Feb 12
MoggyGoogle, Internet, Random, Search Engine
Google has recently rolled out their new beta website, and in with it a more slick version of their search suggestion tool (where you start typing what you want to search for, and a list of the ‘most popular’ suggestions come up). The feature is pretty good, but also makes me laugh rather a lot as a result of some the funny results that come up! Check out these screenshots from my experiences!
More
Nov 16
MoggyFamous People, Internet, Media, Website
Take a look at the screen shots below of headers of the most popular newspaper websites here in the UK. 4 broadsheets, and 4 tabloids. See if you notice any difference between the two… and i’ve added some arrows and circles to help you on the tabloid screen shots.
The Quality Broadsheets…
More
Oct 26
MoggyFacebook, Internet, Media, Update, Website
Dear Facebook,
While I like, and I am very supportive of the new features and design changes you bring to the community, the latest bunch of changes have had me very puzzled, and consequently annoyed.
I have never really liked the “Live Feed” idea, and in my mind it is just messy. Therefore I was happy to have it hidden away in the previous design. Now, however, I get awfully confused when sometimes I click on the “Home” button whilst logged in and it takes to one or the other (and not the last page I had previously been on) of either the much nicer, clearer and customisable News Feed, or the slow, irritating and cluttered Live Feed.
To be honest, and I will admit, this is not massively annoying, one click and it will take me back to my preferred News Feed. But WHY, have you – intentionally or not – COMPLETELY messed up my News Feed!?!? WHY!? Items that should be in the live feed are apparent… Items or types of updates I had previously hidden, are now appearing… and most of all – everything is out of order.
More
Sep 05
MoggyInternet, Media, TV, Website
A few posts ago, I wrote about how I favoured the Guardian news website against rivals, but today I stumbled across something that really rather annoyed me (for you folks outside the UK, you probably won’t understand this post, sorry.).
On the front page of all the major news websites, right now at about 9.30pm, there’s some story about the war, politics or something like that… but not The Guardian. The lead story here is about how, according to a survey, the Great British public support the BBC as a public corporation. Great news none the less, and this post is not a contest of that – but there findings are a bit interesting.
First, this all kicked off when James Murdoch, the CEO of News Corporation in Europe attacked the BBC, and this was at a keynote speech at the Edinburgh TV festival last weekend – an event sponsored and broadcasted by the Guardian Media Group. The next few days saw the reaction to this, and the poll, published by the company ICM, that the article refers to was introduced… great, but hang about… is this not a company heavily influenced by the Guardian Media Group as well? Oh yeah, I didn’t mention, the poll was also hosted on, and only on, the Guardian website. Great.
Some of you may be thinking what’s the problem with this. Well, the average reader for the Guardian newspaper is slightly left-wing… meaning they support public companies and object to privatisation. See where I’m going? Oh yeah, the BBC is one of those companies.
That’s right. By that line of thinking, everyone who actually visited the website and voted was heavily influenced already! Independent survey!? Bollocks to that! I would imagine had the survery been hosted on the Times Online website… or the Telegraph website, the results would be much different.
Aug 27
MoggyBBC, Internet, Media, Web Design, Website
On a day-to-day basis, I, and I’m sure many others of you do too, read the news. I commonly read mine online, brought forward to me either by RSS feeds or Twitter feeds – or by looking at my Safari homepage, currently set to Guardian.co.uk.
If you know me personally, you will know how much of a picky person I am, and here I will tell you why I picked the Guardian for my homepage out of all the other news sites to compare. I hve compared the layout of The Guardian to two other media sources; the BBC and The Times.
BBC News Online
I have always been a supporter of the BBC, and I shall say that for specific news stories, I read the BBC News online articles by choice. However, I dislike the BBC Homepage. Firstly, the whole thing just looks crammed in my opinion. I dislike the way that those eight ‘other top stories’ on the right don’t even get a description… and compare this to the ‘also in the news’ section and the ‘video and audio news’ section which have far less important stories, but are granted a thumbnail. Don’t get me wrong, the content on the BBC is great – but the layout and the homepage… not so.
Times Online
I rarely use the Times Online website, which is strange for me considering the Times is my favourite newspaper. Strange right? Well, I don’t read the online articles out of choice, nor is it set to my homepage, nor do I have any Times-related RSS feeds or updates of any sort. However, I thought I’d bung it in for comparison. I do rather like the layout, though see that big white space above the logo… yeah, thats a big banner ad – thankfully it’s not showing as I have an ad-blocker plug-in installed. Also see that space in the bottom right, yeah, that’s an ad too. I know companies like Times Online have to make money somehow, but I honestly hate large obtrusive adverts. Then there’s just the general feel of Times Online, it just looks… bland, plain, boring. Compare it to the Guardian, below, which makes better use of colour. And then, the layout, it hosts the biggest crime of all. When I’m scrolled to the top, excluding the ‘most read’ box, I can only see a maximum of 4 news stories. Just 4.
The Guardian
And then we have the Guardian, my current favourite. The page is vibrant and attractive, unlike The Times it is colourful and mildly exciting – and I can see more than just 4 stories! There are no obtrusive ads, and the column on the right is small and out the way in my opinion.
And then, finally, as it’s worth a mention – the Media Guardian section is fantastic and hosts great content – one of the real great reasons why I use The Guardian for online news reading.
Jun 14
MoggyInternet, Technology, Web Design, Website
In this post I will list the sites that I use to get extra code for great features on mine and other websites. All are pretty easy to use (just read the instructions on their websites) and you should be fine. Enjoy.
DynamicDrive
Geeat site full of DHTML stuff, and a GREAT Ajax and Javascript section. You may notice some of the scripts I’ve used on my site.
DHTML Goodies
A site full of DHTML goodies (as the name suggests… well.. duh!). Similar set up to DynamicDrive.
Script Asylum
Another site full of great scripts worth checking out. Has a really good games section which is a bit of fun.
MiniAjax
A nice library of an expanding collection of really pretty looking DHTML and Ajaz scripts from around the net. Lots of misc. scripts. Worth checking out if your fetching ideas.
DHTMLsite
Another site of great scripts. Not quite as popular as some of the others, but still very good. 300+ tutorials.
Kazaap
I personally didn’t take a liking to this site, but you may enjoy it a little. It’s got some pretty cool animated header creators… and all the effects seem to be a little more basic than a few others I’ve seen.
Sohtanka (css/xhtml)
Awesome blogger for web design. Check out the css/xhtml section of the blog for some great tutorials and scripts. Some nice animation with jQuery here.
JavaScriptKit
Sister site to DynamicDrive, but has a lot of scripts not found there. Worth a look.
Flowplayer (jQuery Tools)
Not so much a script library – but has some really good tutorials into making some really nice web 2.0 tabs, tooltips and other designs. I learn’t a bit from here.
Enjoy!
Aug 15
MoggyGoogle, Internet, Search Engine, Technology, Website
Cuil, pronounced ‘cool’ (apparently..), is a new search engine, launched by ex-Google employees, in beta in late July this year.
You can try it out at: http://www.cuil.com/
Ok – you may think… “Oh dear, not another search engine… same on same on…”, but Cuil promises to be a little bit different from the standards of Google, Live Search and Yahoo!.
Firstly, Cuil owners claim that Cuil searches the web far more thoroughly than it’s competitors – 3 times more listings than Google and a whopping 10 times more than that of Microsoft and Live Search.
They also claim that internet searching should be more colorful, simple and easy to understand.
When you search for a term in Cuil you will be taken to a rather different results page. Instead of a standard webpage listing the results one by one, with the occasional duplicate result (which I find really annoying), you get a very pretty two column list of results with a (more or less) very relevant description of that page. If you like, you can even switch between looking at a 2-column or 3-column view.
What is really cool though is the “Explore by category” box which narrows your search relating to other sites. For example, if you search Cuil for “youtube”, On the right hand side you’ll see an interactive box that will link you to similar sites to Youtube, one example is Google Video. If you search Google, Cuil will even recognize common services to do with Google and tabs will appear at the top of the page to filter your search for that service. Google services include Google Search and Google Earth, for example.
Ok – my thoughts – I think Cuil is really great and looks great, but it isn’t popular or accessible as I would like a search engine to be – for example – I only ever really use Google or Yahoo because these are the two built into my Safari browser.
Twitter
Facebook
RSS
Recent Comments