Dan Price’s blog
Weblog of a cyber-geek

As some people will know, I’m a moderator at Webmaster-Talk, a comprehensive webmaster forum. Recently, Earners Forum, an online community for individuals who were earning money online, merged with Webmaster-Talk. The merge will mean new content for Webmaster-Talk, lots of new members and masses of new expertise that we didn’t have before.

The forum has now opened a celebratory contest with prizes including a Macbook Air, iPod touch and a Nintendo DS. 5 lucky winners will get these prizes by collecting the most points - you get 10 for just signing up, 2 per post and an incredible 200 for submitting articles.

The contest will be open for another 32 days, after which 5 winners will be announced. Good luck!

According to a new study referenced in a BBC article, yes.

“We have strong perceptions about first names and associate them with success, luck and attractiveness, according to new research. And our perceptions can have very real consequences in everyday life.”

I find it quite fascinating, and I would certain believe such a statement. I know that I often associate names with stereotypes and this quite possibly has an effect on the decisions I make therefore influencing someone else’s life and changing their future.

I’d be quite interested to know where my name comes on the list (not that it would change anything though!)

Windows XP may be a 7 year old operating system but it is still widely used, and often preferred, to Windows Vista. However, Microsoft have still decided that they will cease all sales of the OS (Operating System) on June 30th and officially stop support sometime after this date.

While it is inevitable that Windows users will have to upgrade sooner or later, XP has been on the whole a user friendly, compatible OS that has remained incredibly versatile for it’s age. In my opinion, Microsoft should continue to sell Windows XP for users that prefer it, but put emphasis on selling Windows Vista and preloading most systems with it, just as it is doing at the moment.

If you agree, then sign the Save XP petition at InfoWorld!

If you live in the UK, then it’s hard to miss the controversy that the Archbishop of Canterbury has caused by what he said on BBC Radio a couple of days away. For the uninformed, the Archbishop said that he thought it was “unavoidable” that some aspects of Sharia (Islamic) law were adopted here in the UK to “retain social cohesion”. Of course, just about all parties in parliament have jumped on the bandwagon, distancing themselves from his comments with some even calling for him to resign.

As per usual, the BNP (British National Party), a bunch of racist scum, are having a field day purposely misinterpreting and broadcasting his remarks simple to gain further support for their Neo-Nazi policies.

Sharia law is a practical code of ethics/law that some Islamic countries use to live out Islam in their daily life. On the whole, it gets bad press because it doesn’t treat women as equal to men and it even supports public executions and whippings. (more…)

Well it’s something I definitely missed, but Amazon has announced that it’s DRM-free music store is going global this year. This is of course fantastic news for regular computer users like you and I!

Amazon has got a number of major labels involved including EMI, which is likely going to cause a massive headache for the likes of iTunes, Napster, Yahoo Music and other download services that rely on DRM (Digital Rights Management) to theoretically stop users from sharing music illegally. DRM however is widely criticised because it also stops the user from moving music between his own devices - i.e. from one computer to another, or between different MP3 players and computers.

Is this an end to DRM entirely? We’ll have to wait and see

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….

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).

It’s official. YouTube is now so popular, that even Her Royal Highness, the Queen of the United Kingdom has got a YouTube channel. Both old and new footage (including this years Christmas speech) has been uploaded.

I was told once that on average, we use 1% of our brains - that seems ridiculous now I’ve read this BBC News article saying that the belief we use on 10% of our brains is untrue - how could I have believed we use 1%?!

Anyway, the article follows a recent study to discover the truths behind a number of medical myths. These include the myth that reading in poor light damages eyesight (which seems a bit logical it has to be said) and that hair and nails grow after death (who would even be watching then?!). Well worth a read.

Inactivity - I’ll start off by apologizing for the long period of inactivity since my previous post. This is mostly due to a lack of enthusiasm to do anything worthwhile, serious boredom, a hectic few weeks at college and the transition to a new server for my hosting company. Anyway, I hope I’ll be able to blog a bit more now as college winds down.

Programming - I’ve been busy doing a bit of programming recently at college for the course. We’ve focused on Visual Basic.NET since it’s supposedly one of the easiest languages to learn and fairly easy to code in (since you don’t need to focus on hand-coding the GUI). (more…)