Dan Price’s blog
Weblog of a cyber-geek

McAfee SiteAdvisor is something I couldn’t surf without these days. The free software works as a plugin to Internet Explorer (7) and Firefox, highlighting the results of searches from Google and other major search engines, and also displaying a toolbar when you are on a website, showing whether the site is safe or not.

Sites are tested by McAfee SiteAdvisor staff based on download tests, possible phishing scams, email spam, popups and browser exploits. Members are also welcome to sign up for free to assess sites themselves and post comments about how reliable/safe sites are based on their own experiences. (more…)

That’s the claim by Steven Frank in his article on the subject. OK so he’s even more of a Mac-addict than myself and he’s completely biased on the subject - this quote says it all:

“It’s important for me as a Mac developer to use Windows once in a while, because it’s a fantastic lesson on how do absolutely everything wrong when designing software.”

Despite this, the article is worth a read, for both Mac and Windows fans - Mac fans to nod “I agree” at the end of every line of the rant, Windows fans to desperately disagree with every dig he makes against their beloved virus-infested, crash-prone pile of junk. Anyway…. (more…)

For the second time in just a few months, Blue Peter, a British children’s TV programme, has again publicly embarrassed itself and the BBC as a whole.

The TV programme has been around for nearly 50 years and has long been viewed as a very reliable and respectable show, but it recently came under scrutiny when it fixed a phone-in competition an awarded the prize live to a passing child in the studio. When this came to light, the BBC was criticised and was forced to pay £50,000 by the regulator of telecommunications, OFCOM. (more…)

I’m going to keep this blog post fairly short today but I hope I’ll be able to entertain you So….

Is this web site the worst one ever? If not, it comes fairly close!

It’s the combination of the terrible background music, the flashing light under the header; the poor contrast between the red writing and the background; the background itself; the almost unreadable navigation bar; the flashing icons at the bottom; the poorly integrated Yahoo stuff and last but not least, the slow loading times. In fact, if you actually take a look at the other pages, say the “Artists” page, you get even more flashing junk to irritate you! (more…)

I was once a staunch supporter of Windows - I stood up for the brand against the better Apple Mac computers and the much cheaper Linux experience. More recently, my loyalties changed as I bought a Macbook and every use of my PC after that seemed slow, cumbersome and boring. After yesterday, I’ve had enough of Windows altogether!

I was part way through a game (for those of you who MUST know, it was Age of Empires 2 - not exactly a great game, but I don’t claim to be a gamer). Suddenly, the screen froze and before I knew it, the blue screen of death had flashed before my eyes, and then the PC restarted. This is was really random, but it has randomly restarted before a few times, so I just thought I’d have to wait the extremely slow 5 minutes for the computer to start up, and then restart the game. (more…)

Many web sites become unstuck with www and non-www redirecting - in some cases, they have even failed to set up the non-www version at all, but don’t have a redirect, leaving the visitor unsure whether the web site actually exists. In this short tutorial, I’ll tell you how to redirect the non-www address to the www address, and vice versa.

The non-www address is becoming increasingly used by web sites, as more and more advertise their site without the www. infront. For SEO purposes, it is best to choose to use either one or the other to get links to, rather than spreading the links over the 2, since some search engines, including Google, see the non-www site and the www site as 2 different web sites. (more…)

A recent thread on the Webmaster-Talk forums caused some hilarity (as all of my posts do naturally….), because of the following post:

Gullible Inks Inc. is looking for quality inks for reciprocal ink exchange.

If you have any inks, then email gullible@gullible.org.uk

Of course this is a way to catch a couple of spammers, who don’t seem to know their language/their business language (depending on their nationality) very well. I didn’t actually even mention “links”, but instead “ink exchange”, and if you thought there was something wrong with my l key, intelligent humans would notice the word “Gullible” has this in twice. (more…)

After deciding to get some traffic to my site soon, I posted a thread on the Webmaster-Talk forums.

Below is post:

I am looking to buy advertising space related to web hosting. I don’t want to buy this space where lots of other web hosts are also advertising though - your site can have Adsense and things, but preferably not banners or multiple text links. I’m willing to pay approximately £20-£30 ($40-$60) per month for the space.

If you own a web site which is related to hosting and has a reasonable amount of traffic, please PM me. I don’t want PM spam or link exchanges.

Lone behold, what do I get? PM spam about link exchanges from a lonely spammer:

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Some days, you just wake up and after a quick inbox check, you know it will be a spam day! Well that’s it’s like for me.

Hotmail spam is the worst. The junk mail filter is supposedly advanced and can sort out spam from real email. Not so for me. My hosting company, Whym Web Hosting, seems to have woken up on the wrong side of the spam filter, while annoying ‘confirmation’ emails bypass it on a daily basis. Is it just me, or do other people get these “Please confirm your flight to Hawaii” or emails from the “Confirmation Dept.”

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