Why? Well, it’s different, but I have to also confess to having been a loyal Sensodyne user - used to have sensitive teeth, but not anymore. When I say loyal, I’ve probably been using it for the last 6 or 7 years - that I can remember. It may be longer than that, who knows. But the point is that some things in your life, you just don’t like to change. You’re happy using the same thing, or doing the same thing day after day.

Then comes that time when you question whether you should change. You break into a cold sweat… Something you know so well. Something that you’re so comfortable with. Can you change? Should you change.

Well, I thought what the hell. A new toothpaste had just come out that had a foaming action and promised to make your teeth feel even cleaner than normal. So what the hell, I thought I’d give it a try. Lets see if those promotional guys were telling the truth.

And you know what? It was worth the change. I’m not going to name the product, but you should be able to work it out from my description and the ads. My teeth do actually feel cleaner. As does the rest of my mouth. I’ve always had this thing about my front teeth never quite feeling spotless except for that day after the dentist has polished them. Now they feel almost that clean. In case you can’t tell, I’m genuinely impressed by this change.

It’s actually to the point where I’m now looking at the other things I’ve repeatedly used. Even the daily routine that could possibly use a refresh. A change is good. I’ll keep you posted on any others.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

It went almost flawlessly… Got it wrong first time as I ticked a wrong box. Mine’s an American iPhone in Australia. 2nd time, it worked perfectly! Well done guys! Seriously, they’ve been working so hard to do these for free - I hope that UK company has been shut down now - and have done such an amazing job!

So, now I have it, I dived into the iTunes Apps Store. Bad idea… I now have the following installed on my phone:

• Facebook - Great little app, which gives you all the main features of Facebook, and works almost flawlessly.
• Last.fm - I’m a big fan of Last.FM and used the original App a fairbit (for reference it plays really well on an iPod Hifi).
• Phonesaber - Pointless but great fun.
• Remote - Apple’s free application for controlling your iTunes is a work of art really. Pair it with your iTunes, and it’s like browsing your iPod but it’s the collection on your computer.
• Shazam - I used this service in the UK regularly, and now it’s out on the iPhone. Hold it up to a speaker and it will tell you what the song is playing (most of the time).
• Crash Bandicoot 3D - The Bandicoot crashes onto the iPhone in an addictive little game where you control the character using the phones accelerometer to steer, and a
• iPint - this takes the biscuit for a waste of time, but somehow it’s amusing. Slide a beer down the bar, then your iPhone fills with beer which you then drink by tilting your phone.
• Sudoku Unlimited - I had a version of this on Nano and got quite quickly hooked. Reading the reviews this a down to earth version that lets you simply play Sodoku. What more could you want?
• TwitterMe - Yep, it lets you post tweets on Twitter
• Super Monkey Ball - Everyone saw this in the keynote speech, and it is as good as it looks - although it does take a little getting used to.
• Texas Hold ‘em - Apple’s take on the most popular card game is worth the price. It does exactly what you’d expect from a game of Hole ‘Em
• myLite - erm, it’s a torch that does torch type things. Yep, it turns your phone’s screen into a bright light.
• AIM - allows you to use American Online Messenger and .Mac/mobileMe messaging on your iPhone.
• Pinball RC - I love pinball. This is fun, but it’s a little chuggy at times. Good fun though.
• BrainChai - Brain Training similar to that on the Gameboy DS. Good fun!

In conclusion, the upgrade was a great thing! If you’re not afraid it might fail, then Pwn your iPhone now!

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

So, booting it into DFU mode, and downgrading my iTunes to 7.5, I just couldn’t restore it running in OS X. It was giving me permission errors on the phone. I followed every guide, and still nothing. So, I booted into Windows XP, thinking that Microsoft’s approach to security might work in my favour. It did!

With a flashed phone, I set about jailbreaking and activating it. No problems there - although I did find that sometime Pwnage failed a couple of time due to permissions and required another restore (I think I restored the phone something like 30 times over the weekend).

Next up came installing my freshly created install. No problem. Then loaded it up and watched bootneuter (error 5) appear repeatedly… Nooooo….

So, I tried Liberty+ and Ziphone (I since found out that the latter may have been a bad idea… Search for “Ziphoned”) Nothing would unlock it. Further searching, and I found that you need to delete the bootloaded on some iPhones. Did that, went through the steps (again, and again), always hit the same problem.

Further searching, and I found that potentially ziphone had done something to my phone - I actually don’t think it was this, and was the iPhone 2.0 firmware. But, that did lead me down the final path to success. There are modified version of that program that will remove the bootloader and downgrade it.

Tried that. Nooooo…. turns out my phone has a version that nothing removed. Version 04.04.05_G. Nothing removes it, till I found a link on a YouTube video to Kiphone. My heart raced as I watched it purge that evil bootloader and install a downgraded one.

After that, everything worked flawlessly and I now have a fully working 2G iPhone again. And, this worries me a little, but after 3 days of not having it, I realised even more how much I like it, and had missed it!

Anyway, for those in the same position, 2 links for you:

Modified Ziphone to remove older bootloader:
Modified Ziphone for bootloader removal

iclarified’s tutorial on using kiphone to remove firmware version 04.04.05_G:
Remove and downgrade iPhone 04.04.05_G with kiphone

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

There’s more to driving your site to succeed online than just adding a blog and content syndication to your site. You need to market it, and in turn your brand (often yourself). With the birth of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, it has become common practice to think that a site will succeed purely by bolting on a blog, and sticking up some photos and regularly updating the content.

At to that the social phenomenon, people started adding send to a friend links and social network tags, such as Digg and Facebook. Those are great tools, as long as your users click on them and share your message. You could do it yourself, or ask your friends to do it, but it starts to look a little bit obvious and also reduces your rating on those sites if you continually push your own content in. You need to come up with ways to connect with them and make them want to do it. If you’re really good, and connect well, you don’t even need these tools - look at how well Apple does if you need proof.

This is where the advertising industry has one up on web development companies, and where they should learn from each other. Part of their mission is to connect with the customer - in this case, your site’s user - and make them feel you know them and that they’re special. Rather than relying on you to try and work out what to do and write, they aim to deliver elements that appeal to a broad audience, and bring them in by going a few steps further.

1. Know the brand’s customers. OK, for a new brand, this is where the brand and marketing guys come in, and it’s a little more tricky to get right first time, but what I’m going to say in this blog covers that (think competitors). But what does knowing the customer mean? It means start by looking at who your loyal customers are. The ones that have been with you a while, and will stay with you. I’ll say for example to be generic, that might be the 30-50 age group who grew up with your brand and stayed with it. Then look at the ones around that. How can you market to them without alienating the ones you already do so well with? Read what they read. Watch what they watch. It’s tricky, and something that takes a lot to get just right - I’m about to start doing this for one of my clients and I’m can’t wait to start!

2. Get to know the brand’s rivals. This is a bit of a no-brainer if you think about it. We all know it makes perfect sense, but we also know it’s an easy thing to forget or skim over. What are they doing? When are they doing? And most importantly, what do we do better than them that could boost our market share? Then ask if there’s anything they do better that we need to steer clear of - that’s not to that if they really do do it better, you can’t use it, but make sure it won’t come back to have a detrimental effect on what you’re trying to achieve.

3. Know the brand’s products. Does this sound like an extension of the last points in a way? It shouldn’t! If you don’t know everything about the products you’re trying to sell, how can you do a better job of selling them to people who know nothing about it? Know the strengths. Know the weaknesses (but don’t tell the client). Live and breath their products if you can - or find someone that does.

4. Stay in touch with your users. In the day and age of database this, and database that, it’s easy to slap a ‘Stay in touch’ box on a website. But ask yourself what that actually means? Does it mean a monthly, or bi-annual newsletter perhaps? Perhaps it never gets used. I don’t know. All I know is that when I see that box, and I see it not used to it’s best effect, I get upset. That box means that someone has looked at your site, and thinks that you have something that others don’t, and they want to make sure you tell them what you’re doing. If you don’t talk to them, you’re missing a real opportunity and at the same time letting them down! But then, why not go one step further if the product permits. Why not encourage your users to turn that email address into a user account on your site? One that lets them enter competitions periodically? One that actively encourages them to come back, and also gives you the chance to make their experience that little bit more personal? Make them realise that you really connect with them, and want to ensure they get even more from you than they already have.

5. Get to know them better. When users register for a site, you general collect the basic information. Collecting more than that is difficult, but why not ask them anyway? If you can find out that a large chunk of your sites users actually fall into a category that you want to target in point 1, then you know you’re on the right track or have succeeded. Why not ask them how old they are, what they do, how they found you, would they recommend you, and what they think of you. That’s all information you can potentially use later on to do an email or other promotion to them to help make them feel special and that the brand connects with them. OK, so some of those questions are a little sensitive, and they don’t need to be mandatory, but you could give them an incentive to tell you - and that might encourage them to tell their friends too… Suddenly for that one person, you might have 10-20 more customers just for asking more questions to sell to them.

6. Now work out how to deliver. This is a huge topic, and something that I couldn’t possibly cover here. What sites to advertise on. What sites to contribute to. What will appeal to the online community? Should you be thinking about a viral campaign or a competition? Would a Facebook application or Facebook group work well for you? Perhaps a blog would be enough… Ultimately, it boils down to your client’s budget, but you also need to make them aware of what can be done to give them the best return on their investment.

So that’s 6 points. There’s a lot more than that I could write, but that’s a brief take on what I see as a basic strategy to beginning to succeed online. There’s more to come that feeds off that, like viral marketing, banners, offline to online. The list goes on, but you can see where my head is. I’m in the position of moving from being the Technical Director in charge of delivering sites, to being someone more strategic who comes up with the ideas.

I see the web as a world of opportunity. And damn I’m excited by the direction I’m moving in! Please let me know if I’ve said anything you disagree or perhaps really like. And if you want to give me some words of encouragement that I’m going in exactly the right direction, I always welcome and encourage any feedback.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

If you’re not aware of what I mean, then let me briefly explain. Think of a scenario where someone has done something which has resulted in a bad outcome, or perhaps they’ve asked a silly question. The response these days is ‘FAIL’. It’s somehow incredibly satisfying! Try it… You’ll like it, and people will laugh once they get it, and start using it too.

For added effect, go onto Google images and search for ‘FAIL‘ and ‘EPIC FAIL‘. You getting the drift? In our office it’s spread like wildfire. Everybody’s saying it! And it’s nearly always funny!

If you haven’t tried using it yet, do yourself a favour and give it a go! You’ll never look back!

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

The meme is basically defined with the following rules:

• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Let me begin…

8 Little things about Gregory Brine

1. I’ll get this out in the open for those that haven’t yet read all of my site… I’m an Essex Boy. For those that know, please don’t navigate away. For those that don’t, I’ll leave you to search Google for Essex Boy. Actually, I’m quite proud of where I’m from. So it has some quite entertaining stereotypes, but it’s a beautiful, diverse place - it’s not many places where there’s a car at every set of lights with a deafening sound system and a desire to race down the street whilst earings and fake Ralph Lauren tops dazzle you in your mirror (a lot of them drive slow cars).

2. I’m a Mac Addict too - this isn’t off to a good start is it? 2 confessions in such a short period of time. This is a good one though. I have my dad to thank for this addiction. At the age of 11 he bought me my first Apple Mac LC and I’ve never looked back - thanks dad! From that age, I was working in his advertising agency, getting full marks for presentation at school (content very slightly less). I now own a mac laptop and am the proud owner of an iPhone (and a few other Apple gadgets). And I watch all the mac rumour sites.

3. Golf comes into that love it and hate it part of my life. Some days, it’s the best thing - like this weekend when I beat Chris. Other weekends, the game drags on and on… But it’s like life. It’s a challenge to overcome and when you do, man it feels good! Moment of reflection…. that was deep! But it is a great way to spend an afternoon. Good company, outdoors, you get a tan in summer, and for some people in Australia, it’s yet another excuse to spend a few hours drinking (incidentally, being a golfer from the age of 7, and a club member, that breaks just about every tradition of the game!).

4. Walking… Walking… Walking… I walk everywhere! Really. Some of my friends find it a little annoying at times, but thank me after. I just won’t get cabs unless I’m feeling really lazy! Walking’s great! I’m sorry, but it is. I even walk to and from work some days (that takes about an hour each way!). And when you’re somewhere new, the best way to see it is often on foot. Next time you’re away, try it. You might like, and I know you’ll be surprised how much more of a place you’ll suddenly see!

5. You can nearly always find a camera on me. I love taking pictures (slipped a bit lately, I’ll admit, but that’s more due to time than anything). On my travels I will often come back with so many photos it takes me weeks to sort them all out - and a little longer to re-touch my favourites (when I get time). I’m hoping to do a photography course at the Australian Centre for Photography soon, just need to decide which course now - any suggestions, please let me know.

6. OK… Another confession for those that don’t know me… I’m a geek! Those that do, already know that and are now wondering why I’ve said that. For those that don’t most people don’t guess straight away. But, alas, I do play games, I do like gadgets, certain jokes do amuse me, and I do own some stupid t-shirts (never understand why that’s such a geek thing, but it is). Part of that is that I do love technology, and in particular the web (and Apple stuff). I read about what’s new on the web everyday. I’m always looking for new ideas and approaches. Working out new ways to market and sell sites. I do love the web, and I’m lucky enough to work in that space too.

7. Entertaining my friends and family and how important they are to me. For those that know me, they know how much my friends mean to me and what I will do for them! Among my circle of friends, I’m know as one of the most loyal people, and often become that big brother person that everyone comes to as I usually have a very level head, and will always listen and help if I can. But… I love having friends round for drinks or dinner so I can show off my culinary skills in the kitchen.

8. I love cats! I really love cats! I know some people think they’re evil - I’ll admit they can sometimes be a little self centred - but they’re the best companions! They always make you feel good, want to play and love your attention. We have 3 at my parent’s house and I miss them dearly. I occasionally look after a friend’s over here (landlady won’t let me have one sadly), and it’s so good having her around. A sign that will always stay in my mind and I think is so true is “A house without a cat is not a home”. Never a truer word said.

And there you have it. A little incite into me. There’s a lot more to say, but the challenge was 8. I’ll do another one in a while.

Next, I need to tag aome of my friends to take up the challenge:

• Nomad Pete
• Jatin Valabjee
• Thomas Ritter
• Sushiv Mathur
• Benjamin Christie
• Laura Tjitrafjaja
• James Cox
• Robert Beerworth

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Lets start with coding itself. A lot of back end (ASP.NET for example) developers don’t care about front-end (presentation layer) code because they believe it is below them for some reason. Unfortunately, what they fail to understand is that knowing the basic principals of how to code the presentation layer can actually be influenced how you do certain things on the back end. It’s OK to rely on the built in controls, they work, that’s why Microsoft put them in, but they also put a lot in to give you that choice and flexibility!

Think about that for a second. Is there a chance that they are too generic and slightly bulky? Is there a chance that one may be quicker to implement, but another will actually give you far more control over the aesthetics of the site (the presentation layer). If you can control that, it will allow the designer to express themselves better, and the client to be more impressed.

The same goes for front-end code. Would making an element a user control or list speed things up, or frustrate the developer that’s got to plug-in the code that will integrate the presentation code with the CMS back end?

But, why stop there? Why not think about how those objects will then affect the performance of the site in terms of speed, longevity and marketing (SEO, SEM, analytics, campaigns, viral, RSS, etc.). If you construct a page in a certain way, you can maximise how Bots for example, index the site. If you build forms and databases in a certain way, you can collect data in a way that makes utilising it for profiling and targeting emails.

OK, so the data collection bit comes under a different area of the process, but it’s a very useful skill to know! If you look at a site, and see a missed opportunity, how good will that make you look? That idea to collect an additional piece of data, or make the user profiling module that bit more flexible suddenly opens the site up to a whole new world of selling back into the client, and in turn, maximising their return, and future spend! You’ve made you company money with an idea, that will hopefully ultimately see you rewarded!

Then there’s SEO and analytics. 2 very broad topics that I will only touch on, but 2 very important ones! If you have some down time, go and have a look at the stats, and see if you can spot anything unusual or useful. Perhaps a page isn’t appearing that you’re sure should be there. Has something happened that could be making that page less favourable to the search engines? Is there a page or particular area of a page that’s performing better than expected? Is there an opportunity to leverage that to drive more people to key information?

And one that amazes me, is how many people in the web industry still don’t know what a blog is, and how an RSS feed should actually work including ‘pinging’. For anyone that wants to work for me, there’s a very good hint as to one of my favourite interview questions!

You can see that there’s more to just coding a website for it to work. It is an area the web is still learning, and it’s only those web site developers that go to the effort of learning above and beyond one area of code, that will ever be a true legend on the web and let them make a name for themselves.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

These people know .NET, which is obviously a good thing, but they don’t seem to have any awareness of the other elements of the website. If it’s not in .NET code, and if it’s not a built in .NET control, then why should they need to know it? That’s the way it comes across to me.

When I started learning web development, I tool the approach of learning HTML mark-up first, then moving to server-side code in the form of Coldfusion. It seemed logical to do it that way, as ultimately what the end user sees is HTML. When CSS came along, I jumped on that bandwagon, and loved it. It helped me breath new life into my code. Then I changed from Coldfusion to Classic ASP and Microsoft SQL. All this enabled me to take a Photoshop file and deliver a complete website with a database driven back-end - incidentally built using the CMS systems I have developed over the years.

Recently, I started learning .NET and I’ve realised what a lazy language it is. Everything about it is geared to not really needing to think about anything! Everything is done for you, to the extent where you just need to start typing and Intellisense kicks in and tells you what you probably meant - and most of the time it’s right. I think that should be a good thing as it gives you more time to focus on the HTML, CSS and JavaScript side of things, delivering a great looking, functional website which validates if possible.

This also gives you more time to ensure the other elements of the site are more polished and included, perhaps affording you time to improve your RSS feed to include the most up to date information. Looking at a new technique such as integrating the Open Search for people’s toolbar or including microformats. Carrying out those last checks such as ensuring the Google Analytics and sitemap code is included and working.

However, that’s not how it works now. Apparently, people that know .NET are exempt from knowing anything outside of .NET when it comes to building a website, which to my mind makes them an Application Developer, not a web developer. Recently, we had an intern in who said he was good at html and CSS, but when you say that’s good and can he turn this PSD into a site, he says know, that’s someone else’s job as if he’s more important than that because he knows .NET.

Why has this happened? It’s a single language, so why do these people place so much value on this one skill over the other, in my opinion more important, elements of the site? I think it’s the banks. Think about it. Banks have recently built massive systems and brought everything online over a period, paying people lots of money for that period and then letting them all go once that task was completed, flooding the market with people who thought they understood the web. It’s a shame, but it affects smaller companies the most ultimately.

Add to that that they don’t seem to understand the idea of a good user experience, and are happy if what they build works. They don’t care if it works well, and don’t even seem to notice if something doesn’t work as well as it could. If a page is slow, doesn’t matter, it loads. If a page is hard to use, doesn’t matter as it works doesn’t it? I find that a strange attitude.

We’ve been talking internally, and are hopeful that a change is afoot and that the days of the true web developer will return again. The developers I place highest value on can be given a PSD and produce an entire website, optimised and including all the elements that make a website great! And I really hope that hope comes true.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

But what is it about these games that keeps me coming back? I’ll be honest with you here. GTA 3, in my opinion, was the best of the GTA 3 series. There was something about it that was so good, and something that Vice City and San Andreas never managed to capture. There was something about this living, breathing city that is Liberty City. You could drive any car, do pretty much anything and the city was laid out in a fun way. The ones since have been bigger, with more to do, but somehow, they never captured that magazine.

And with GTA IV, I think Rockstar Games may have re-captured that original magic! Why? Liberty City is once again resurrected, but this time it’s got a lot more depth, a life of it own and feels like it might actually be based on something real! Cruising the streets, there’s people wandering the streets, and cars driving by, But now the people mingle and react to one another and you. Car drivers go about their business and crash into each other occasionally and apologise. There’s a real feeling of purpose and history to this place!

Liberty City feels like it’s been around for a long time and grown to what it is now. Some neighbourhoods are run down with graffiti and burnt out cars, with only a few cops to guard the streets. Other areas are very affluent, with nice modern cars, cobbled streets and lots of protection. There’s industry that might actually support the residents of the city. And the story covers a range of topics, letting you into bits of the city, and give you a hint at what’s happened to them over the years.

Weather is prominent too. On a sunny day, the streets are dry and cars handle well. Then the heavens open and cars start slipping and sliding, and - this is a simple but impressive touch - the people get their umbrellas out and put raincoats on. It’s such a little touch, but it really makes a difference. And one thing that impressed me no more was a thunderstorm! A thunderstorm that feels real! A crack of lighting illuminates the screen casting some amazing shadows, then the thunder comes making the controller rattle as if you were in the game with the character. I’m struggling to do how impressive this looks and feels but trust me, you’ll know it when you see it!

Then you move onto the vehicles. Lots of vehicles! And every one of them feels unique! That’s no mean feat. Jump in an American Hot Rod and your good for high speed in a straight line, but try to corner and you’ll struggle as the suspension wallows. Drive a big 4 x 4 and nothing gets in your way, but it’s a little slow but you can real feel the power. Jump in a sports car and it’ll weave through traffic. Fancy driving a lorry? Their slow, but somehow so much fun! And bikes… Well, they’re a struggle I find, but I’m sure some people love them.

Performing on foot has been improved immensely! I used to struggle with the old controls, but now it feels almost as good as Halo (nothing’s beaten that yet though). And the targeting system is improved through the simple act of letting you lock on fully (trigger depressed fully) or part-depress it, and you get free aim. It’s a simple thing but works so well! And combine that with the new duck and cover button, and you can’t go wrong.

What else can they do to improve the experience? Well… There’s the new physics engine that brings everything to life - knock the garbage bins over and they roll along and down hills. The graphics are a lot more comic book like - gone are the old simple textures of the old one. And the character animation is amazing! Some of the details you almost don’t notice, but crash your car and anyone in the car lurches. Corner too fast and their head rolls to the side. Jump out of a moving vehicle and your character - Nico - rolls along the street just like the movies.

Any faults? Well, sadly yes. Cover gets a little confused at times, but that I think is something very hard to get right. Even Gears of War got it wrong occasionally, and that’s an amazing game for the duck and cover idea! And being in Australia - and this is really upsetting - the game is censored. Come on Australia, WAKE UP!!! There’s no rating above 15 here, so the language has to be toned down. One example being how Nico thinks that Michelle is a “really good listener”, after he’s “Talk to me! Talk to me” in a rather enthusiastic way. It’s a little sad really.

But, that’s it. That game is simply amazing and damn near perfect in my eyes! The one thing that I’m concerned about is what happens when I’ve completed it… Just have to try and complete the myriad of micro-tasks within the game.

If you don’t have it, get it now!!! Why are you still reading… Get down the shops and buy it now!

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

One of the games that was invented by them was 2-up and the only day you can legally play it in Australia is on Anzac day. The principal behind it is to flip 3 coins off a wooden paddle, and whichever 2 sides match is the winner, hence “two-up“. There are some rules though: You have to get a good flip on the coins - if they don’t spin enough when you through them up, it’s a no-throw. Likewise, they have to get a good height - but not too high or hit the ceiling. And on hitting the ground, they have to all stay with the defined boundaries.

Now that sounds pretty dull in essence, but it’s a actually a blast! The reason being that you bet other people in the audience, and everyone - I mean everyone - gets involved. You can shout out a bet of say $10 on heads, and someone will say I’ll call you tails. The person who calls heads looks after the bet until the result is known. Then if they win, they keep it, and if they lose - tails - they give the money to the other person. You’d think people would try to cheat the system, but they don’t. The spirit is absolutely amazing! Everybody has great fun and chats and laughs and you just can’t imagine how much fun it is. It’s just a shame that it only happens once a year.

We spent an impressive 5 hours in the Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel that afternoon, but not playing that all day. All in all it was a great day, and next year I’ll make sure I’m up for the dawn service.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

But, “Up North” - you have to say that with your best Geordie accent - it’s a different story. My friend is from Newcastle and we have the running joke’s about the differences between the North and South of England. And today, as the temperature drops to the point where I’m considering wearing a jumper - yes, it does get cold in Sydney despite the myths - I was reminded of a classic joke… The Geordie Thermometer.

It’s so true. I’ve never been up there, but I have friends from there, and they just don’t seem to feel the chill. It’s a strange thing. And that joke cracks me up every time!

One thing it has made me realise is that I really want to go there! I can’t believe I’ve never been. I went to Uni in the Midlands, and Newcastle’s not that far from it.

And yes, I just mentioned it. I actually have a selection of Winter clothes here in preparation for the Sydney Winter. It last for around 2 months, but thankfully doesn’t get as cold as home - gloves are not needed. But one thing I do wish is that they didn’t make manhole covers out of the slipperiest material known to man! I’m serious. The other day, it rained, and you can see all of Sydney’s working population carefully avoiding them like some kind of hop-scotch game. Those fool hardy enough to venture onto them, usually ended up doing some kind of impromptu dance routine with all the coordination of burning confetti in a tornado!

But, I do kind of like the rain. Reminds me a little of home. It’s rarely the same kind of drizzle you get in London - which is a good thing - but it is kind of comforting to know there are similarities with Sydney. Roll on deepest Winter… I’ve got my jacket ready.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

But, I have far too many. I’ve recently swapped over to NewsGator’s tools for both mac and PC, and one of them has a curious feature, and one I’ve found myself using far too much. A “Panic Button“. What does it do? Well, when you have too many unread articles, it offers to go through and mark anything that is more than 48hrs old, and unread as read.

It sounds like a trivial thing, but it made me realise that I’d accumulated so many feeds over the years that I rally needed to do some house cleaning. I think in doing that, I’ve probably removed about half the sites I was subscribed to.

Am I sad about doing that? Not really. I think in the long run, the feeds I have left are much more focused, and given time, I’ll probably thin them out a little more.

If, like me, you find you have too many to read, do this little exercise and I think you’ll feel much better about yourself - and be able to find much more time to read them.

In a future blog I’ll be outlining some of my 10 favourite RSS Feeds and why I think they are som

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Flexi Pages Widget
If like me you’re using Wordpress as a CMS (Content Management System) to manage other pages about you, then you’ll quickly come to realise the standard side menu doesn’t work so well because it shows everything all the time. The plug in gives you a large degree of customisation, allowing you to make your menu behave like the one on my site, with everything collapsed until you go into that section.

NextGEN Gallery
I love taking photos, and have explored a few options in this area. There’s several that integrate with services such as flickr, and one that works off you Facebook account. But none of them were quite what I was after. The NextGEN gallery allows you to manage galleries within your site’s folders rather than using a 3rd party. I find this approach more appealing as it means my site is almost completely self contained.

Redirection
The site you’re looking at used to be www.gregorybrine.com. That had a lot of links, and folders within it, each with a pagerank and some valuable traffic. You can do a simple URL re-pointing, but you risk loosing this traffic. Instead, you should do a 301 redirect for all key URLs on your site. This plugin has allowed me to control all traffic to the new www.gregory-brine.com URL, as well as some some of my original URLs that were valuable but of no use in the current site such as my old Personal Blog and Travel Around the World URL - thanks to Cheb for pointing me to this one.

WordPress.com Stats
It’s always good to know how much traffic your blog is getting, and this tool allows you to get some basic information back about who’s reading what on your site, and where they are coming from.

Google XML Sitemaps
You’ve gone to all the effort of writing fresh content for your site, and the pinging service within Wordpress goes a long way to spreading the word, but a Google sitemap takes it one step further, which is especially useful for those using the CMS features of Wordpress.

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

It turns out a great deal! Now I know the iPhone can do a lot already thanks to Apple’s work and 3rd party developers, but what they showed off in that presentation makes you realise how much it’s capable of!

First off, the new business features are kick-ass and will really make it a phone for business users. The new Cisco VPN is something I’m very keen on as most of our clients use Cisco equipement. But the Exchange server stuff was really something else, especially given as it’s new software from Microsoft. It looks like Apple’s gone and integrated the Exchange software better than anyone else has been able to.

But then when Scott Forstall came on and started talking about the APIs built into the iPhone, you suddenly realise that Apple’s been holding back! It’s got full 3D technology built in yet nothing uses it yet. The accelerometer is 3 dimensional - and incredibly sensitive, install Labyrinth and you’ll see how sensitive!

Demonstrations by EA Games and Sega showed game controlled by tilting the iPhone, and the control and graphics were so clear and so precise. And with major game developers like these developing for the phone, things can only get better.

The business applications will also turn the iPhone into more than just a toy. It will become a tool for businesses. The CRM software shown by salesforce.com opens up a host of opportunities. Imagine the possibilities… That piece of software worked so seamlessly, and was so easy to make, how long will it be until we see other main stream tools coming to the platform?

I think it’s an exciting time to own an iPhone, and it’s only going to get better!

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

It started flying over Epping - yes, there’s a suburb of Sydney called Epping, but it’s not quite the same as Epping in Essex, although that is the origin of the name - past St Leonards, and North Sydney. Then you see the bridge and the harbour open up, before seeing the towers of the city, all lit brightly against the dark night. The Sky Tower a pin-prick of building surround by these great monoliths of steel, concrete and light. The only thing I couldn’t see was the Opera House - although that may have been caused by the distraction of everything else.

The only thing I can compare it to was flying down the River Thames late at night passing over the whole of London. Going to have to book more late flights - but perhaps not on a Friday night as it wreaks havoc on your social life!

Bookmark and Share

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™

But anyway, the iPhone. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? Nothing really. Everyone’s talked about how easy to use they are. How intuitive the interface is. What a joy it is to use, and it’s problems. Well, I hate to sound boring, but I’ve come to the same conclusion.

It does have some problems. Like I can no longer type a text message while I walk - nothing major, just takes me 30 seconds of standing still. There’s the fact