Irishlight

Phone Story : An iPhone educational game. Now banned from the AppStore

2011-10-04T17:37:00.001+01:00

Phone Story is a game for smartphone devices that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. Under the shiny surface of our electronic gadgets, behind its polished interface, hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe

Phone Story represents this process with four educational games that make the player symbolically complicit in coltan extraction in Congo, outsourced labor in China, e-waste in Pakistan and gadget consumerism in the West

Keep Phone Story on your device as a reminder of your impact. All of the revenues raised go directly to workers' organizations and other non-profits that are working to stop the horrors represented in the game

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and User Interfaces

2011-07-15T15:54:00.003+01:00

It is estimated that 5% of Americans suffer from ADHD and this should be borne in mind by people designing user interfaces for web sites, computer applications and control systems

I didn't just pull this information out of a textbook but when I saw the terms ADHD and User Interface Design mentioned in the same sentence on cloudpanic.com/user-interfaces.html

Snap. I recognised the connection immediately because it was intuitive. Someone pointed out something that is so obvious that it does not need explaining

After years of wading through complicated web sites and computer applications I began to think that there was something wrong with me and that I was maybe a bit slow on the uptake but this is not the case. It is not me who is to blame but the designers of crap user interfaces

Here are some symptoms of ADHD:

Impatience
Easily Distracted
Difficulty focusing on one task
Difficulty processing information as quickly as others

It is not just ADHD sufferers who exhibit these symptoms but a sizeable percentage of the population at large will show signs of at least one of them when they are operating a computer. This is food for thought and it gives credence to minimalists like me who believe that user interfaces should be as clean and simple as possible

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and User Interfaces might make a good study topic for someone doing a masters degree

Market your Technical Skills

2011-06-22T06:30:00.009+01:00

Among the patterns emerging from the mass of headlines I scan every day is the fact that employers are now looking for precise skill sets in the drive to recruit the right staff at the right time. For small businesses it is vital to get this right because getting the right people can make all the difference between failure and success

Employers are being ultra choosy about the skills they buy in and the recruitment process is being hampered by the fact that there has been an increase in the numbers of unsuitably qualified job candidates for technical positions. For example it is hard to find good Java Programmers which is why there are so many Java Programming jobs paying salaries that are not to be sniffed at

73% of employers report that despite increasing numbers of job applicants
thanks to high unemployment rates in the UK there is a serious shortage of
technical skills. This means there are also opportunities for HR people because
someone has to sit down a filter all these CVs and make decisions on who
will be getting the magic phone call

Why this is the case is anyone's guess but I suspect the idea of a technical
career became old fashioned in the crazy noughties as more young people
opted for careers in banking, accounting and the real estate sector. A career
in Information Technology had lost it's appeal and sounded like too much
hard work when there were faster ways of getting richer

There is plenty of money and opportunities in a technical career provided
you are clear about what your skills are and how you market them. Employers
are now shopping for people in much the same way you would buy books
from Amazon. The buying process is the same because you are buying something
based on user reviews (references), performance (skills) and quality (attitude)

It an easy exercise to to write down your set of skills in a list but that only tells
you what skills you have and does not put them in context or say anything about
your level of experience in each

The list below is an example

Java Programming
PHP Programming
C# Programming
Web Design

Hardly any information here at all and pretty useless
The example below is way better because it identifies strengths as well
as helping to identify in which areas you may need some training

Java Programming - 4 years - expert
PHP Programming - 3 years - intermediate
C# Programming - 1 year - beginner
Web Design

This is much better but we can provide even more information by taking out Web Design and expand Web Design and Programming skills under separate headings:

Programming Skills

Java Programming - 4 years - expert
PHP Programming - 3 years - intermediate
C# Programming - 1 year - beginner

Web Design Skills

Cascading Style Sheets
Java Script
Copywriting

This is much better because it provides more information. Lots more. It tells us that we have here a technical person who can write. Bingo. This is interesting because too many technical people are one trick ponies who can't do much else except be a techie. This type of information can be gold to a sharp eyed recruiter as well as the savvy job hunter

It's also useful to mention skills in which you are not an expert but which you have a
working knowledge of. This is important information too and it could swing it in
your favour when employers are making final decisions on who is getting hired

It's easier to be straight and not kid yourself and least of all an employer. If you end
up working in a technically demanding job where you lack the skills required you
will only end up stressed because of the pressure of constant under performance

Links

Annual survey on recruitment finds return of war for talent and huge skills gaps in UK, despite widespread unemployment

Broadband Speed Checker

2011-06-16T05:36:00.002+01:00

Use this tool to test your broadband download & upload speeds

Technical Graduates lack Soft Skills

2011-06-16T02:13:00.002+01:00

Engineering honours graduates from Irish Institutes of Technology perform well in the workplace according to a report commissioned by engineering schools from twelve Institutes but only 64% of employers found graduates well prepared in non-technical skills such as communication

Institute and university engineering graduates perform similarly in the workplace
4 out of 5 employers found honours institute graduates well prepared in technical/problem solving skills and engineering knowledge

8 out of 10 employers found that institute engineering graduates progress at a similar rate in their careers as other graduates

83% of engineering graduates believed their education prepared them well for their first job

65% of engineering graduates agreed that their engineering careers and salaries progressed as they had expected since graduation.

8 out of 10 graduates believed they had been given positions corresponding with their engineering qualifications

9 out of 10 employers said institute engineering graduates either met or exceeded the employers’ expectations

1,500 engineering graduates completed the graduate survey
75 engineering managers completed the employer survey

Study shows Engineering Graduates progressing well in the workplace

LinkedIn - Professional Networking

2011-06-11T07:38:00.010+01:00

LinkedIn is an excellent social networking medium for jobseekers, the self employed and businesses with an eye on future opportunities

Using LinkedIn for professional networking can be lucrative if you put time and effort into creating a polished and accurate profile clearly demonstrating your knowledge, experience and skills. It is like an online CV where you tell the world about your experience, qualifications, areas of expertise, services and anything else you can do to solve other people's problems

LinkedIn is a different animal from Facebook in that it is focused on business, recruitment and job search rather than trivia and entertainment. LinkedIn is not for the masses but instead offers a sober environment for professionals wishing to market themselves online and stay in tune with like minded individuals and special interest groups

If you are a student, jobseeker or self employed professional looking to the future and you don't have a LinkedIn profile then do yourself a favour and start thinking about it now. It may become the best investment you ever make if you can see the potential of this tool and learn to use it intelligently and effectively

LinkedIn can help people find you easily because, as a search based tool making heavy use of keywords and keyphrases, LinkedIn is heavily indexed by Google! I am sure I don't have to spell out what that means

If you are selling professional services then LinkedIn could be a far more effective marketing tool than Facebook because your audience will be more focused in their needs meaning that those who do visit your LinkedIn profile will be more targeted than much of the casual passing traffic you will attract on sites like Facebook

A carefully crafted LinkedIn profile is visible on the open web so it should be optimised in much the same way as your main web site with proper titles, descriptions and text all containing keyword rich content accurately describing your qualifications, skills, experience and interests. Yes Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Techniques should be applied to your LinkedIn profile for the very same reasons they are applied to any other type of web page

Here are some motivations for using LinkedIn:

LinkedIn for Business

Entice targeted traffic to your main web site
Provide updates about services, products, events, publications etc

LinkedIn for Recruiters

Target your searches using the advanced search tool
Build lists of candidates for each vacancy
Contact candidates with job offers
Ask if they can refer someone else who is currently looking
Place job ads

LinkedIn for Job Seekers

Current position, project work, personal achievements
Previous positions with descriptions of each
Educational and Professional Qualifications
Personal Interests

LinkedIn Profile Tips

Create an interesting Summary and inject your own voice into it
Provide links to your Website or Blog
Describe what you did in your previous jobs
Mention special projects and personal achievements

Your Professional Headline

Your professional headline appears everywhere your name appears on LinkedIn. It is crucial that you create a good professional headline that is memorable

Examples:
'Sales and Marketing Consultant' is as boring as hell.
'Internet Marketing Guru,Sligo,Ireland - Outsmarting Your Competition' is much more memorable and interesting

Status Updates - Intelligent Use Of

This is similar to Tweeting and the 'What's on Your Mind' feature on Facebook. If you run a web site or blog then each time you post something new you can broadcast your latest article (including the link of course) on LinkedIn with a quick status update. This will be seen by everyone in your immediate network and beyond

Get Yourself Recommended

Go for quality and not quantity when seeking recommendations
Ask people to recommend you and offer to return the favour
Be honest and realistic

Participate

Joining discussion groups will increase your visibility and further let you demonstrate your knowledge and experience. This is why LinkedIn is called a Social Media application - you need to be sociable :-) to get the most out of LinkedIn. Seriously though, by participating you will meet many people who share your interests and who will want to join your network and keep in touch with what you are doing

A Custom News Service

LinkedIn lets you tell the world about yourself but by joining groups you can receive regular updates providing you with valuable information about what is happening in your industry and in this sense you can tweak your LinkedIn settings to act as specialised news service. You can avoid information overload by controlling how often you want to receive email updates from groups and discussions on LinkedIn

Time Management

LinkedIn is not a tool you would use every day - it sends email alerts when there is some activity around you. Most time is invested in the beginning when learning how LinkedIn works and in planning your strategy and profile creation

Advanced Search

Narrow down your keyword search to a particular location, eg "Computer Repairs, Sligo,Ireland"

Updates

Regularly updating your profile keeps it fresh and shows that you are still alive and kicking. A quick and easy way to keep your profile fresh is to post links in your Update Stream. Make them interesting and make them frequent

Facebook for Business and Personal Use

2011-06-09T05:11:00.007+01:00

I am not a technophobe but I understand why some people hate using Facebook. The user interface sucks and when your number of friends reaches a critical level managing a Facebook page can become a major pain in neck due to spam and seemingly deliberately placed usability obstacles designed to drive you insane

My first attempt at using Facebook did not set the heather alight because I didn't understand what the point was of reading status updates and the banal goings on in the lives of people most of whom I hardly knew. I find it hard to fathom why people eventually become Facebook addicts because let's face it Facebook itself is pretty is boring

Previously I had formed a conceptual model of Facebook which made me think it was a time sink for college students bunking off from class but when I noticed that it had something like 500m users I went back to it with fresh eyes and a more open mind

My position today is that Facebook can be a powerful marketing tool but as a means of socialising you can forget it because the best way to socialise is to do it off-line and in person with real people

I reasoned that 500m people can't be wrong and that there had to be some potential use for Facebook I had not considered first time around. I invested some time reacquainting myself with it and then it began to click. I figured that the key to understanding and reaping any potential benefits of Facebook was all about understanding it's privacy settings and making efficient use of lists

However the privacy settings alone consist of 50 settings with over 170 options and a glance this New York Times Facebook Infographic is enough to induce a mild sense of paranoia into even the most level headed of people

It is this seeming complexity that holds the key to levering Facebook into becoming a powerful marketing tool in the right hands. Here Facebook has real potential for driving interested people to a main website because many people use Facebook as a search engine like they might do with Google. If you have the time and the energy then Facebook can become another major trunk route feeding straight into your main website

After digesting the NY Times Facebook infographic it is clear that there is a huge level of control at your fingertips and that such fine grained control allows you to add structure to your Facebook presence and easily control who sees what

Creating a Facebook Profile

This takes some thought because you have to think of who you want to connect with on Facebook - friends and family; fellow professionals; special interest groups; clients/customers etc

You are supposed to have only one Facebook account in your real name and this will likely be your personal Facebook page where you keep in touch with what family and friends are doing but some people also use their personal Facebook page for professional reasons too. If you intend to use Facebook for a business trading under a business name very different from your own name then you can create what is known as a Facebook fan page under the name of the business. Managing two Facebook accounts can be a major hassle however but it at least makes a clear distinction between your personal and professional life on-line

Facebook Privacy Settings and Lists

Once you are comfortable with Facebook's privacy settings and lists you will not look back. All the types of people you might come into contact with should be placed into lists such as family, previous workplaces, university or college, professional contacts, fans, sporting and activity partners, study groups etc. It's not difficult but it takes a bit of time and effort before you feel organised and in charge of your information

Apply privacy settings to each list to determine how visible they are. Naturally you want to apply the tightest security to your family list and keep that list invisible to anyone but family. As you work through each list you can determine the privacy settings for each knowing that if you prefer to keep your professional and social contacts invisible to each other then you can easily do so.

If you use Facebook for both business and personal use you can prevent your fans from seeing family photo albums and other stuff you want to keep private. Lists are wonderful things and they offer maximum control over your visibility on Facebook

You can get value from Facebook if you start out with a clear goal. If you have a goal then it will be much easier to learn how to use Facebook intelligently with the aim of devising a strategy for achieving that goal and measuring your expected results. Good luck

Write Quality Articles for Link Building

2011-06-02T18:39:00.003+01:00

Some people use article creation software to churn out articles for their websites. The software trawls the net looking for passages of text related to your chosen topic and stitches them together to form an 'article'. Would you want to read such junk or would you prefer quality articles that have been researched and written by humans?

Which article would you trust the most?
Which article would people want to link to?
Which article carries the most authority?
Which article is most likely to get results?

If you arrived here after being lured by the keyphrase 'article creation software' which I placed in the first paragraph and then repeated in this one, then let me tell you that you are on a hiding to nothing if you think such software is going to have the world beating a path to your door and shower you with good karma

When it comes to article writing quality is everything and it takes practice to hone your writing skills and produce quality. You can't produce quality writing without putting in some effort but by learning what makes a good article good you will find it easier to pen your own articles and do it quicker and with less effort

The purpose of and intention behind your article will come across to any web savvy reader. Intelligent people read between the lines and can quickly tell if something is genuine or whether it is half hearted

This article was written to educate some of those dumb marketers out there whose attempts at marketing themselves and their businesses are nothing short of a joke. The real intention behind it is to convince people to write quality articles that make the web a better place and offer value. Value for the reader as well as you. It works both ways you know

Many people now rely on Google to educate them and most of them click the first link that comes up in the search results. How many times have you clicked on the first link and found it was junk? It happens all the time doesn't it?

And here we have a serious problem Heuston

Some people think that getting a top search engine ranking is a goal to be achieved at any price. With so many SEO hotshots out there gaming the search engines we are at the mercy of so much junk articles and misinformation.

You can win by making yourself different from the majority and going for quality. How you achieve that is up to you but in my experience all the how-to books in the world are no substitute for adopting the clear thinking and self-discipline it takes to sit down and write a quality article. If you put in the effort and your intentions are honourable then you will get what you deserve

Copywriting as Painting with Words

2011-06-01T00:01:00.010+01:00

If you search Google for 'great copywriting' then you will soon discover the phrase 'images expressed as words' and if you search for 'images expressed as words' all the links returned will be for sites or articles related to copywriting. Conclusion: copywriting is painting with words

Words paint images in our minds and we only need to think back to when we were young and losing ourselves in the adventure stories of the Famous Five to recognise this well known fact. This is why it is sometimes said that great copywriters are also great story tellers

Humans are very reliant on their visual processing systems when making decisions and if they can't see or physically handle something then will try to imagine what it would be like based on word of mouth or written descriptions. Word of mouth works best but great copy can be just as as effective

Every day we read and hear words which paint pictures in our minds designed to persuade or sell and to make us laugh or cry but most of these words are immediately forgotten and don't sink in because they are either poorly written, uninspiring or simply don't create mental images strong enough that will spur us into action

Half baked writing is lazy and it is to be found everywhere. Don't do it

Writing is a powerful tool that should not be underestimated yet many people imagine that when it comes to the web visual appearance is more important than copy. It isn't

People don't arrive at a web site to sit back and drool over the visual design - they want high quality information. How many web sites have you seen that look visually stunning for a couple of seconds and then cold and empty because there is nothing there - all fur coat and no knickers if you will excuse the expression. There is nothing more offputting than arriving at someones door only to find they are out and that you have had a wasted journey

Tourist sites are a good example of where you will find a mixture of imagery and copy presented to paint pictures in your mind about that great holiday spot you have always dreamed of visiting. The imagery will fire emotional triggers but it is the words you read that will convince you more

Why is this?

Because good copywriters know about:

Effective research
People
Empathy
Subject knowledge
How to communicate
How to craft words

It's not rocket science and if you really want to know what it takes to write good copy then all you need to do is think back to all those times in your life when the written word had the power to move you or spur you into action

Google Ireland Initiative - Get Your Business Online

2011-05-31T18:12:00.005+01:00

The Benefits:

No Cost
No need to know about technical stuff
Free .ie domain name for one year
€100 free Google Adwords

40% of Irish businesses don't even have a web site. This figure is not only surprising but it is revealing. You could interpret it in many ways but it makes me suspect that some Irish businesses fell into a false sense of security during the boom and are now paying the heavy price of lost sales by not having had the foresight to prepare for the changing behaviour patterns of web savvy buyers

It also tells us something about the Irish Concept of Management but I will leave that hot potato for another day. It is better that they waken up late than not at all and stop giving Irish consumers (who spend on average 20 hours per week on-line) good reasons to give their hard earned spends to businesses in the UK and across the pond in America

The world of technology (especially mobile technology) is moving fast and there are 3 billion mobile users out there using hand-held technologies which allow them to organise their life and do business on-line. There is a world of opportunity beckoning in the Mobile Commerce (MCommerce) world because very soon people will using their Mobiles as credit cards

Do something serious thinking about it now because the tools are there and free. If you check the link below you will soon realise that those imaginary barriers preventing you from putting your business on-line are no longer there and that there is no excuses at all for not having a web site and learning about social media and how it relates to your web site

To be ignorant of the explosion in mobile technology is one thing but to have no inclination towards learning what even a basic web site can do for your bottom line is a fatal mistake for any small business or sole trader to make. This is where a little education can go far but the sad thing is that all the information you need to become web savvy is freely available. In fact it is everywhere and it doesn't cost a cent

A cynic would say that this just proves that people are intellectually lazy and I would like to listen more to such an argument but what it does prove without a shadow of doubt is that many business people are not being as smart as perhaps they could be

This is serious because the longer businesses and individuals take to become tech savvy the longer it will be for them to catch on and realise what it takes to make a difference in the cut throat world of on-line business

60% of Irish businesses don't even make use of on-line business directories and this is a damning figure which tempts me to put it that if you are one of the 60% then you either have so much business that you don't need a website or that you really need to get some cop on and sharpen up on your business skills

If all your thinking becomes geared towards providing a better service than your competitors and doing it in your own unique way then you wont go far wrong. Good luck

Getting Irish Business Online Campaign

Plus video of An Post's new on-line services:
http://www.gettingbusinessonline.ie/

Android Phone Comparison Tools

2011-05-30T20:26:00.002+01:00

Google has a nice web application for making side by side comparisons of the feature sets and specifications of Android mobile phones and it is a very useful app for anyone who is in the market for a new phone or just window shopping
After picking up to three phones from a list you are given a table containing detailed information on each phone including vital statistics like battery life, screen size and hardware specs. There are also links to online retailers where you can buy the phone you want

It would be great if the app gave each phone a score out of 100 in order to make it clear which phone has the edge but sadly this is missing

The answer of course is to look at what customers are actually saying about the phone you are thinking of buying so that you can learn from the experience of others

The tool over at phandroid below allows end users to vote for their favourite phone but it does look like there are many people using it in their research. The site itself gives each phone a rating and there is also a download centre with some very useful apps with user votes determining the popularity and usefulness of each

Android Phone Comparison Tool:
http://www.google.com/phone/#

Most Popular Androids and Coming Soon
http://androidphone.org.uk/

Android Comparison with End User Voting
http://phandroid.com/phones/compare/

How to avoid Spam Emails

2011-05-30T17:44:00.005+01:00

Recently I signed up for a free marketing ebook and had to provide an email address. The ebook was average and did not tell me much I didn't already know and then the spam emails started rolling into my inbox in rapid succession. It was time to take action and eradicate this pest

Stopping spam is very easy if you have two gmail accounts - your real one and another one for use in scenarios where you don't trust the person asking you for your email address. You can use any name for the junk email address such as mickeymouse@gmail.com. It doesn't really matter

I often use my mickey mouse email address when signing up for anything that looks too good to be true but sometimes the spam gets through to my real email address because I have instructed mickeymouse to forward all email to my real address

Luckily gmail lets me filter out emails from certain senders and will mark them as spam and then automatically delete them. I went into my mickeymouse address and set up a filter to delete all messages from the spammer

Yesterday morning there was 4 emails from the spammer and last night I added the filter. Today I checked into mickey mouse to see what the story was and it was as clean a bell

You could add the filter to your main gmail address but doing it my way offers you double protection and works like a charm

MCommerce - Mobile Phones as Credit Cards

2011-05-30T03:46:00.001+01:00

New Google smartphones are soon to be fitted with wireless sensors which interact with electronic payment systems at the checkout. All you will need to do is swipe your phone across any pay-pass enabled terminal and it will take your payment

After it's venture into the mobile market with the Nexus 1, Google is now moving into the mobile payments market and this means you could soon be using your mobile phone as a credit card

Google has teamed up with CitiBank, MasterCard and manufacturers of electronic point of sale (epos) systems who are upgrading their payment terminals to handle contactless payments in addition to existing methods of payments such as swiping credit and debit cards through slot readers

The payment system is known as Google Wallet and it will be possible to use any major credit card simply by entering the card account details into your Google Wallet enabled phone and then waiting for verification from your credit card company

This is a revolutionary use of technology and bound to have an effect of the three billion mobile users worldwide

One minute video - a man using a mobile phone to buy a can of coke from a vending machine:

Links

Google Wallet FAQ

Well Structured Web Pages for SEO

2011-05-29T00:53:00.002+01:00

A well structured web page benefits the reader as well as the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts of the site owner. You can better serve the search engines, your visitors and, most importantly yourself by creating quality web pages that are easily read by humans and web bots such as the Google web site crawler

There is no mystery in this because the process is like structuring an essay or any other document. Behind the page in the markup there are two meta data tags imaginatively called 'Title' and 'Description' which usually appear on the list of search results returned from a Google search

In the graphic below you can see this in action where Google displays the Title and Description Meta Tags of my landscape photography site http://www.irishlightandcolour.com

The text is easily readable and the Title and Description Meta Tags accurately tell you what to expect when you visit this site - landscape photography and photography tips

The page content itself should also be properly structured and consist of headings, paragraphs and lists. The first paragraph should be a heading 1 style and it should be the only heading 1 on the page. It should also be an exact copy of the title meta tag mentioned earlier if you want your web page to pass accessibility tests

The headings of subsequent paragraphs should be heading 2 and or heading 3 styles ...

Search engines love text more than images. Behind the page it is important that your content (text) appears as close to the top of the page as possible but there is a stumbling block here waiting to trip up inexperienced webmasters

The space between the meta tags and the first heading 1 of the page content is usually where webmasters include references to other resources such as stylesheets, javascripts and the main menu. All these resources have to be included in the document and parsed before you get to the first heading

Some webmasters even put the main menu before the first heading and if this menu contains dozens of links in a dropdown style menu then all this has to be parsed too before you come to the content. One solution is to put the menu after the content in the page markup and then use css to place the menu at the top of the page above the content

Sidebars can also be placed beneath the content in the page makup and then positioned using css

Well structured, light weight web pages often come up high in the search engines and it is better to keep your markup lean and mean rather than including everything but the kitchen sink in your page markup. Good luck

Natural Flowing Copy

2011-05-28T03:25:00.004+01:00

There is nothing more irritating than reading amateurish web page copy that looks like it has been generated by a robot. It smacks of laziness and lacks the authenticity and authority of words that have been penned by a human

Likewise you can tell class a mile away and this is where good copywriters earn their daily bread. Good SEO Copywriting is a craft and can make a web page come up high without butchering the text through keyword stuffing and bolding keywords all over the place willy nilly

If you are going to optimise a web page then you are better optimising it for readability while making your keywords and keyphrases appear naturally within the flow of the text

If they appear naturally and you occasionally make them bold then people will not really mind because a few bolded keyphrases can like a navigation mechanism when a visitor is visually scanning the page after it first appears on the screen

To keep the keyphrases under the radar while giving your readers a quality read takes some creativity. There is effort involved in this and optimising a single web page can take a couple of hours work and there is further work involved in the measuring of your results in the future

Professional SEO Copwriting often employs subtle psychological techniques designed to convince people that what they were searching for is not the thing they really wanted through offering them a superior alternative - 'unlike (cheap competitors keyphrase) we offer a far superior alternative'

That is the power of words and it is words that do the convincing. This is why SEO Copywriting should be seen as an art and treated seriously

I wonder how many people will tomorrow be searching for the phrase 'natural flowing copy'. Not many perhaps but for one or two who do this post should just about hit the spot

Profiting from Long Tail Keywords

2011-05-28T02:09:00.004+01:00

A short keyword phrase such as 'landscape photography' is much less specific than 'irish landscape photography prints' and likely to be much less profitable for any Irish photographer attempting to sell prints through a web site

The reason is very simple. Someone who searches for 'landscape photography' is not being specific and their search results will return a much broader range of results relating to landscape photography. Here the searcher is being casual in their approach and is not asking for anything in particular

Among the search results they will find sites offering landscape galleries, articles, photoshop tutorials, photography courses and photographic equipment. For the searcher this becomes a hit and miss affair and it does not serve the site owner well because there is no point in attracting passing visitors who don't stay on the website

If you are in business as an artist or photographer attempting to attract people who will buy your prints then it is smarter to use long tail key-phrases which will appeal to people who are at the buying phase and have already made up their minds up that they are going to buy an Irish landscape print

The moral here is that if you are selling something and then specifically tell people what it is you are selling then you will get more buyers

You can take this even further by being even more specific in your key-phrases and actually include the word 'buy'. People use ordinary words when searching and buy is a more commonly used word than 'purchase'. No-one uses the word 'purchase' in real life anyway

It is better to have a small number of less specific pages sending you lots of untargeted traffic and a lot of specific pages bringing in targeted traffic through the use of long tail key-phrases describing those pages

The Rise of Android

2011-05-25T14:02:00.002+01:00

There has been a huge rise in the uptake of Google's Android as the Mobile Platform of choice for developers and vendors alike. Android offers freedom and choice which other mobile platforms don't and this is no doubt one of the main the reasons for it's meteoric rise to fame. The graph below clearly illustrates that Android is giving Apple and Microsoft a real headache in the battle for mobile market share

The story is not all rosy for consumers who may be tempted into buying a cheaply priced Android device. Android is a completely open platform and it has been abused by unscrupulous manufacturers producing Tablet PCs and Handsets which are junk. If you are in the market for an Android powered handset or tablet then pay attention to what previous customers say before handing over your readies. However if you do have an Android device that is junk then just remember that it more likely to be the device rather than Android which is the problem

For hackers and enterprising software engineers however Android could be a dream come true. There are no license fees, approval processes or other restrictive practices dictating how you develop and deploy your applications. Android gives you access to and control of the hardware and you can even download a free software development kit which includes an Android device emulator. That's right you don't even need a physical Android device to design and develop applications that will run on any Android powered device!

Android could be a goldmine for anyone who is a software developer with an idea for a killer mobile application. Google, the makers of Android, have stated that they have adopted the philosophy that the way to push the envelope in the mobile market is to give developers all the tools and freedom they want. It is developers and hackers who design and create the software to use hardware in ways that no-one else has thought of so this makes sense

Android is a good thing for society because it offers a level playing field to developers from all walks of life and you are not locked out because you don't have a spare $500 for the latest device and another $500 for a software development kit. And thank god too

Links

comScore Reports January 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share

Poor quality tablets could harm Android's reputation

Java Programming Tools - Netbeans

2011-05-23T15:49:00.000+01:00

It has been a couple of years since I last used Netbeans and I recently downloaded the latest version on to the Linux box. Netbeans has come on leaps and bounds and I am very impressed with what it can do. What excited me the most was the idea of having one great tool for working with both PHP and Java applications on a Linux machine. The people who develop Netbeans have an uncanny ability for anticipating the most useful features developers are likely to need or want in the future and in that sense they do a sterling job

One of the things about Java Programming that has always been of concern to developers is the quality of development tools available and for creating applications with rich user interfaces you need something that is intuitive, easy to use and which does a lot of the work for you. Netbeans is such a tool and it is supported with an active user community and excellent documentation

It is one thing using a couple of classes from the Java Swing library to create small Java applications for collecting user input and then displaying output but quite another when you want to create a fully featured desktop application featuring Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) packed with all the bells and whistles from the Java Swing library. Such applications also need to be thoroughly documented and Netbeans can handle all this this too

With Netbeans creating GUI layouts is laughably easy thanks to the Matisse GUI Builder and you don't have to manually create all the GUI code that forms the layout structure of your user screens. You don't have to manually create event handlers for your GUI components because Netbeans can add any event handler you can think of at the right click of a mouse. It all feels very slick and in my opinion is as good as Microsoft Visual Studio. MS have always produced top programming kit that has made some Java people envy their polish and sophistication but now the differences are minimal

Anyone who has ever coded up GUIs by hand will know that it is a time sink that keeps you away from the real business of coding up and debugging your application logic. It is far better to spend more time on Debug and Test than things which are repetitive and should be automated. Time is money

Netbeans makes it easier to quickly develop Java web applications and it also has built in tools for accessing and manipulating databases. Connecting to and running applications on a local web server is child's play and it even has the ability to deploy Java and PHP application on to remote servers

One of the really cool things about Netbeans is that it is Swing application platform which can be used as the framework for future applications. All those things that common to GUI applications are build into the platform, things like : windowing, a help system and deployment options. Starting off from a sound footing using a Java framework you then extend the framework with your own loosely coupled modules which allow you to build applications which have clearly defined boundaries between their constituent parts. No more spaghetti code that forever keeps you in debugging hell. There is really not much to dislike about Netbeans in my opinion

Real Stories from People Switching to the NetBeans IDE

Learning Java - A Recap

2011-05-23T12:18:00.000+01:00

Recently I enrolled for an on-line Java Programming course provided by the Irish employment agency FAS. I used to be very good at Java but I let my skills and knowledge gather dust so I decided to go back to the beginning and start all over again. I am looking forward to getting back into Java and I have all the tools set up on my Linux machine and the tool I chose are Netbeans and BlueJ

This weekend I dusted down my old Java book - the same one I used in college seven years ago - Java How To Program 4th Edition by Deitel, and smiled at the yellowing pages and the coffee stain on the cover. If I remember correctly it is even a Java Coffee stain. So I got to thinking about what Java is and decided to type up this note as a refresher for myself and as an quick Java read for anyone else who is on the start of the learning curve

I find that there are not many people who can clearly explain what Java is and I know that this is a major obstacle to many who are just starting out in learning Java. When I was learning Java the first time around I was always looking for good articles in the hope that they could shine a ray of light across the intimidating Java landscape but in the time since I have realised that there are not many people in this world who are technically gifted while being able to articulate their technical knowledge to the layperson. People like that are pretty rare

Why Java?

Java is everywhere http://www.java.com/en/java_in_action/ so why not?- it runs on about 1 billion desktop computers and 3 billion mobile devices. In many companies Java has been adopted as the standard for building and integrating interactive web applications, back end business systems and user applications running on the desktop and on handheld devices. These Java applications include:

Office Desktop Applications
Relational Database Engines & Database Management Systems
Web Services & Mobile Device Applications
Content Management Systems
Digital set top boxes and consumer electronics gadgets

That is pretty impressive stuff and equally impressive is the fact that Java is free, the programming kit is free and you can run your applications almost anywhere

Java can be used to program anything from tiny smart card applications all the way up to huge multi-tiered client-server applications serving the day to day IT operations of large companies. Java can also be used to power web services and to provide applications for people using handheld devices such as barcode scanners, pagers and smart phones which need to interact with those web services and back end business applications a company runs in house. For example,
if a haulage company wanted to collect real-time data on it's fleet operations then it can be done with Java Technology

One reason why Java is so popular in business (the enterprise) is it's portability and networking features which allow it to inter-connect a wide range of computing devices such as servers, desktop and mobile devices running different operating systems. The whole idea is to write software once and run it anywhere where there is a Java Runtime Environment containing a Java Virtual Machine. Java provides a layer of abstraction between your applications and the underlying hardware which means that Java applications are not hardware dependent

Learning Java - Programming Tools

There are two aspect to learning Java. First there is the language itself and then there is the need to familiarise yourself with the plethora of class libraries that are available for use in your applications. Learning the Java libraries takes time but learning them well can ensure that you leverage what is already available to you rather than needlessly try to reinvent the wheel. This re-usability is made possible thanks to the idea of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) which is the main technique used when creating programs in Java. If you learn about Objects early in the learning curve then will find it a lot easier to understand Java Programming.

You need good tools to create Java programs. These can be simple tools (BlueJ) or they can be fully fledged Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) such as Netbeans or Eclipse which are often used by professional Java programmers working in commercial programming shops. For learning the Java language and getting your head around Objects I think BlueJ is a fine tool because it lets you create and interact with Objects in ways that no other tool can.

I like BlueJ for experimenting with the Java language and use an IDE (Netbeans) for creating heavy duty applications with Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) used to access databases and provide tables of information to the end user. These are the two best Java programming tools I have come across and I would definitely recommend them to beginners because if you can master them then it should be enough make you dangerous

Frameworks

When we want to create a new Java application all these pre-written software components (Class Libraries) are available to us at the click of a mouse and they provide us with functionality that would be very time consuming and frankly boring to re-create from scratch. This is where the term 'Framework' comes from and the term is heavily used by Microsoft to describe their Java competitor which they call "The .Net Framework". The Java and .net are frameworks which both do more or less do the same thing and what one you use is a matter of preference

To make the concept of Frameworks more concrete I want to take a quick diversion and will give you an example of a great PHP framework. In the PHP world you have Frameworks for the Rapid Application Development (RAD) of dynamic web sites. CodeIgniter is such a PHP Framework and it does exactly what the word Framework implies - it lets you create top notch web applications in days rather than weeks because all the boring and repetitive stuff is taken and packaged into
class libraries which you just need to plug into your application. It handles things like URL requests, security and database access without you having to code all these functions from scratch. This is very smart especially when time means money and you have little development time

The Java Platform (or Framework)

Java is akin to a huge warehouse containing a rich collection of reusable software parts and assemblies, written in the Java Programming language, which are known as the Java Class libraries, or sometimes called the Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Java classes are grouped by functionality and arranged into libraries which we can easily reference from our
own java applications

The Java Platform consists of a group of programs and documentation for developing, running and debugging programs written in the Java Programming language. To develop Java programs you need a Java Development Kit (jdk) and to run them you need a Java Runtime Environment (jre). The jdk includes the runtime and the runtime includes the Java Virtual Machine. The jdk also comes with neat example programs for you to run and see just what Java can do

There is also comprehensive API documentation available for java which you can download (it is 56 megabytes) and browse from the Netbeans and BlueJ user interfaces (UIs) or from your web browser. There is also a huge Java tutorial imaginatively called "The Java Tutorial" which can be downloaded and used for offline study. It is packed with examples of Java applications and their source codes

Deploying Java Applications

You can package a Java application and send it to anyone who is using computer with a Java Runtime Environment and they should be able to run it. Your application is like a stripped down version of the Java Class Libraries and contains only those custom classes your application specifically needs. Your custom classes, class libraries and resources such as images are all
bundled into a Java Archive (jar file) which can be executed on the users machine simple by double clicking the jar file icon in their graphical file manager or it can be executed from the command line using the command "java -jar myjarfile.jar"

Object Oriented Programming

This is where beginners have the most trouble. Getting your head around the idea of software objects can be pretty difficult especially if you have experience of writing linear top down programs (or scripts) in languages such as PHP. The good news is that in Java you can still write linear programs when learning the language and then move on to Objects later. The Deitel book thoroughly covers all the basics of Java in the first seven chapters before moving on to Objects in Chapter 8

It is worth getting to know Objects because thinking in Objects comes natural to humans. We like to classify and categorise things (objects) into groups because it makes perfect sense to do so. After a while you find that thinking in Objects make sense and that it makes even more sense to apply the paradigm to computer programming. Good luck on learning Java

Links

What is Java
Download Java and The Java Tutorial
Jdk Documentation

Usability 101 - The Human Action Cycle

2011-05-11T08:14:00.001+01:00

In his book the The Design of Everyday Things author Donald Norman describes how there are two aspects to every human action - execution and evaluation. Execution involves doing something while evaluation is the comparison of what actually happened with what we expected to happen. This process is known as the action cycle and it has seven stages

You start out with a goal (something you want to happen) and go for it with the intention of achieving it and you don't want any barriers in your way. When you know that barriers have been placed there deliberately then you have good cause to get pissed off and rightly so. Especially when it comes to computer software and web sites.

This morning I got an email from IBM, who I have not heard from in ages, promising me an article titled "Seven Steps to Improving Requirements Engineering" and I though it sounded pretty useful. There was a link and I assumed it went straight to the article but no, it wasn't what I expected at all. Remember this is from within my Hotmail Account and they already have my email address. Here is what I got:

After thinking about this I was considering the stages of evaluation. Evaluation starts with our perception of the world and then we must then interpret our perception thus completing the seven steps of the action cycle:

We do this all day every day because it is built in to how we humans are wired. Normally our reactions are normal but when we innocently intend to perform an action and then realise that someone has been taking the piss it is not unreasonable to arrive at this conclusion:

Ok all kidding aside there is a lesson in this for anyone who designs things, especially computer software and web sites - never promise one thing and then deliver something else. I am sure the article would have been a good read but fail to see why they needed to ask for my email address especially after just sending me this message. I thought Big Blue was meant to be intelligent but in this case apparently not.

Great Online Colour Tools

2011-03-30T18:09:00.014+01:00

Colour Tools for Web, Graphic and Interior Designers

This is a collection of interesting on-line colour tools that are either very useful for professional work or learning

Playing around with these tools can be fun and therapeutic

Colorzilla for Web Design

CSS Gradient Generator
Colorzilla for Firefox

Close Colours Tool

Pick your base colour and compare it to closely related colours that are slightly lighter and darker than the base colour.
Close Colors Tool - colortools.net

ColorBlender Palette Tool

This is a slick piece of work.
Choose the palette which catches your eye from a huge range of palettes.
Your palette has 6 colours and includes neutral colours.
Tweak it and then take a screen shot or save the codes for each colour.
ColorBlender - colorblender.com

Principles of Information Architecture

2011-03-28T00:29:00.007+01:00

Notes from a podcast by Information Architect Dan Brown.

Duration 19:34

Link to podcast

The User Interface Engineering website UIE.com recently sent out an excellent email newsletter containing links to a series of articles and podcasts. The podcast 5 Principles of Information Architecture by Dan Brown was illuminating and below are some notes I took about the 5 principles and links to related material I found
on following up my interest

Information Architecture Definition

The structural design of information and the labeling of it to support find-ability and usability. Many websites act as structured knowledge bases and the organisation of content and navigation is both an art and a science

Structural Principles

Principle of Choices - only offer options relevant to a given task
Front Doors - assume that users will arrive via different pathways
Exemplars - categories are best described using examples

Abstract Principles

Principle of Growth - how a site will expand over time
Principle of Focused Navigation - it's purpose and it's location on the page

User Generated Navigation Systems

Elevating popular content - eg, '10 most read articles' - is questionable because these lists are generated by an algorithm or by the site owner. 'Popular content' does not let users see the range and depth of available content

It might be more beneficial to serve the user up content based on her previous choices. Such user generated navigation systems may offer a more personal user experience

The Principle of Exemplars applied to an Intranet

Offer content based on the TYPE of content - form, report, policy document etc.
The most requested content can be elevated and the user can click on the main category and see all forms or all policy documents etc from the HR department:

Three Questions Every Web Page Should Answer

Where am I in the scheme of things?
What's here?
Where can I go from here?

Conclusion

Information Architecture is a developing discipline which can offer opportunities to those who decide to pursue it as a career. There are all sorts of fields where information needs to be designed and managed - libraries, government departments and businesses all need to have the right information available in the right context at the right time. In the information age specialists can do their bit by helping to ensure that information pollution and information anxiety are kept to a minimum. If you like order and discipline then you just might enjoy studying IA

Links

Information Architecture on wikipedia
Dan Brown - Eight Principles of Information Architecture (PDF)
Interaction-Design.org - Information Architecture

Shutter - A Screenshot Tool for Linux

2011-03-14T04:04:00.007Z

Capture a selection, full screen or application window
Plugins - image resize, watermark, drop shadow, 3D rotate
Optimise images for the web
Copy images to the clipboard for pasting into other applications
Upload images to Flickr or via FTP to other web sites

There are many times when we want to capture screenshots from our computer displays. Sometimes all we want is a single screenshot for emailing an image to a friend while at other times we might want to take a series of screen shots of a web page and save them into a folder where we can read them later using our operating system's default image viewer. Such a tool is valuable to educators creating learning materials for distribution via the the web and anyone who is creating presentations for use in the classroom

I have been trying out a nice screenshot tool on Linux called Shutter which is full of tricks and more than just a pretty face. I looked for a user manual and could not find one worth talking about so I put it to the ultimate test of seeing how well it would stand up to the test of a new user (me) taking it on a test flight while flying blind. It stood up very well because I found it very easy to figure out without a help manual and it did things which exceeded my expectations. Simplicity and the exceeding of people's expectations is the hallmark of good software

As a user I expect to capture one or more screenshots at a time and save them to my desktop in jpeg, png and gif formats. Further to this I want to have the option of retaining the maximum image quality or being allowed to save the files at say 60% quality where I get smaller file sizes for easily transporting over the wire

Based on previous experience of using screenshot tools I expected to find a method of selecting an area of the screen, usually using a cross haired mouse cursor, and being notified each time a screenshot is taken. Anything extra is a bonus so my expectations are pretty low

The User Interface

The title of the Shutter window is 'Session - Shutter' which does not make sense right away. What is a session? A scan around the menus tells us that the help file is useless but from the 'Preferences' menu item we find that there are plenty of ways to configure Shutter and control it's behaviour. This is great because it means the flexibility is there once you get up to speed and become an expert user

There are visual cues on the toolbar and the label texts make me assume I can take screenshots of rectangular selections, the full screen or any window open on the desktop. There is also a button called 'export' which is for saving your screenshots to file

I fired off the actions for selection, full screen and window and it was really simple. I was very pleased to find that I had managed to take screenshots of a selection, full screen and window without having to think about it. Meanwhile back in the session window I am helpfully informed that I have taken three screenshots taking up 100k of disk space. This tells me that these images need optimising for the web because 100k is a lot for just 3 images

The status bar provides feedback information such as the captured image size in pixels and the file size. A great touch is the two controls on the status bar for setting a time delay and whether or not to include the mouse cursor in the screenshot. Having these two controls on the status bar is very handy

The final control on the status bar tells me that this application works with user profiles and then the window title Shutter-Session' finally makes sense. I had to guess this but the general idea is that you get the most out of Shutter by creating profiles and then choosing the best profile for the task you are performing. I need just two profiles - one for saving images at full quality and one that saves images at 70% quality. I can work with several images at a time and make useful tweaks to them without calling in the cavalry such as Gimp.

Final Thoughts

I am delighted to have found this little tool despite it not coming with a help manual. People like myself will not let the lack of a help manual stop them but a good help manual always gives a piece of software more credibility. It is what people expect. In conclusion I think Shutter is great and I really like using it. It ought to be very useful for people who work in education and training

And just for fun ...

Linux Breaks The Sound Barrier

2011-03-09T08:49:00.000Z

According to statistics from authorative internet site w3schools more people are now using Linux to power their computers. A 5 percent user base is no small feat and the milestone will make more people listen up and hear the message about Linux and Free Software. Another interesting statistic is that Microsoft Internet Explorer's market share has gradually sunk to an all time low of 27% compared to the heady days of March 2003 when it enjoyed an 88% share of the browser market. At the current rate of adoption of Google's chrome browser it is only a matter of months until Explorer is pipped into third place and further obscurity

Operating System Statistics

Browser Statistics

When you add the 5 percent of Linux users to the 8 percent using a Mac this means that 1 in 8 people are now using software that is not made by Microsoft. It also tells us that people respond to choice and that the good work done by the people who build and promote Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is bearing fruit

I have been using Linux Mint for two years now and there is no way I would turn back and fork out money on Microsoft or Apple products. I have everything I need and spending money now on software would only make me feel that I need my head examined

As if we were not spoiled enough there are new versions of the Gimp Image Editor and the OpenShot video editor in the pipeline. More and more books on FOSS are apprearing in retailers like Amazon.com and Computer Book stores telling us that there are plenty of developers and creatives now using Linux. Life is great in the Linux camp and I want to see more people using it. If we adopted Linux for use in Irish schools we could probably save money while at the same time offer our youngsters a proper computing education and not the dumbed down fare that are currently on offer. Like the ECDL for example.

Slow Internet Connection Drives Man Crazy

2011-03-04T06:17:00.001Z

It is official, in my mind anyway, that slow internet connections change our surfing behaviour. Seriously, after years of minging service quality and watching web pages download at the rate of drying paint I came up with all sorts of productivity tricks to avoid the combination of blank vacant staring and flickers of rising blood pressure which is peculiar to a slow surfing experience

At first I thought it was just me but then I found statistics that proved otherwise so at least I know I am not alone. I would even hazard a guess that the phenomenon is so common that shrinks have already labelled it and that world health officials have cited it as a public health risk. My reasoning is simple - it is not healthy!

It used to drive me loopy doo but not any more because one day I rose above it and saw the insanity of the situation. I imagined I rose out of my body to a position several metres away where I found myself looking at this poor man being driven demented by a slow internet connection. I asked myself what can he possibly do to stop huge portions of his life being eaten up by such pointless activity? Surely he would eventually cop on and make more productive use of his time

Going by the maxim that what can't be cured must be endured I accepted what I could not change and stopped beating myself up for all this wasted time and lost productivity. I figured that if you added up all these minutes and put them into context it would ring true to many others. We are all used to useless facts used to fill empty column spaces where there are no advertising takers. Earth shattering facts such as the one which illuminates humankind to the fact that the average man spends six months of his life sitting on the toilet or that a woman spends two years of her life manicuring her finger nails

Talking about women - that was then I thought about multi-tasking and realised that if women can milti-task then why not us men?. It was the perfect solution after all so I started multi-tasking and thinking about my time differently. There are lots of other things I can while waiting for web pages to download and just realising this made me feel better because now when I go online I might ask for 3 or 4 web pages and then go back to doing something else while the pages are downloading. An instant improvement which means it is happy days again. So simple that I missed it for 40 years!

Rather than wait and waste my life away I got used to the idea of dividing my time into smaller chunks and using a spiral notepad to keep track of what I am working on. No more blank staring and last week the doc reckoned the blood pressure is tickety boo

Posterous - One Stop Web Publishing

2011-02-24T08:18:00.009Z

I visited Posterous to take a look and what caught my attention was the claim that Posterous is like 'email on steroids' and can be used as a centralised blogging and web publishing tool which automatically posts and then forwards your content to other web spaces such as blogger and facebook simply by sending an email. Sounds good. A tool like Posterous means you post once and publish everywhere and the service is free, good looking and carries no ads. People who find that blogging and social networking is a time sink might appreciate the potential of Posterous as a one stop publishing tool

For casual as well as pro bloggers Posterous offesr a tool which has allowed blogging to become as simple as sending an email and there are even iPhone and Android apps available for posting photos to Posteous

Less Repetition = More Free Time

By posting once you cut out the repetition involved in uploading a single post to multiple blogs and social networking accounts meaning you can serve your readers worldwide who use a disparate range of web services. Imagine how many people you could potentially reach with one email sent via your own centralised communications tool

Posterous Highlights

Cost Free, Ad Free and privacy controls for whole blogs / individual posts
Post from an email account or via SMS from your mobile phone/device
Post text,sound,video,documents and presentations
Group blogs where everyone is immediately updated on recent activity
Automatically preparation and forwarding of posts to flickr, facebook
Customise the design to fit seamlessly into an existing web site or blog.

User Interface Design and Pitch

The Posterous home page feels good owing to the relaxed use of colour and they provide just the right amount of information to give you an clear idea of what the site does. It promises a blogging experience made simple for individuals and groups online. There is a small flash like feature in the header providing further teasers designed to make you think of ways you might use Posterous :

Create a travel journal, photo blog and share your thoughts
Stay in touch with people everywhere
Collaborate and share ideas in a group
Launch a product

The important information is provided above the page fold and when you scroll down you further you see that there is a faq page, recomendations and mini profiles of Posterous users. This is good design as it makes you curious and entices you in

The mini profiles took me to the full profile pages of some Posterous users but I noticed that there were not many comments under their posts. Filtering out and serving up those users with the most commented on posts would have given the impression that here was a busy site bit I was surprised in the lack of dialog

It was when I read the faq page that I became very impressed with the features on offer which includes 1 Gigabyte of web space. This is plenty if you can think of some smart way to make use of it

Easy To Customise Design Themes

I use Blogger and like it but I am very interested in Posterous because like Blogger it allows you easily customise the theme if you know how to code up web page designs. Posterous give designers full access to the xhtml code behind the design

I think Posterous could be a useful tool for people teaching themselves to design, build and integrate web sites and services. The templating system on Posterous is made very simple for newbie web designers but at the same time it allows experienced coders access to features which allow them to edit the theme they please

Impressions

I could not resist it and signed up. I chose the chocolate coloured Dakhar theme which I will set about customising as some of the fonts are a bit dark and lacking in contrast

Posterous on Wikipedia
Posterous website

Linux File and Directory Commands

2011-02-24T05:07:00.009Z

When opening a terminal you will be in your home folder. You can also right click and 'open terminal here' from within the file manager.

To get help on any command, type in the command name followed by --help or -h. To get information on any command, type : info command

COMMANDS FOR DIRECTORES

What computer am I using?

hostname

Where am I?

pwd

Move to my home directory

cd or cd ~

List directory contents

ls
ls -a (the -a switch includes hidden files)
ls -l (shows a longer description of the files and sub-directories)

Navigate to directories

cd newdir
cd path/to/newdir

Move up one directory

cd .. (space needed between cd and ..)

Move up two directories

cd ..

Create a new directory

mkdir newdir

Delete an empty directory

rmdir myemptydirectory

Delete a directory which contains files

rm -R directoryname
The -R switch means 'recursively' and deletes all files in all subdirectories so use it with care

Copy an entire directory including everything in it

cp -dpR mydir mynewdir
The d and p switches preserve file attributes and symlinks recursively

COMMANDS FOR FILES

Delete a file

rm filename

Copy a file

cp myfile mynewfile

Write a file's contents to the terminal

cat myfile.txt

Mark a file as executable

chmod +x filename

OTHER USEFUL LINUX COMMANDS

Clear the terminal

clear

Todays date

date

Disk usage

Log out

Exit

PATHS

Linux commands like those listed above are executable programs.
Everything in Linux is a program.
Linux executables are stored in several different directories and this list of directories is stored in the Linux PATH variable. To see where Linux is looking for executables on your system use this command:

echo $PATH

Below is the output on my machine:
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

Command to add a new location /opt/gnome/bin to your Linux Path:
PATH="$PATH:/opt/gnome/bin"
export PATH

LINUX FILE PERMISSIONS

Can be changed using the graphical file manager or from a terminal using the Chown command.

chown to 0777 = (rwxrwxrwx)
chown to 0776 = (rwxrwxrw-)
chown to 0775 = (rwxrwxr-x)
chown to 0774 = (rwxrwxr--)
chown to 0773 = (rwxrwx-wx)
chown to 0772 = (rwxrwx-w-)
chown to 0771 = (rwxrwx--x)
chown to 0770 = (rwxrwx---)

First set of rwx = Owner
Second set of rwx = Group
Third set of rwx = All Others.

Also see this post on setting webserver permissions at Ubuntu Forums

Fast Loading Web Pages are Always Tops

2011-02-21T00:17:00.003Z

You can't beat the experience of using a web site which serves up pages at lightning fast speeds. I have always known this because for 10 years I have lived in remote locations on the west coast of Ireland where internet connections are often poor. The last thing I need is some fancy flash video at the top of a web page that takes 10 seconds or in some cases over a minute to load. This annoys me and makes me think 'hang this I will go to abettersite.com because they are more grown up and better understand their users. This is why my bookmarks point only to sites I know to be fast loading

A huge proportion of the global population does not have the luxury of fibre broadband piped straight into the home and my own experience leaves me of the opinion that many people in web design do not realise the importance of speed over graphical eye candy and fancy behavioural effects. Most people are not interested and want you to get to the point fast so that they can find what they came for - content

Jakob Nielsen - Web Response Times
Web Site optimization - OECD Broadband penetration and GDP per Capita

Hand Code or HTML Editor?

2011-02-18T23:17:00.000Z

Is it better to hand code a website using a simple text editor or use web design software like Dreamweaver or Visual Studio? The short answer is that both can save you time when you know the pros and cons of each and can fully understand why you are using them. What do you think?

In the world of visual design software and the large marketing budgets used to promote them you are promised cool products which will improve your learning experience, increase your productivity, do all the difficult work for you and allow you to switch your brain off and sit back as you witness your transformation you into a web design rockstar. It all sounds great in theory and that is why so many beginners are only too willing to spend money on college courses, software and educational materials which teach web design and development

Marketing people who sell software tools for building web sites would have us believe that they have the answers to address most of the problems facing those who do web design and development. When you are time poor this can seem like a magic bullet and that is why these software applications are used in evening courses which teach web design. All this really does however is line the pockets of Adobe and the Training Providers because a 12 week course on Dreamweaver will never in a month Sundays get an unemployed person off the dole and into gainful employment as a web designer

Photoshop and Fireworks are also visual design tools but are used for creating web page layouts with an arty look featuring high graphical content. The problem with these applications is that once you finish your masterpieces you still have a long way to go before they are transformed into beautiful functioning web pages that look great in all the usual web browsers and have clean code behind them to make it all come alive. Even Photoshop veterans will admit that Photoshop is not the easiest beast to tame. The reason is that Photoshop tries to do too much and promises to be all things to all boys and girls - web designers, graphic designers, print designers, photographers, digital artists and so on. No wonder Photoshop is so confusing and most people don't understand what it is for

WYSIWYG Html Editors

First a definition. WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. Web site building applications like Dreamweaver and Visual Studio are wysiwyg editors and hosting companies also offer similar tools to build web pages. These visual design tools have palettes of common web page components such as Forms, Buttons and Menus and some html elements like Headings, Paragraphs and Lists. You create a new web page and by dragging and dropping these components onto the page you can position them and make them look good using colours and fonts. You can even drag and drop in blocks of functioning programming code to work behind the scenes. Basically that is the nirvana that WYSIWYG promises the newcomer to the world of web design and development

The software creates all the (x)html and css page markup for you under the hood and apparently you end up with a great looking web page which looks exactly the same when viewed across all web browsers. All that bang for buck without breaking sweat. This sounds fine and might be the way to go when introducing people new to web design but there will come a time when those who stay the course realise that there is much more to web design and development than Dreamweaver and Visual Studio

These visual design tools have a separate coding window for inspecting your (x)html and css markup, letting you tweak your web page presentation (how the page looks). The code editor also allows you to use real programming languages such as Asp.net and Php for producing code which runs on the web server and Javascript code which runs in the browser. Programming in these languages makes your site more interactive and determines it's behaviour. All this sounds great but a lot of experienced designers hate these tools while at the same time any experienced freelancer will recognise their true value and know when to use them.

For example. A freelance web developer takes on a new client with instructions to give the site a makeover and the site was created in the old days using a table based layout. Hand coding may not be a viable option here because all that extraneous and complicated markup is likely to look meaningless when opened in Notepad but it could be handled just fine if you open it up in an old copy of Dreamweaver. The freelancer can do the job in a few hours and the client is happy with the cost of the work. This makes good business sense if the designer gets a lot of requests to carry out work on older table based websites.

Firstly, it takes weeks to learn how to use these tools and by doing so you are placing a big boulder right and the foot of your learning curve. Secondly, they teach you bad habits from the outset and once you have been using them for any length of time it begins to sink that if you came to depend on them you would be leaving huge gaps in your education. This dependency on WYSIWYG editors partly explains why there are so many rubbish websites out there

Hand Coding

The hand coding approach is preferred by the professionals. Real professionals know about Dreamweaver and other web site building software but the reason they hand code is because they know all about the finer aspects of web design and development. People who reach this level of skill can tell just by looking at a web site design what would they would need to do to put it together from scratch or make changes to an existing web site. They know what files to look in order to make the changes and for the same reason they are capable of hand coding anything from small snippet of custom code to complete and fully functioning websites. It takes years to achieve this level of skill and it can only be done by properly understanding how web sites really work and by learning to hand code

Features of good Editors

* Line numbering
* Syntax highlighting and bracket matching to aid visual navigation of code
* Save code snippets in a snippet library for reuse
* Preview a web page in a web browser
* Project management - create a separate project for each web site

Disadvantages of HTML Editors

* They can be are very expensive and overwhelm you with 'features'
* They are difficult for beginners and useless for teaching web design properly
* They are slow and cumbersome
* No debugger. (Dreamweaver has a Javascript debugger however)

Advantages of HTML Editors

* Beginners don't need to know about html and css
* You can view pages in design view, code view or split them to view both
* Code Auto-completion. Lazy coders love this feature.
* Great for creating tables but modern web designers rarely use tables

Advantages of Programmer's Editor

* Control. No spurious markup and comments is injected into your code.
* Easy to attach a code debugger
* Simpler and faster

Disadvantages of Programmer's Editor

Absolutely none when you understand web sites and how they work

Types of Websites

2011-02-18T22:18:00.002Z

Web sites are usually classified by the functions they serve and most sites fall into one or more of the following categories:

Single Page
Brochure
Gallery
Ecommerce
Information
Community

Single Page Website

A single web page acting as an electronic business card advertising a service or as a place to purchase a product. The proposition is obvious and so is the action required by the visitor. The page might contain text and graphics with a theme
helping to market the proposition but the information provided is far more important. Visible evidence of presences on places like facebook or a blog is always a good sign that there is someone home. Should also provide contact details so people can get in touch by telephone or e-mail

Brochure Website

Hotels, Restaurants, Salons, Professional Services, Art & Photography.
Brochure sites contain a just few pages giving factual information about you and your business. They are the on-line equivalent of traditional printed brochures but without the printing and environmental overheads

The design usually consists of text and pictures to create visual excitement in support of the content. It should be easy to update such a site with new content like news, events etc. Blogging software like Wordpress is often used to create such sites because the software is friendly to web designers owing to the huge range of free plug-ins available. The built-in admin tools should make it very easy for a site owner to manage and maintain the site

The page count is usually small (3 - 6 pages) and each page should have professionally written copy; good images/graphics; and pull together coherently to sell you and your business

Each page should contain keywords so your ideal visitors can find you in the search engines. This is basic internet marketing and a well planned website can generate a lot of interest and enquiries if done right

You want to update a website site sometimes. A "Latest News" section can keep a site fresh and prevent stagnation

For this you need an administration page to handle the updates. In the web industry this is called content management and it can be simple or complex depending on what functionality is needed. A monthly or quarterly newsletter is also something to consider because it can build customer loyalty and let people know that you keep moving and have things to tell them on a regular basis.

Brochure sites can be simple but very effective. With a good design you can leave a great impression on your visitors and ensure that they remember you in two months time when you send out your newsletter

Gallery Website

Gallery Websites are designed to make it easy for visitors to view/buy art and photography. Other people who use variations of this genre include musicians, designers and estate agents. If images can sell your concept then a gallery is a must. In fact amazon.com is really just one huge big photo gallery when you consider what it actually does

There are hundreds of available solutions for building web page galleries that can be plugged straight into an existing site. You can create your own gallery from scratch or import existing galleries from your places around the web - facebook, flickr, picasa web albums etc

For Photographers there are several on-line providers such as Clikpic who have all the facilities for creating and running an on-line photography gallery which includes selling prints. These types of services offer a few templates and colour schemes to change the look of the site but the thing to look out for is pricing and image management features. These on-line services can be expensive in the
long run so do compare pricing structures.

Building unique gallery websites is the most expensive option for creating something our of the ordinary but those who do this are usually serious about pursuing their individuality and will go to any lengths to achieve their creative vision

Ecommerce Website

Examples: art.com, amazon.com

Ecommerce sites are like traditional printed catalogues on steroids. Both serve the same purpose - to take orders from customers - but there is much more you can do with an ecommerce solution than just let people buy products or services via mail order or 'snail mail' as it is now called. You can write product reviews and articles for your visitors to inform, entertain and let them buy things. If you act on the feedback provided by visitors then you have one of the best marketing tools possible at your finger tips. Building trust is the key to success in any ecommerce venture and you should always remember this

The cost of an ecommerce site varies hugely and the final outlay may run from a few hundred into tens of thousands depending how much business you plan to do on-line and the degree of customisation that is required. If you are very successful and end up selling a lot of products then the initial cost of the site may turn out to be a good investment.

There are off the shelf scripts available for those who have the technical savvy and like to learn by themselves. It takes effort to learn how to use them so if time is not an issue they could be a good option.

Ecommerce sites need to be run and managed on a daily basis and you need to ensure that you get a system that is very easy to run

Information Website

Examples: Government Departments, Company Intranets, Educational sites.

These sites provide information about one or more subjects. Information is categorised by subject and users begin browsing from a list of categories that is presented as a list or menu

Categories can sometimes contain sub-categories and so on. This is when tagging is very useful because it lets people enter keywords in the site search box to return a list of items containing those keywords. If every information article is properly tagged and described then it makes the site more searchable and those searches will return results that people can read in plain everyday language

Users should be able to find information fast. A website fitting this criteria is the Irish employment website FAS. I have used this site for 6 years and every time I go to look at the job listings it takes me about a minute to find my way into the part of the site where the jobs are located. If this is a problem for one who is well trained in computers what would it be like for someone who has little experience?

Users should also be able to quickly form a conceptual model of how the information is organised.

Layout and good navigation can act as a visual map that reflects the site structure and makes it easy for visitors to find things.

Some people run information sites about a hobby or interest they are knowledgeable about. They use google ad-sense in the sidebar to carry adverts that generate cash from clicks. This type of site is inexpensive to run and provides a great example of a site that benefits the owner and the users.

Information Website Conventions:

Use of colour coding for each subject area.
Search box and site map.
Meaningful documents titles.
Keyword rich page content.
Printer friendly versions of web pages offers more value.

Community Website

Examples: Bulletin Boards (Forums), Blogs & Social Networking.

Community web sites allow people to share common interests.

These sites allow users to interact with each other and they do this by adding and editing content, sending messages and forum posting. One site that is community based is Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia where users can add and edit new or existing content.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are another form of community based web site that allows non technical users to add content and publish it live. Businesses often use Content Management Systems so that members of staff take over the responsibility of running and maintaining the site. There are different levels of security for each user and permissions are granted to people depending on the seniority of their role within the company. This can save money if it is well managed and the business does not need to pay the web site creator every time they want to update the site. Content Management Systems can also help with your Search Engine Optimisation efforts because adding page Meta data is simple.

Forums are great for people who need answers to specific problems. A site that sells products of any complexity can easily add forum forum software to an existing site to build a community of customers who bought the products. This is good because it allows you to see what customers think about your business and you can use this information in the design and marketing of future product offerings.

Recently I bought a graphics tablet that came with digital painting software. The software company has a forum on their site where people post tutorials and help other painters out. Next time you need software look at the software company's web site and see what it offers by way of education, forums, free stuff etc., against that of their competitors offerings.

Programming on Linux with GTK# and Monodevelop

2011-02-15T04:29:00.007Z

If you are using a Linux distro with Gnome desktop then you can create applications using the excellent MonoDevelop IDE which is comparable to Microsoft Visual Studio. You can program in the C,C++ and C# languages but as I am from a C# background the resources listed here reflect this

For Linux programmers good tutorials and documentation are thin on the ground and that is why I have created this resource

People learning to program in C#.net on a Windows platform have one huge advantage and that is the sheer amount of books, tutorials and documentaion available to them. I used Microsoft technologies in the past and one thing I have to say about them is that the kit is great and the documentation is very good

GTK+ is a user interface toolkit written in C for creating cross platform user interfaces and is the toolkit used by Gnome Desktop and photo applications such as Gimp and FSpot. There is a wrapper for coding GTK+ applications in the C# language and this is available from within the MonoDevelop IDE.

Resources

A very good C# Tutorial http://zetcode.com/language/csharptutorial/
GTK# Tutorial http://zetcode.com/tutorials/gtksharptutorial/

MonoDevelop GUI Designer Tutorial. Learn how to create GUI based C# application for viewing log files. Nate's Log File Viewer

Paul Hudson is the editor of Linux Format magazine and he has an excellent series of C# programming tutorials using MonoDevelop over at the Hudzilla Coding Academy where there are currently 10 lessons with more to follow.

Search Engine Optimisation

2011-02-03T12:22:00.002Z

Summary

How Search Engine Optimisation is used to find your audience
Market research and keyword research
Web page optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation example of an open niche market
SEO sites and free SEO tools

This article gives you a quick low down on the few essential aspects of SEO and how to apply them to your web pages. It is more concerned with long tail marketing and not about getting into Google's top 10 just for the hell of it

If you are in a competitive market and competing for attention in a crowded place then SEO will keep you busy because the more popular the market
the bigger the rat race. If you are in real estate then you have your work cut out. Big time

If you write for people and not for search engines however then you need not break sweat over Search Engine Optimisation(SEO). You should still use it as a
matter of good practice because it will benefit yourself and the web in general

Difference between generic and pay per click searches

Web pages which are highly relevant to what people are searching for should come up high in search engine listings for the keywords and phrases entered. These are called 'generic' search engine listings are not the same as those Pay Per Click (PPC) adverts that appear elsewhere on a search results page

PPC is a pay as you go advertising strategy where you can compete with the big sites, for a while, whereas SEO is a more planned, long term, strategy where you are trying to earn the right to a top 10 place in the generic listings. Generic listings are free, always will be and are the way to go if you have long term goals for your web site

If well planned SEO can bring you free targeted traffic for life whereas with PPC you are just paying for clicks to meet short term goals. If you are selling products or having a fire sale then PPC can be your friend but if you are not selling anything then you can forget about PCC because you don't need it

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Roughly 60% - 70% of web users read the generic search engine listings first and then scan the results looking for keywords. Humans are guided by the wording and choose those links which look the most promising to our search goals. This is why all web pages should have proper titles, headlines and descriptions as a matter of course because they meaningfully reflect the contents of a web page to both search engines and humans. A search engine uses an index and attempts to return those pages it thinks are most relevant to the search term(s). SEO is all about playing nice with this index and playing by it's rules in the hope that it likes your content

With SEO we are using a process that will improve the relevancy of a web page for any given search term(s) by choosing appropriate keywords and phrases which accurateley describe the contents of each web page. The use of site analytics software for monitoring traffic; learning how people found you and what they do on the site etc. You also learn about your most visited pages; watch marketing trends and spot future trends. Anyone can learn this stuff and if you are not in a hurry then don't need to pay fancy money an SEO expert

It takes planning to spot current and future trends in this hyper-competitive age and it is no good expecting miracles overnight. Your SEO efforts will be governed by your intentions and you need to have clear goals before you create your content. Your ultimate goal is to reach your target audience and deliver your message honestly and clearly. If your message delivers real value to people then you will be more successful because it will sell itself and people will spread your news through word of mouth and links pointing back to your site. Having quality incoming links is the way to gain credibility and the right type of visitors

After you submit your site to the top three search engines you want people to find it. Your initial market research will tell you what keywords you should be using to promote your goal and for this you should use a keyword research tool. Keyword reasearch tools tell you what people are searching for and the number of searches carried out each month. You can also look into other niches to gauge to how much action is going on and levels of competition for searchers

SEO is used in preparing the web pages so that they can be easily found by the search engines and come up high for your chosen keywords

Generic listings appear more credible to web users but they have to be earned and there is work involved in getting a top 10 ranking

Web pages need to be optimised to perform well in generic search engine listings

Web Page Optimisation for Search Friendly Web Pages

Web pages should be marked up with proper title, description and keyword meta tags - similar to the way you structure an essay. The most important of these tags are the title and description tags. Title tags appear in a web browser's title bar and they also appear in search engine listings. The description can usually be seen in the listing right below the title. Both of these tags are readable by humans so here is your chance to accurately get your message across and free of charge. By writing good meta tags you are helping the search engines but ultimately you should try to write for humans

Free SEO Tools

You can check the quality of your website meta tags using the free Meta Tag Analyser from Submit-Express. Your page title, description and keyword meta tags are given a percentage score based on how relevant they are to your page content

You can check the density of your keywords using the Keyword Density Analyser at seobench.com.

After you fix your meta tags and have a keyword density of about 3% - 15% then you are set to begin real SEO and start tweaking your web pages into the top 10

Choosing Keywords

Choosing appropriate keywords is important when designing a new site or when writing content for and existing site. Some people say that keywords are not as important as they used to be

Keyword Research Example

A contract plumber in County Galway, Ireland could be missing out on a lot of business. Just look at the keyword statistics shown below for the phrase "plumber galway". The competition is shown for relevant key-phrases where a figure of 1 indicates 100% competition for the key-phrase.

The statistics imply that there is a market for plumbers and especially those registered with Corgi. The competition is medium and very beatable. If I was a plumber in Galway I would get Corgi registered, create a website tomorrow and try to get some of these searchers to find me.

I would consider combining the phrase "a plumber in" (1000 searches) with "for a plumber" (1300 searches) and try to kill two birds with one stone. You could have a headline that calls out "Looking for a plumber in Galway?" and watch more traffic come in because the statistics say there are 2300 searches that would fit the criteria.

Example Web Page Meta Tag Optimisation for a plumber in Galway:

TITLE - Corgi Registered Plumber serving Galway and Ireland
DESCRIPTION - Commercial and Domestic Plumbing and Heating Contractors with 20 years experience.

KEYWORDS - Corgi,Registered,Plumber,Plumbers,Plumbing,Commercial,Domestic,Contractors,Galway,Ireland

That would be a decent place to begin because you have a baseline from which to monitor your traffic rates as you make progress.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEO is only one part of your overall Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy. SEM deals with positioning a web site in the market-place so that it has high visibility and attracts the right visitors.

Some businesses apply SEO to their most important pages for long term gain and they mix this approach with Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising which brings in targeted traffic immediately. There is no messing around with PPC adverts and you can spend as much or as little as you want when you want.

SEM techniques include PPC, Email Newsletters, Submitting sites to the best directories, creating and measuring the return from advertising campaigns, etc.

Install Xampp on Ubuntu and Linux Mint

2011-02-03T06:47:00.040Z

Set up a personal Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) server for developing and testing web sites on Linux. Xampp is a complete web server stack with all the pieces you need and there is also a built in control panel for starting and stopping your server. If you want upload your web pages to a hosting company web server then I recommend installing the Filezilla FTP client in addition to xampp

Xampp is available from Apache Friends -
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html

The download file has a tar.gz file extension indicating that the file is a zipped archive which first needs to be extracted. What we need to do is extract the zip to the '/opt' directory, change ownership of the web directory (called 'htdocs') and a couple of config files before firing up the server. The method described below ensures that we can easily create and delete files under the htdocs web folder without running to permission based problems

Step 1 - Download xampp and verify the zip file

Open up a terminal and navigate to your downloads folder :
paul@paulpc ~ $ cd Downloads

Perform an md5sum check on the xampp zip file :
paul@paulpc ~/Downloads $ md5sum xampp-linux-1.7.3.tar.gz

Check the number matches the number on the xampp download page :

Step 2 - Extract the zip file to the '/opt' directory

Log in as Root user and navigate to your downloads directory :
paul@paulpc ~ $ - sudo -s -H
paulpc paul # cd Downloads

(Notice that the prompt now changes from a dollar character to a hash character)

Extract the zip file :
paulpc Downloads # tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.7.tar.gz -C /opt

Step 3 - Check that xampp is working

Open up a terminal and log in as Root user :
paul@paulpc ~ $ - sudo -s -H

Start the server :
paulpc paul # /opt/lampp/lampp start
The server will start running and you will see these messages :

Step 4 - Make yourself the owner of the htdocs folder

paulpc paul # chown -R paul /opt/lampp/htdocs

Step 5 - Edit the Apache config file

paulpc paul # gedit /opt/lampp/etc/httpd.conf
(gedit is name of the default text editor)

Look for this line:

User nobody
Group nogroup

And change it to this

User paul
Group nogroup

Instead of 'paul' (that's me) change it to your own username. Save and close the file

Step 6 - Restart the Server

paulpc paul # /opt/lampp/lampp restart

Step 7 - Point your web browser to the Web Server

http://localhost

You should now be able to access the web server as shown in the following screen. You should also be able to create new folders under the htdocs directory and create and delete files :

Step 8 - Making phpmyadmin accessible

Click the link for 'phpmyadmin'
You should get an error telling you that the config.inc.php file is not readable.
There is an easy fix:

Make yourself the owner of the phpmyadmin configuration file :
paulpc paul # chown paul /opt/lampp/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php

Xampp Control Panel Quick Launch Icon

By adding a quick launch item to your task bar you will not need to use the terminal for controlling xampp

The xampp control panel lives in the following folder - 'opt/lampp/share/xampp-control-panel/xampp-control-panel'. Since I am using the Gnome desktop I can just right click on my menu panel and select 'add to panel' and then choose 'custom application launcher' from the list of options. We fill in the details as follows -

Type - Application
Name - Xampp
Command - gksu /opt/lampp/share/xampp-control-panel/xampp-control-panel
Icon

You set the icon by clicking on the icon symbol which will open a file dialog from which you choose the xampp icon by navigating to the following directory - '/opt/lampp/htdocs/xampp/img'

Now you can use your launcher to control xampp. The diagram below shows the quick launch icon and the xampp control panel :

Xampp Security

You can harden your xampp install by running a script that lets you set passwords for xampp, mysql, phpMyAdmin and FTP.

Open a terminal as root user and start the xampp security script :
paul@paulpc ~ $ sudo -s -H
paulpc paul # /opt/lampp/lampp security

Answer all the questions while writing down the passwords you choose because you will later forget them. I guarantee it

Un-Install Xampp

Stop xampp, open a terminal and log in as a root user
Type in this commnd :
rm -rf /opt/lampp

Good luck

Links

Installing a LAMP Server on Linux Mint
This tutorial on the Linux Mint Community blog shows you how to install LAMP server components individually. Each component can be easily installed from the terminal
Linux Mint Lamp Setup

9 Signs of Good Web Design

2011-02-03T04:23:00.000Z

9 principles to improve new and existing web site designs. Successful web site design combines compelling content with good design and aligns visitors needs with business needs. Content comes before design every time. User needs are considered at every step in the design to ensure that great content is professionally presented, logically structured and easy to use

Design for The Users

Without visitors a web site is nothing and people may quickly leave a site that fails to excel in any of the following areas:

Easy Navigation - there are roughly 8 types of web page navigation
Page Loading Time - not everyone has broadband but they may still want your content
Attractive Visual Appearance - simple and appropriately themed
Clear Structure - this can visually communicate the your business offerings clearly
Organised Internal Linking - very helpful to your users AND your search engine credibility

Visual Design

Consistent use of colour, graphics and typography are applied to well structured page layouts.

Conventional layouts are known to work best.

Style Sheets are used for structure and appearance of the layout. They are very powerful in the hands of a designer who uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Colour, shape, line and typography can all be combined to stunning effect and with great economy - no real need for fancy graphics.

Page Layout

Grid layouts make page design easier.

Grids bring order to page layouts and allow users to find things fast.
The human eye and brain is trained to look for order and grid layouts can achieve this.

The BBC web site uses grids to great effect.

White Space

Lack of white space between the boxes on a web page creates tension because the page appears over-crowded and there is nowhere to act as a resting place for the eye as it moves around the page

When someone views a web page for the first time they will quickly begin scanning for what they came for. If each box is clearly differentiated then this will speed up eye scanning.

White space can also communicate information about the site structure and this help make users feel in control. It also looks professional.

Text

Good contrast between text and the background makes it more readable.

Verdana is perfect for body text and serif fonts like Times and Georgia are good for headlines.

Serif fonts are good for printed materials and headings but not for text passages.

Navigation

Too many layers of navigation confuses users and makes a site appear disorganised.

A primary navigation bar should be visible throughout the site.

A 'three click rule' may be applied so that everything is within 3 clicks of the home page.

In e-commerce systems the checkout process should take 4-6 clicks maximum.

If the site content is categorised into sections, secondary navigation is used within each section

Secondary navigation in a sidebar is a well followed convention that users know.

Sidebar navigation with left justified text is easier to read.

Consistency

Repetition re-assures visitors that they are moving around in an autonomous environment.

Logo, navigation, header, footer and fonts are used consistently across the site.

Site sections can be differentiated by the judicial use of colour.

Consistency applied to an existing design can greatly greatly improve performance.

A unified look across a web site gives it polish and professionalism.

Modular Web Design

Good designs are modular. The items that make up a web site are separated so that the page design is loosely tied to the code that is used for back office processes such as order processing.

This separation makes it easier to change the appearance and layout of a web site quickly without touching the back end. Conversely, you can work on the back end without affecting the design.

A client saves money and frees up the busy designer who has other projects to manage.

Future design changes are also more easily costed and implemented in a modular web site design.

Web Design Standards

Modern web design practices make use of web standards to guarantee quality web pages that consist of mark-up that passes validation tests.

The Web Governing Body - the W3C - provides on-line testing facilities for HTML and CSS mark-up. Anyone can use it to test the quality of the code behind any web page on the internet.

Valid mark-up is clean and works better across web browsers. It is more easily read by search engines, and is thought to improve search engine rankings.

Web Standards offer the opportunity to build quality into a web design from the outset.

If you use standards in your design you also guarantee that your pages will work in future versions of the major browsers. No nasty surprises that will break your site.

Footnote

The points listed above all provoke great debate in the web design community and only hint at the large body of knowledge that is available to people who study user interaction. Some of the links can be followed to sites that have authoritative articles on all aspects of Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

Common Sense Web Design Tips

2011-02-03T03:20:00.002Z

First Impressions

First impressions last and you only have a few seconds to make a good one
The look is usually the first thing people notice and it sets the atmosphere
The content should reinforce the atmosphere and give value
For value read: engaging, informative, entertaining, controversial, personal

Purpose is your raison de etre

What you do is the first question people normally ask after meeting you
How you reply often determines who your future friends and aquaintances will be
Tell them about your professional and personal interests
Make it obvious that you know your field and like what you do

Content is king

News and Technology moves so quickly that todays news will be irrelevant a weeks time
Timeless content is far more valuable than something that will be dead in 6 months time
Original content is better because it is hard for others to compete with

Blogs and Personal Sites

You are free to write in your own voice and say what you like
This also means you have a lot of rope with which to hang yourself
Visitors like a conversational writing style on blogs and it makes them feel included
Be happy in your purpose and let others see that you are happy
Be genuine
Be nice :-)

Business Web Sites

Your intent should be clear from the start
If you are selling something then sell it properly
Make it simple for people to do business with you
Give them tools to easily browse your site and purchase products and services
Create a professional image by offering plenty of information about you, your product/service warranties, shipping policies, privacy policy etc.
All these little details build a sense of security when people shop online

Teach and Educate

People want your experience and knowledge to help them make decisions
People also want to learn how to do the things you can do
Provide them with articles, how-tos, instructions, examples and resources

Share Information

Subscribe to forums and news feeds of interest
Expand on what you learn and turn it into more useful information
Write informative articles backed up with good sources and references
Recommend books and literature to point the reader in directions that will improve their education and maybe even their life

Interaction

Site interaction is far more interesting when visitors find it simple to get around
Well designed navigation systems put users in control and makes for a better experience
Even a search box which takes up little space provides a lot of great functionality
Lengthy web pages can be split using a paging system or accordion menu
People love to communicate so make it easy for them
You can easily do this using blogs and Social Media such as Facebook and Flickr

Speed

Slow sites frustrate visitors and force them to leave
Think twice before adding fancy flash effects because it may slow things down for your visitors
Search engines cant read flash files anyway so that is another reason to avoid them
Large graphics slow page loading times and should first be optimised for web use

Footnote

The above list is not exhaustive and barely scratches the surface. These tips are plain common sense and universal in the world of web site design but it amazing how many web sites still get the basics wrong. Interestingly usability guru Jakob Nilesen has found that 70% of web users pay most attention to the left hand side of a page yet so many sites put all the action towards the right. It is all these little details which go into creating effective user interfaces for a web site. As the man himself says it is more profitable to stick to convention

Resources

Jakob Nielsen's Alert box: horizontal attention means left

Compelling Reasons for Using Linux

2011-02-01T12:43:00.002Z

Linux and Free Software contributes to social harmony because it is owned by the people who use it rather than some faceless corporation. It is founded on the principle that sharing knowledge creates a fairer society where everyone can access and make use of high quality free software to improve their lives regardless of their background, colour or creed. Free software is a noble cause and a force for good in what has become a selfish and anti-social world.

Free Software restored my faith in humanity when I thought it was faltering. These are just some of the reasons why I love Linux and to remind myself of this I maintain this list of compelling reasons for using it. Our day has come but we need to keep on nailing home the message that there is a much better way to think about computers and the vital role they now play in our lives. What we all ultimately want is freedom and choice. We have it already and it offers us a sound alternative but we may not have it for much longer if certain forces have their way. That freedom has to be defended and can never be taken for granted

Community

Linux is all about community and sharing information about how computers work - it's built and maintained by volunteers for the benefit of those volunteers and anyone else who wants or needs to use the software for what ever reasons they like. Anyone who uses Linux automatically has full access to a friendly, helpful and supportive community of fellow Linux users who are only too happy to help solve someone else's problems. They genuinely like to help you out

With Linux everything is open and nothing is kept secret under lock and key as it is in the world of proprietary software. This transparency forces Linux contributors to act with integrity and to think and behave in a way that serves others as much as it serves themselves. Giving is just as important as receiving and most of us would agree that we have all individually benefited immeasurably from the work of others at no cost to ourselves whatsoever. Some people give their time for altruistic reasons and find it hugely rewarding because they have recognised that there is great value to be gained in collaborating with others for the benefit of society. Computers are a social phenomenon and right now we are living on the crest of a wave, technologically speaking, but the freedoms Linux gives us need to be defended. To do this we need more people to support Linux and this is where you can help it happen

Software should be free and available to anyone to use, study and modify for whatever use they see fit. The world already has tons of high quality free software that is peer reviewed and tested to death before release and there is no excuse not to lever what is already there and use it in new software projects. Imagine the speed with which new projects could be completed if it were that simple. Free and open source software (FOSS) makes this a reality because you can get your software built rather than have to spend half your time with lawyers checking over patents to see if you are breaking the law. You can produce a better software product if you integrate pieces of high quality and well tested code to implement constitiuent parts of your project rather than invent the wheel from scratch every time you start a new project. This can be a smart way to work and can save time and money when either of those resources are scarce and is one of the reasons why lots of large software purchasers are looking to open source software now that we are in a recession. It makes perfect sense economically as well as technically

Some entities want to dominate us and control our computers and the software we use because there are serious fortunes to be made by whoever can gain the most control. Governments want more control of the internet and there are rumblings that some powerful people intend to lock down all computers from here to Mars using a system called treacherous computing. This degree of control is the antithesis of everything Linux stands for and it should be resisted at all costs because it is a movement that wants to digitally handcuff everyone on the planet, spy on them and rule them by division, paranoia and fear from a centralised point of command and control. They do all this under the guise of intellectual property protection and anti-counterfeiting measures but the real intention behind all it is to create an even more repressive society where individuals are under constant surveillance. Windows 7 and Vista, which are 'DRM ready' are already spying on people and if this knowledge is repeated often enough then we can drive people over to Linux in droves if we can make them see that Linux is the best way to rebel against oppression and preserve our hard won freedoms. These are freedoms that even Hitler could not take from us yet they are in real danger and Linux offers us a way out if more people catch themselves on

Linux is easy to learn

If you buy a Windows PC or a Mac you get an operating system and not much else. You will then want applications such as an office suite, jukebox, movie player, video editor and so on. The main problem is that you first need to search for them on the internet, download and install them, and often you pay serious money for them. Then there is all the hassle with driver hell and having to reboot your computer every time you make the most trivial of system level changes. Linux is much different in this respect because it has a built in Software Centre where you go when you need new applications. Just like a catalogue it lists all the available applications and even includes user ratings and reviews for each. When you see one you like you simply click a button and the application is downloaded and installed along with any other pieces of software that are required. You don't need to reboot and you can just open the application up as soon as it is downloaded. It is that simple and this is one of many highlights that make Linux a far more pleasant experience than using Windows. Reading about this is fine but you will only grow to love this whole philosophy as much as I have if you actually download Linux and try it for yourself. I am sure you will love it too

Choice

There are dozens of Linux distributions available and there is a high level of compatibility between systems. Some versions of Linux are packaged for office work while others are bundled with applications for creative work such as professional audio recording, video production and digital photography. Learning one version of Linux means you can easily drive others because the skills you learn are transferable and won't be obsolete in five years time. Linux offers many options for customising it's look and feel, and perhaps best of all, it's behaviour

Support

There is lots of first class support freely available on the internet for Linux users and that support is of a very high quality. My Linux experience has taught me that it is actually easier to fix a Linux machine than one of the other kinds and believe me I have built and fixed a lot of computers in my time. If really want to you can even buy telephone and email support for around €40 a year per desktop that covers any software related issues that prevent you from using your computer. Free support is just as good however and it can usually always help you fix your computing problems quickly. Newbies are always treated with respect in Linux forums and experienced Linux users always like to help you fix your computer. There is no such thing as a silly question

Easy Troubleshooting

Linux creates log files of system events and tries to provide you with all the information you need if you encounter problems. This transparency means that you can often find the source of problems by looking in the logs. In Linux forums you are often asked to post the contents a log file so that people can help you diagnose the problem. Other operating systems deliberately obscure this information hence the jokes about Windows needing to be re-installed twice every week - if you can't get at the right information you can't fix the problem

Unshackled licensing model

Linux is licensed in a way that works for the end user and not against her like a proprietary license does. This license is called the GNU General Public License (or GPL) and it works as a copy-left license meaning that you own and control your software instead of it owning and controlling you. You can install multiple copies of Linux on one computer or on one hundred computers without paying a single cent in license fees and you may change the software in any way you like. You can also legally give away copies of the software to your friends free of charge or in return for payment. It is your choice

Polished Desktop environments

The refinements now seen on Linux desktops often blows away anything you would see on any other types of computer. Linux makers are now employing talented people who specialise in interface design, user interaction and graphic design to make Linux the coolest desktop available and with the release of Ubuntu 10.04 (The Lucid Lynx) they have struck a real blow in this respect. With Linux you have a choice of two main desktop environments - Gnome and KDE . Gnome desktop takes a restrained approach and is an ideal desktop for beginners but also preferred by some long term Linux users such as myself. KDE desktop is more like using Windows only better and has even had some of it's features poached by proprietary systems. There are also lightweight linux desktops available which allow you to comfortably run Linux on old or low spec computers and on notebooks. Both desktops are very easy to customize and there is a great choice of themes available for each

Driver Support

Linux usually works right 'out the box' :-) with all your hardware. There is no need to hunt down and install drivers for common peripherals like monitors, printers and pluggable USB devices because the drivers are already built right into the Linux kernel. There are lists available of Linux friendly hardware manufacturers to consider when you need new hardware but generally you need not concern yourself with driver hell in the Linux world. Some people have had problems with mobile broadband dongles but this situation is improving all the time and many people now use mobile broadband on Linux

Security

Viruses and malware are rarely if ever found on a Linux machine and I have never found one. Rogue programs and processes are not allowed to run rampant throughout the system by default. You don't permanently operate a Linux computer as an admin like you do on other systems. If Linux needed lots of third party security applications then it would be defective by design and just another flavour of the centuries old problem / reaction / solution manipulation technique that is used to con people who don't know the truth. I've never used anti-virus software on Linux and I've never had a virus

Reliability

Linux was initially designed as a server operating system which would rarely if ever need rebooting. Even Google uses it. The core software in any stable Linux distribution (distro) is all thoroughly tested before release and does not freeze or crash although some of the newer desktop applications may be buggy. Linux was derived from the Unix operating system which has been continually developed and refined for over 40 years and it's proven reliability is the main reason why it often used a server operating system

Freedom

You can study the Linux source code to learn exactly how the system works and modify it in any way you see fit. You can use it on any type of computing device and freely experiment with your new system and it's various hardware concoctions and there is no-one who can stop you doing this. This is what free software is all about and why open source software is great for people who want to innovate and create things that are genuinely useful and in some cases even better than commercial offerings

Trust

People who make Linux are rarely motivated by money but instead do it for peer recognition, personal satisfaction and friendship through making personal contributions to projects that are worked on by individuals from all over the world. New software features are developed to meet the genuine needs of the users and not because the marketing department thinks so. Linux has no need for a marketing department because it is developed to meet the needs of it's users and there is no need to bullshit people about what it does and how it works

Better Software Application

All the software you need for work and play can be freely downloaded from the net and the applications are improving all the time as more programmers take up Linux development. More developers want the kind of freedom that only free software development can offer them rather than work for behemoths like Microsoft and Adobe Systems where all their good work gets hidden away under lock and key and where no one ever sees it. The alternative can be much more rewarding because all your work is highly visible and your name gets around thanks to peer recognition. If you know C# programming, like myself, and are familiar with writing Windows applications you can now develop C#.net and Visual Basic applications on Linux using monodevelop and port your applications to Linux, Mac and Windows. Huh. The Gnome desktop badly needs a decent photo manager and someday soon some college kid might make a name for himself by creating a Linux photo management app in C# that blows us all away. Just watch

Usability

On the Linux desktop there is great scope for customisation and there is a wide choice of very good visual themes available. There are hundreds of tweaks you can make to get your system to behave in ways that can greatly help your workflow and productivity. A Linux system, while offering the ultimate in flexibility, rarely gets in your way and interruptions for system updates are very brief. You wont find a Linux box interrupting your work flow every hour to download megabytes of undocumented and secretive 'security updates' or 'bug fixes' for code that should have been properly tested in the first place

Ease of installation

Linux is now easier and faster to install than Windows. It would be very difficult to cock up a Linux installation attempt because the installer's graphical interface walks you through it step by step. If you have Windows installed, Linux will respect that fact and install itself beside your Windows installation. Linux creates a system start up menu offering you the choice to boot up into either Linux or Windows. Other operating systems are not as accommodating as this and Linux is much nicer

During the installation process Linux even asks if you want to import your Windows documents so that they become available to you on your Linux desktop. You can open, modify and save docs on your Windows drive, reboot into Windows and witness the changes

Final Thoughts

Once you start using Linux on a daily basis it becomes very familiar. Some try it and don't like it but many try it and never go back. I first toyed with Linux in 2002 but due to more pressing commitments I did not have the time back then to pursue my interest any further. Now I use Linux Mint every day for maintaining this website, running a local testing web server, C# programming, writing, digital photography and painting, instant messaging, youtube and so on. That is a lot of bang for buck from something that some closed minded people perceive as being inferior just because it is a community based project and free as in beer. For me the the real value comes from having the freedom to do what I want with the software and use it in any way I like. To rest my case I will leave you to ponder on a quote from the free software definition

"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer."

No double standards - Google's push for WebM

2011-02-01T00:51:00.002Z

Last week, Google announced that it plans to remove support for the H.264 video codec from its browsers, in favor of the WebM codec that they recently made free. Since then, there's been a lot of discussion about how this change will affect the Web going forward, as HTML5 standards like the video tag mature
Read the full article

Linux Photo and Graphics Applications for Gnome

2011-01-31T22:57:00.001Z

Here is a list of some very good Linux application for photography, painting and graphic design. I have tried these applications out for myself and can honestly say that they are all very good. My favourite is My Paint because although it looks simple it really is a joy to use especially as it works with Wacom graphics tablets and responds to changes in pen pressure resulting in real paint like stokes on my paintings

Gimp

Gimp is my first choice every time for photography and web graphics because it is one of the best bitmap editors in the world. It takes time to like it because it is quirky but after a while you grow to love it. Gimp comes with lots of raw power and considering what it can do it amazes me that the download file size of Gimp is one twentieth the size of Photoshop's. It can do most of what Photoshop can do and then some but unlike Photoshop it is snappy and starts up quickly. It is an ideal photo editor for everyday use or for creating one off digital masterpieces. There is a great community behind Gimp and there are also lots of online tutorials to teach and help you experiment with it's many features

Inkscape

In contrast to Gimp, Inkscape is a vector graphics editor which does more or less the same thing as applications such as Xara (see below) and Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape is suitable for creative art, logos, web page graphics, technical diagrams and free hand illustrations like those you always find in clipart libraries

Inkscape's toolbox provides tools for text and shapes such as ellipses, rectangles, spirals, stars, polygons and paths. Inkscape imports graphics in png, jpeg and svg formats and allows to save selections as a separate image. Objects in Inkspace can also be cloned and transformed by rotating, scaling and skewing. Inkscape also has features for creating 3D graphics and has tools to support 3D such as grids and transformation tools

Xara Xtreme for Linux

Xara Xtreme is a great graphics editor and it now runs on Linux. Xara is a quick and powerful general purpose graphics editor and there are tons of tutorials on how to use it. The Linux version is based on Xara Xtreme version 2 and is a bit outdated because Linux developers refuse to work on it as the company behind Xara Xtreme would not reveal all of the source code but it is still a very useful application for Linux users

Xara can be used for the same purposes as Inkscape and among it's features you will find tools for: transparency, bevels, drop shadows, gradient fills and 3D extrusion. You can also import photos and bitmaps from your file system simply by dragging the image into the Xara workspace. Xara is slick and very easy to use and offers some of the most powerful graphics editing tools on the market. It is great application and fun to use

Picasa

Picasa is a fine image management application which includes some very useful tools for performing quick edits to photographs and graphic images. Picasa has all the features you would expect in a good image manager and it is great for managing large photography collections

Images can imported either from your file system or a digital camera and then sorted into collections which are then easily tracked and searchable via tagging. Images can also be geotagged using google maps and then uploaded to Picasa Web Albums and shared with the world. One nice thing about Picasa is that it now allows you to create movies with selected images complete with transition effects and background music. Picasa just keep getting better and as user for 5 years now I find it to be the perfect compliment to Gimp for all my digital photography requirements. Highly recommended

gThumb

gThumb is an image viewer for the Gnome desktop and while it includes some basic photo editing features such as: brightness and contrast; colour balance; resize, crop and rotate; it is much more useful when used as an image browser on steroids

gThumb works like an extension of your underlying folder structure and in the sidebar you can create catalogues into which you can group images from many different folders. You create a catalogue, name it and then you can later add any image on your hard drive to any catalogue. gThumb lets you view your collections as slideshows and has a web page gallery generator offering a few clean and functional layout styles

Final thoughts

These applications are all good individually but put them together and then you have a lot of imaging power at your fingertips. There is no reason why a gnome desktop version of linux loaded with these applications can't be used for serious photography and graphic design work. Just like they say a poor tradesman always blames his tools :-)

GNU/Linux and The World of Free Software

2011-01-31T21:56:00.005Z

Computers are a societal resource which help the lives of us all and it makes sense for us to want to share and recycle software applications (apps) but we can also share complete operating systems and other bits and pieces which make computers do amazing things. This is natural because we are social animals and most us love swapping books knowing that we are helping to improve each others lives in some way

Computer software too can improve people's lives so it is natural for us think of it in the same way and want to help out a neighbour who says "your software is just what I need - could I have a copy?". The answer is yes

However most people are conditioned into believing that when it comes to anything to do with computers and computer software they should have a credit card at the ready. This is because the massive marketing budgets of software and media giants have all the angles covered with worldwide advertising and distribution strategies. The average person has no chance so they tend to buy brand name kit and hope for the best. The horror stories are legendary and most people think it is normal for their computers go awry and then spend more money maintaining and/or upgrading them. Free Software is different because it just works and with it's modest hardware requirements it can extend the life of older hardware and reduce landfill

Free Software is distributed over the internet at no cost and it can used straight away or customised further to your requirements rather than be re-invented from scratch. There is no paying out insane sums of money on draconian licenses for using closed proprietary software which can't be altered in any shape or form. The difference is huge and in a time of worldwide recession Free Software is becoming an even more obvious proposition which will serve the information technology (IT) needs of budget conscious individuals and organisations

With technology things change very fast but proprietary software can snooker you later if you want changes but with free software you can act fast and make your changes immediately. More IT professionals are now using Free Software components in their work because they can legally obtain, customise and sell the software on for a nominal fee under value added services such as setting up blogs, e-commerce solutions or office solutions for in-house use. Free Software is all around us - Google would never have been possible without it and most of the internet runs on Free Software. Most of the websites we visit are powered by Free Software as are most of the flashy mobile devices now on the market

Free Software offers a real alternative and for many people it would not make much sense to shell out for proprietary software because for every type of software which you are required to pay for there is a free alternative which is just as good and in some cases superior. This is why free software commands serious consideration for end user applications in businesses, education and training, government departments and the home

My personal experience as a user of Free Software makes me believe that it offers a higher level of quality and reliability than expensive proprietary offerings. I find Free Software more pleasant to use and I feel a true sense of ownership and control over my computer. When I compare this to my past experiences of using Windows based computers I am reminded of why I would never go back to the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) of that world. I smile when I still smile when I think about that I like myself a little bit more for knowing that I discovered something which literally changed my life for the better. You might ask: is it really that good? Well I think so

The GNU Project are the champions of Free Software and Linus Torvalds created the final system components which turned the whole shebang into what is now often commonly called "Linux" or to be technically precise "GNU/Linux"

Free Software exists thanks to to the work of the GNU Project whose definition of Free Software encompasses 4 freedoms:

The freedom to run a program in any place, for any purpose and forever
Access to the source code. Freedom to study how it works and to adapt it to our needs
Freedom to redistribute copies so that we can help our friends and neighbours
Freedom to improve the program and to release improvements to the general public

GNU/Linux is now approaching 5 percent market share according to authoritative web development portal W3Schools and large computer manufacturers such as Dell and Lenovo have in the past offered PCs and Netbooks powered by GNU/Linux based operating systems and mixes such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint

If you like what you have heard so far then you will benefit from learning more about what Free Software can do. The links below offer a good starting point from which to start learning what Free Software is all about and in the other articles in this category I show you some of the software that is available. If you keep an open mind you might discover something that will just click for you and change your life for the better

Free Software Links

What is GNU and Free Software? - The Free Software Foundation (FSF)
The Philosophy of Free Software
Motives for Writing Free Software
Why Selling Free Software is OK
A Small Business Introduction to Linux
Linux Total Cost of Ownership : Less Than Half The Cost of Windows
A Comparison of Linux Distributions - Wikipedia

Apple and Microsoft

2011-01-12T21:47:00.011Z

Windows 7 Phones heavy on Bandwidth

It seems that mobile handsets running Windows Phone 7 are downloading and sending phantom data and that their customers are facing increased bills for internet bandwidth they never used

Irish Independent - Windows Phone 7 Sending Phantom Data

Windows 7 Update nukes Mobile Phones

Imagine applying a software update to your puter which renders your machine totally unusable. This is what some mobile users running Windows Phone 7 had to endure recently. Ironically the update was designed to update the updating process but instead it resulted in Microsoft doling out a customer service announcement advising users to consult their mobile retailer
Microsoft Windows Phone 7 update crashes smartphones

Windows Phone 7 and Xbox ban GPL software

Just like Apple, Microsoft's interests are opposed to phone buyers - they want to maintain control over a computer that you've already bought and paid for. Don't buy into it
Free Software Foundation

Tell Sony to stop Harassing Hackers

Sony has been in the news a lot recently: suing developers for figuring out how to run free software on their PlayStation 3 consoles.Both George Hotz (geohot) and more recently, Graf Chokolo -- operator of the PS3 Hypervisor Reverse Engineering blog have been harassed by Sony, with Graf Chokolo having his home raided on Feb 23rd
Defective By Design

Is Apple's iPhone Tracking Users?

Two British software engineers discovered a secret database hidden deep within the iPhone. After unlocking the database the data revealed that the iPhone had been storing location and timestamp data since June 2010. Why Apple would want to do such a thing is a mystery and this news will surely influence the buying decisions of those who are in the market for a new phone. It is enough to give you the creeps.
Irish Independent

User Interface Design Articles

2011-01-11T22:39:00.006Z

Responsive Web Design

People now expect more from the web so how can designers keep up? Ethan Marcotte describes a technique called Responsive Web Design which can ensure your design works in the constantly fluctuating landscape of web enabled devices and browsers
Responsive web design

Photos as Web Content

Information Carrying Articles = good
Big Photos = Good (When Requested)
Product Details = Good
People Photos = Good (If they are real people)

Jakob Nielsen's Alert Box Column:
Photos as Web Content

Technology Links

2011-01-03T20:14:00.013Z

Technology Predictions for 2011 - Sunday Business Post

Tech Predictions for 2011

By 2014 50% of Televisions will have a web service

Sunday Independent

Intel warns of $1bn cost of chip fix

Hooray for Intel's loss -- Intel deserves this for its new DRM features. If the world were automatically just, Sandy Bridge would fail over and over. But justice does not happen automatically: it is up to us to make Sandy Bridge fail
The Guardian

Smarter PHP Web Development Using CodeIgniter

2011-01-01T20:43:00.003Z

Over the holiday period I took a look at CodeIgniter which is a PHP framework for Web Development using the Model View Controller (MVC) software design pattern and it impressed me. With Codeigniter anyone wishing to develop serious PHP applications quickly could save themselves and their clients a lot of time not just in the initial development stage but also later when it is time to upgrade the site
Anyone who has developed a PHP based web site using old school methods consisting of lots of ad hoc sql queries and include files will know that when it comes to updating and making changes to your site it can become something of a challenge when you are trawling through lines and lines of code where PHP code is interspersed with html markup. When the customer requests design changes six months down the line you have forgotten all the details and need to spend a lot of time becoming reacquainted with the project and often mind numbing levels of detail

I obtained the book Professional CodeIgniter written by Thomas Myer and this book teaches you CodeIgniter by taking a project based approach where you build a complete e-commerce web site complete with shopping cart and other cool functionality such as a search feature and administration panels. I had a lot of the core functionality built in just a few hours and am looking forward to completing the rest of the project

One of the great benefits of this book is that it teaches you how to apply Agile development methods to your web projects. Agile development is ideally suited to projects where you expect rather than fear change and it allows you to be flexible in your approach meaning that you can facilitate changes and implement them very quickly

Developers are sometimes asked to build e-commerce sites and deliver them within short time-spans and the time constraints often determine whether he has enough resources to take on the project. In these cases CodeIgniter could be just the ticket and some effort spent learning it would be a sound investment which will cause you less stress while increase your revenues

CodeIgniter is also tuned to run fast on shared hosting plans and when you add this consideration to points I made above then it is clear that CodeIgniter offers a yourself and your clients a serious value proposition

Good luck

Visit the CodeIgniter Web Site

Programming careers and why all that glitters is not gold

2010-11-01T06:06:00.001Z

The recession has thrown up numerous forum postings from people contemplating a career change and computer programming is one of the subjects that comes up often. Computing careers can be transient and short lived however because for every person wishing to get into the industry there is another one dying to get out. One forum poster alluded to the fact that she had three friends who were all ex programmers who had quit their jobs to become: a dairy farmer, a photographer and a counsellor. This should tell us something

"I wouldn't mind the rat race -- if the rats would lose once in a while." - Tom Wilson (American Actor, Writer and Comedian)

Is this because the IT industry is rubbish or is it because there are too many people making career decisions for the wrong reasons only to later lose the required levels of motivation to stay on top of the game? I did some digging around to find out if there is any consensus between programmers and IT workers regarding the levels of job satisfaction in the industry and I have come to the conclusion that all this disaffection is down to placing the wrong horses on the wrong courses. On the other hand some people are very happy in their jobs because they are in the right role with the right company and they feel that their work is highly valued by their employers. A good employer can make all the difference while a bad one can destroy the soul

I find that there are lots of people who moan about their work but that there are some who love it. If you always think of programming as hard or mundane then you won't like it at all but if you consider it to be more like a trade where you can excel using self discipline, craft and skill then you might like it a lot. There will always be plenty of work for any diligent and conscientious craftsman who can produce the goods in a certain problem domain

From my perspective, I previously worked in the the electronics industry as a test engineer and first learned to program in the early 90s by writing low level code for controlling electronics hardware and computer controlled test equipment. The electronics industry has all but died off and now I enjoy programming to build dynamic web pages which can interact with databases. The programming languages I am most interested in now are PHP, Python, Javascript and SQL. I also like to dabble in C/C++ out of sheer curiosity. I program for fun but can also do some very practical things with computers. More importantly, I am interested in computing more for the tangible benefits it has brought to society and in the ways people use and interact with them for work, study and recreation. I don't associate computing with earning money and I am glad I don't because it would not be as much fun

"The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple" - Grady Booch, Chief Scientist, Software Engineering, IBM Research

A technical career can be rewarding but great careers are not handed out on a plate and you need to be careful about who and what influences your direction. There are a lot of unemployed programmers out there facing huge competition; low cost economies are only an email away for anyone looking to hire a cheap programmer. With all this competition you need to be more critical in your career planning and try to be more specific. If you go into the corporate world then you become even less specific and you can end up working as a maintenance programmer on outdated computer systems and find it a drag just trying to stay motivated and get out of bed in the mornings. Having said that, this is where many professional programmers earn their bread and it might not be so bad if you just remember that it is only a job and that it gives you a means to pay the bills, have a comfortable home life and have a holiday every now and then

Self discipline is an important trait in all good programmers. It also helps if you are mildly obsessive :-) regarding attention to detail and that you live properly. Your brain is your most valuable asset and you won't be helping yourself if you go out on the lash during the week and neglect your mental and physical health. If you want a career doing programming for eight hours a day then you need to get plenty of sleep and have a good healthy diet to keep your levels of concentration up. You can get away with fast living until you reach about 25 and at 35 it's tough, but when you reach my age it is impossible :-(

I believe that it is far better to deliberately restrict the range of subjects you work with and master them because otherwise you risk becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none. For example, in college I did some C# and SQL Server projects but then ditched Microsoft altogether because, as one senior contributor to a well known programming forum succinctly put it : with Microsoft you are always stressed out in trying to keep up with all the changes they make to their technologies. Just when you are starting to feel comfortable using one kit you find that they have brought out something newer, expensive and supposedly better. Life is tough enough and I am not willing to put myself at Microsoft's beck and call so as a result of my decision I have halved my worries and now have much more free time for other things like photography, writing and having a social life

"The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it’s too late" - Seymour Cray

I think the best motive anyone can have for learning to program in the first place is because they want to do it and find it genuinely interesting. More people than ever are now interested in computers and how they work because never before has computing been so accessible to the man in the street. Computers are now seen to be the new rock and roll and even people who work in ordinary humdrum jobs are taking an interest in programming either as a hobby or have enrolled on a night school course to work towards a programming qualification

People often ask: "what programming language should I learn?" and the answer is that it depends on what you are trying to achieve. Here is a list of application domains with some of the more popular programming language solutions:

Desktop applications - Visual Basic.net, C#, Java, Python, C++
Web applications - Php, Ruby, Perl, Python, Java, Asp.net
Systems programming - C/C++
Mobile development - Java, C#, C/C++

Web development also requires knowledge of mark-up languages like (x)html and xml; web standards and cascading style sheets

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense" - E.W. Dijkstra

Once you learn one language then another one can be picked up quite swiftly and you will learn more if you try to adopt a hacker mentality early in your education and get some cop on. You have to work hard and for a considerable time to become a serious programmer and you need to think for yourself. I refer to the term hacker as being someone who wears a white hat and not one of those malicious immature buggers who like to vandalise other people's property just because they can. These people are often just criminals motivated by financial gain whereas real hacking is about creating something that people will find cool and want to use. Percy Shaw from Halifax, England, who invented those motorway cats eyes in his garden shed in the 1930s was a real hacker because he managed to solve a serious problem that was causing people to have road accidents after dark because they could not see the road properly

In college a good place to get a programming foundation is in the engineering departments because there you get more exposure to embedded computing which deals with programming some interesting hardware using low level programming languages like assembly language, C and C++. At this level programs are usually linear and execute from top to bottom in a logical sequence. It makes much more sense to teach a first year programming student how to code linear scripts rather than introduce them to Object Oriented Programming (OOP) because OOP only serves to scramble brains and quite frankly is a turn off for beginners. With OPP they are scared to experiment in case they break the program but with linear scripts they can experiment intuitively. This is all a world away from business computing courses which focus more on 'enterprise' computing using bloated proprietary software and it is where you can learn to focus more on the logic of programming rather than on fancy tools and elaborate methods of software development

The contrast between programming on an electronic engineering course and on a general computing course is stark because they are at opposite levels of the spectrum in relation to the technologies involved and end results. On mainstream computing courses you are usually asked to write programs for desktop/web applications and Java and C# are the languages most often used. You don't find C++ very often in colleges because students are always complaining that it is too difficult. Instead they teach them Java and C# because they are easier and a lot of employers are looking for these skills

"In C++ it’s harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg" - Bjarne Stroustrup

The downside of this is that colleges are turning out graduates who have learned their programming skills using frameworks like Java and .net which have kept them in ignorance and isolation from the inner workings of computer systems. There are just as many C++ jobs out there and they pay slightly more with less competition standing in the way. Couple C++ skills with maybe some project management and writing skills and you might be giving yourself a head start over the herd

During 1990 - 1992 I did an electronics course where I learned Pascal, assembly language and C programming. Except for Pascal those skills are still in big demand today and they always will be because industry needs people who have an understanding of electronic hardware and the tools and methods for programming it. With this type of programming you are literally down closer to the hardware level and you are working with the more basic forms of control logic using bits and bytes; boolean algebra and circuit timing. For an introduction to this type of programming and the kits available you could take a look at The BASIC Stamp Micro-controller Development Kit which is manufactured by Parallax

Typical engineering projects might involve designing a micro-controller based application where you gain knowledge of practical hardware based applications and some really interesting programming techniques. If you do an engineering course your skills will probably be more unique and and have more range than those which they teach on general computing courses where, in Ireland at least the colleges seem to have a fetish for Microsoft technologies. You will never a learn lot about computer systems if you go on a course that is too heavily influenced by Microsoft

"Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline" - Bjarne Stroustrup

One of the biggest pains for any new programmer is getting a handle on the programming tools available. When you are just learning it is better to use light tools with few features because this will keep your mind on the programming and not on the tools themselves

Microsoft has Visual Studio which many say is the best development tool in the world but the problem with it is that it is very complicated for beginners - even in third year I felt uncomfortable whenever I opened up Visual Studio. If you want to learn C# and the .net platform then do start with the Express Editions of Visual Studio because they are free, very light weight and not nearly as intimidating

Microsoft also have a nice free tool called Visual Web Developer that will get you up and running quickly with asp.net powered web-sites. It is all drag and drop mind you and a lot of the code is generated for you. This is fine but it stops you from really learning to program properly. What happens when you run into problems with your application? Often the problems are not related to the actual program logic but instead have more to do with the tools and their configuration. This is why too many 'features' can cloud your mind and stop you from working effectively

Java development tools historically have been pretty lousy but thankfully there is now Netbeans which makes it much easier to learn Java, C++ Ruby or PHP on a Windows, Linux or MacOS box to create web and database applications with cool user interfaces and slick functionality. If you are more of a purist then there is a great interactive teaching tool called BlueJ which I recommend because I used it in college and it gave me a great feel for Java programming when I did an introductory semester in second year. BlueJ was the first programming tool I ever saw which had an object work bench which allows you to interact with programming objects in a fun and experimental way. The idea has since been copied into Visual Studio and claimed by Microsoft to be their own 'innovation'. Cheeky

"If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution" - Robert Sewell

If you are the type of person who thinks that an evening spent learning to program is better spent than watching TV then you are have the potential so maybe you could teach yourself a thing or two about computer programming, become good at it and find a real sense of achievement when you complete your personal projects. By choosing projects that you enjoy you will have much more motivation and be keen to take things to the next level. If you do programming for your own benefit and pleasure then you have a much better chance of still enjoying it in five years time

When making the decision to take on a computing degree course from 2002 - 2006, I went in with my eyes open because I could see the potential in IT to be something which would keep me interested for many years to come. Unlike other vocations it is something which you can do professionally, for pleasure, or both. If you become unemployed then you still have something which you can study and work with to satisfy your intellectual curiosity and pass the time or you can create something practical for your own benefit and for other people who need your expertise

Canny people don't always hire themselves out to the first offer they get after graduation because they know that it does not really make economic sense to do this. Instead they will think up ways to become financially independent in the long run by working on personal projects that they find highly motivational and interesting. The unique thing about IT is that there are no cost barriers to entry and that you can plan long term projects which can bring you lasting benefits for many years to come. It is smart to think like this because by putting all your eggs in one basket in a regular day job you are taking a huge risk. If you have serious financial commitments and the economy takes a slide then what are have you got to fall back on?

Most programmers work as a coder for a few years and then find that they can't progress much further because after 5 - 10 years of programming the only other option is to move into management. Management is not much fun so many people just prefer to leave the computer industry and go off and do something else, like ... counselling

"It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets" - Alan Cooper

This is hardly surprising and after I graduated I attended job interviews where I got a sense of the working conditions programmers are often expected to work under and it left me with no doubt that it can be an unglamorous, un-sexy career where your days can either be mind numbingly boring or loaded with pressure and stress. No thanks, because boredom is a disease and I can count dozens of people I have known over the years who ended up miserable and eventually yielded to stress related illnesses. Too much too soon and with no steady pace is a recipe for disaster in your career and your life outside work. There is one place I have been informed about where the average duration of employment is just 6 months because that is all most normal people can take. Anyone who is over a year in the job is either in serious debt or a bit slow on the uptake

In one place I saw a dozen programmers crammed into a room without windows working in little cubicles under fluorescent lighting and the interviewer had eyes which conveyed about as much humour to me as a sore toe. It was like talking to a robot and I have seen more personality in a pound of sausages. There are probably some good places out there to work as a programmer but I suspect that the main thing which makes them good is the people. After all, they say that people don't really move jobs but instead they change people. It does not cost much to make a workplace comfortable and conducive to brain work but unfortunately a lot of employers neglect their employees by expecting them to work in poor conditions. Even a few inspirational wall posters and a coffee maker can make a difference!

I knew I would be unimpressed by what I saw after graduation because by that time I had lost all my motivation for programming and wanted to do be doing something less mechanical. I took some time off and learned about the web instead because it offered a more humane and social aspect to computing which was absent in the abstract and clinically logical world of software engineering and programming. When the course finished I was a web newbie - and I mean clueless - but I had become a good programmer because during the course I was always paying attention to my work and saw web surfing mainly as a waste of time that could wait until after graduation

By the time I graduated I still didn't even know what lmao or btw meant because I had spent so much time working on my course that it nearly sucked the life out of me. There is a lot to be said for taking a year or three out after such a long hard slog to gain a fresh perspective on everything including who you are as a person. For example, I discovered I had a passion for words and writing; something which would have passed me unnoticed if I had jumped straight in to working as a full time programmer after graduation

Best of luck

C Programming - a great beginners language

2010-11-01T03:29:00.007Z

If you don't know C and have little interest in it then you will leave gaps in your programming education but if you are interested and want to learn C programming then a fascinating world awaits you where you will gain a real appreciation of computer systems, how they work and how they can be programmed for almost any purpose. Learning C will also get you extra kudos from fellow programmers and extra brownie points at job interviews because most people think of C Programming as a black art. The good news is that is isn't and if you are genuinely interested in how computer systems work then C is the ideal language to begin with

There are other programming languages of course such as Java and C# but these languages do not offer the same level of control over a computer system that is available to the C or C++ programmer and they also place a lot of obstacles in the front of the beginner which makes their learning curves unintuitive and difficult to grasp. C programming is leaner and by learning some of the basics you will be able to form a much better conceptual model of how computer systems work

Conceptual models are important to technical people because they act as a blueprint from which we can begin to apply our knowledge and understanding to everyday computing problems. Even if you don't become a C programming master you will at least learn what it is capable of at the systems level and the knowledge picked up along the way will give you a clear advantage over someone who chooses Java or C# as their first programming language

C is a programmers language. Learning C is well worth the effort because C code is everywhere and it will not be disappearing any time soon. It is still in the top 10 programming languages demanded by industry and languages like Java, C# and Python all borrow heavily from C making it the grandfather of all modern high level programming languages

Although C is a high level language it differs from other high level languages in that it is small and it does not have the strictness of Java or C#. There is a small collection of keywords in the C language but there are a large amount of operators that can be used in myriads of ways for solving any given computing problem no matter how simple or complex. This gives the programmer total freedom and is what makes C so flexible and powerful but with this great power comes great responsibility as far as you the programmer is concerned

C can be used for almost any programming task imaginable and will run on anything from a toy car to a supercomputer. It can be used to code anything from a user control menu in an 8-bit microcontroller application with a four line by 32 character LCD display to full blown 32 bit desktop applications complete with jazzy graphical user interfaces (GUIs) running on the Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems

C programs can be compiled to run on any microprocessor based hardware and they will run as native machine code without requiring layers of fat such as virtual machines like Java and .Net. This is also the reason why C is used to program real time control systems where no timing latency is acceptable in system performance. C code is only one level of abstraction above assembly language, which is often used by electronics engineers and other practitioners of black arts. C (and C++) programs are lean and fast yet the source code is very readable and understandable by human programmers

Just to give you an idea of how efficient a C program is compared to assembly language consider this. A simple C source file which asks the user to enter an integer and then does a test to see if the number is greater than or less that 10 takes up 375 bytes of disk space. The compiled executable version of this file takes up 7 kilobytes! An integer requires 4 bytes on a 32 bit system so as you can imagine, the C compiler creates a heck of a lot of ones and zeros, even from a very simple source file to create the machine code version of your C source file. This can be done in 5 minutes using C but if you were to attempt this using assembly language it would take ages. If you were to do it like they did in the old days by writing sequences of ones and zeros on punched cards it would take days. Well, It would take me days to do it anyway ;-)

C is the language used to write systems level software and the language allows you to gain complete control over a computer's hardware and it's operating system. The Linux operating system is written in C and it follows that the Linux operating system can also be stripped down and modified to run on any type of electronic hardware and this makes it a popular choice of operating system for use in embedded systems and mobile devices such as smart phones and portable radio sets

C is great when you get to know it because it is beautiful in it's simplicity. C programming is just you and the machine and there is no fluff like Visual Studio, C#, Visual Basic, Eclipse or Java to worry about and that is just as well because these things are all pre-built frameworks (platforms) and tools which were developed to supposedly make it simpler to create computer applications and deploy them to any operating system and even the web. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is what that is called and it is further up the chain of command and further away from where the real action lies

Frameworks use languages that owe much of their structure and semantics to the C programming language and if you first learn to C then learning them is later on is easy. The trouble with frameworks however is that you first need to learn a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with pure programming logic and from experience I know how frustrating it can be to get started and create a simple "hello world" program working in Java or C# for instance. I would never recommend these languages to anyone who wants to know how computer systems work because application development is not concerned with the inner workings of a computer system and rightly so. Application development just as much about project management, design, deadlines and customer satisfaction. The actual programming might typically be allocated around 20% -35% of the time available

If you want to quickly develop desktop applications you would use Python, VB, Java or C# because all you are required to know is how to include those external libraries you need and call the appropriate functions within them. If you know how to write loops, branches and work with variables then you are good to go. Done and dusted

Frameworks are big, ugly, cumbersome and complicated entities and the fact that they come with reams of documentation proves this case succinctly. With C all you need is a great book, some decent web links, a text editor and compiler and then you can begin to learn almost everything you need to know about programming computer systems. That is surely a sound proposition for anyone who is interested in really learning how to program. If you like logic games and puzzles then C will test you for sure and you will never get tired of it

Using a framework is akin to building a plain vanilla looking house at one location using jerry blocks whereas C programming is more akin to having the freedom and skill to build a house in beautiful and ornate red brick work at any location you like

A good C programming course will give the beginning programmer a thorough and in depth understanding of the main programming mechanisms that are commonly found across all programming languages - data types, variables and constants, looping and branching, input and output, system calls

C was designed to be a portable language and in this sense it forces a programmer to think about computer hardware and what limits are imposed on the size of data types a program can handle on different systems whereas if you are learning to program using a framework these important details are hidden away from you and taken care of by the framework. You are insulated and do not need to worry about these things and in this sense frameworks are more like black boxes that have been designed around the assumption that the programmer does not need to know anything about hardware or system level sorftware. Sometimes you need complete control however and you only get that kind of control using C or, god forbid, Assembly Language. Hopefully now you will have realised what I meant earlier when I mentioned power and responsibility

If you are coding up an application for use in an office you can just install a framework runtime on the office machines and then your program should run. For this reason you would be crazy to write desktop applications in C and you would use C#, Java, Python or Visual Basic instead. There is lots of earning potential in this type of programming and it keeps many programmers in employment

Frameworks are like boxes of pre written tools (scripts coded in C or C++) from which you import those tools you need to meet the requirements of each project. A framework is good for creating desktop applications for use in heterogeneous business environments or for commercial release software and there are tons of developers working in this area. They are called developers because that is what C#, Java and VB programmers do - they develop end user applications using frameworks whereas a language like C can be used for special purposes at the systems level

To get started with C programming all you need to do is download the GNU C compiler and start writing C scripts in a text editor, fire up a terminal, compile C programs and run them. Nothing could be simpler and there are some C tutorial links and resources at the end of the article for your enjoyment :-)

Learning C is not very difficult and after you have created the obligatory hello world application you pat yourself on the back because you have managed to get the compiler installed without any major dramas. It is a great idea to create small interactive programs such a simple menu based scripts which perform different actions in response to choices made at the command prompt

Working with a command line prompt feels like having a real dialog with a computer and once you see how easy it is to write and modify small programs and instruct them to do your bidding it can become quite addictive. It also gives you a better understanding of the gap between human logic and computer logic and the challenges which are involved in translating one into the other. If you like this type of programming then you should continue learning it because liking something is half the battle in becoming a master of it and everything you have learned could keep you in gainful employment for years to come

C allows you to make system level calls and open and save files on your hard drive. After you get bored writing small console applications then maybe you would like to spread your wings a bit and get your program talking to the hardware. This is when things get interesting because you begin to see that C is not a toy and that it is a very serious tool indeed. In fact with C you can access any addressable object on your system whether it be a byte in RAM, your screen or something that is plugged into a USB, serial or parallel port

Now that we are down at this level it feels like a world away from developing desktop applications and if you have read this far I am sure you will know what I mean. Try doing these simple little jobs with Windows 7 & and Visual Studio

If you can talk to port then you can talk to anything that is plugged into that port. It could be a small temperature semiconductor sensor soldered onto a printed circuit board and powered with an AA battery and all you would need to do is figure out how to capture the sensor output signal and get it into your C program. From your program you might want to log the sensor reading every x seconds and then open a log file and append the reading to all the others you have taken. Later you might want to create a GUI application that will call your log file and draw a graph of the sensor behaviour and save the image as a screenshot for using in presentations and user manuals. GUIs can be written in C using a toolkit like GTK

C is extensible and every C implementation comes with a built in standard library with functions for talking to the operating system kernel, performing the usual gymnastics with math and strings; data type conversions and the handling input / output tasks such as taking input from a keyboard and displaying it in the screen. You don't get lots functions for networking and creating Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) like you get with Java and .net but with C you can seek and find pre-written libraries and GUI toolkits and include them in your program. This is still way better than throwing in all but the kitchen sink. It keeps your C applications lean and mean

This trimmed down approach is what makes C easily portable and why your code easily be compiled to run on any type of target device. Any type of hardware platform from an intel pentium 4 desktop computer to a small microcontroller chip embedded inside a washing machine can be targeted by a C compiler

Hopefully you have enjoyed this article and that is has helped you in some shape or form. Maybe you will want to try C Programming and if you do then I know you will not be disappointed in your efforts. All it takes is time and practice peppered with a little sprinkling of intellectual curiosity to become an efficient C Programmer

Personally Speaking

I first started programming in 1990 and I learned Pascal and Assembly Language on a college electronics course. I found them very interesting because their logic made sense. I designed and programmed an electronic circuit module to simulate the functionality of a washing machine controller. The design was based around a 6502 microprocessor, a timer and a ROM chip. The logic was worked out by creating flowcharts using a pencil and paper and then the flowchart logic was coded up in 6502 assembly language before being burned on to the ROM chip. I used an EEPROM which is a ROM chip that is erasable and can be programmed many times over. On a student budget you gotta be smart and save on the old pennies :-)

About 13 years later I did Visual Basic (VB6) in the first year of my degree course. I found the difference startling and while the language itself was simple the idea of graphical programming took some time to get used to. All we were expected to do was create pretty GUIs and hook up a few procedural style scripts that handled user actions via the GUI. GUI programming is pretty easy but you need to know what makes a good user interface and for that you need to read Jacob Neilsen's notes on usability

In the second year they taught us Java using a programming tool (BlueJ) specially designed for teaching programming in colleges but BlueJ and Java encourage programmers to adopt the object oriented (OO) programming paradigm from the start and I think that this is what trips a lot of people up and turns them off programming. The class struggled and so did the instructor because there is nothing more demoralsing for both parties than attempting to teach people a subject that is clearly not sinking in. We got into the groove, eventually, but it took months for us all to feel comfortable with Java. The problem was that it takes time to get your head around the idea of objects, what they are and why you would choose to use them in the first place over the linear programming paradigm

It would have been more useful and productive to adopt C as the first year programming language because the other modules on the first year course included operating systems and computer hardware - subjects which deal a lot with computing concepts like memory, bits and bytes, input and output, etc. It would have made much more sense to teach C rather than VB6 because a C course would have consolidated the knowledge gained in the other modules and brought a degree of consistency to the proceedings. The students would have been made aware that there are such things as objects if only for the simple reason that someone would be bound to ask what the difference was between C and C++. The answer of course would have been that C++ is like C with objects and classes and that you should be reading up on them over the summer as you will be getting taught all about them in the second and third years. If you fail to plan then you plan to fail

In third year it was C# and all objects. Once you understand object oriented programming you dont forget it in a hurry and that is why I chose C# for my fourth year honours project. I also did a final year course on Artificial Intelligence (AI) using the Prolog language and it was pretty mind bending stuff which scared most the class witless. Lots of people dropped out and never made fourth year but that is bound to happen on any decent degree course because a good course will make sure that programmers program all the time and that they can't possibly achieve a pass on the theory alone. You can't bullshit your way through a programming degree and you need to put in a load of effort. Most of all programmers should love programming and do it almost every other day. It keeps the mind awake and it is a fascinating intellectual pursuit

Best of Luck

C Programming Resources

Free C/C++ Compilers
A Tutorial on Pointers and Arrays in C
All the C you need to know for GTK+ GUI Programming

Mandriva 2010 Spring (Gnome Desktop version)

2010-09-11T14:43:00.003+01:00

Machine Specification:
Processor - 2.4GHz pentium 4 Celeron
Memory - 512MB Ram
Graphics Card - NVidia GEForce 8400 GS
Screen - 1440 x 900 Flat Panel LCD. Hewlwtt Packard W1907S

Mandriva is a pretty cool Linux Distribution (distro) which I have been using since it's installation borked my Linux Mint partition. The graphical install was very simple but the installer did not recognise my Mint partition and add it to the Boot Menu. I was disappointed with this because my experience with Debian based distros is that they always recognise other Linux partitions and add them to the boot menu. I had created dual boot and triple booting systems before yet I could not get this to work with Mandriva

Playing around with the Grub bootloader is not my idea of fun and needless to say many others will not be impressed with having to do so. If you have windows installed and want a dual booting machine then the Mandriva installer will do it all automatically and do it well

This was the first time I had seriously used a Linux distro that uses RPM instead of Synaptic as the software package manager but this was not a real problem because like Mint there is a Software Manager in Mandriva that hides all the gory details about packages and libraries from the user. The Software Manager takes care of all the extra libraries you need for running any applications you install

My personal data was backed up onto a pen drive (as always) so I all I had to do was pull it back into Mandriva (Mandy) and then access it. I could always re-install Mint later even though it would mean having to reinstall all my favourite software apps but in Linux installing software is childs play so this is not a huge issue as long as you have a good internet connection

There were a few hiccups along the way and unlike Linux Mint, Mandy needs a bit of persuading before she plays ball. Luckily I managed to get the system to behave just like my old Mint install without really having to open a terminal which will be great news to anyone who feels spooked at the very idea of using the command line but these tweaks would make many a Linux newbie give up and look elsewhere fast and I would not blame them if they did

After some tweaking and installation of my usual tools and applications via the Software Manager I am pretty pleased with Mandy and I am sure she will serve me faithfully. As always the first thing you notice with any new distro is the look and Mandriva does a very nice job with the default theme which is a fresh and polished looking blue. The fonts are nice and the desktop response is snappy. A plus for me was that the Gnome version of Mandriva worked with all the fancy Compiz Fusion effects and the 3D desktop cube. The Gnome version also has better documentation and help files installed than the KDE version

I also installed tried the KDE Desktop version but quickly ruled it out because it acted the monkey and would freeze completely when tweaking the theme settings. The beauty of Linux is that as long as you have all your data on a stick you can skip any distro that is not behaving and quickly find one that does

Mandriva Issues
Monitor size was not properly detected and had to be manually set via the control panel.
Could play videos in Totem Movie Player but without sound
Menus were confusing and contained lots of duplicate entries
No Terminal Access available via the Nautilus File Manager
No way to open Nautlus as root user
Annoying debug message always appears on start up
Num lock key always activated on start up
Does not power off

Monitor Resolution
To configure the monitor you open your control centre: System > Control Centre. Under "Hardware" select "Monitors" and set the correct resolution for your screen. Under "Hardware" I selected "NVIDIA Display Settings" > "X Server Display Configuration" and entered my screen settings. That fixed it

Codec Issues
Mandriva does not come with the media codecs you need for playback of dvds, flash, mpeg, mp3 files so you need a media player that will take care of all this and the VLC Media Player is the one that does the job. Rather than look for VLC in your Software Manager you first have to add a new repository (REPO) known as the PLF repo and you can do that by visiting this link. Once you have that done open up your Software Manager and search for VLC. In the description box check that it contains the warning that this version of VLC contains codecs that are illegal in some countries. If these codecs are illegal in your country or you feel jittery about using them then you can go to the Mandriva Shop and pay for the codec pack

After adding the PLF repo I searched in the Software Manager for "win32-codecs" and "libfaad" and installed them. After this VLC could play all my media files

Editing the Menus
The Mandrive Menus, although comprehensive, were confusing because I would see and icon and think "hey I just saw that somewhere else a minute aqo but can't remember where". Seeing as main menus are usually categorised and the reason for having categories in the first place is to put things in labelled containers for fast access, the menus needed tidying up before I would use them. In Linux this is dead easy stuff but so many software developers cram in lots of menus and often duplicated items just to give you impression that there is a lot more happening than is really the case. This is a habit that needs curtailing as it only leads to confusion. A simple menu will do guys and the simpler it is the better

Terminal Access via Nautilus File Manager
Those people who love working at the command line will notice that in Mandriva the Nautilus File Manager does give you access to a terminal. Graphical File Managers are good but many users want to open a terminal from within the currently viewed folder and this is something I can not live without now. Fortunately Nautilus has a plug in called "nautilus-open-terminal" which can be installed via the Software Centre. You need to logout and then back in to see the effect. When right clicking in a folder from within Nautilus you then see the command "Open In Terminal". This neat feature gives you rapid access to your file system and is like being able to kill two birds with one stone depending on how you feel

Open Nautilus File Manager as Root User
Sometimes you need to open Nautilus as a root user, particularly if you are running a web server and want to transfer any html files you create from applications in your own user space over to your web directory which is usually installed under the root directory. I use Xampp as my local web server which installs to the the /opt/lampp directory. As this directory is under the root directory you need root privileges in Nautilus before you can start creating, copying and deleting files. The solution is to open your software centre and search for "gksu" and install it. Then from the command line all you do is type "gksu nautilus" and enter the root password to transfer files from your own space to the /opt folder

Num Lock Key on Start Up
This is a big blooper and I will tell you why. No-one ever notices when the Num Lock key is on and when you reboot Mandy after installing her you are asked to create a user name and password for the root user, who is usually but not always you. If you are a mere mortal like me you will just go straight ahead and type in a user name and password and then life seems good. After you are logged in and want to carry out some task requiring root privileges you enter what you are sure is the correct root credentials only to be denied access. If you dont realise that you created these credentials with the num lock key on then you will end up pretty confused. Solution is to switch on the Num Lock and then re-enter the root details. It took me a few minutes to figure this out but not all people out there are as computer savvy

Verdict
Mandriva likes to promote their distro as simple and ideal for beginners but come off it guys, does it really sound like a beginner would know how to overcome the hurdles I have just described? I doubt it. Take a hint from Mint and see how polished it is because that is what I would advocate as the ideal beginners distro

Mint has everything a new user needs and Mandy doesn't. However Mandy after tweaking looks hot and with the added eye candy of Compiz Fusion I think I will stick with her for a couple of months and get the feel of using a new distro for work and play. Out of the box I would give this distro 5/10 and after tweaking an 8 or maybe 8.5. It's really me giving myself 8 or 8.5 :-)

The issues I have listed might seem small and insignificant to someone of my experience but what would a Linux newcomer think? I would not recommend Mandriva to a newbie (Mint is the one for them) unless in future they pay more attention to these headaches. There is no need for them guys and you need to pay more attention to the finer details

Technology and Slave Labour

2010-05-28T07:05:00.005+01:00

Yesterday Apple overtook Microsoft as the world's richest technology company and many news outlets are hailing it as a great success story owing to the fact that Apple nearly went bankrupt in the 1990s. Apple are now reportedly worth $220 billion, just ahead of Microsoft who are valued at $219bn.

Soon we will be bombarded with more glossy marketing efforts designed to persuade us that Apple's latest lifestyle product, the iPhone, is something we should all aspire to but behind the glam marketing there is much darker story emerging

Apple's products are made in China at a huge facility in the city of Shenzhen and operated by the technology company Foxconn. Some 300,000 young workers are employed at this facility and the average monthly wage is around $120 US. Supervisors at the facility claim that conditions here are better than at most other Chinese industrial complexes but if this is really the case then one wonders what these other places are like considering that there have been 11 suicides at the Foxconn facility alone this year.

The workers commited suicide by jumping from buildings in and around the facility and the company has responded by putting up nets to break the fall of anyone who attempts suicide in the future. Workers at the Foxconn facility live in abject misery to provide the rest of us with expensive shiny gadgets while they themselves are expected to live on poverty level wages ensuring that they will never be able to afford luxuries such as an Apple iPhone or a Dell computer.

Workers are putting in 12 hour shifts 6 days a week and are being treated like slaves. The military style regime has been accused of hiring child labour and refusing to let workers talk or even listen to music as they carry out their mind numbing and monotonous work. They say this is done to forge discipline within the workforce.

Among the sticking plaster solutions currently being applied to care for the mental health of employees at the facility are: counsellors, Buddhist monks, singers, dancers and a suicide hotline.

Having worked in the electronics industry in both Ireland and Taiwan I am not surprised by these allegations. Industrial management in the west is tyrannical enough but they usually know where to draw the line regarding workers rights and how they should be treated. China is very different and Chinese workers have more reason that most to be fearful of management.

Many of these workers are from poor peasant backgrounds in remote provinces and came to the bright lights of Shenzhen with dreams in their hearts. The city draws them from all over this vast country with promises of a better life but for most of them the reality is harsh and unforgiving. Every day they face verbal and sexual abuse from petty dictators who see them as less than human.

Electronic and Computer products used to be made in Ireland but not any more. We have all been made redundant here and the jobs have moved to places like China and Eastern Europe where labour can be hired at a fraction of the cost. This is why technology companies like Apple and Microsoft continue to make such obscene levels of profit.

If you care about this and want to do something about it then you can start by boycotting Apple products and insist on running only free software on your computer. The more people turn to free software the less power the technology companies will have to monopolise the market with inferior, expensive and restrictive products.

XHTML valid Youtube Codes

2010-05-19T21:04:00.002+01:00

Embedded YouTube video fails Xhtml 1.0 Strict validation.

I got a slew of validation errors after embedding a video from YouTube. A common problem is unencoded ampersands in the url pointing to YouTube. Check the code YouTube generates for you and make the following correction:

In the url of the YouTube video replace:

&

with

amp;

This is the correct way to code ampersands in Xhtml strict.