new earth online

Modernizr is a new JavaScript snippet which can be used with CSS to switch styles on and off depending on what the browser supports. Visiting their site in Firefox 3.5, their own use of the widget shows me that the browser supports:

• Canvas
• rgba()
• hsla()
• border-image
• box-shadow
• opacity
• CSS Columns
• CSS Transforms

But does not yet support:

• border-radius
• Multiple backgrounds
• CSS animations
• CSS gradients
• CSS reflections
• CSS transitions

It does look quite useful, but a lot of that I don't think you really need to detect whether it's supported or not - if it's not supported the line of CSS will just be ignored. The only way I see it being useful is if you want to have entirely different styles in another browser which does not support a feature you want to use.

I first heard about Scriptaculous during a Carson Workshop held by Thomas Fuchs, the creator of the framework. Since then I've used it pretty extensively up until a few months ago when I converted all my code to use jQuery. The latest version of the framework, currently in Alpha, isn't called Scriptaculous though. The framework is now called Scripty2... which makes it sound like it's trying to be "hip" to win over more users.

scripty2 is a complete rewrite and reimplementation of script.aculo.us, with are modular structure intended to ease the development of highly customized user interface effects and behaviours.

Anyway, the name aside, what is more important is it's feature set, it's ease of use, and it's footprint. The downloadable file contains both a distributable version and the source code should you wish to make any changes. The filesize of the libraries now compare as follows:

JavaScript Framework filesize comparison

Framework	Downloaded Filesize
Scripty2	127 kb
Script.aculo.us	141 kb
mooTools	65 kb
jQuery	244 kb

In the above table Script.aculo.us  is the only one which is not minified as the filesizes are for the full available packages in whatever form they are available. If you don't need the full jQuery UI package (which you're likely to not need in full) then you can customise it before downloading the minified file. For example to give it more or less the same feature set as scriptaculous it would be 163kb. So looking at Scripty2's footprint it actually isn't all that bad with only mooTools being smaller.

Moving on, the framework is now divided into 3 sections: core, FX, and UI. For this first alpha there is nothing in the UI section, and so to start with is a little drab, but I'm sure the usual drag/drop, etc. functions will be available in no time. The core section includes many DOM helper functions, such as the particularly useful viewPortOverlay which can be used when creating lightboxes. The new effects engine is packed full of goodies such as morphing (CSS changes) and translations (movement). There is the usual ability to chain effects in a effects queue, but what I like about the rewrite of the effects engine is that it is now scalable, or rather, it degrades nicely for machines with performance issues as it will drop animation frames where necessary.

In terms of usability it's as easy as any other framework, but I don't think we can give a definitive answer of where this new framework fits in the grand scheme of the web until the final version is released. 

The first of Studio Ghibli's films, Castle in the Sky follows the journey of two children as they search for the legendary floating city of Laputa. It is arguable that Nausicaa came first, however that one was not produced under the name of Studio Ghibli.

At the very start we are introduced to Sheeta (voiced by Anna Paquin), a young girl who is being transported by the military until their airship is attacked by a gang of air pirates. Taking this opportunity to escape, Sheeta knocks out Muska (voiced by Mark Hamill), her captor, and climbs out of the window. It's probably not the brightest move when you're onboard an airship, and sure enough she loses her grip and plummets through the sky until a strange stone around her neck lights up and slows her descent.

This is where Pazu (voiced by James Van Der Beek), a boy from a mining town catches her before she floats down the mining shaft. All this time she is unconcious though when she awakes the following morning she doesn't seem to be that startled to be in strange surroundings. We learn Pazu's father was an adventurer who discovered the long lost floating city Laputa - the only surviving floating city from long ago; however what we don't learn is how his father died after he'd been ridiculed for believing the city still existed. It also seems strange that Pazu despite his relatively young age seemingly lives alone with no relatives around. When they are forced to escape Dola's gang we see the towns people band together to protect Pazu and Sheeta as they make their escape onto the rail road. 

What follows is an adventure where the two of them are being chased by both the military and Dola's gang of air pirates. At one point they are eventually captured by the military and taken to a large fortress where we learn that Muska is also trying to find his way to Laputa as he see's a city with such power as a threat to the safety of the people living on the land.

This program was recommended to me after my Macbook at work started to struggle with the memory hogging VMware Fusion. Don't get me wrong - I like VMware fusion, and it has a nice interface; but it was so slow. I don't think my Macbook Pro has ever had an VMware Fusion related slowdowns, so it could just be processing power that was the cause of the problem.

Anyway, I decided to give VirtualBox a try; the installation was the usual simple method of dragging and dropping an icon from a DMG into your Applications folder which these days is pretty much what you expect. Once done it does ask you to register your name and email address but you do get the choice to not provide these details.

What I find amazing about the program is it's simplistic design is instantly recognisable as being by Sun Microsystems and that put me off to start with. I don't know what it is about their UI's but I find them horrible, I wish I knew why. The program itself is straight forwards and speedy, and installing a new virtual OS is as simple as clicking new, going through a wizard to decide exactly what you want, and then to boot with either an installation ISO image mounted as a drive, or the installation CD in a mounted drive.

Unlike VMware Fusion it does not automatically do all the installation work for you, it's not that sophisticated. Instead you have to follow the normal installation instructions as though you were installing it on a real machine. For my virtual PC I decided to install Windows XP as I needed access to Internet Explorer 6 for testing purposes. The installation process was exactly the same as if I was installing it on a PC and was really easy.

Another similarity VirtualBox has with VMware Fusion is that you can save snapshots of your machine states so that you can revert to older versions of your machine should any changes cause the OS to go wrong, etc. There are many other common configuration settings such as 3D acceleration, specifying base memory and video memory sizes, clipboard sharing configuration, and remote displays.

For the past few days now I've been running Windows XP from this virtual machine with no serious slow down to my machine, and inside the VM itself it's still pretty responsive despite only allocating 192Mb RAM to it. One thing I've also noted as a useful feature is it's ability to have variable sized HDDs.

For those of you who have used VMware and need to convert your existing images there is documentation on the Ubuntu site on how to do this. 

If you're in the market for some new virtual machine software to be run locally then this is a good alternative to try.

Following the amazingly low pricing for Snow Leopard, Microsoft have also followed suit with a price cut of their own. Of course though it's not as big a drop as Apple's was.

The first thing mentioned on the Windows Team blog post that is of any real interest is that people who buy PC's with Vista pre-installed as of June 26th will be able to upgrade to Windows 7 for free. For the rest of us we have to pay a little more than that (well of course, paying does suggest more than free). The estimated retail prices for upgrade packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade): $119.99
• Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade): $199.99
• Windows 7 Ultimate (Upgrade): $219.99

And the estimated retail prices for full packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (Full): $199.99
• Windows 7 Professional (Full): $299.99
• Windows 7 Ultimate (Full): $319.99

They do comment on how 7 Home Premium is $40 less than Vista Home Premium's current price, but it's still quite a bit for an operating system when you compare it to the price of Snow Leopard. I do find it interesting that the "bigger" two versions are $100 more for the full version, yet the Home Premium SKU is only $80 more for full. In various parts of the world they're also offering a 50% discount for those who pre-order within a specific time frame. For those in the UK it's between July 15th and August 14th - they've also added a rather optimistic "or whilst stocks last" tag to that... I think stocks will last quite well thank you. In the US they don't have long to pre-order though, for them the offer starts tomorrow and ends July 15th. Their offer is only available from Amazon, Best Buy, and the online Microsoft Store so I'm guessing they're trying to limit how many people buy it at 50% off as they can.

I think I might pre-order the upgrade version of home premium... under the assumption we won't get charged more than the US does (which is usually the case due to various taxes, etc.). Doesn't seem long since I last bought a copy of Windows... damn you Microsoft! *shakes fist of fury at them*

WWDC 2009 announced the release of the new iPhone 3GS which was a faster, more powerful iPhone with video capabilities. After having used my iPhone for a week it's now time to take a look at it to see whether it was a good investment, or a waste of money. 

What I find different about buying an iPhone as opposed to any other phone is that it's a unique experience. I queued outside the Apple store in Leicester's Highcross shopping centre eagerly awaiting the store to be opened. There were only 5 or 6 people in front of me, and about as many behind me as well by the time they opened the doors. Instead of letting everyone through the doors in one go they actually let 3 people in at a time so that they could be given their full attention - everyone outside who hadn't made it through in the first batch was served tea and coffee whilst we waited.

After 15 minutes of waiting I was finally in, sitting down, and giving them my details in order to start a new contract with O2. The whole order process took about 30 minutes and after that rather than being shuffled out the door they lead you over to the Genius bar to get your phone activated. The initial stage of the activation didn't take too long, probably because I'd gotten in early enough to beat the rush but the second part of the activation seemed to take ages... that is until a friend told me I needed to press and hold the power button to turn it off and on again for it to finish registering.

The first thing that struck me about the iPhone's interface was how much fun it actually is. Being able to swipe your finger across the screen to change what you're seeing and being able to let your fingers dance across it's surface to type on it's virtual keyboard is a thing of science-fiction dreams. I'd have to say it's cooler than the LCARs interface from Star Trek: The Next Generation (as it happens someone has made this GUI for jailbroken phones).

In case you're wondering what happened to day 5 in this series of news items, it was actually the article titled "Location Sensitive Programming" which dealt with the use of navigator.geolocation in JavaScript.

Today let's look at the newly released iPhone OS 3.0 and what new features this will add for you. As usual the release of an update has been marred with problems such as activation problems and and iTunes error (-4). As a friend said on Twitter, it's usually best to wait until such failures are not trending topics.

Anyway, once you've got your iPhone OS 3.0 update you'll have a few new features to try out - the first and foremost of these being the addition of the long awaited "Cut, copy and paste" capability. It's amazing how long it's taken for such a basic feature to be added, but they have had UI issues trying to figure out the best way of representing the feature across all applications in a consistent way. I think it still has a few problems - there have been numerous times when I've tried to move the cursor back through the text but have instead activated this feature. Landscape mode is now available for more applications as well, so if you're writing an email you can get a landscape keyboard to type with.

Spotlight search is now available to the left of the home screen meaning you can easily search your iPhone for whatever it is you're after. The results include little icons to represent the type of result it's found as well. Suprisingly I've barely needed this feature yet as most programs now have search built in as well.

iTunes is now built in to the iPhone's interface meaning you can purchase music, audiobooks, tv series, etc. online without having to synchronise with your desktop... that is assuming what you buy is less than 10mb as anything larger will notify you that it won't download and will instead need downloading from your desktop and will need to be synched.

I'm not sure why this wasn't a feature already as it's a nice easy feature for a phone to have - a way of recording voice memos. In this latest revision of the OS they've added the ability to record voice memo's and to be able to share them with other people. It's kind of like using AudioBoo, but without the social networking aspect it gives.

For most people this has also included the addition of MMS, though for iPhone 3G users this is for images and audio only - the ability to send video MMS is restricted to the iPhone 3GS. I found it took about 48 hours for MMS to be enabled after I bought my iPhone and I've not actually used it yet - I've been using email instead. It's certainly useful though if you've got a picture or some audio to send to someone who doesn't use email often, or if you have their phone number but not their email (but how often would that be the case).

Mobile me has added a simple yet brilliant feature - the ability to track and remote wipe your iPhone should it be stolen. I have had some reservations about this, mostly based around what complications this would give if someone gained access to your Mobile Me account. With access to this your movements could be tracked without you knowing about it, but realistically I'm guessing there won't be many cases where people's accounts are hacked. In fact, in the first few days of this feature being available someone successfully used it to track down someone who had stolen their phone. Whether this was a publicity stunt or not I don't know, but it certainly sounded real.

Since the advent of Twitter's 140 character goodness, another tool often used with Twitter is becoming a new craze. That is the AudioBoo. Here we look at how you can use an AudioBoo Atom feed to display a feed of your own AudioBoos to your site.

If you've ever parsed XML before then you're going to find this very easy to implement; otherwise I hope my description of how to do this will help you. To start with, I assume you know what an AudioBoo is - it's an audio blogging application which is available for the iPhone.

Once you've found the list of AudioBoos you want to use you'll notice an ATOM feed is available for them. For example, whilst logged into my AudioBoo account I clicked on "My Boos" and then clicked on the orange RSS icon which took me to http://audioboo.fm/users/2417/boos.atom

I'm going to assume you're using PHP, but if you're not then it shouldn't be too hard to adapt for your language of choice. To start with we need to make a call to this URL so that we can store the contents in a string ready for parsing. The function I use to process this is:

/**
 * Send a request to the AudioBoo ATOM feed of choice and parse the result
 * @param integer $userid The id of the user to get AudioBoos for
 * @return array The array of retrieved AudioBoos
 */
function _getBoos ($userid)
{
   $xml = file_get_contents(AUDIOBOO_URL . $userid . '/boos.atom');
   $xml = simplexml_load_string($xml);
   $this->title = (string) $xml->title;
   $this->subtitle = (string) $xml->subtitle;
   $boos = array();
   if (!empty($xml->entry)) {
      foreach ($xml->entry as $entry) {
         $boo = new AudioBoo();
         $boo->id = (string) $entry->id;
         $boo->title = (string) $entry->title;
         $boo->summary = (string) $entry->summary;
         $boo->link = (string) $entry->link[1]->attributes()->href;
         $boo->length = (string) $entry->link[1]->attributes()->length;
         $boo->published = (string) $entry->published;
         $boo->updated = (string) $entry->updated;
         $boo->author_user = (string) $entry->author->name;
         $boo->author_url = (string) $entry->author->uri;
         $boo->content = (string) $entry->content;
         $boo->url = (string) $entry->link[0]->attributes()->href;
         $boos[] = $boo;
      }
   }
   $this->boos = $boos;
}

I've been so busy lately it's taken me a while to get round to posting about this one. Now that the web development news is quietening down a little I thought I'd take a look at this new Google product. I have heard people refer to it as being pipped to the post by Opera Unite, except I see Google Wave as a very different product. Where Opera Unite is about social browsing, Google Wave is more about collaboration on work.

How Google Wave is similar to Opera Unite is that they both exist as extensions to their browsers and provide a new way to interact with other people. Google Wave brings chat, email, web feeds, and document sharing into the Chrome interface to make it easier for people to collaborate. Okay, they do sound incredibly similar, and Google Wave may have come first, but what features they bother cover I think Opera Unite does better. For the time being the only advantage that Google Wave holds over Opera Unite is when it comes to multiple people needing to work on the same document - however this can already be achieved using Google Docs.

Digital Britain is a new initiative from the UK Government which covers their plans to modernise TV, radio, and to maximise the economic and social benefits from digital technology.

Digital Britain measures include:

• A three-year National Plan to improve Digital Participation
• Universal Access to today's broadband services by 2012
• Next Generation fund for investment in tomorrow's broadband services
• Digital radio upgrade by the end of 2015
• mobile spectrum liberalisation, enhancing 3G coverage and accelerating Next Generation mobile services
• robust legal and regulatory framework to combat Digital Piracy
• support for public service content partnerships
• a revised digital remit for Channel 4
• consultation on funding options for national, regional and local news

The above list is cited from the Ministry of Culture's website. The second of these targets, to ensure everyone in the United Kingdom has access to broadband internet is being funded by the £200 million which is left over from the digital switch over for television. On top of this though they needed to find a way of securing funding for continued maintenance, etc. and have done so by levying a £0.50 tax on telephone landlines. I've commented before that most people who don't have broadband access don't actually want or need it, yet as the majority of funding is coming from what has already been taken in tax there's been no public uproar about it. I also doubt that a 50 pence increase in telephone bills will bother anyone either - so it will happen.

Originally I did think a better plan would have been to provide free Wi-Fi access in all city centres, or to even subsidise the cost of broadband so that those who do want it, get it cheaper. It does seem however that the Government are planning to make sure we get speeds of up to 40Mbps which isn't too bad.

Another step forward (or backwards) that they want to take is against digital piracy by putting pressure on all ISPs to crack down on people who are illegally file sharing. This is something I don't think they can possibly hope to clamp down. According to the consultation which closes in September, it will be mandatory for ISPs to reduce the illegal file sharing by 70%.

ISPs will be required to send notifications to subscribers who have been identified in relation to alleged infringements of copyright. The second obligation is for ISPs to maintain (anonymised) records of the number of times an individual subscriber has been so identified and to maintain lists of those most frequently identified. Both obligations would be underpinned by a code drawn up by industry and approved (or imposed in the absence of agreement) by Ofcom.

So just what does this mean? Firstly it is not clear how they will identify illegal file sharing. It isn't as simple as detecting the sort of traffic that they get as whilst it is true that the majority of illegal file sharing these days is by Bittorrent it is also true that not everything on Bittorrent is illegal. It is becoming common practice for Open Source and large ISOs such as Linux distributions to be made available by Bittorrent to ease the demand for larger infrastructures. We can also see similar traffic from the BBC's own iPlayer desktop application with the methods it uses for transferring TV programs between people in the UK. What it does say further down the consultation however is that this is something to be defined in terms of "standards of evidence". This is a good sign as it means there will be less chance of wrongful accusations of people file sharing such as what we've seen in the news from the RIAA.

Despite how high the claims of loss often are I'm not convinced they are that accurate. I believe the majority of people who do download illegally will not have actually bought the product(s) had they not downloaded them anyway. This is something the consultation is also hoping to clarify and to provide more actual puntative damages based on extensive history which the ISPs will log (but will be unavailable without a court order). Further into the consultation it discusses what actions other Governments have taken such as France and New Zealand take the "3 strikes" option, we then get a list of what actions may be taken by ISPs against repeat offenders:

• Blocking (Site, IP, URL),
• Protocol blocking,
• Port blocking,
• Bandwidth capping (capping the speed of a subscriber’s internet connection and/or capping the volume of data traffic which a subscriber can access),
• Bandwidth shaping (limiting the speed of a subscriber’s access to selected protocols/services and/or capping the volume of data to selected protocols/services),
• Content identification and filtering.

I found it interesting to see the UK Government mention bandwidth shaping as a "punishment" - some ISPs already do this for ALL regular customers anyway to deter them from downloading.

On top of all this they (the Government) are also trying to move forwards with a new rating system for digital games. This new system is being developed with the EU and is being called PEGI. It's already been in use for a while on the continent, but it looks like it will be the legal ratings system here by the end of the year. What is important about the new PEGI rating system is not just that it provides parents with an appropriate age rating for the game, but it also warns them of what the game content is like. The age rating labels are broken down as:

PEGI 3

The content of games given this rating is considered suitable for all age groups. Some violence in a comical context (typically Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry cartoon-like forms of violence) is acceptable. The child should not be able to associate the character on the screen with real life characters, they should be totally fantasy. The game should not contain any sounds or pictures that are likely to scare or frighten young children. No bad language should be heard and there should be no scenes containing nudity nor any referring to sexual activity.

PEGI 7

Any game that would normally be rated at 3+ but contains some possibly frightening scenes or sounds may be considered suitable in this category. Some scenes of partial nudity may be permitted but never in a sexual context.

PEGI 12

Videogames that show violence of a slightly more graphic nature towards fantasy character and/or non graphic violence towards human-looking characters or recognisable animals, as well as videogames that show nudity of a slightly more graphic nature would fall in this age category. Any bad language in this category must be mild and fall short of sexual expletives.

PEGI 16

This rating is applied once the depiction of violence (or sexual activity) reaches a stage that looks the same as would be expected in real life. More extreme bad language, the concept of the use of tobacco and drugs and the depiction of criminal activities can be content of games that are rated 16+.

PEGI 18

The adult classification is applied when the level of violence reaches a stage where it becomes depictions of gross violence and/or includes elements of specific types of violence. Gross violence is the most difficult to define since in a lot of cases it can be very subjective, but in general terms it can be classed as the depictions of violence that would make the viewer feel a sense of revulsion. Descriptors shown on the back of packaging indicate the main reasons why a game has received a particular age rating. There are eight such descriptors: violence, bad language, fear, drugs, sexual, discrimination, gambling and online gameplay with other people.

It may then include one or more of the following descriptors: Bad language, discrimination, drugs, fear, gambling, sex, violence, and online gameplay. I think if the PEGI system had been around when GTA4 was released it would have been PEGI 18 with every one of those descriptors.

You may have noticed that there is a new section underneath each of my reviews on this site - a blog widget provided by RateItAll to allow users to write their own reviews and to view other peoples reviews of the same product. For the time being I've disabled the viewing of other peoples reviews via the widget using CSS which just goes to show the flexibility of their widget.

They've only just launched this nice new blog widget to make it easier for people to write reviews for products from other sites without the need to use their Reviews API. It's very easy to get you own ones as well - if you search for the item you want to display reviews for you will find there is an icon to click which will then take you to a page where you can configure how it will display. When you're done you just copy and paste the code onto your own site.

I first heard about RateItAll earlier this year, and as I'm writing an increasing number of reviews I thought it was quite a useful platform for storing reviews and now it's just been made even easier for me to get user interaction.

So when reading any of my reviews from now on, please feel free to write your own review!

As we move into a world where social media is king we are inching closer to a change in paradigm where no longer will we need to say where we are, but our browsers will be able to tell a web application where we are (if we let it) and we can then be served content based upon this. With the iPhone OS 3.0 update it will be possible for the Safari browser to access the longitude and latitude information provided by the phone's built in GPS, in a web browser using JavaScript.

Fortunately this new feature is based on the W3C Geolocation API specification as is the Geode extension for Firefox meaning compatibility with other devices. The syntax for getting the location can be seen in the following example.

if (navigator.geolocation) {
   navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(successCallback,
          errorCallback,
          { maximumAge:600000, timeout:0 });
}

This means you will need to create two functions - one to get the latitude and longitude, and another to perform error handling if they're not available. What we are doing here is we are testing to see if the the browser supports the geolocation namespace, if it does then we're asking the browser to give us the current position and to pass it into one function, to handle an error using a different function. Finally, the optional parameters specify we will allow a position which is cached and is as old as 10 minutes but with a timeout of 0 if there is no cached version it will fail.

Inside the successCallback function we can then do something such as:

var latitude, longitude;

function successCallback (position)
{
   latitude = position.coords.latitude;
   longitude = position.coords.longitude;
}

Opera Unite is coined as being a web server in a web browser, but it's a actually a lot more than that - it brings a community to your browser. To start with you need to download a Beta of Opera 10 which includes this new feature and then when you're installed and ready you'll get a new icon in the status bar and in the side panel (if you use it). If you click this icon you can then add your current computer to Opera Unite by simply registering a new Opera account or logging in with an existing one, followed by specifying a name for what computer you're using.

Once you've done this you will get a new panel appear with the following sections:

• File Sharing
• Fridge
• Media Player
• Photo Sharing
• The Lounge
• Web Server

The file sharing section sounds straight forward enough - you specify a folder and you immediately begin sharing files in  that folder. It's not open to the whole world either, the security settings default to being "limited" - a password must be entered when accessing the files via a specific URL. It does sound like it might be fairly secure, but I'm yet to hear about any weaknesses in it. It's also possible to make all files in the folder public, or private depending on what you prefer. If it's private then only you can access them; unlike the limited option there is no way for other people to be allowed access.

The fridge is an interesting concept, and could probably be considered a more localised and personal form of Twitter. It allows you and others to leave small Post-It notes (limited to 40 characters) on a fridge. When I tried it from my Mac it worked great and I was able to post on colleagues fridges as well. However when I got home and installed it on a Windows machine I found it wouldn't work for me. Every time I click "Add note" and then start to type it would just scroll down the page and nothing would appear in the new Post-It note.

The Media Player works similar to the file sharing option - you specify a folder to share and then you get the same privacy options as before. In this mode you also get useful filters and sort options to easily navigate through your shared music. You can also play your music straight from the browser using this page as well. It's also clever enough to know if you add files which aren't music to the folder as well and will ignore them. Photo sharing is a similar sort of thing except it shows thumbnails of the images and when clicking on them you can view a larger version and also email them to a friend.

The Lounge is basically a chat room where you are the host, and you can invite people to chat with you. If you're discussing anything which is private, or you just don't want anyone else to join then you can also enable a password for it.

The final option, the webserver, isn't really any different to the Media Player, the Photo sharing, and the file sharing in terms of how you use it. The difference however is that once you've added an index.html it will then start serving the webpage from a different URL.

Personally I think there are a few things I'd change with it given the option - photos, media and file sharing I think would have been better off all in a single interface where what interactions are available differ depending on the media type. In terms of collaboration I think it will be an amazing tool for companies to use, however I don't think an average user will reap the same benefits.

I think the file sharing part of it I could occasionally find useful if I need to share files between home and work but don't have a USB memory drive on me at the time (though normally in that circumstance I'd just email it) or if I want to transfer larger files to friends. The fridge I don't currently have a user for - I use Twitter instead (@jedi58). Media Player I doubt I will use at all, nearly all my music files cannot legally be shared over the internet as they are ones purchased over iTunes or have been ripped from a CD I own. For photosharing I use Flickr and Facebook, so again no personal need for that. I'd be interested to hear what uses for Opera Unite people have found so far, so please feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.

This is a topic I've covered before in an article, and it's something which is necessary to revisit frequently due to shifts in methodology and standards. So far we've seen how to add "Touch icons" for when your site is added to the menu screen, and specific development techniques such as specifying telephone numbers which can be dialled straight from the site, what gestures are available, and how to use a specific stylesheet for the iPhone.

There are quick and easy ways to get your site ready for the iPhone however, with sites that provide automatic conversions such as Mobify. I think this particular example is quite clever actually as you can specify which elements from your site you want to keep on a mobile version and can change quite a few properties of the page in their designer view. They will also host the mobile version for you, and this is how they make their money by providing services such as analytics and custom branding. I've found you don't need to use this service though unless you need to - the interface includes source code for your design which you can easily copy and paste to use on your own server if you have one.

Whilst it is useful to see what people have done when creating mobile sites I don't plan on using the software myself as if you're used to programming and know how to code for the CMS you use then it's just as easy to code it yourself. Popular Open Source CMS's like Wordpress do include iPhone applications for adding content to your site, but there are also themes available which make your site look suitable for the iPhone.

There's been a number of attempts at changing the current standards for metadata, the most recent being Common Tag.What I find different about this one is that Yahoo are already supporting it, so with support from one of the big league search engines (relatively speaking) it is quite possible that this standard could become mainstream in the next couple of years. What this project draws upon is that there are many tags you could use for your content to identify it.

in the absence of a common tagging format, the benefits of tagging have been limited

Individual things like New York City are often represented by multiple tags (like “nyc”, “new_york_city”, and “newyork”), making it difficult to organize related content; and it isn’t always clear what a particular tag represents—does the tag “jaguar” represent the animal, the car company, or the operating system? 

To get around this problem their idea is to have a library of "common" tags which have stored with them a series of alternative tags for that common tag (as described in the quote), and then when searching for any of those tags on Yahoo it will understand what related tags there are and use those also.

Actually using this needs the addition of an XML namespace to elements on your page so that you can tag pages at element level.

<div xmlns:ctag="http://commontag.org/ns#"
     about="#second" rel="ctag:tagged">  
  <span typeof="ctag:Tag" 
          rel="ctag:means" resource="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Luke_Skywalker"/>
</div>

So as you can see they don't actually utilise the meta tag at all - it is added to the actual content. This same method can also be applied to objects (for Flash objects for example) and to images meaning this could also be used in specific image or multimedia searches.

I've not started using this myself yet, I think it's something to keep an eye on as in some cases it almost feels like it's encroaching on microformats territory - I think it would work out better if the two somehow merged however this would require the current system for Common Tag to be changed which is unlikely to happen (at least for any serious change).