Richard's Blog
Welcome to Richard Parfitt's Blog page, here you will find a wealth of tips, tricks and insight into web development, web marketing and general internet related issues. I blog once a week so be sure to check back on a regular basis, or sign up to our newsletter. You can also subscribe to our RSS Feed.
Have a comment to make? This blog has a comment form so that you can contribute. (Comments are moderated).
Latest Blogs:
- Google Calendars - a free and easy calendar solution for your website
- "Human-Computer Interaction"
- Dynamic drop shadows...
- TiVo in New Zealand?
- Online forms
- The end of the week, time to update the Blog.
- Keeping your website up to date...
- Merry Christmas and a happy new year...
- Google Maps New Zealand - Street View
- How to be punctual...
- Aliens freeloading off our wireless? Internet Now Avaliable in Space.
- ACDC - THE WORLD'S FIRST MUSIC VIDEO IN AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET!
- A little goes a long way...
- TED.com - Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers
- Converting websites - Dramatic unnoticeable differences
- Summer is around the corner... USB Gadgets to help!
- Blogs from space
- Richard Parfitt - I want to be number one on Google!
- Klixo's Online Knowledge Base - Support Articles for the masses
- Store your Telecom Mobile Photos online
- Handy tools for the Web Developer
- Google Maps Australia - Street View
- 2008 Bejing Olympics
- Using CSS to display menu images instead of Javascript
- Cool Viral Marketing Campaign - The Dark Knight
Kia Ora, developing a fully functioning calendar system has always been deemed as a lot of work, and in most cases this kind of development is out of the budget for the client. We have recently discovered Google Calendars and have been adding them to some of our clients websites as a cheap and easy method of doing this for them. All you need is a Gmail account for your website (if you do not already have one - and also you can forward the email address to your current email address) and from there you can easily set up a public calendar, which you can then embed anywhere on your website.
We have been playing around with Google Calendars and are currently implementing quite a complex version on a site we are developing. Some of the limitations we have found so far are minor but could (most likely will) be modified in future.
- Scaling the calendars down in size causes the calendar events to become unreadable
- Modifying the CSS (i.e. the colours) of the calendars is currently not possible - except the main background colour of the calendar
- Links to more information are not customizable
Overall the Google Calendars are a great solution for small clubs that hold events, or any company for that matter. Once your calendar is made public anyone can subscribe to your calendar which will add it to their personal Google Calendar - so they will also receive event reminders in their inbox. You can also add any other public calendar to your websites calendar - so for example you can add New Zealand public holidays. Another great feature is that you can set up re-occurring events, then go through the calendar and delete the instances of that event that wont happen - for example an event that occurs on a public holiday.
So if you're interested in adding a calendar to your website let us know and we can run you through it. Have you got any cool Google Calendar tricks and tips, or public calendars I can subscribe to? Let us know! This is a cool tool we will be using a bit in the future. Currently the only event on my calendar is "Eat a sandwich day" which occurred this week. Yum.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 11 Sep 2009 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, Blogging has taken a back seat over the last two weeks as our priorities have been elsewhere in terms of working. I haven't had a go at using transparent divs to generate a drop shadow effect as mentioned in my previous post (Dynamic drop shadows) but this is still in the back of my mind.
Catch phrase of the week "Human-Computer Interaction" this is something I have been thinking about for while in terms of how people use the internet and browse websites and now I have a phrase to explain it, or at least a good website to find out information to back up some of my thoughts. The website HCI Bibliography : Human-Computer Interaction Resources is full of interesting articles, guidelines and resources (as the title suggests) for designing and building websites to work better inline with human behavior in terms of use with the internet.
For an example the names of pages in a page menu, this is something I came across recently when one of our clients renamed their "About Us" page to "Who we are". I found it very difficult to adjust to the new name and also to find that page in the menu when I first went to the site looking for it. People are used to the basics or "Old words" like "About Us" and in most cases will find the information they want when the page is named as it always has been. This is explained better in the article "Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes" (Number 10) by Jakob Nielsen on his Alertbox. In saying this though I believe renaming pages something unconventional isn't such a big deal and over time there will be more and more of this, as web users are constantly getting smarter at seeking out the information they require. There are a lot of other good points made in the article written by apparently - "the king of usability" Jakob Nielsen.
What are some things in terms of usability that bug you on the internet?
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 15 May 2009 | read 3 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, I found a great article on how to do dynamic drop shadows recently over at A List Apart and I have used this on a website (that is not live just yet), I will add a link once it is. (Update: site is live - Images on the right have dynamic drop shadows - probably wont be that noticeable until they use a portrait image however). This is a great method however there is one down point - when using images that are fully transparent (Alpha Transparency) for the corner images they overlay the main background image causing the corners to appear darker - I haven't found a solution for this yet, and I resorted to non-transparent images for the corners. It is a great solution for images or divs on single color backgrounds.
Article link: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/onionskin/
I am going to have a play around with this and try some methods using transparent divs with background colors - in order to create a method without images. The corners probably wont look as good but it will be cooler.
Also check out Klixo on Twitter we are still coming up with ideas as to what to use this for but we have a few. Bye for now...
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 24 Apr 2009 | read 2 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, I was supposed to have written this blog entry last week as now this is slightly old news. But "FreeView On Steroids" aka TiVo is coming to New Zealand. TiVo in New Zealand will finally give Sky some competition, and since analogue TV broadcasts will be stitched off some time after 2011 now is the time to prepare for the all-digital TV age.
But what exactly is TiVo... Well apart from the basics (What I have Learnt from TV) I'm not entirely sure, so I have had a look around on the internet to see if I can answer some of my questions.
Apparently the TiVo device will technically work as a FreeView satellite receiver in New Zealand, so you will be able to receive all of the Free to air channels such as TV One, TV2, TV3, C4, Maori Television, TVNZ6, TVNZ7, TVNZ Sport Extra, Parliament TV, tvCentral, Chinese TV 8, Radio New Zealand National, Radio New Zealand Concert, BASE FM and all new Freeview HD channels. Except with TiVo you will be able to record and store your favourite TV shows, automatically by series, time and it even offers the option of automatically recording shows or movies with your favourite actor or director involved.
In other countries the option to skip advertisements on your recorded programs is available, however in New Zealand this feature will be removed and only an extremely fast "fast forward" will be available, which I believe they have done as they are expecting advertisers to foot a lot of the costs involved with getting started here in New Zealand.
Another function of TiVo is the ability to watch movies on demand via a broadband connection, which sounds awesome but broadband plans in New Zealand aren't that great. Can you imagine streaming a movie watching your 2gig limit disappear. I'm not entirely sure how the broadband side of TiVo works (Might look into this a bit more) but from what I have read so far they do not supply it.
Apparently they are going to be quite expensive to buy initially, but this was the same with FreeView and the cost should come down, personally I have FreeView and I think with TiVo coming this will push more channels onto FreeView so hopefully us FreeViewers will benefit from this! I will keep an eye on this and maybe update in the future...
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 03 Apr 2009 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, it is not uncommon these days for pretty much every website to have an online form. Online forms are great way for visitors of your website to get in touch with you easily and conveniently. Other benefits of online forms are:
- You can measure how effective the content of your website is,
- If people are sending you a form asking you questions about something that isn't already explained on your website you can update the content to cover it
- If people are making enquiries, you can tell that people are paying attention to your website and you have caught their attention
- You can use the form as a goal to see how people are using your website
- This is mainly for bookings or product enquiries, but by installing Google Analytics and creating a goal or two, you can easily analyze your visitors and use that data to better steer them in the direction of purchasing or enquiring, which they will do through your online form - then you can track how many people are getting to your goals.
- People who are using computers that don't have an email client (e.g. Outloook) don't get annoyed by clicking on old school "mailto" links which open these programs - they can quickly send an email to you without having to leave your website to login to their email account to send it.
Now everything I have said so far is pretty much common knowledge these days, and most people already have an online form, so here are some tips for people who already have online forms on their website:
- Don't have email addresses for you or anyone in your company in the content of your website, replace any email addresses with links to your contact form. If you have separate divisions of your company such as sales, general enquiries or locations - set up the links with parameters that can tell the form who/where to send it to, or just have the person who receives the emails forward them to the right person.
- Put the form in a prominent position on the "Contact Us" page so it is displayed as soon as the visitor gets to the page, try to avoid large amounts of content on these pages as if the visitor has come to the page they are already ready to contact you.
- If you do have a lot of content on a form page create an anchor link to the form in the top of the content, this way visitors can skip it if they wish. A good example of this is on the Extreme Boats website. Their boat information page also has a quote form at the bottom, there is a link at the top of the content to send them straight there.
- If you have a lot of staff changes within your company - or if you believe the person who receives the forms will change often set the email address that the form is sent to as an alias - for example enquiries@example.co.nz. This will mean that every time the receiver changes, the form doesn't have to be modified in any way - only the email alias will need to be moved to the new persons email account.
- Drive visitors to your form(s) - a nice looking "Contact us now" button can be a great way to do this, you can put these on every page or just in key areas, this will prompt people to enquire after reading the information you have given them. Analyzing your traffic with Google analytics is also a good way to measure this and perfect it.
So have a think about your website and how effective your online form is (or how effective one could be) for you. Also let me know your stories if you have any, about how small changes have made a huge difference to the amount of enquiries you receive.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 20 Mar 2009 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, thanks to my great Blog "Keeping your website up to date..." I now have to update this Blog in order to be consistent, which is fine but this week has been particularly busy. And it is now 5.10pm on Friday (Which if you haven't noticed I "always" update this Blog on the Friday). So unfortunately the content of this update is a bit last minute (hence the rambling). I will try and find something better to Blog about next week I promise... Perhaps I will write about the catch phrase of the week here "Call to action", thanks to Mick G (smart marketing and web strategy). Or perhaps Creating a new email account in Mozilla Thunderbird, which I spent a mourning the week figuring out/supporting a customer, the knowledge base article was deceivingly simple! We got there in the end. Or perhaps I will just ramble on about nothing once again... Perhaps.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 20 Feb 2009 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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As we all know keeping the content fresh and up to date on your website is important in order to keep visitors coming back and to continue adding valuable content to your site. As you probably also know this blog has unfortunately been a little neglected during this year. This was mainly due to how busy we have been (seemingly more so on Friday afternoons) and of course we have been on holiday. Any way the drought is over and the weekly blog updates will be beginning again!
Note however the klixo.co.nz website itself hasn't been neglected as we have been adding more Clients to our "Our Clients" Page and we have also set up a handy "Tools" page for you all to use due to the popular response to my previous blog post "Handy Tools for the web developer" (0 comments)!
For more information about keeping your website up to date see here: "Benefits of Content Management for your Website and your Business" and here: "A strategy for better search engine rankings for New Zealand small business websites".
See you next week!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 13 Feb 2009 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Merry Christmas every body. Time to pull out the ol' Christmas Tree again, thank you to all the blog readers and thank you for your comments - We will begin blogging again in the New Year so there's something for you to look forward to when your back from your holidays.
You can track Santa's movements here, or read about how Santa exploits the space-time continuum which of course makes it quite hard to track his movements! I was going to put up a link for you to send your wish list to Santa as well... but I will refrain from that as you would enter your email address and end up with Spam for Christmas - my advice is to do it using snail mail.
Wishing you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Be safe and have fun.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 19 Dec 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, if you didn't know already Google has released the Street View of New Zealand - Pick your sight you'd like to see in New Zealand and drag your little yellow man there... That is exactly how I started my blog post three months and twenty five days ago for the release of the Australia Google Maps Street View. I said then that I couldn't wait till they do New Zealand and now they have. Now this is still a fascinating time waster (can't think of any practical reasons for using this yet), but I have already seen most of New Zealand anyway so it really isn't that great after all of the anticipation. How ever there are some fun things to do:
- Look up all of the houses you have lived in in the past (this could take days for some.) See below for where Klixo Started.
- Find your Favourite view (Send me your favourite view of your town in the comments, I would like that). Like this view from the Ohope Lookout
- Try and find your self - I'm nowhere to be seen (they haven't done all the streets in Whakatane yet - next time!). A blogger on Stuff.co.nz has found himself
- Or Hunt for people doing funny things. See StreetViewFun.com for some examples
Let me know if you find anything else (or practical things) to do with this. Bye for now.
View Larger Map
Update: See Daniels blog for practical uses!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 05 Dec 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, to be perfectly honest this is not an area of my expertise (I'm working on it) - so I will refer you to a great article on WikiHow! The first step: "Acknowledge that you are a person who is having a hard time being punctual."
Link: How to Be Punctual
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 28 Nov 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, Google Inc and NASA have recently developed an internet connection that will make it possible deep space internet to be available millions of kilometers into space! The internet has always reached shuttles in orbit and has allowed Astronauts to update their MySpace profiles and buy items of trademe... Not really, but it has been used for sending data and communications within orbit of our planet. Now it is possible for internet connections to be used for satellites and rovers in the outer reaches of space. Using a new method to get around the implications and barriers such as solar flares, the harsh radiation in space, or the obstacle created when a spacecraft swings behind a planet the internet connection uses a "store-and-forward method" to store the data and send it when the signal is available. Having deep space internet available will allow several missions in space - orbiters and spacecraft on the Moon or Mars for example - to communicate with each other and work as a team, instead of NASA having to schedule contacts with their spacecraft and pass messages between the vehicles. This new method should also bring many new uses here on Earth as most new space technology does. I can imagine the Google Analytics report now - Visitor Location: North America 10%, New Zealand 40%, Mars 5%, Argentina 25%, Germany 5%, The Moon 25%!
References:
- 'Interplanetary Internet' possible, thanks to NASA, Google' - Canada.com
- Pushing the Internet Into Space - Wired.com
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 21 Nov 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, I am in no way an ACDC fan at all - in fact I'm quite the opposite, but... this is neat - they have converted one of their videos off their new album Black Ice (I had to look that up) into text character images for example ---%--<@ thats a rose. Any way you can download it from their website or watch it on YouTube. This is not really work related but it is titled "ACDC ROCK THE OFFICE" and it is kind of nerdy... And it is a brilliant form of Viral marketing that will appeal to a younger generation. See the original video and compare it (I haven't watched the original) That is all... Wait!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 31 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora. Do you have a website? Is there something you have been meaning to change or do to it that you just haven't got the time to do? Or do you have a great idea for the site but your not sure how to go about turning it into a reality? If you answered yes to those questions then I believe you need to do something about it! Its amazing what a little attention to your website can achieve! Simple things like changing the welcome message on the home page or the extreme full revamp of your website can do wonders for your traffic and your online presence.
Here are some suggestions of small changes you can make to your website that can generate more traffic:
- Update the content frequently - A good idea if you are a specialist in your field is to set up a "Blog" or "News" page that you can add articles to, this way people that are interested in your field will keep coming back to your website. This is also a good way to promote products or services your business offers and provide information about them. A good example of this is the Pascoe Barton Ltd. who update their articles section weekly with sound financial advice. Also review the content on your website monthly or weekly to make sure that is up to date and does a good job of promoting your business and your products.
- Email Newsletters - Setting up an email newsletter for your website can be used to promote any special offers you may have or to send out information to your clients, it will also let your users know that your website does contain valuable information and that it is updated frequently and worth checking out again.
- Competitions - Think of a good idea for a competition and promote it on your website and in any other advertising material. Make sure you collect relevant information off your entrants that you can use to further mould your website to meet their needs. You can also use an email newsletter to announce the winners, this will bring users back to your website everytime you draw the competition.
- Include your domain name in all of your promotional material - More and more people use the internet these days as a method for getting more information about a company and their products. If they like your advertisement or offer they can follow this up by going to your website and making an enquiry.
A little investment of time and in some cases money on your website in the right places will go a long way. If your interested in any of the suggestions above, or if you have some ideas of your own (Billboard on the moon perhaps?*) please do get in touch with us to discuss them further, we can let you know what is involved and the best way to go about getting it done.
*Klixo Limited do not offer billboards on the moon as a product at this stage.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 24 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, I discovered a website that I believe is worth sharing - TED: Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers. This website is a database of all of the talks from the annual TED conference, which basically brings together the worlds greatest thinkers and doers and encourages them to give the talk of their lives in around 18 minutes. As TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design your more than likely to find an eye opening or inspiring talk on any topic your interested in.
The sites navigation takes a little bit of getting used to but you will find it easier to find what you are looking for the more you use it. The talks can be viewed by watching the streaming video, or you can download them in a range of formats (mp3, mp4 for example), the videos are the best format to watch as with the audio you miss out on all of the diagrams and images referenced by the speaker. One feature of the sites navigation that I particularly like is the "Order Talks By" in the menu, you can order the talks by most discussed, most jaw-dropping, most persuasive, most courageous, most ingenious, most fascinating, most inspiring, most beautiful and most funniest depending on your mood.
This site is defiantly worth looking at (if you have broadband that is), find a theme your interested in and go from there. One of my favorites is Malcolm Gladwell's "What we can learn from spaghetti sauce" which looks at the nature of choice and happiness and marketing to meet these needs.
So now that you know, let me know your favorite videos from this site. Enjoy.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 17 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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I recently converted a website for a client from the all to common - "my friends aunties son built my website" over to a Klixo template based website. The overall goal was to keep the look of the site the same as it was already quite professional but not consistent and improve the loading times and the SEO for the site. After completing the project the client said to me "It looks exactly the same?..." Which on the surface and to the untrained eye it did, but in no way was the new version of the site anything like the old site. For example:
- The overall loading time (56k) had been brought down from 41.99 seconds to 8.51 seconds (according to WebsiteOptimisation.com)
- The menus had been converted from images with rollovers to text based CSS menus
- All of the images on the website had been optimized for the web
- The text had been formatted consistently - using heading tags in order e.g. Heading 1 > Paragraph > Heading 2 > Paragraph
- Alt tags had been added to all of the images on the website, logos header images and all of the images in the content
- The design features were made consistent throughout the website e.g. background images on all pages instead of some.
- Title tags had been added to all of the menu links - describing the page the link is going to.
- Keyword and Description META tags had been added to the Head and filled with content
- All of the HTML markup is now compliant with W3C standards - tested using http://validator.w3.org/
- All of the tables used for formatting had been removed and in place a mixture of divs and CSS was used. This helps bring the size of the HTML file down dramatically.
- Klixo's custom PHP image resizer had been installed on the site for thumbnails - making it easier for the client to update and add content.
- We installed the Klixo Website Manager in order for the client to be able to update and edit their website easily.
After explaining some of this to the client they seemed satisfied that we had actually done some work for them, and off they went with a website that will definitely help their business in the future. But completely unwise about the amount of work that was actually done to get it to that level.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 10 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora. That's right summer is just around the corner, and we all know what that means... Its going to be HOT! Yes toasty hot summer days are awesome, however sitting at a desk in an office doesn't have the same cooling effect as lazing in a pool, in a lake or splashing around at the beach. So I have done a bit of research for todays blog on some of the cool/geeky USB devices that are available to help get you through the upcoming hot days! So here is a rundown of some of my favorites, also if you would like to use this as my Christmas wish list that's fine by me.
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- The USB Beverage Cup cooler and Warmer - Keep you favorite beverage warm (for winter) or cold all the time with this USB Beverage Cup Cooler and Warmer! This would be perfect for keeping my 1.5 litre water bottle of Kiwi Blue cool.
- The ever stylish USB Coke fridge - this ones an old favourite
- Of course there had to be a USB Fan - there are so many to choose from but the Plant Fan here is my favourite looking one!
- The USB Seat Cooler - This is seriously something I want! It takes in air from the surrounding area via an intake valve and provides a constant stream of air to cool your backside
- This is by far the best one - an Air Conditioned shirt! If you have a USB Seat Cooler your going to need an USB powered Air conditioned shirt! These look awesome and would be perfect for work in the summer. You can also get Ties with fans in them to match!
And last but not least I thought I'd add the USB Apple Air Purifier - This high-performance badboy immediately & silently draws the polluted air in then disperses the negative ions evenly back into the air... Perfect for cleaning up those smells that accompany hot feat and sweaty summer workers!
Most of these are available on www.usbgeek.com. Thats all for now, have a look around and let me know if you find any other awesome gadgets for the summer!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 26 Sep 2008 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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This week I haven't really come up with any good ideas for a Blog... So it's 5.10 and there is still nothing on my page! Hmm what to write about? Well I have decided to write about other peoples blogs - as I cannot find anything interesting to write about this week I suggest you go elsewhere for your fix - do come back though! Here are some interesting Blogs I enjoy reading:
- The NASA blogs - I've always been interested in space and this site will give you a unique insight to the people involved with going there. Everything from Blogs of upcoming missions to live events
- NASA Edge is an interesting one
- Commander Peggy Whitson's Space Station Journals - from the international space station are an interesting read
- Robot News - Pretty nerdy but always an interesting read.
- The Klixo Blogs - I had to include this one really - cause you probably have found this blog just by searching for it in Google, your probably not aware that my fellow colleagues also write interesting blogs.
That's all for now - next week I will try to write about something better and more work related. Bye.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 19 Sep 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, as you may already know my name is Richard Parfitt - why am I telling you now? Well it has recently come to my attention that when "Richard Parfitt" is searched for on Google.com - when not searching "pages from New Zealand" (I have already dominated that area) - I am ranking around the third result mark for this blog! Which is awesome, but it's not first... Which is something I have always wanted to achieve haha. So yeah basically this blog is a blatant attempt at making me NUMBER 1 in Google. I have already out ranked my relative "Rick Parfitt" the singer and the rhythm guitarist from the English rock band Status Quo. Now all I have to do is beat this new guy on the scene, some "artist" of music Richard Parfitt, his link is only to his Amazon.co.uk listing for his album "Highlights in Slow Motion" which I would be interested in listening to - once I have beaten him!
So if you know of any ways that will help me please leave a comment, some things I would like to know are:
- Is including links to your competition a bad thing?
- Will that help them more than me?
- Will having the sentence "This blog is a blatant attempt at making me NUMBER 1 in Google." affect my ranking?
- Have I missed any SEO tricks that could help?
If you can answer any or all of those questions, please leave a comment. Oh and please include the name Richard Parfitt or Richard Parfitt related keywords in your comments!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 12 Sep 2008 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, today I am going to be blogging about our online knowledge base, if you are a client of ours you will probably already be aware of this area of the Klixo Website - if not you should be!
We have an extensive online knowledge base for our clients that covers everything from "Problems with logging in?" to "I have accidentally responded to a Phishing (Scam) email. What should I do? ". So if you are a user of our take a look around these pages - you may just find what you have been wanting to do on your site for ages, but just didn't know where to start - or get some great ideas for new content on your website, like "How to embed a YouTube Video in your Story".
Here are some of the most commonly used articles and ones I recommend to all Klixo users as good reading:
- How to upload Images & other files
It's good practice to upload well optimized images to your website as it helps with loading times and the appearance of you site to. Plus you can make you stories way more awesome with interesting images! - How to link to a PDF
This is quite a common thing users want to do as PDFs are becoming more popular method of displaying large flyers etc. - How to read your web statistics
This is handy for understanding the complexity of the beast called Web Statistics!
So there you have it - take a look around and if you can't find what you are looking for let us know and we will add it, as we are constantly updating this area of Klixo. If you get stuck with any of the articles don't forget the "How to get help" article! Bye for now.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 05 Sep 2008 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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Store your Telecom Mobile Photos online
Do you have a Telecom Mobile that has a camera? If so you may be able to upload your photos online! The first thing you will need to do is check your mobile phone to see if it has an upload option for your images, if it does you should be able to do this! Then you will need to create a Telecom User Login - once you've done this you will be able to access your online gallery here. You will be able to view all your uploaded photos in the gallery! I know a few people who have the same phone as me and they don't use this feature - it's FREE and its a great way to keep your phones memory free for more photos and also you can download your photos and back them up on your computer!
Let me know how you get on with this and if you have any questions.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 29 Aug 2008 | read 2 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, during my working day I come across a range of little jobs that can be annoying/time consuming to do and over time we (by we I mean my co-workers mostly) find handy websites that can do these for us much more efficiently in this article I'm going to share some of these with you. These tools are mainly for webs developers but I will include some here that can be used by your average web user. I will also include some sites that are just plain old handy tools when working with clients during support.
Developer Tools:
- Web Page Analyzer (WebSiteOptimization.com) - Optimize the loading times for your website using this tool, the results will tell you what you need to optimize in terms of objects on the page and their size. If you can get all greens then Congratulations!
- FavIcon Generator (Dynamic Drive) - Creating FavIcons used to be such a pain! Thanks to this handy site it is now a breeze!
- Lorem Ipsum - Lorem what now? Lorem Ipsum is basically text you can use to place on a page as test content which looks nicer than "this is test content testing test test test content this is test content testing test test test content this is test content testing test test test content this is test content testing test test test content". This site will generate nicer looking test content for you.
- Klixo Geocoder - Need to pick out a Longitude and Latitude for your location to use on a Google map? This handy tool by Klixo will help! Just type in your address then drag the Icon to your exact location.
- Convert em,px,pt and % in css (Worldtechies) - I had been looking for a tool to do this for a long time, we get some CSS designs that come to us using px or points and it can be a challenge getting these right using ems or %. This is the closest tool I have found for converting these but like it says "...it’s a good starting point." and in some cases doesn't apply.
Support / Other Tools:
- TinyURL.com - This site is one of my favourites, if you need to send a real long URL to someone via email visit this site first and create a TinyURL - this will stop your URL from being broken onto another line and will also stop the receiver from wondering why you have sent them a broken link...
- Secure Password Generator (PC Tools) - Generate secure passwords easily, just insert your parameters you would like to use for your secure passwords then click generate passwords
- IP Chicken - need to know a users IP address? Get them to visit this website and the will be able to tell you
- Java Test - This is a tool that was developed by us and is used to determine if a user has Javascript enabled in their browser or not.
I may add to this article as I find/become aware of more handy tools (can you do that with a blog?) and of course if you use or know of a handy tool that you think we might like / NEED post a comment and let us know!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 22 Aug 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, if you didn't know already Google has released the Street View of Australia - Pick your sight you'd like to see in Australia and drag your little yellow man there - any streets that are outlined in blue have the capability of being roamed almost virtually. This is of course hours of fun if you have the time and the broadband to spare! Privacy issues aside its quite a lot of fun seeing how much you can actually spot - from seeing right into peoples lounges to gazing at sandy and busy beach vistas.
The whole country is basically done! I can't wait till they do New Zealand!
Have fun.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 15 Aug 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora. The 2008 Beijing Olympics are exactly one week away! I believe the internet is going to play a much larger part in the Olympics for the first time, from being able to watch the Olympics greatest moments / greatest blunders on YouTube! Also TVNZ (since I don't have a TV are doing on demand coverage so you can catch up what you missed out on while you were at work! Or catch up on what you missed out on the night before because you had to go to bed early for work!
Oh and check out this nice slideshow of the venues by Reuters - Olympics venues here
So yes the Olympics! It's going to be great. See you.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 01 Aug 2008 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, a while ago now when I was revamping one of our clients websites I pulled off a trick that I thought was pretty neat! This trick was showing images for each menu object when the page link was hovered over by using CSS - whereas usually I would have had to have used Javascript to display the image, I can sometimes get away with putting the image in a background image of the menu objects A tag and showing it on the on the hover which is a nicer option. But in this case I couldn't.
It is fairly basic CSS really but I still thought it was neat. So here's what I did:
By embedding the image in the A tag you can then control that image object in the same manner as you would a link using CSS i.e. link, visited, hover and active. So there for you can on the links hover display the image. So I have made the A link the parent object of the image so when the A links status changes from link to hover I can also change the Images status from display: none to display: inline - You can use inline or block here - I have used inline here so the image sits next to the link. Now I have gotten my image showing up on the hover I can then position the image where I would like it. You can use position: relative - or position: absolute for this and by using the top and left classes you can position the image. I have put in the height and width in the Images class to define the images space when its loading. When using a relatively positioned image you can use the margin-bottom to cancel out the space that the image is relative to, by putting in the height as a negative this will happen. See the example below for how this works.
<!-- EXAMPLE -->
<!-- HTML EXAMPLE -->
<a href="http://klixo.co.nz/blogs/richard.html" title="Richard's Blog">
Hover over this
<img src="/pics/rpblog_css_example.gif" alt="Menu Hover Example" class="menu"/>
</a>
<!-- CSS EXAMPLE-->
a:link.menu img, a:link.menu img
{
display: none;
}
a:hover.menu img, a:active.menu img
{
display: inline;
}
img.menu
{
border: none;
position: relative;
top: 25px;
left: 20px;
height: 25px
width: 40px;
margin-bottom: -25px;
}
This is my first time trying to Blog something technical and hopefully I will improve, feel free to submit your comments on "correct terms" for objects etc etc!... bye for now.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 25 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, as I was browsing the internet the other day trying to track down the official website for the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight" for some work related reason, I got to the IMDb listing for the movie and found the Official sites page and found there was a couple there. I had found the official site I was after but of course I was intrigued by the other links available as I am looking forward to seeing this movie! So the first link I clicked on was the "Concerned Citizens for a Better Gotham" not entirely knowing what i was going to find. What I did find was what appeared to be the official website for an organisation related to the movie that had been hacked by The Joker and his cronies! The page had been mashed into what looked like a young child let loose on the front page of the Beacon (local newspaper) - with jokes and rearranged sentences to make funny mad libs and smiling faces drawn on all the people. After checking a few of the other links I found the same thing. The pages are just single images mostly, some have links that go to other information about the movie, competitions and trailers etc, as it is all of course just a big advertising campaign, but none the less a very creative and entertaining one! Here are some of my favourites:
- gothampolice.com - Gotham Police website
- ccfabg.org - Concerned Citizens for a Better Gotham
- gpdmcu.com - Gotham Police Major Crimes Unit
- ibelieveinharveydent.com - I Believe in Harvey Dent
- rossisdelicatessen.com - Rossi's Delicatessen
- wearetheanswer.org - We Are The Answer - A Safer Gothem Farts with you...
The list goes on and on you can find them all on the www.whysoserious.com website which appears to be The Jokers home page by clicking on phone numbers in the address book there.
Enjoy!
R.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 18 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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posted by Alex, 21 Jul 2009