Archive for the ‘Personal Thoughts’ Category
- 29.07.09
Microsoft and Yahoo getting together
It has been reported today that Microsoft and Yahoo are coming together to create a search engine to combat Google. My first reaction was to laugh and then it turned to anger. Apart from the fact that I hate Microsoft with a passion, (they are a disgrace to the world of business and should have been shut down many years ago), I’m sick to death of them thinking that they can just enter a new marketplace and become the leaders in it. You’re time is over Microsoft, you’ve pissed off too many people. The second the community asks you to do something you don’t listen, just look at the recent fixoutlook campaign and then look at their outrageous response, it was like watching a politician trying to get out of answering a question.
Anyway back to the topic. They are getting together to create a new super search engine, hmm what was MSN search, then Live Search oh and then Bing. Come on Microsoft you’ve failed three times, you’re not going to succeed by teaming with another sucky search engine. When I produce an SEO optimised site I don’t care about any other search engine apart from Google and I’m guessing its the same for the rest of the web development community. The only reason we support Internet Explorer is because they force it upon their users so we don’t have a choice because they have an unfair advantage on the browser market.
Read Full Post - 23.07.09
The importance of being a part of the design community
For a while now I’ve known that to succeed you need to be around people that enable you and help you in that quest. The design community benefits from this to no end, and because the community is very active on social networking platforms there is no reason not to be part of it.
There are thousands of great designers out there using sites like Twitter and Facebook. Following and contributing to discussions can only help you get out there, get noticed and feel part of the community. I cant tell you the amount of times I’ve come across people that see no point in Twitter until you start mentioning how you’ve received work, gotten help on an issue and so much more. Just take a look at my twitter feed and you’ll see just how many times I ask questions rather than sitting for hours staring at a PHP problem, getting frustrated and having to take time out, I simply put the question on twitter and within a few minutes I have a number of people who know the answer.
Read Full Post - 28.06.09
Advertising the Pringle’s Way
Advertising is big business, you don’t need me to tell you that. If you are good at advertising it’s generally the case that you’ll live the luxurious penthouse bachelor lifestyle like you see in the movies, I always wanted that apartment in “What Women Want” with the views over the city.Anyway, back on topic, the guys that create those little banner ads you see on websites, they tend not to be in the same position but after seeing a rather impressive ad the other day, maybe some should. I never normally click on adverts on websites because I know exactly what happens but I strongly recommend that you click on this advert: http://awardshome.com/cannes2009/pringles/can-hands.html
It’s advertising Pringle’s (my favourite crisps [chips to my American readers]), but in a rather ingenious manner. See they know that most people aren’t going to see an advert in a sidebar of a website and think “I know what I’ll click that” so they play on that idea and “talk” to you, with phrases like: “BTW, thanks for trusting our banner not to send you to a porn site”.
Read Full Post - 24.06.09
Working from home again
After having an office for the past 8 months I decided to move my office back into my apartment when I moved to a new place. The reason I moved into an office in the first place was because of motivation issues and the fact that I couldn’t concentrate because there were too many distractions.
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So [...] - 13.02.09
I’m now on a Mac, oh yeah!
A couple of years ago if someone said I should get a mac I would say s/he was wrong, Macs are crap yadda yadda yadda. Last year I bought a cheap iBook for about £150 off of eBay, it was slow, nothing worked with it and I felt that it proved my opinions.
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About a year [...]