu is just Javascript or DHTML.

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The difference between normal and AJAX web applications

A traditional web application(using a shopping cart form example)

.. a user enters their shipping details and clicks submit, the page sends the form details and reloads again showing the shipping charge.

AJAX web application

.. a user enters their postal code and the server automatically calculates the shipping charge and returns it to the original page, all without the user having to wait for another page load. Much more efficient!

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How does it do it?

It’s the work of the devil! that’s how!
Seriously though, javascript, css and html are used on the browser side and a scripting language is used on the server. The scripting language can be PHP, perl, asp or any kind of get-process-return language that runs on a server.

Really, javascript is the boss for all the actions as it is responsible for orchestrating everything on the client side. ie:
The javascript detects the click, text entry or other action which initiates a call to the script on the server which responds with the data requested, the javascript receives the data and by using css and html it is able to update the page, all without the user having to wait for a page load as with traditional web pages.

Take a look at this diagram:

1. The javascript detects an event and requests information from the server
2. The server accepts the request, processes it and returns it’s own data
3. The javascript accepts the data and uses CSS and HTML to put it on the page

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Data types

Probably the best data type used is XML, simply because it is a standard capable of representing complex data that would otherwise be difficult to represent. But, that doesn’t mean that XML is the only type of data that can be used. You could use plain text if there was only a small amount of simple data to be sent like a name or value.

You could also use something called JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) but that’s for a later tutorial (and for geekier types!)

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The Server role

It’s important to remember that AJAX is entirely dependent on a server program accepting requests and responding to them in some way. You can’t just make a web page with some Javascript on it and have an AJAX application, you need the javascript to send and receive information and do something with it.

You don’t have to use the same server as the web page to do the processing, you could just as easily use a script on a remote server.
Places like Google, Flickr and others allow people to use an API (Application Programming Interface) to request information from one of their scripts on their server. Flickr for example could send back information listing a users photo locations so the AJAX page could display them.

Simply, whatever the server or javascript does, it all comes down to ; request send, request received, data processed, data sent back, data used.

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Ok! that’s the introduction dealt with, I hope that clears up exactly what AJAX is for you!

On the next part of this series, we will get into the guts of an AJAX application and show you just how it works and how you can change it yourself. For now, here is an example of what you should be able to do after a couple more tutorials..

It detects a click on the pink area and sends a request to a PHP script that reads a text file containing a number, adds one to it, saves it and sends back the number to be displayed on the page. Try it yourself, it may take a couple of seconds to show the number (this is just an example, later we will add a nice AJAX’y type of wait animation). I wonder how high this number will/can go?

Come back next week for the second part of the series where we will get into the innards of AJAX and show you just whats needed to make the traditional ‘hello world’ program….

Popularity: 7% [?]