Jack of all trades…

Unfortunately in current times, people feel like they have to be able to do everything, to be able to offer every service to their customers. And to be honest I’m as guilty as the next person of this. I have a keen interest in the web, and I’m a half decent developer. I love design but I know that my design work isn’t great – so I don’t do any for clients. I outsource that for almost every job I do, as I owe it to my client to give them the best possible product.

… Master of none

Some companies however, take this to another level – I know of a number of computer repair shops, that offer “web-design” and pretty much every other computer “related” service that they could fit on a flyer. This leads to a distortion of the market, as you have these people offering their services at a very low price, so some actual designers, maybe starting out or whatever, feel like they have to be able to match this.

Along with this, some potential customers, looking to get a price reduction, will point out that these people can do it cheaper. You do not want these clients – if they can’t tell the difference between a real designer, and someone chancing their arm, then it does not bode well for the project.

Hopefully, people are able to tell what they are getting before they approach a designer.

Its for that reason that I believe there are two problems in the Irish equation – uneducated clients and bad web designers.

Uneducated Clients

The number of times that a small business owner has said to me that their 15 year old nephew/niece is a brilliant web designer is beyond counting at this stage. And perhaps I’m being unfair – maybe they are the next Chris Spooner, Meagan Fisher or Grace Smith. But I’ve heard it so many times that this is virtually impossible.

And unfortunately this boils down to the fact that although these business owners (apparently) know quite a lot about the subject matter they deal in, they know little or nothing about the web. This is of course a shame. But not the end of the world. I feel to really help these people you must be able to educate them as to why something is a good idea. Or a bad idea. And most of the time they will listen and understand and learn. And once we get to that stage the relationship can only get better. And your job then becomes much more rewarding. And hopefully you’ve earned yourself a repeat client.

Bad Web Designers

Full disclosure – I have made some really terrible websites in my time. But I never charged anyone for them – They were back when I started out and they were for friends. I never would have advertised the fact that I was a web designer. In fact – I still don’t. I love design but I love development more – And I’m much better at it too – In my opinion .

As I mentioned above more and more people are offering themselves as web designers, and they really shouldn’t be allowed. I’ll stop short of advocating that there should be some kind of test before people can call themselves a Web Designer… but only just.

Unfortunately, these “designers” cause a distortion or blur the market for young good web designers. When starting out and looking for a steady amount of work or in the current economic climate, you may take on work that you would never have taken on normally – and these clients can sometimes cause problems because they can’t tell the difference between these cowboy designers and you – the excellent designer.

Not Specific to Ireland?

The more research I did on this I realised that Ireland is not really the only country that suffers from this. You have the same issues all over the world. But Ireland is in a fairly unique situation, we’re a tiny country – with a population which is punching well above its weight in the creative world. You just have to look at all the world renowned poets, musicians, artists and authors. In the business world, you can look at all the Irish companies doing very well around the world, or all the Irish CEO’s of leading companies around the world.

We have an excellent and unique opportunity to educate our business owners on usability, on accessibility – to ensure that they get the website that they need to further their business. The website that their users deserve.

(Main image attribution: uggboy on Flickr)

The website, while not the worst example of government sponsored web design in Ireland or the world at large, probably wont help you plan that visit very well and I think it definitely could be much better. There are a number of very bad design and usability mistakes that I feel could be rectified by both redesigning and realigning the site to better serve any visiting users.

A Critique…

Layout

The layout of the site is a sign of being designed with a specific screen size in mind. In fact, on the main page it looks like the news & events list has grown much longer than the original designer had intended. In the menu, the layout doesn’t seem to take into account any differences in browsers/Os’s as you can see above unfortunately it has started to wrap on the line below. Drilling further on, the layout of the site does not give itself well to announcements of various sizes. This may well be an issue that again has become prominent since the design was completed. Maybe not enough work was completed on what was actually going to be displayed on the pages. Its always a difficult step to reach out to the client to find out the various types on information that they are going to want to convey, and to then image your design with that content in it. Getting that info very early in the process is very important.

The layout suffers from a lack of highlighting or direction. The three/four column layout is a little confused, and doesn’t help highlight any particular column or even separate them very well. And this layout is used nowhere else on the site so there is no familiarity when you go deeper into the site. Now I don’t expect the homepage layout to be featured everywhere else in the site but having familiar index type pages is a very useful tool for guiding users around.

The main pages lack of direction and how to fix it is something that I talk about later on.

As one of the most beautiful places in Dublin you really want to be able to show that off. The homepage of the site has a couple of images that show a bit about the park. However, the images aren’t ideal – they are small, not optimised for the web, and don’t really add anything to the page. Example – The image on the right is of the Wellington monument. One of the parks main attractions. However – nowhere on this page is it even mentioned. There’s no way to find out anything else about what that images is. If they were only for decoration – I think you use better photos?

Digging a little deeper, to the following page for example – http://www.phoenixpark.ie/visitorinformation/attractions/ and you have the main attractions of the park listed. Again, the images used, while they could be excellent, are too small. Unfortunately, there seems to be no thought about where the images are going to be used throughout the entire website. All of the images on this particular page are even different sizes, and this leads to another point – there’s no template for image sizes. This is a common website management tool – you know where the images are going to go – so you know what size to make them.

The phoenix park is one of the most beautiful places in Dublin, and the imagery of this site does not do it justice.

Navigation

This is one of the main usability problems with this site – the navigation is not as clear as it could be. Imagine the scenario – A couple, in planning a Saturday day trip with their family wants to see a map of the park – which item would they choose? They choose “maps” of course. But say they want to plan to see some of the attractions?

One of the most important things about any brochure/informational website is being able to give people the information they want as quickly as possible. And for that to happen – the menu’s have to disambiguate as much as possible. You don’t want a user to have to click on 3 different menu items because they’re quite similar. So with this, you either reduce the options, or give them more precise options. The risk with giving fewer options is that you could then end up not helping the user at all as they might think the site does not cater for them. And on a site like this - which has no site search functionality that is definitely a possibility.

To not give a user an easy means to search your site is a usability error on the highest order. It might never get used if people get to your site through Google and are immediately gone but on a site like this – the homepage is where people start. And people are used to have site searches, and its so easy to implement that it is a very strange omission.

The Redesign

Making it better

There are a few ways to guide people when they get to your website. The two I tend to focus on, are to either to try guide the user where I want to, or to try and imagine what the user wants to get from my website. In this particular site there is no real reason to guide the users in one particular direction. No product to sell (apart from a visit to the park of course, but thats different) or no signup to gather. In this case we want the user to be able to get whatever information they want about the site as quickly as possible. Not just a redesign but a realignment. Both in fact.

Redesign vs Realign

I feel this website needs both – a redesign to look after the usability and other design flaws, and a re-alignment to better suit the users that are going to be coming to this website. If you want to read an excellent article on the both of the above – and when either is warranted check out the following article from WebDesignerDepot – I feel this website needs both – a redesign to look after the usability and other design flaws, and a re-alignment to better suit the users that are going to be coming to this website. If you want to read an excellent article on the both of the above – and when either is warranted check out the following article from WebDesignerDepot – http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/06/redesign-vs-realign/.

Redesigning the Layout

The current layout is unfortunately a bit dated, and unfortunately over time and without a content strategy, the front page design has suffered. This is because over the years, the image sizes have obviously changed, the number of new articles has also changed and I suspect the number of menu items has changed – and this has meant that the design has not grown with the content or no set content strategy was in place to ensure that the the users of the site were able to update it over time without affecting the layout.

The one important column on the page is overused, with both news and events listed there. And even with the link text it can be quite difficult to see which each of them are without clicking on the link. I propose changing that out – You want your most recent items on the homepage – and you want it under the right headings so people can gather information very quickly about whats on or whats new in the park. On a minor note the heading for that column isn’t great – It just looks like another item in the list – not great for usability or anything else for that matter.

So I redesigned the site using a three column layout – Each column for a different type of update – News, Announcements and Events. This covered the three most used types of post and also allowed the user to quickly see which was more important to them! Each of the headings should be clickable to bring them to posts of only that type. I highlighted the events column as this should stand out – You want to attract as much attention as possible to these as you want to attract as many people as possible to the park!

This brings on the second part of the front page changes – realigning the navigation.

Realigning the navigation

The old navigation was confusing – at least to me. Whats the difference between “visitor information” and “about”? And unfortunately you have to click on both to find out. Meaning if you got it wrong then its just extra clicks to get back. What my concept calls for is a drop down menu with lots of information. This means that you can click on both – See what comes under them and then click on the appropriate item that you might be looking for. I’ve added this for many of the menu items – this should ease the navigation for the user.

It also means that the website owners have to think better about where items go – and what overall heading to use. I personally can’t see the difference between about and visitor information – and I feel these should be amalgamated under one heading on the navigation. The added advantage of drop downs is that you can then separate out below that if you really feel its necessary.

Then I added a search options – one of the glaring omissions from the original site. This is also in the form of a drop down just to keep in line with the design but that isn’t entirely necessary either.

The new front page I feel better serves users and helps them find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

Other Additions

I’ve also included a revamped footer – which I feel also benefits the users. First off is the addition of a sign up box for news or event updates. This is a pretty big omission from the original site as it can offer an excellent opportunity to advertise new events to people who are interested in the park, and to send out announcements as well.

Next is immediate contact information – Address, phone numbers, etc. Although this information was already on the site, it wasn’t that simple to find immediately or in a hurry.

The footer now also includes a little map, with the location of the park, but that map is clickable to bring up a bigger Google Maps page of the map. This means you can get directions etc very easily from wherever you are.

Below that again you could add sponsorship logos and the OPW logo etc.

Conclusion

Normally I would but more work into the article pages of websites but this mini project was unfortunately cut short by paying work. Unfortunately I’m also very busy in work so I don’t think I’ll get back to this concept any time soon. However I did offer the design and code to the OPW but they didn’t reply to my follow up mails. That doesn’t really bother me so if anyone wants the code or to use the design – feel free. Obviously the logo and other images are property of the Office of Public Works.

Live site – Front page, article page(not finished, nor will it be unfortunately)

Daily Star News App

On first looks this app seems to be very basic. And after using it for a bit, it doesn’t really get any better. The design is quite simple, and the interface is quite underwhelming. Though that said – its easy to get where you need to go and the application is also fast to load and to move between articles.  There also doesn’t seem to be any way to refresh the current stories manually – You have to go into a story and then come back out again. Not ideal but not a show stopper. The news is English focused like the paper but if you like the Irish print version(with the token Irish stories) you may like this application as well.

They’ve kept the headlines a bit short but there’s an image with every story which is always good. The article length is often very short though. There’s also isn’t a lot of choice… you get News, Gossip, Babes, and Sport. That’s it… There’s also an information button for more information about the company that made the app… not very professional but people need publicity I suppose. I’ve also noticed some weird bugs… If you click to go into an article the toolbar at the bottom changed to a loading icon(left) and a refresh button(right). Pressing that refresh button takes you straight to the Babes section… A pleasant surprise but a surprise indeed. Interface buttons should always do what you think they will… and the refresh button is one of the best well known symbols around. Changing what it does in your application will only confuse people. (Although in this case I can hardly say I was upset…)

NYTimes News App

This application from the New York Times is one of the first news applications that I ever used. I also have previously recommended because it is very good. The quality of the writing seems to be excellent and some of the editorial pieces have had me reading for whole commutes. The interfaces is very nice, and very detailed. You have a huge amount of choice if you need it, but the latest news is right there in front of you straight away. The popular stories are also just one click away. The rest of the categories are only 2. Its an excellent interface and one that lets you get where you need to. Its also one that iPhone, iPod users will be used to as its very similar to how you get to podcasts for example from the music app. It’s good to see they’ve done some research.

There are a few nice features within the articles too – the top and bottom toolbars visible in the second screenshot, disappear when you start scrolling through the article. It takes the interface out of the way while you’re reading. Nice. And its easy to get it back – one click on the article and they pop back. Also when you read all the way down to the bottom of the article it knows when you’ve reached the bottom and it pops back. The ability to resize the text is there too – which is important as I find that the default text size is much too big. Back on the homepage the refresh button does what you expect of it, and articles seem to be fairly regularly uploaded.

Although this app has very few problems(and many positives), it does have one or two… – its quite slow, and after a bit of use the app crashed a few times – not a huge deal but hopefully would be resolved in later releases.

On a side note, this is also the only application to use right aligned thumbnails for the articles… hmmm.

Sky News

One of my favourite of the newer news apps that I’ve downloaded, this app has a lot going for it. The interface is simple enough, but shows you a lot of information straight away. As soon as you load the application you get the 6 top stories straight away. A feat only matched by one other application in this list. However, there does seem to be a little ad bar that opens down at the bottom but I can’t work out when it opens – it seems to be entirely random. The application is fully featured, and a lot of the stories also have video included and its easy to see which ones. The app is reasonably fast to load, with a nice little headline by headline loading mechanism. 

If I could give out about one thing, however, is that the article functionality is very basic. There’s no resizing of text, and no landscape view. Also, oddly, there’s no ability to share that interesting news story that you’ve just come across. This is surprising as almost every other app here lets you email, or twitter a link to the story.

One interesting part of this application is the “Your Report” section. I can see this having many benefits for Sky News as it enables you to send them news of an event that you might be witnessing! I can see this being a big thing – especially with the proliferation of iPhones around these days.

Time Mobile

There are a few Time magazine subscribers in my family and I came across this app advertised at the back of the magazine so a good while ago I checked it out. The first time I loaded it I was nicely surprised by the design of the interface, nice big pictures with a coverflow-like ability to flick across from one story to the next. However, for those of you without perfect 3G coverage there is also the ability to press a button in the top right had corner and to change it to a list view that some people might be more comfortable with. Apart from the default coverflow-like picture interface the rest of the interface is very similar to a lot of the other major news site apps. As I talk about in the conclusion later – this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The article pages have a few nice features too – you are able to zoom in on the article and you can also change the font size. However the stand out very nice feature is in the bottom left corner of the article pages – the ability to turn off the accelerometer so that it doesn’t accidently shift to landscape view in the middle of you reading something! I absolutely loved this, and found myself looking for this feature in every other IPhone application I use! Back to the app though the news and editorials tend to be of good quality and if you’re used to the magazine or the website then you should be well looked after by this application.

ITN News

The ITN iphone application is one of a couple of applications on this list that provides Videos as well as more traditional text based news. And it has to be said that it does it very well. It’s very easy to see which story have associated videos attached, with a small “v” in the thumbnail. Once in the article and the quality is pretty good. The ads at athe top maybe take up a bit too much room but with excellent images and video this more than makes up for it. 

Within the articles it’s actually a little confusing where the videos are – until you click around a bit. Up in the Nav bar, you’ve got a copuple of buttons – Headlines(essentially the back button), Share and Videos.

This Videos button display a list of the associated videos and gives you the ability to play them. The loading of the videos is pretty quick and the quality pretty good.

The Share button gives you the ability to email and twitter a link to the article, however that sharing window that pops up is a bit weird. The cancel button doesn’t seem to work, and the others seem to take a long time to open. That could just be my phone though

Msnbc.com

The interface on this iPhone application caught me by surprise. The first, and I must say only, genuinely unique design out of this entire list comes from a news site that is a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC. They integrated their logo (or maybe took inspiration from it) and turned it into a slick circular interface that is very nice to look at. Its also easy to use. When you click on one of the topics you’re taken through to a page that on first using is a little off-putting. The news itself flows by from the top downwards. This caught me out until I realised what it was doing. There is a pause button down at the bottom of the screen and I hit that as soon as I could!

The application is nicely fully featured and has literally hundreds of articles and blogs to read. They’ve also congregated all of their various twitter feeds under the twitter button. Once in there you can choose from any of their twitter accounts to see their recent updates. A nice feature indeed, as you can check out the feeds all in one place first before you decide to follow them later! I like this application a lot, from the Zumobi Network which seem to do a number of other nice applications.

Unfortunately, its not all rosy in the garden. To read the full articles, takes too many clicks and also loads the Msnbc webpage within a frame. If you just want the first half of the article you don’t have to go further but if you want to read the whole thing you must load the website. This website can be slow to load and kind of negates the data saving from using the application. I don’t understand this unless the object of the app is to get more visitors to their website? And maybe this would be acceptable if it didn’t have ads in the application, but it does – so you get ads in both places. Not ideal, but if you just want to do some casual news reading with a very nice interface then this application will suit you.

The Munster

The only free Irish web app in the top 50 listed in the Irish App Store, the Munster Express’s News iPhone app was a pleasantly surprisingly good application. This, I have to say caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect a regional Irish news paper to be able to produce such an app. And even if that does say more about me then it really should have, I then thought about it for a little while and I realized that of course it was possible. Ireland has an excellent community of developers who are easily capable of producing such an application. However why don’t we see more of this? The regional paper in my area – the Leinster Leader – does not have any iPhone app. But on to the application!

The application itself is pretty good. The number of articles on the main page is nice, as it allows you to scan headlines very quickly and easily. Especially when a brief excerpt is included. The application is pretty basic looking, but I suppose its better to stick to the default Apple styling than do some messy job yourself.

The news stories tend to be provincial but that’s exactly what you need from this type of application. If you’re from the south of Ireland and live away from home this is perfect to keep up to date.

Couple of weird things going on with the ads currently used by the app but I cant see that affecting you’re overall use of this application. The app is on the basic side but I dont think anyone expects anything else from a news sourfce of this size.  

France 24

A very simple application but the only one of its kind on this list. The France 24 new app is primarily a video application. The application loads and then you click on one of the options below and you get video news of that topic. They seem to be updated regularly enough. That said the design of the application could be a little better and if you weren’t in a 3G covered area then this application is really of no use to you.

The videos themselves once you let them buffer for a while are of an acceptable level of quality. The app also has the nice distinction of being available in 3 languages – English, and as its primarily aimed at the French market, Arabic and French. Unfortunately when the app is changing to the video, it goes completely black and it looks like the application has crashed when in fact it hasn’t. Not the first time we’ve seen this on the list but this black loading screen seems to last a good bit longer. The application itself is a case of sticking to what they know but the design could use a little sprucing up.

Wednesday April 15 2009

I recently had a long conversation with a friend of mine who lost his job. He was in a reasonably good job and after a little bit of overtime was earning a gross salary of €35,000 per year.

So I asked him the obvious question of how he was going to cope now with four children to feed and, I have to be honest, the answer startled me.

He was actually a lot better off and now in a position to go out golfing every day while his children are at school.

Frankly, I did not believe him until I sat down and did the sums. On a salary of €35,000, his annual net income after the mini Budget was €28,854, after all deductions.

Now he is on the supplementary welfare allowance which — with a wife and four children — gives you €443.90 per week, or €23,083 annually.

As he also has a mortgage, he is entitled to mortgage interest supplement which pays all the interest on your mortgage. In his case, this was €1,200 per month of his €1,500 mortgage, or €14,400 per annum.

He is also entitled to back-to-school and footwear payment of €905 per year for four children, a medical card which is worth, on average, say €500 per year (probably more) and a heating supplement which I cannot quantify.

In total, he now has tax-free income of €38,888, an increase in his net income of €10,034 per year for working on his golf handicap.

Based on the calculations after the mini-Budget, you would need to earn more than €47,000 per year if you have four children to justify continuing to work.

This is even before taking into account the costs of working, such as petrol, car maintenance, tolls, lunches and so on.

Now in any civilised society, and especially in a society in a deep recession with a huge welfare bill, surely the government must give people an incentive to go out and work

Making the child benefit taxable or means tested later this year is just going to make the situation worse and encourage more people to give up work and rely on the State to live.

It could even drive our small economy to collapse as the welfare bill gets bigger and bigger as more people, including myself, ask: why should I bother to go out to work when it is basically costing me money to work?

Unless something radically changes, I will be joining my mate on the golf course very soon.

Andy McNamara
Drogheda

Interesting if its true though.

One of the jobs, we felt, that had to be completed before we moved into the house was getting all the windows replaced. The front windows(2 large bay windows and a “normal” sized window) were aluminium single glazed windows and at the back(4 “normal” sized windows), they were the original steel single glazed windows from the original build of the house. Although, I was slightly amazed that they survived 60 years, we knew they had to go. So we organized a few people around to give us quotes on all the windows and a set of french doors at the rear. The first people out assured us that they sold the best windows in Ireland. The only company with an A rated window. And boy were they expensive. Priced themselves completely out of the job with a quote for just a hair under a cool 20 grand. Although I reckon we hid our shock well in the end. The person that came out to quote the house, then asked if we had anyone else coming out. We named off the other companies that are calling out and he nonchalantley added that his quote would be around 30-40% more expensive then the others. I’m actually believed that they have the best windows but the premium is just too high. We had a couple more people out and their quotes were much more reasonable, and in the end went with one that was neither the cheapest or the dearest.

Next quotes were for painting. We had two people over and they undercut each other to death. It was actually slightly embarassing to watch. Unfortunatly there are alot of tradesmen out there at the minute with not a whole lot on, and they’re really lowering their prices to try and get work. We were told that during the boom years, it would cost 3750euro to paint the interior of a standard 3bed semi. In the end our quote came to a lot less than that, so happy days.

Electrics have also been a focus on the last two weeks, and I have someone helping me out in realizing my grand scheme. Speaker cable, cat5, and a couple of extra power lines have been put in around the house, which will hopefully allow me to hook the house up with some neat home AV tricks. How that all works out is another thing! Hopefully I’ll write another post about just this, as it’s really the area where I have the most hope for!

Plastering has also moved forward slightly in that all upstairs has been finished. A couple of places had to be patched after the electrics but nothing major and the plasterer was aware that it would be happening.

So last on the agenda this week was what we were going to do with the kitchen. On the table for a while were a couple of suggestions about extending but in these current times I really didn’t want to stretch the budget.  So in the end we went with another idea that we’d had a while back about making the kitchen and dining room open plan, and the kitchen re-arranging that is necessary for that to go ahead. Unfortunately organizing that kind of thing really pushed the girlfriend over the edge, and in the end decided to hire a builder to focus on the rest of the renovation project. In the end its probably a very good thing as with both of us working in busy jobs, we don’t have time to be keeping an eye on carpenters and builders. Plus the contacts that this person brings to the project will always be helpful. So hopefully this doesn’t end up backfiring but hopefully a good bit of work is going to get done in the coming weeks.

I don’t know where people who are interested in technology get the time to keep abreast of all the developments that happen in this industry. Unfortunately for me, my interests cover a huge swath of categories so I’m constantly hearing about stuff about 2 weeks after it happens and by then its old news! Also since there is a huge number of people and websites aiming to keep me informed, its hard to know who to listen to for good quality stuff. So where do I get my news? And who from? Being a hilariously busy Sysadmin and with my long commute in and out of work it makes sense for me to use podcasts as my tech news medium of choice, especially here in Ireland where no radio channel would dare touch on a subject that didn’t involve mainstream music, and or celebrities news! I jest, but still there is no technology news on the radio in Ireland so I get it all pretty much from the US. So what podcasts do I listen to and who in particular do I pay attention to?

Leo Laporte

The undisputed but sadly uncrowned king of technology news and chat has to be the great Leo Laporte and his amazing setup that he has over at twit.tv. I know I’ve joked about paying for stuff before but this time I really mean it when I say it. I would pay to listen and or watch his shows. So much so that I actually kind of went through with it and have a monthly donation setup through PayPal! The shows/netcasts/podcasts that run over at twit.tv really are some of the best technology broadcasts out there. The tag line of twit.tv is “netcasts you love from people you trust” and its true! In fact if Leo came out and told me on a show that the sky was green and the grass was blue, I would have to check! Anyway, enough of my idol worshipping… Leo has introduced some amazing people to me through the podcasts over the time I’ve been listening and always enlightens me on any subject that the shows happen to be covering. My RSS feed is full of blogs and websites from people that Leo has introduced me to from John C. Dvorak, all the way over to Molly Wood and Wil Harris, to name but a very few! Every week has me waiting for the next instalment of “This week in Tech” or “Windows Weekly“. He also blogs semi-regularly over at leoville.com and is a regular twitter..er. If you head over to twit.tv there are are some really interesting podcasts but, in particular, check out how twit was founded! Although a regular listener, I haven’t yet made the leap over to watching the shows live, as my schedule doesn’t allow for it, or watching the video podcasts because the battery life on my iPod touch doesn’t really allow for it! On a final note – although I really know that he’s not the only person talking about tech and gathering great minds together, he is the best at it.

John C. Dvorak

Where would twit be without John C. Dvorak? Who knows but it wouldn’t be where it is today. A legend in his own right, I look forward to the shows that he participates in. Although at the start I didn’t like him at all! I found him rude, brash and patronising but I have grown to respect and enjoy what he has to say – because he’s normally right! As a regular on twit he really does bring his considerable insight to the tech news world and always has something to say so it shows his considerable knowledge on the world of technology. Apart from twit, John also has a number of other projects like cranky geeks, which is another show that I religiously download and enjoy every time I can. You can also check out his personal blog at http://www.dvorak.org/blog/ which covers a huge broad spectrum of subjects… check out http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=31819, http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=31765 for example!

Paul Thurotte

A legend that I really discovered through Leo’s netcasts, I catch all my MS news from this man. It can’t be easy being the sole pro-Microsoft person (or so its seems from time to time) in the tech news industry, but I believe he always explains his arguments well and always gets to the point. However he would also be the first screaming when Microsoft gets it wrong so you can be sure he is quite… well I wont say unbiased but pretty close all the same. Insightful and funny, he really does make the shows with Leo really interesting and I find him very easy to listen to. His very low tone of voice helps a lot too! Aside from the podcasts, Paul is the news editor at Windows ITPro magazine, and runs the supersite for Windows. As work get the former, I get a chance to read some of the stuff, and the latter has to be, in my opinion, the greatest windows resource out there – bar none(although I don’t like the site re-design…)! I have used it for many things from finding out the latest Windows Vista news to learning how to create a slipstreamed XP disk! Paul has an inside line to the good stuff at Microsoft so he’s really worth listening to if you want to keep up to date with all that’s going on at the minute over at Redmond.

Conclusion

So there you have it, not a complete list by any stretch of the imagination but hopefully enough to get anyone started. The above people really are who I go to first for all of my tech news and analysis as they’re trustworthy and intelligent, funny and witty, and always keep my morning commute entertained. My hat comes off to Leo Laporte especially for bringing all these great people together at Twit.tv.

I’ve been a 3 customer for a long time. Over two years. And that is really long for me as I’m probably best known for my fickle nature with regards things like this. This change to o2 will be my fourth mobile operator change – in about 7 years. So I’ll have been with every operator now. And the first 4 of those years were with Eircell/Vodafone so they don’t really count. Then I changed to Meteor when the hype moved over to the hottest young operator on the block, and then to 3 when they first launched here in Ireland too. They offered good data plans for non business users before anyone else was and that made me make the change. And it was great for checking cinema times, news headlines, etc. while on the go but proper web browsing? Nope.

But that’s not really their fault. It wasn’t until recently that we’ve seen phones good enough, with proper power to be able to view full web pages. WAP was never going to be huge, no-one was going to put a lot of money into it because I think everyone wanted more. They knew eventually these devices would come along and WAP will become essentially obsolete to all but the most basic tasks. I can see the purpose of WAP changing in the future but not doing the same job it does now.

So now we have it. Well actually we’ve had it for a long time with phones like the n95 etc. but now we have a phone that the mainstream media will pick up on. And I’ll be picking mine up on Friday.