Open letter from Hasbro

On October 30, 2009 in Internet.
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Monopoly City Streets, the game that took the world (or at least the world I live in) by storm!

For those of you who don’t know, Monopoly City Streets (MCS) is an online version of the recently released board game, but uses Google maps to allow real roads to be brought, built upon and sabotaged. There are also local, national and international leader boards for the top few of the digital tycoons out there (I’m currently number 3 on the South Staffordshire local boards).

MCS has been running a while now, and I expected there to be some sort of reward at the end of the season (set for January 2010) such as an iPod or laptop (or even a car or house? – It is Google powered, after all).

However, following a recent post on the MCS blog it has been announced that there is NO rewards and that the game is just that – a free online game to promote the board game. Hasbro also stated that they underestimated the popularity of the game and as such the databases were unable to cope with the pure number of queries being thrown at them.

Now, featuring one of the world’s most popular board games and powering it with one of the Internet giant’s software, and then sticking it on the most readily available media source in the world would perhaps make developers think it may be a golden egg? Perhaps not.

Anyway, to the point of this post – Start charging some money (say £15) to sign up to an account and use the profits to increase database functionality and throw in a few prizes for the winners (or top 3!) of each leader board?

It’s just a thought, but surely the way forward with traditional board games. It makes you wonder what else could be digitalized? I’m thinking of starting a design for a detective based game, with rooms, characters and weapons in… Rowley in the study with the Laptop, anyone?

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Webpage Optimization

On October 27, 2009 in #60SecondShout, Internet, Website Design.
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Thanks to a bit of friendly advice at work this week I have discovered that possibly the single most important thing to your Google ranking could be the load time of your pages.

This page not only analyses your page but also gives you ideas on how to improve on your load times (things like image optimisation, external pages etc) Check it out: http://www.websiteoptimization.com

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WordPress App for the iPhone

On October 24, 2009 in Internet, iPhone, Tutorials.
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WordPress 2 has recently been released for the iPhone via the App store. Not only is it free but also very easy to set up.

All I did to set it up was go to /wp-admin/options-writing.php and tick the XML-RPC checkbox under the remote Publishing section. From there I simply put in my login details and blog URL and it quickly connected and showed me my posts :) From there its blogging as usual; create a post, approve comments or edit pages.

The improvements from ‘Wordpress’ to ‘Wordpress 2’ is apparently improved functionality, compatibility and a much smoother user interface. I must say, its working wonders for me! I’m currently sitting in my car waiting for Ice Hockey to begin, whoop!

The only downside (and I am being particularly fussy here) is that the app developers didn’t upgrade the original WordPress app but instead just made another. Now I realise that this could be to do with the way things were put together in the first instance, but there are rumours of a third version coming out which will be a separate app again.

Don’t get me wrong though, this is a brilliant little app, and best of all its FREE! The idea of being able to blog while I have 10 minutes before a lecture or on a train or in the park makes the idea of blogging much more appealing. Bring on version 3.0 (template / style editing, perhaps?)

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Putting the ‘ping’ back into ‘shopping’

On October 18, 2009 in Internet, Website Design.
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With ever increasing advancements regarding the Internet, I have started doing more and more Internet shopping.

River Islands, Sainsbury’s and Argos are amongst a few stores who provide an online store alongside their retail outlets around the UK unlike Amazon and Firebox, which are Internet specific. I have used Sainsbury’s for over a year now to do my weekly shop and I must say – It’s brilliant! The main advantages are that you get to systematically and comfortably browse the isles, check your basket, view your previous orders and see all the latest deals. Ultimately saving money and time.

Maybe its because I’m unsociable, or perhaps its because you not only have a much more available selection but also don’t ever have stock issues. It’s all delivered at a time that suits you. Lovely!

River Island is the same. You can browse items and add things to your basket. I find a much greater selection available online and the highlight for me is that you can return things free of charge if you don’t like it! It’s basically like having things shipped to you in your own personal changing room!

Now, the only downside of this is that buying online feels almost too easy – I tend to get carried away with impulsive buys like TV’s and gadgets that, by the time they have arrived, have lost my interest.

I’m also quite impatient when it comes to waiting for things in the post and always have to pay for the express next day delivery if available. A nice way around this is the reserve and collect feature that many retailers such as Comet are now introducing. You still have to go to the shop itself to collect the item, but you get it the same day and often for a lower price.

Online shopping is great! Just try one online supermarket order. I did, and I never looked back!

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Get some style

On October 16, 2009 in General, Internet, Website Design.
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My WordPress is all styled up!

It began last night, messing around with different templates and eventually fell upon ‘Simplicity’ which is a nice and neat two column template with a similar layout to the rest of my site.

After ‘installing’ (I’m not convinced that’s the correct terminology) WordPress on my host Justhost I downloaded the header.php and style’s css files as well as the index.php page and started to play around.

My background knowledge of CSS and PHP helped a lot, but my main tool was the Web Development Toolbar (WDT) for Firefox. Using this I edited the CSS and could see the real-time changes to the various pages. I did find that some attributes of the CSS a little obscure but this was overcome by trial and error (a process that can be tedious and repetitive if constantly requiring uploads, but seamless and efficient when using WDT.

The header again was a simple procedure, simply deleting the entire current header and replacing it with my own. (NOTE: I also included the content wrapper code from my page to hold the blog and sidebar central).

The entire process took a few hours (about 7-8) to complete, but I’m positive that my next revamp will knock the blog style up in a quarter of this!

Well done WordPress, you continue to amaze me! Now all I need is some content worthy of the cyber-space!

WordPress is all styled up!
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No longer a blogger virgin!

On October 15, 2009 in General, Internet.
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SO, this is my first blog. I guess I should say something important or wisely at this point (fist impressions and all); I feel embraced! I have done a complete U-Turn and am starting to understand why bloggers blog! I’m still less than 100% convinced, but I’m hoping the next 6 months or so will continue to open my eyes to the wonderful bloggersphere!

I decided to (finally) make my account after a while getting to grips with some 2.0 features of the web – I’ve recently opened my eyes to the world of Blogging after years of being strongly anti-blogist! More on why to come soon (via blog, coincidently!) Yes I know I’m a computer scientist, Web Developer and IT Professional, but it’s never really appealed before tonight.

First ‘real’ blog to come soon! Keep your eyes pealed (Although I suspect no-one will be reading this until I have a somewhat more substantial archive and more importantly improved my Google page rank!!).

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