James Oppenheim’s blog

I am going to participate in the 2007 CSS naked day on April 5. The creator of CSS naked day, Dustin Diaz believes it is the ideal event to promote web standards. While everyone will be able to see my XHTML for its semantic and structural integrity, it may provide some usability problems. I think promoting web standards is a great idea, however, should we do it at the cost of usability? So I will run a small, very small, focus group. If you find it hard, confusing or just plain annoying to navigate my site on April 5, please let me know and I can try and make the necessary adjustments.

I will be away camping at Mungo National Park over Easter - more importantly CSS naked day - so I will 700 KM away from my computer. Consequently, I will not be able to show off my by disabling my stylesheets for the day personally. Hopefully, however, Guff’s Word Press: Naked Day plugin will handle the job for me, so everyone will be able to see me in my birthday suit, if only for one day.

Hopefully this will provide some useful comments on the structural usability of my site as well.

Technorati Tags: CSS, web standards, web, accessibility, usability, Mungo National Park

Daylight savings is changing tonight in Melbourne Australia at 2 AM. Our clocks are going forward this Saturday/Sunday at at the specified time of 2 AM, this mean I can sleep in. Wow, I love sleeping in. Yes I am very productive during daylight savings, but hell, I still do love sleeping in! How sweet it is. Suddenly 9:00 AM becomes 8:00 AM. Could daylight savings get any better? Suddenly I don’t feel so guilty about daylight savings.

Web applications? Are they international, definitely yes! What about Flickr, when is my picture publishes? Daylight savings or not? What about my shopping cart purchase at Amazon. Daylight savings or not? What about a simple comment on a post. Daylight savings or not? How do you handle different time zones. Do you count on the server? Well the short answer it seems is yes. But the long answer is - does it realy matter?

Well do I like this? The answer is yes. I can sleep in and be an hour late, wow daylight savings helps me me be a better person. More sleep = good. More comments on a post per day = good. More importantly it is impossible to be late!

Daylight saving for Melbourne Australia, you are great. Thank you and it can help slightly late web application developers.

Technorati Tags: daylight savings, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, time zones, happiness, Flickr, Amazon, web application

Where can I get the cheapest royalty free stock photos on the internet I here you say.

Fotolia.com provide royalty free stock photos at extremely reduced prices - $1 for medium, $2 for large and $3 for extra large. After you come too from the shock of those crazy low prices, you will ask, well why are they so cheap? Well according to Fotolia it “is the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and illustrations”.

With the medium images being about 2MB in size they are easily big enough for use on the web.

That being said some of the images can be quite cheesy, but if you do some intense searching I am sure you will be able to find something useful and all for a measly $1, a US dollar that is.

So go forth and prosper, tell your friends and family the more the merrier.

Technorati Tags: stock photos, photography, cheap photos, free photos, web

With the advent of Web 2.0 and the evolution of the web as a whole I started to wonder: How far has the web come from its humble inception? Luckily Archive.org can provide a portal into our past, looks like we don’t need Doc from Back to the Future after all. Below are some interesting comparisons, I hope you enjoy.

1. Google
   1998 - Take me back
   2007 - http://www.google.com/
2. Yahoo!
   1996 - Take me back
   2007 - http://www.yahoo.com/
3. eBay
   1997 - Take me back
   2007 - http://www.ebay.com/
4. Microsoft
   1996 - Take me back
   2007 - http://www.microsoft.com/
5. Sony
   1996 - Take me back
   2007 - http://www.sony.com/
6. BBC
   1998 - Take me back
   2007 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/
7. Adobe
   1996 - Take me back
   2007 - http://www.adobe.com/
8. Apple
   1996 - Take me back
   2007 - http://www.apple.com/
9. GeoCities
   1996 - Take me back
   2007 - http://www.geocities.com/
10. AOL
    1997 - Take me back
    2007 - http://www.aol.com/

This begs the question: What will websites look like in 2020? Will we be up to web 5.0? Will Google control the internet?

Technorati Tags: websites, archives, web, web 2.0, Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Microsoft, BBC, Sony, BBC, Adobe, Apple, GeoCities, AOL

Australia Day. Wow, what more do you want in a day. No work, beer and a BBQ. Plus Australia thumped England in the Cricket. Is there anything more fitting? I should use the day to be constructive, but I don’t know, maybe I should just be patriotic and put another snag on the barbie?

Technorati Tags: Australia day, Melbourne, Cricket, BBQ, patriotism

So after a few months of doing this blogging thing I thought to myself, is this really the best / most efficient way for me to participate in the blogosphere. I am using WordPress to publish this blog and it is great, easy to style, effective and user friendly. Well this is good yeah?

But what about the new Bubbletwo (this site no longer exists) by Ben Nolan. I have setup another blog and it took 5 seconds. Now that is great. It takes me about the same time to write a post. So is this better than WordPress? Well it depends on what you want. I think Ben’s web application is a fantastic idea, but it lacks a few key features.

1. Lack of customisation. - You should be able name your blog and give it a strap line
2. Strange URL’s - You should get a more memorable URL you can give your friends rather than http://www.bubbletwo.com/gaaye (this site no longer exists)
3. Edit - You should be able to have the ability to edit your other posts, not just delete them

Once these features have been integrated I think Bubbletwo has the ability to be the next MySpace, Flickr, YouTube or Twitter.

While Bubbletwo is in a different market than WordPress, I still think it could have a major impact on the internet or at the very least change the way I blog.

Technorati Tags: WordPress, bubbletwo, blog, blogging, web, personal, Ben Nolan, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter

I like this idea of Jeremy Keith’s elsewhere. Grabbing all the pieces of information on the web about you and then placing it all in one spot. I had a go and look at what I came up with.

Nice idea, I suppose I could redo my whole blog to just be a collection of other information about me around the internet all complied in one spot.

Go Jeremy!

Technorati Tags: Elsewhere, Jeremy Keith, web, personal, interesting sites

Well we are into another season of Futsal, weary and with a dickie knee I solder on.

Have I been swept up in the overpowering soccer world cup wave? Yes, yes I have and the winner is… Futsal. I am into my second season with all conquering Albion FC and we are playing at the hallowed Puckhandlers Indoor sports stadium, Melbourne Australia.
So what is futsal. Webster’s dictionary describes it as… No not really, just check out futsal on Wikipedia.

I will keep you updated with the highs and lows of the futsal season. Hopefully we can bring home the bacon. Futsal and bacon… Together at last.

Go Albion FC!

Technorati Tags: Futsal, Melbourne, Australia, Albion FC, Puckhandlers

http://www.spamhelp.org/harvesterkiller/

Not a very nice looking site, but wow what a great idea. Do your bit to hit back at the spam bots, but clogging up there database with invalid email addresses. Ever been caught in an endless loop while programming one of your applications. I know I have. Hopefully this can annoy the spam bots as much as they annoy me.

Well done http://www.spamhelp.org/

Technorati Tags: spam, spam help, spam bot, interesting sites, web, personal

Spam should be canned or is it spam in a can!

I can’t stand spam, from junk emails to spam comments on this blog. Does anyone remember the days before spam. Wow, I could hear the calm sound of the ocean as I soak up the sun on the beach with my free time. But not now. Spam. Spam. Spam is all I hear as I attempt to find the relevant information between all the spam.

Why do we receive spam emails. Because they must work! Why people click on them is beyond me, but they must work or there would be no reason for them at all.

I can understand why there is blog comments spam. At least akismet and the web community is trying to collectively do something about this.

From work to personal email all I see is spam. So if anyone has created an effective way of managing their spam emails please let me know.
I hope it invloves frying up what comes out of the can.

Technorati Tags: spam, email, blog, wordpress, akismet