Dan Price’s blog
Weblog of a cyber-geek

I site I managed to find recently through Google was the Web 2.0 validator.

For those unacquainted with the term, “web 2.0″ is a term used to describe the new internet, following the recovery after the .com crash of the late 90s and early 2000s. The only problem is that no-one actually knows exactly what “web 2.0″ really means - some people think it’s about design, others about new technology (i.e. AJAX), community-based websites or a mix of them all. It’s simply become a buzzword and there are a number of running jokes in the tech industry about it.

Back on track, the web 2.0 validator tells you whether you’re site is 2.0 or not! In their own words: “we’re the dot in web 2.0″!

This sites results are as follows:

The score for http://www.danlprice.co.uk is 10 out of 66

• Uses Cascading Style Sheets? Yes!
• Attempts to be XHTML Strict ? Yes!
• Actually mentions Web 2.0 ? Yes!
• Uses Semantic Markup? Yes!
• Refers to web2.0validator ? Yes! (Woohoo!)
• Uses the “blink” tag? Yes!
• Appears to have Adsense ? Yes!

Wow, I’m so 2.0….

“Conservatipedia” sounds just like another web 2.0 site jumping on the bandwagon, and with such a name would obviously be targeted towards a right wing audience. The name simply suggests that it’s a right wing site about politics, perhaps discussing the different ideologies on this side of the political spectrum.

However, if you actually go over to this site, you quickly realise this isn’t a place for moderate Conservatives to air their views, but for far right wing Conservatives, perhaps even Fascists, to indoctrinate their viewing audience with absurd ideas about a number of topics. (more…)

A friend recently introduced me to MacHeist, a bundle of shareware that is released every year for Mac users. The bundles dramatically cut the cost of purchasing each application individually and the several of the applications are second to none.

This year it’s cost just $49 (approximately £25) which is a bargain compared to over $300 that might be spent if you purchased all of the software on it’s own. I highly recommend this to other Mac users!

Note that it’s only available for up to 5000 bundle downloads and afterwards it closes - don’t miss the deadline!

Student governor results

I’m sure you’ve all been eagerly anticipating the announcements of the results of the student governor elections that I stood for at my college - if you haven’t, then I’ll announce them anyway. The waiting is over!

The result: victory!

Yep I won the student governor elections for the college so now comes the real part - actually doing the hard work.

Open Source search

I’m sure you’ve at least heard of this, if not been bombarded with it already. Wikia Search, currently in Alpha, is the hot news right now. It’s attracted a lot of criticism by bloggers and the tech industry however. The concept of the site is that it is open source, meaning that the code and algorithms behind the search engine can be viewed by anyone. This is a clear contrast to Google which keeps a lot of the information regarding it’s algorithms secret.

The idea does seem to be jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon a bit and I’m unsure whether it will catch on among the non-techie crowd who make up the majority of web users. However, if the site can prove that it’s search results are of a better quality to Google (which is asking a lot), then it may be able to compete successfully with the giants (Yahoo, Ask, MSN as well as Google).

Similar to the “Noah takes a photo for 6 years”, apart from this time it’s Homer instead. Quite funny

Half of the people on TV last night didn’t have any when asked - I still feel I might as well write a resolution that I’ll break after a few weeks since that’s just the good old tradition of New Years Resolutions.

Well, mine are:

1. Complete web site projects that I start, and try to do it as promptly as possible rather than letting them go on forever with countless redesigns……
2. Try to keep the uptime of my server above 99.9% every month (difficult considering several recent outages involving the firewall….ummm best not to mention all that!)
3. Work harder at college generally and attain merits in all topics (bit of a nerdy one that is!)
4. Learn PHP to an advanced level and take a look at Javascript.

That’s it folks!