This is a sketch of a proposal for a new HTML element to simplify displaying maps on a website. I'd like your comments and criticisms before I submit it. This is born out of my frustration of using different JavaScript mapping solutions - my phone has a mapping app, why do I need to share […] Read More
Twitter have just released Periscope for Android. I'll do a full review of it later (tl;dr it's Qik with worse resolution) - but for now, I want to focus on the sign up process. You can only sign in with Twitter. That's fine, it's a Twitter product. So I pressed the sign-in button and this […] Read More
I have a (very minor and polite) disagreement with Matt Gemmel's argument against dates in URLs. Before I start, let me be very clear; your blog = your rules. If you want to write your URLs as a series of Emoji or in Klingon - go right ahead. There really is no such thing as […] Read More
tl;dr - If a mobile web browser recognises an Emoji, it should display it natively. If not, it should fall back to a supplied web font. Is this possible? When Android and iOS find Emoji in text, rather than display them as black-and-white fonts, they show them off in gorgeous colour. For example, the unicode […] Read More
Running a website is hard. Let me clarify - setting up a website is dead simple - keeping it running and updated is tricky. Now, for some of us, it doesn't really matter whether our sites live or die. But for big companies like McAfee it's not simple to switch off a site - especially […] Read More
Search Engine Optimisation is the (dark) art of getting a site to the top of Google's ranking algorithm. If you're in the business of selling decorations for ponds, you want your shop to be right at the top of the results when people search for "bespoke synthetic frog spawn." The problem is, there are lots […] Read More
In October, I was interviewed in Econsultancy about the BBC's new "responsive" website. I said: The BBC's mobile site is fairly responsive. If you view it on different sized phones and tablets it adapts quite well. But it is an entirely separate site from the main BBC news site. The BBC are doing device detection […] Read More
Image adaptation and resizing is a hot topic at the moment. With devices of varying screensize accessing your site, how do you ensure that the crappy 240*240 phone gets a reasonable experience while still making everything look gorgeous on the retina-busting iPad? One of the very first things we're taught in HTML school is that […] Read More
Updated! 2011-01-11 20:00 - see the response from the Metro. The Metro is a London-based UK newspaper national newspaper which is distributed in 33 cities across the UK. Around a year ago, I reviewed the Metro's mobile website. It wass a perfectly fine mobile site and I'm pleased to see that over the last 12 […] Read More
Two of the biggest "mass market" brands are using QR Codes in their advertising. ASDA - the UK arm of Walmart - and Martina Cole - one of the UK's best selling authors. Here's the poster in situ Here's a close up of the code It's a reasonable physical size and the information density isn't […] Read More