Apr 27 2011
I see that Blacknight has launched a campaign promoting .eu domain names: Invade Europe. It is catchy, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek!
It is now possible to register .eu domain names for 1, 2, 5, and 10 years. The 10 year registration is heavily discounted by 50%. It is great value, and I guess that it is representative of the fact that .eu domain names are generally not regarded highly.
Comments Off on Multi-year EU Registrations
Feb 04 2011
I heard of the concept of Google Bombs long ago, but I only discovered today that this was their name :)
Some of the cited examples are very funny :D
Comments Off on Google Bombs
Jan 15 2011
I read during the week that Skype has become the world’s largest international call provider! That is amazing, and it certainly must be concerning the traditional telcos! For more information see CES 2011: Skype Steals International Scene.
I am aware that Skype had a serious outage before Christmas, but luckily it did not affect me. The $1 credit was a nice apology!
During Christmas I had the opportunity to use Skype for video calls on the latest version of the iPod Touch, and I was extremely impressed with both the quality and the ease of use. It was a much better experience than I imagined, and I could easily get used to doing all my calls like that!
Comments Off on Skype Growth
Dec 10 2010
I read an interesting article about using Twitter while watching television today – see The audience tweets back.
I must admit that this is something that I have done, and I found it made mundane programs become very entertaining!
Comments Off on Twitter Television
Nov 12 2010
I hate censorship – of all types. So I was delighted to read that Amazon has refused to censor the rather controversially titled book The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure. For more information see Amazon row over paedophile book.
Well done Amazon!
Oct 19 2010
It is celebration time! Teknovis is exactly two years old today! The very first entry Why WordPress? was posted on 19/10/2008!
I am actually very impressed with myself for staying active for two years! During this time I have written over 300 posts!
I have found the experience to be very useful, because it causes me to pay more attention to what is going on in the world of technology. I also find the blog is a great way of keeping useful notes in an easily accessible way :o
Perhaps my biggest disappointment has been that I have not been able to write the sort of insightful and deep articles that I had originally envisaged. I think that this is mainly due to not having enough time, and a strong concern about discussing work related topics.
So let the third successful year begin :)
Oct 11 2010
The Irish Courts have said no to the music industries ridiculous demands for policing users’ activity! See Record companies lose illegal download case.
Brilliant! Well done to UPC for standing up for its users rights!
I wonder will Eircom reconsider its foolish position of cooperation now!
Comments Off on Irish Courts Rule Against Music Industry’s Demands
Aug 19 2010
The laptop belonging to a friend of mine recently got attacked by a Drive-By Download virus. The particular virus was the Antimalware Doctor, and there is plenty of information about it available online, such as Remove Antimalware Doctor (Uninstall Guide).
Lucky, my friend had a very recent external backup. Therefore, I wiped the laptop and simply reinstalled everything, rather than trying to remove the virus.
However, this made me wonder how Drive-By Download infection occurs. Another friend recommended that I read The Ghost In The Browser Analysis of Web-based Malware. It was an excellent introduction, and it was very readable.
Comments Off on Drive-By Download Infection
Aug 06 2010
I needed to edit a photo on somebody’s computer today. I needed to crop the photo, and then sharpen it. Unfortunately, there was no software installed on the computer that would do it :(
I previously wrote about an online photo editor called Pixenate in Online Photo Editor. Unfortunatly, it is not able to sharpen photos :(
So I did a search, and I found Pixlr. It is really slick, and it appears to be very functional!
Comments Off on Online Photo Editor – Pixlr
Aug 02 2010
Today is a public holiday in Ireland, so I have a bit more time to write about something that has been on my mind for the last weeks.
I often have to work with companies that already have a well designed website, but they have no content designed specifically for mobile devices. These companies normally have a very strong desire to target mobile users, but they are unsure of the best approach.
In an ideal world, if a website is well written in XHTML then it should be possible to create a separate CSS stylesheet to render the pages well on mobile devices. This solution is usually easy to do, but it only provides a very basic user experience.
Therefore, there is normally a requirement to create new content specifically for mobile users. There are normally three different options, and each of these has its own advantages and disadvantages.
This is probably the most popular option, and it is the option with which most users are familiar. The advantages of this option are:
This main disadvantages of this option are:
There are many examples of such mobile applications :)
This is probably the second most popular options. It involves creating a second website that is specifically designed for mobile devices. This new website can be hosted on a new domain (.mobi for example), and mobile clients can automatically be redirected there based on the HTTP user agent header.
The advantages of this option are:
The main disadvantage of this option is that it does not give a presence in the application store.
The advent of HTML 5 enables another option that consists of developing a skeleton application that is basically a dumbed-down web browser. This application is configured with an application specific title, icon, and start page.
The main advantages of this option are:
The disadvantages of this option are:
Hopefully I have not forgotten anything!
