new scouts.ie website

Before I begin, this isn't a dig at anyone in particular. This is me talking about Scouting Ireland. I'll also state that I'm not perfect nor is neting I do!

Scouting Ireland relaunched their new Scouts.ie website yesterday. This new website will be the public facing, what's scouts about and how do I join for the public to view and get information. This website has also been finished for the last number of weeks, waiting a whole big unveiling at a Group Leaders conference this weekend. So they should be well prepared for their 16:15 launch, which eventually went live at 16:45ish.

I have seen many new websites go live, been involved in many go lives and even had the pleasure of testing, breaking and proofing website before launch. Standard practice, get people to test and look over your website, usability test etc etc. It seems that there wasn't many people left into the inner circle of testing this new website. I will go through some of the things I came up with on a 30 minute quick look through the site last night:

Typos typos everywhere

I found a total of 25 typos on a website that contains about 30 pages. In no particular order:

1 & 2 - On the National Management Committee page.

3 to 6 - On the Professional Staff page.

7 - On the Parental Information page.

8 & 9 - On the Campsite Locator page.

10 - On the homepage page.

11 & 12 - On the Join Today page.

13 to 15 - On the History of Scouting Ireland page.

16 & 17 - On the One Programme page.

18 - On the Cub Scouts page.

19 - On the Scouts page.

20 & 21 - On the Venture Scouts page. 

22 & 23 - On the Benefits of Join page in the Leaders section. 

24 & 25 - On the Why become a Leader page. 

Broken / Formatting Errors

Here are some of the things that I found didn't work as expected or there was a formatting issue

1. That Huge Banner doesn't link correctly. On the home page it links correctly to Beavers, Cubs and Scouts but click on the Ventures Banner and your directed to Rovers and click on the Rovers links to Leaders. The Leaders Banner is usually the first one that loads and it doesn't link anywhere. Also If you miss the banner, there is no way to go back, you have to wait until it goes around again.

On any section page, for example Venture Scouts, the banner rotates with different Venture Scout images and click to find out more (Why would I want to click when I'm on the page?), but they say Ventures and then link to the other sections, Beavers Cubs etc..

2. Section or Recent News. Every section page, Beavers to Leaders has their own Recent news box, which should contain news for that section. In this example, Cub scout news contains Venture Scout news. There is also a Read more Section News, which should bring you to loads of other Cub Scout News, but it fails and just brings you to the article about Challenge 2010.
Ok, there is a lack of news as the site just launched, but there could be a place holder Cub news for their section?

3. Formatting in Other Links. Again, a little formatting hiccup that should have been picked up straight away.

4. Contact Page. This is perhaps the worst designed page on the site. First off they seem to want to SHOUT about GROUP and CHILD PROTECTION POLICIES. Then there is a nice map, but no location placed on it. Sure National Office is somewhere there, but where? Then I only noticed it out of the corner of my eye, there is a contact form (with an missing image). There was no mention of filling out a form on the page, it is just there!

5. Group Locator page. When you click on a group, you get a nice balloon popping up with details of the group. It is however butt ugly with scroll bars. Format it correctly please!

Final Thoughts

On the design of the site, I think the banner is too big, the duplicating of the groups and ages on the main page takes up far too much space. There is no RSS for the latest news and no social media integration (HUGE opportunity missed here). I believe the correct term is Scouters not Leaders as National Office has drilled up for the past few years, but decided to let it slide on their national website. 

Ok, it is a website for the general public and we will have to wait until next Wednesday to see the amazing my.scouts.ie website for actual members to use. Overall it does its job but there is a lot of really bad mistakes. I've been trying to look at it in the mind of a potential youth member or parent and hopefully it will increase members and raise the profile of Scouting.

avoid ryanairs credit card fees

Mr. O'Leary will love me for this but I just booked a flight and saved paying the 5euro each way/per person charge for using my credit card. It is simple and here is how:

1. Head over to entropay.com and sign up. Create a virtural card and leave it at that for the moment.
2. Start booking your Ryanair flight.
3. Don't add any extra's or bags, just pay for the flight and the web check in fee of 5euro each way/per person.
4. When you get to the payment screen, select Visa Electron and watch as the total doesn't increase!
5. Head back over to EntroPay and load your card with the required amount, down to the cent. You will be charged a loading fee, but I will talk about that below*
6. Copy the details of your new virtural card and paste them into the Ryanair website where they ask you for your Visa Electron Card (I used my own address).
7. Click Pay!
8. Once the flight is confirmed go back to the main Ryanair homepage and click manage your booking using Option 3. You can then choose to add more bags or extras. You can use your main Credit Card now as it won't be charged the 5euro handling fee!

*EntroPay charge a fee of 4.95% to load the card. Booking your flight without bags etc will cut down the EntroPay charge as it is a percentage of the amount you are loading. You can pay for the bags with your normal credit card without any fees once the flight is booked.

Please note, this method is only beneficial if the cost of the flight and online check-in is under 202euro per person (404euro for two people etc..), mine was 77.32euro. I believe my maths is sound. Here is what I just paid for my flight using EntroPay:

I know it is only a 6.17euro saving, but because it is Ryanair it is even more sweeter!

On a side note, it has been a long time since a post here, but there have been many over on tumblr! I am also in a position to talk once again about the Amazing Teaching Council of Ireland.... but that's another post!

kisc gmail gadget

If you loved the Kandersteg International Scout Centre Webcam Gadget for iGoogle as much as they did in Switzerland to even mention me on their webcam page:

NEW: ADD THE KISC WEBCAM TO YOUR iGOOGLE PAGES!

Use this fantastic widget to keep an eye at the Centre from your own personalized Google site! To insert the KISC Webcam to your iGoogle, click here! (thanks Darran for creating this widget!).

Well the you will love this! (Thanks for the kudos too!)

K.I.S.C. Webcam in your Gmail!

As you can see, a little version of the Webcam right there in your Gmail, which I have open way more than iGoogle! So here is the step by step guide on how to add it:

1. Click on Gmail Labs in Settings
   
2. Scroll the the bottom and enable: Add any gadget by URL
   
3. Click Save
   
4. Click on Gadgets in Settings
   
5. Paste in the address for the gadget:

http://darranc.googlepages.com/gkiscam.xml

That's it! If you want to move it around, like above chat, go back into Labs and enable: Navbar drag and drop.

Met Éireann Gadget
On the topic of Gmail Gadgets, Peter created a nice Met Éireann Gadget to keep track of the weather!

Add this line to the Gadgets page:
http://www.highonsnow.com/metgadget/metgadget160.xml

dell laptop repair

Yesterday, the graphics card on my laptop went again for the second time. I bought it in September 2007 and I got 1 year next day on site repair and 2 years complete collect and return repair.

Last June I had a similar problem and it was fixed the next day by an engineer who came around to the house and replaced the motherboard. Great stuff!

This time around I’m not covered by the on site repair. So I rang support and went along with the various checks they did over the phone. He then said he would send an engineer out to repair it. Great stuff again I thought! So he booked me an engineer for Tuesday.

Photo owned by refeia (cc)

Today I got a phone call from Dell and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hello
Dell: Hello Mr. Crowley. This is [Subject Name Here] from Dell.
Me: Hi. How’s it going?
Dell: Good. I’m wondering if you are willing to have your laptop sent to us for repair?
Me: Didn’t you organise an Engineer to come tomorrow and fix it at my home tomorrow?
Dell: Yes we did. But it looks like your warranty doesn’t cover the next day on site call.
Me: How long would it take to get my laptop repaired if I sent it to you?
Dell: About 5 working days.
Me: So I could have it fixed tomorrow or wait 5 more days?
Dell: Yes. We would prefer if you sent it to us.
Me: Right. I prefer the engineer to come tomorrow.
Dell: Ok. You are aware in future you are only covered by our collect and return service.
Me: I know. That’s why I was surprised you were sending someone tomorrow.
Dell: Ok. Thank you Mr. Crowley.
Me: Thank you, bye now!

Score one me not Dell :-)

kc's queue cam

Following on from the KISC webcam gadget I made for iGoogle, (which can be found here) I made a similar one for the K.C's Queue Cam.

I know how lazy people are when it comes to things:

• Finding the K.C's site and webcam page
• Getting the address of the webcam image
• Search for a webcam gadget to allow you to put in the address
• Adding that to your Google homepage
• Then edit it so it shows the KC's Queue Cam

So i've done all the hard work for you. With this gadget you can add it directly to your iGoogle page or to your own site/blog. Enjoy!

eircom ups my broadband

Eircom finally upgraded my broadband speed!

According to my Router it should be: 3072/384 (kbps)
What I'm getting from SpeedTest.net is only 2633/314 (kbps)
I'll test it again in the dead of night.

That took long enough to get upgraded!

twitter counter

I had a look at Twitter Counter to see how many people follow me. It gives you stats over time but what is better is that it gives your a FeedBurner style button you can put on your website showing the amount of people subscribing!

My FeedBurner:
My Twitter:


And here is the leaderboard for some of the RTÉ Twitter bots:

RTÉ News

RTÉ Business

RTÉ Sport

RTÉ Soccer

RTÉ GAA

RTÉ Rudgy

I also made a bot/account a while ago to put Twitter Feed through it's paces. Bosca (Irish for Box) just pulls any Irish Blog or News and every 30 minutes publishes 5 new stories. In the last 5 months it had updated itself over 24,000 times!

Bosca

And any Brian Cowen news follow Biffo :-)

iphone prices worldwide

With the release of the new iPhone world wide on Friday, I have been contemplating should I get one. Afterall my old phone is getting a bit dated!

The offers here in Ireland from o2 are pretty shite to be honest. A €45, 18 month contract and pay €169 for the 8GB model up front! So I started to look online at the other countries offers to see was everyone else getting screwed, and the answer is yes.

I've gotten prices from USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, Mexico, Denmark, Norway, Finland, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. This is the 8GB model of an iPhone on the smallest and cheapest contract. You can see a summary below and a break down of each country on my Flickr Photostream.

Some things I've noticed:

• Switzerland is the cheapest place to buy a contract-less iPhone
• Belgium is selling unlocked iPhones with no contract
• Canada has the worst deal, with a 3 year contract
• After Belgium there is Denmark with a 6 month and Norway for 12 month contact

Data-wise:

• The Netherlands, UK and USA offer unlimited data
• Sweden, Norway, Mexico and Finland only have 100MB per month
• Ireland and Switzerland isn't doing too bad with 1GB per month

Price-wise:

• Per month: Mexico, Germany and The Netherlands are all under €30
• Ireland is up there with The USA, Norway and Denmark with most expensive monthly contact
• At the end of the contact, Canada, USA, New Zealand and Ireland are most expensive

You have to take what you get from the contract (datawise, free minutes, sms) with what your going to be paying. Obviously when you live in one country it would not make sense to buy a contact for another country.

All currency conversions done via xe.com. I couldnt translate/understand Italy, Hong Kong or Japan. There is no word from Australia, Spain, Portugal or Austria.

One last bit of information. The i in the iPhone means Internet, as it does it iMac. That holds true in the USA & UK as you can use it as an Internet Phone. It is a pitty that other countries put a cap on how much you can use the Internet on it. o2 here in Ireland gives you no indication of your monthly download and if you reached or exceeded your limit of 1GB.

I found it intresting to see the wide differences around the world. I am considering getting the unlocked Beligan iPhone or waiting to see what the prices for unlocked one sell on eBay for. I'm not sure what i'm going to do yet. Lets see how the launch goes 1st!

google suggests... fail

On searching for "I can't speak French so I let the funky music do the talking" on Google I get a nice Did you mean: suggestion.

I did think the lyrics were "so I let" not "to I get" so I clicked on to see what the results would be.

Fail. They found none!

You would think they would check to see if there was any result before posting a suggestion, making me look like I was wrong!

free student hosting

Digiweb are offering free hosting and domain name to 3rd Level Students in Ireland.

Show off your creative side with your very own website, create a design portfolio, publish your online photo gallery, develop your own web projects or simply set up your own personalised email address with our great website offer.

Website hosting for 1 year - €48.38
Domain name .com/.net/.org - €8.45
Total Free: €56.83

Sign up here: digiweb.ie/studentoffer

I'm still waiting for my account details to come in. Also make sure you read the terms and conditions!

future posts

Finally Blogger has gotten off their asses and introduced Scheduled Posts!

I can now set a time in the future I wish my post to be published and when that time comes, it will go live!

Yes, I know WordPress has had this feature a long time, but now the Blogger platform has secured I stay here a little while longer!

P.S. I should be in the Pub when this is Published!

flickr goodies

Today Flickr released two new things!

First is their new Uploadr application. Nice design and finally allowing you to edit titles and descriptions before you upload!

The second new feature (for pro accounts only) is Stats (finally)!

Be enthralled by graphs and chats!
Learn which of your photos are popular today, this week, or over all time
Discover where your visitors are coming from
See how they found you
Thrill at a helpful breakdown of your photos.

Apparently it takes a little while to dig up the numbers for my account, so I have to check back tomorrow and things should be ready then!

blogs in plain english

Another excellent Common Craft video. This time it's Blogs in Plain English!!



Click Play to watch!

my delusional outlet

Found this comic via Nelson's weblog, I liked the analogy!

[Blogs] provide their frustrated creator with the delusional outlet of being a published author, sort of like how the prison warden lets the psychotic inmate scribble "poetry" on the cell wall so he doesn't beat his bunkmate with a toilet seat.

I've also found a way to subscribe to Dilbert and others via RSS! Check out Tapestry Comics! No more emails for me.

On the subject of Dilbert, Boo-urns to Scott Adams for stopping his full RSS feed. Pitty about him, not making as much advertising as he hoped, how about putting ads in his feed?! One way not to win over your readers is to stop your full RSS content feed. I can't believe he is actually crying blogging less because:

Readership of The Dilbert Blog is growing rapidly, but at about the same rate people figure out how to use RSS feeds to get the content without the ads. So there’s no longer a correlation between how hard I work and the ad income I earn. It topped out at “trivial,” even while the audience grew to substantial.

Grow up! Give us full RSS ya cry baby!

stickers djpc vectors

Worst Title Ever! This is just a quick update.

1. If you want a "Far Too Much Bertie" Sticker just email FarTooMuchBertie@gmail.com and Kevin will send you on one!

via Donncha.

2. My friend Conor has a website that I think deserves a mention. I thought I did this before, but after a search it turns out I only mentioned Conor a few times and not his site. Sorry!

The site got a face lift and I must say is looking rather nice! Then again, I was never a fan of the old version! So here for you Conor is a Love Link!

http://www.conordjpc.com/

3. I also found this great tool online (can't remember where tho) and I've been playing with for the last few days and think it's great.. Vector Magic!

It converts any image into a Vector. Very clever and useful if you work with logos or anything!

jamboree video

With a break to this weeks Science Week Ireland posts, I just have a video to show you.

Yesterday I saw a short film about Scouting Ireland and the Irish Scout Jamboree next summer. It went down really well at the AGM with the parents (it could of been about 2 or 3 minutes shorter tho!) I got the DVD last night and *cough* VOB2MPG *cough* Google Video *cough* and found it online! :-D [too big for YouTube]



Click Play to watch. If you look close enough you can see Robin!

ultimate gadget: n95

Todays Science Week Ireland Question:

What’s the next gadget that you want to buy?

It has to be the Nokia N95. It is Nokia's flagship smart phone that as so many thing including:

• Integrated GPS navigation
• Installed Maps application covering over 100 countries.
• 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• 2 megapixels more than my current camera.
• Multimedia player
• MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, M4A and Realplayer.
  
• WLAN Wi-Fi
• That's right, surf the Internet over WiFi!

So what about price. You can get it on Vodafone Ready to Go for €599 with €80 call credit, so really only €519. What if you were going to buy all these other devices individually?

• For the quad band, 3g smart phone with all the bells and whistles this one has like bluetooth and wireless Internet access, you will be paying about €250 at least and that is a low guess.
• A 5 megapixel point and shoot camera with the Carl Zeiss optics will be about €200.
• As for the multimedia player, the phone supports up to a 2GB microSD card, and you get a 1GB one with Vodafone. A 1GB iPod shuffle will knock you €79 and that doesn't even include video playback or the FM radio Nokia squeezed in there!
• Then there is the GPS navigation. The crown jewel in the phone! A stand alone version of this would be about €300, and this phone isn't like those stand alone ones, you can install whatever software you want! If you don't like the mapping system they use, get another one! You can't do that with your tom tom's what whatever!

So to add all that up; €250 (phone) + €200 (camera) €79 (basic mp3 player) + €300 (GPS) = €829

You get all this in one device for €519. So that is the device I would want to buy next!

Then again, you could always just wait for the next big thing from Nokia, but won't there be something after that too?

free energy

Todays Science Week Ireland Question:

What invention do you want to see most in the future?

Free Energy.

As a student, I love stuff for free, and I'm guessing it's not just students like free things. Altho I'm sure other people won't just take thing that are free, just because they are free like us students.

Moving back on topic, I would like to see a lot more free energy in the future. I want to see everything from mobile phones to cars to cities powered by free energy. No longer relying on burning fossil fuel, polluting the planet or invading countries to meet our growing energy needs.

By free energy I don't mind what form it is in, it could be just making use of renewable sources and actually coming up with something that works and appeals to the mass market or there is the other crazy way of going about getting free energy. You may of heard about Steorn?

Steorn are a Dublin based company that hit the media with their announcement of a free energy technology. Long story short, in 2006 they couldn't demonstrate the technology. In December they announced that they have a jury who will validate their claim. This summer they were supposed to give a demonstration but canceled due to "technical difficulties". They results of the jury will be announced by the end of the year, but I'm not going to hold my breath!

There is a Free energy suppression conspiracy theory!

Advanced technology which would allow us to better meet our energy needs exists today but is being suppressed by special interest groups to whom the status quo is advantageous.

Even tho I love my fair share of conspiracy theories, I hope this is not true. Some day we will have to address the issue of energy production, where we get it from and how we use it and hopefully we will have an invention what will produce free energy that we can all carry around with us or have in our homes!

all hail vhs

Its Science Week Ireland this week and they have a little blog post competition (tip of the hat to Damien)! Each day has a different question and todays one is:

What was the favourite invention from your childhood?

After thinking long and hard all day I came up with what I think is the best invention from my childhood. It has to be VHS, cassettes and the player! (That's Video Home System or just videos to some of you!)

Altho after doing a bit of research for this post, it turns out VHS was invented 6 years before I was born in 1976. But then again I don't think VHS players were readily available till the mid-80's as the Betamax/VHS war was only just about over when I was born in '82.

I can still remember two films that we were allowed rent, and we rented them many times. First was Santa Claus: The Movie and the other was Zig and Zag's: Nothing to do with Toast! We didn't mind one bit that we saw them before and could probably could recite the entire movie from heart, but back then there wasn't many children's films out.

We probably got to see these once in a blue moon because we didn't have a VHS player. We either had to rent one from the video store or borrow one but I didn't mind, I got to see Zig and Zag 3 times in a row!!

Later on, I think that VHS had a huge impact on the way we spent out time and our habits. A trip to the video store was nearly a weekly occurrence (with the amount of TV channels we had, you could count on one hand) and we got to bring the big screen into our home and watch films that we were not able to see in the cinema.

The best thing about VHS has to be the possibility to record TV. No longer were we slaves to the program schedulers! We were liberated and free to go about and live our own lives and watch TV as we pleased! Even to this day you can get a VHS player to record your favourite programs!!

Long Live VHS!



Zig and Zag!

free microsoft software

Microsoft are allowing you to download Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition for free!

All you have to do is head over to ImagineCup.com and sign up for the competition. You are supposed to be a student (which they don't check...) and there is no pressure to enter the competition! Sign up, download and enjoy! All legit!

The visual studio bundle includes:

Microsoft Visual Basic 2005
Microsoft Visual C# 2005
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005
Microsoft Visual J# 2005
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Applications
Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005
Microsoft Web Application Projects 2005
Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005

You can also download these other full versions too!! For Free!

• Visual SourceSafe 2005
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Expression Web