BBC Music Beta Launches

The BBC have launched their new Music site. It is still in beta but already looks pretty polished. You can find out more about artists that have been played on any of the BBC radio stations. You can see how many times they’ve been played this week, which radio stations have played them and how many times since records began for that artist. You can even see which DJs plays them the most. Apart from a stat fest you can get links to other useful information such as the artists website and wikipedia page and find similar artists that you may like. Artist details also include a discography, photos and more. Much of the content is powered by Music Brainz which the BBC link to for further info or to add your own input.

The styling of the site matches well with the excellent 2008 look BBC homepage but doesn’t have any snazzy, technical wizardy just great content.

There are a lot of music sites out there - many with a lot more artist info and the ability to sample tracks or music videos. In fact the only content BBC is providing is the artists play stats on it’s Radio stations the rest is from wikipedia or music brainz but it is presented really nicely and the unique BBC stats can help you pick a radio station that suits your music tastes or it can help you discover similar artists you may like.

If you are keen to find more artists you may like and suggested artists on BCC music beta aren’t enough check out last.fm
Technorati Tags: BBC, Music, Beta, Feeds

To Dongle or not? Wireless mice for laptops

I recently got a laptop and have fallen completely in love with it. The power of my PC on the move. That said most laptop users will agree however ingeniously the manufacturer has incorporated the mousepad/nub on the laptop it is never as confortable or accurate as a proper mouse. That being the case the 2nd most popular accessory for laptop owners to buy (after the laptop case) is a mouse.

The whole joy of a portable device is being free to move around so wifi is now a must and this extends to the mice - cables are out. There are hundreds of wireless mice to choose from but how to decide. For reliability and performance the top brands have to be Logitech, Apple and Microsoft (probably in that order). This cuts down the list of offerings somewhat but even with just 3 brands to consider there are still many variations to consider.

To Dongle or not to dongle
If your laptop doesn’t have bluetooth than this is a no brainer - your are going to need a rf/bluetooth dongle to link up with your mouse. In my case my Dell XPS m1210 has builtin bluetooth and so I have a choice. I can go for a bluetooth mouse and connect to the built-in bluetooth feature on my laptop (even if it comes with a dongle) or go for a mouse with a rf/proprietary transmitter dongle.

Pros of no dongle
a) Battery life - the built-in bluetooth adapter is designed to work with your laptop and is optimised for efficient use of power. A usb dongle will require the laptop to power the usb port and will always be less efficient than a built-in option
b) Dongles sticks out. This means you probably can’t keep it plugged in when in the case and increases chances of it getting knocked potentially damaging it or your usb port.
c) Can’t lose the dongle. It is easier than you think to lose the thumb size dongles. They can fall out of the bag or get knocked out by passers by
d) Range. RF signals generally give you a range of 2 meters. Adaquate for most purposes but when you use your laptop with a big screen like I do at home having a 10-30m range really helps as I can sit on my sofa watch the big screen and my laptop quietly hums on my desk.
e) Price. You can save money by buying bluetooth mice without a dongle. Logitech and Microsoft both make these. However, this is not a real bonus as bluetooth mice are generally more expensive than RF versions anyway.

Cons
a) Bluetooth was designed to be versatile, a “jack of all trades” - from file transfer, wireless headphones, wireless mice etc. Most will agree it is a “master of none”. Using my Logitech mx5000 bluetooth keyboard and mouse at home I am repeatedly frustrated as it lags behind keystrokes, loses connection or just gets sluggish. It doesn’t happen all the time - in fact mostly it runs beautifully, but when it does happen in the middle of a game or while drawing a lasso shape in photoshop it can be aggravating. Logitech’s solution is to use bluetooth technology to keep the benefits or added range but to not comply to the Bluetooth 1.1 or 2.0 standard. This means the signal is optimised for the mouse and you get better performance, however, it will not work with my built-in bluetooth so I still need a dongle.
b) with a dongle you can hook your fancy mouse up to any computer not just your bluetooth enabled laptop. This is handy if you are going to an area with no wifi and you are forced to use an internet cafe with horrible mouseball mice that just make you want to scream. Or if you want to use it for both desktop and laptop. As most bluetooth mice ship with a dongle too you can probably do this anyway

If you decide to go the dongle route the ultimate laptop mouse would be the Logitech vx Revolution. It’s fast, reliable, has great range, lots of handy extra buttons and scrolling for quick navigation. If you want to avoid the dongle or want more features the Microsoft Wireless Bluetooth Notebook Presenter Laser Mouse 8000 is fantastic. It combines mouse and presenter features and it conforms to bluetooth standards so does not require a dongle (although it comes with one).

I opted for the Microsoft mouse in the end and got it for only £39 (from ebuyer - includes £10 discount for using google checkout). It still hasn’t arrived so I can’t tell you what performance is like but the features are truly impressive. As a mouse it has the usual buttons left, right button, a 4way scroll wheel which also acts as the middle button. It has two additional buttons on the sides (likely for back and forward navigation) an additional 2 buttons on the top which I guess one triggers flip 3D in windows vista. Nothing too special so far but then you pick it up and it becomes a remote control - it can be used to flip through presentations, control music/movies etc. As it is done by bluetooth direct line of sight is not needed and with 2.4Ghz technology it has a range of over 30ft. It doesn’t stop there, there is a laser pointer built-in so if you are hooked up to a projector in a meeting you can point with your mouse. The laser pointer is a great touch as I hate getting up in meetings and trying to point at something on the wall and then casting a shadow so it’s hard to see what I’m pointing at anyway.

I’ll try and add a list of links to the top 10 wireless mice here once I get to the airport (flying to Poland in a few hours). I’ll try and use atlarge.com to find me some wifi.

YouTube killer tries again (vume/eefoof)

When eefoof originally launched it was tipped to be a YouTube killer. It offered most of the YouTube features (user-generated video content) with a twist. Rather than just having the benefit of free hosting and an audience for your work they actually pay you for your submissions. They divide up the income they get (from the ads on the site) to all the contributers. The amount you get will depend on the popularity of the video(s)  you post. So if your videos are very popular and 2% of videos viewed that month belong to you then you get 2% of the advertising revenue - in theory.

The concept seemed great but the unusual name that was not only difficult to pronounce it was tough to remember or spell and so unless you bookmarked it or someone sent you a link you’d likely forget it soon after you visited. Also  during it’s early days there wasn’t that much to look at when you compare the huge database of video on YouTube and Google Video.

Now eefoof is relaunching as VuMe and have built up a more significant collection of content a comeback maybe on the cards. So stop ‘giving away’ your content to Google and make yourself some dosh on the VuMe.

http://www.vume.com

No I’m not on commission. No I have not submitted any video yet, but watch this space.

Reinette De Villiers: The Beauty of Design - FFE interview #1

At long last I’ve pulled my finger out and typed up the transcript from my now not-so-recent interview with Reinette De Villiers. Enjoy.
Download the Podcast here (right-click and save target/link as..)

or Play Here:

Add to iTunes
or read the following transcript.
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Map APIs a comparison

Firstly, sorry for the lack of posts recently - it’s amazing how much time is consumed in looking after a new baby. No doubt you’ve seen Baby Olivia’s photos in my flickr stream featured on the rhs of this blog.

Since been back at work after the Crimbo break I’ve had the chance to work on interactive maps for the first time. Having avoided javascript as much as possible during my time as a front-end designer I suddenly found myself wading in with Ajax.

The project was for the atlarge.com home page as previously mentioned on this blog. I had a look at several 3rd party APIs and settled on Yahoo! Maps as being the best option.

It was the easiest to implement and control, had the most features and I had working map with most of the effects I wanted in an afternoon. However, I had to stop using the Yahoo! API because of 3 major problems.
- view full article for more -
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Get connected at the airports - atlarge.com

A project I worked on back in September/October went live this week - atlarge.com

A lot has been done to it since my HTML/CSS pages were submited. It’s always cool to see all the lights and bells working when you’ve been working on a flat static page and could only imagine what the working page would look/behave like.

I guess that is how movie stars feel when in a special effects scene and all they can see is a blue/green screen.

The site is designed to help you get connected at the airport. The website is driven by user submited ratings and tips. Whether it be the locations of wifi hotspots, availabilty of 3g/GPRS signal or simply if there is somewhere to charge up your devices.

As it’s only just launched a lot of airports have no ratings/tips yet but you can see it’s potential on airports like London Heathrow (LHR) which has seen some activity.

The reviews appear to be moderated which means your review doesn’t appear immediately but ensures useless comments and spam are kept out.

I like the integration with Google Maps enabling you to see a zoomable map of the airport you are viewing.

I hope someone writes a review of Tabago (Tab) airport before I go there next summer. I’m going to be stuck there for about an hour while I wait for my connecting flight to Trinidad and it would be nice to get online - especially on the return leg when I’ll be uploading my photos to flickr.

powered by performancing firefox

ZDNet uses Microformats!

If you’re wondering “What on Earth are Microformats?” - where have you been? A quick search on Google returns 11.7million results!

Very brief explanation. For designers it means instead of using random/made-up class names for content you want to style, you use names listed in the Microformat specification. This gives the content you are styling more meaing which can then be read by appropriate software. The class now not only allows you to style that content/element as usual, but also means an application that reads Microformats can “understand” what that content is.

The easiest example to explain is with a contact us page. If Microformat classes are used correctly a Microformat application can differentiate a name, an email address, a telephone number etc. For a user this means when wanting to make a note of someone’s contact details rather than opening up your address book and manually copy and pasting each detail you can click your Microformats button, pick the name you want, view the business card and add it straight to your address book. You could even add all contacts on the page at once. This also works if the information is dispersed through the page such as a biography page containing contact information spread out through the paragraphs, microformats can collate this data into one tidy hcard. This is just one application. Imagine the other posibilities - adding events directly to your calender, XFN relationships, enhanced searches etc.

This is mostly theory at the moment as there are very few websites (Flickr, Technorati, d.construct) that feature this new technique and even fewer applications taking advantage of it (tails, greasemonkey, Safari favelets). However, with the stir being generated about this and the backing it’s receiving it won’t be long before it’s as big as RSS. There is already a Firefox extention called Tails that can read microfomats and Tails export allows you to export the business cards or calendar events (Tails Export is currently only compatible with Firefox 1.5 or older). There are also a few GreaseMonkey Scripts and plugins for IE and Safari.

To see the latest news on which websites or applications make use of Microformats check out the official Microformats.org
website. Microformats are actually a more advanced than I’ve explained here, read more at the official site to get the full picture.

This brings me to the topic of this post - Microformats on ZDNet. If you have the Tails Firefox extention or another application that reads Microformats visit the ZDNet.co.uk contact us page to see Microformats at work. To avoid spammers harvesting email addresses individual contact email addresses are not shown, instead the instruction to use firstname.surname@domain.com is given. However, if you are using a Microformats reader the business card generated still presents the correct email address for each contact. The embedded Microformats was developed by James Myers (a CNET Networks Producer) and myself. James Myers has been interviewed on the subject which will appear on the site as a podcast and video shortly.

This is another example of ZDNet being leader in new technologies. For this reason I am very pleased to present ZDNet.co.uk with the very first FFE (From the Front End) Award. Congratulations to the ZDNet design team on the FFE Award for Best use of new technology on a Business Website. You can view all awards presented by FFE on the Awards page. Three more Awards were given out during the Podcast with Reinette “Ray” De Silva which was recorded last week. James Myers also modestly awarded another site an Award for best use of Microformats in his interview. These will be added to the award page when the Podcast goes live.

If you need any help viewing microformats in your Firefox, IE or Safari please post a comment and I’ll try and help out if I can. Please include your browser name and version.

Responsibilities as Designers/Developers

This post was prompted by reading a feaure by Andy Rutledge in .net magazine. First let me start by saying - it was an excellent column. If you haven’t read it already I suggest picking up a copy of .net as it’s a particularly good issue this month.

I digress, the article discussed Back end Developers not keeping to standards or producing poor quality work. He suggested that developers that do not understand semantics and correct use of html and css should be fired! The entire article was very strong, but I think this was necessary to get the point across.

What I wanted to comment on was the admonition for front-end designers to report bad programmers to the boss if they are producing bad code or messing up your standards compliant code because they don’t understand correct mark-up. In fact Andy said we were obligated to do so.
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Mikons!?

Mikons!? What on earth is a Mikon? Well I had no idea when I first heard about it but now I’m an addict.

Mikons is the brain child of Mark and Kenna Smith. The website has a built in tool which lets you create cool icons with very little effort. You can then share your creations with other members of the site - very much like flickr. It’s not all fun and games though, the Mikon Machine (as the site creators call it) is the most advanced online vector drawing tool in the world.

I knocked up the above icons in about 10mins. Give it a go yourself on the Mikons website, or click my images to see if I’ve added anything new to my gallery.

=Dave Long=

Service Comparison: Stock Photography

I’ll kick off the new Service Comparison feature with - Stock Photography.

For those that maybe unsure what Stock Photography is here is a brief explanation.

Stock photography is photography or imagery that is used repeatedly for commercial and non-commercial purposes.

When you need images for a site you may require something very specific and so take a photo yourself or hire a photographer to take the exact image you want. However, most of the time a bespoke image is not needed and a generic image is fine. You may require a picture of “a girl laughing” or “a pen” - this where stock photos come in.

You can search a database of images and find one that fits your purpose. While many like to use Google or Yahoo image search the vast majority of the time the images you find will be copyright and therefore illegal for you to rip off and use. There are some free gallery’s of royalty free images but usually as a free service they are very limited in the quantity, quality and variety of images.

For all the above reasons you will be best off with a paid for Stock Photography service. Some only include images from professional photographers, others are submitted by users of the site (although strongly moderated for quality). Here are the 4 examples that I will compare.

• iStockphoto
• Fotolia
• Shuttershock
• Corbis
• Ablestock

I will be scoring each site based on the following criteria:

Site Design (out of 25)
- Site Apperance
- Site Navagation

Images (out of 25)
- Quality of images
- Max available Resolution of images
- Range

Value (out of 25)
- Price/Value
- Restrictions on use

Editors Tilt (out of 25)

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