Category Archives: Me

My first WordPress plugin!

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So I released my first WordPress plugin recently called ‘Broadcast MU‘ – Thanks Luke!

Its actually for WordPress MU (Multi-user) and it allows you to post the same post to multiple blogs, you can read up more on it here.

I hope people find it useful and it is a great opportunity for me to learn more about PHP and WordPress MU, it was developed because there was no similar plugin available for WPMU and we needed it for GDNM.org a site I have been managing for UCA Epsom’s Graphic Design: New Media and Graphic Design courses/departments.

Digg.com

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This is my first, in a series of posts towards my dissertation.

Digg is a company that was created by founder Kevin Rose, as an experiment. However its not the company which is important but the website digg.com. Since late 2004 early 2005 the site has had continual development and seen massive expansion, and is one of the biggest technology news sites on the Internet today.

Digg is often referred to as a social news website or social bookmarking website and these descriptions are accurate. The website is a place where visitors can submit stories on any subject for others to view. Other visitors can then view the title and description, and visit the linked site, and if they like it they can “dig” the story. Eventually when a story has enough digs it will be promoted to the front page of the website so other visitors can see the most popular stories first.

Over time the site has grown in popularity and traffic to linked sites has also grown with it. This has led to the term “the digg effect”, when a story is promoted to the front page the linked website receives intense amounts of traffic until the point where the web server crashes, or the web hosts closes the site because of high bandwidth use.

In addition other phrases such as “bury”, “dupe”, and “dugg”.

  • Bury or buried – Is normally posted in the comments attached to a story when someone does not like the story, more recently the creators of the site have added functionality to actually bury or -1 the count against the story.
  • Dupe – Is short for duplicate, and is also posted in the comments attached to a story when somebody believes they have read the same story before on Digg.
  • Dugg –  This refers to one of two things either the person as does the story, or more likely that the website effected by the dig effect, that was mentioned before.

Over the last four years digg has continuously evolved, expanded, and its design has been refreshed many times and many new features have been added, but essentially its core assets remain the same, as a site where you can post comments, stories and now photos and videos, and allow other people to rate them.

The site has also expanded its categories of news from just technology related stories, it has now expanded to a fully fledged news site visitors can find information about world, business, science, gaming, lifestyle, entertainment, sports, and other news topics.

The site is almost 100% controlled by its visitors, with no need for administrators or moderators on the site. In fact on the one occasion where moderation was required due to a cease and desist order. Mass outrage followed and the site had to deal with continuous spamming of the disallowed content. Eventually Digg conceded and the article was about to be posted and it would seem that no further action has been taken against Digg.

Voice recognition

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Just a short post to let you know, I started using voice recognition software, and have to say it is fantastic, it is called MacSpeech Dictate. The last time I used a voice recognition application was several years ago, using IBM’s ViaVoice software and it was atrocious. While I’m sure not having a proper microphone may not have helped the software has definitely come on a long way.

I would highly recommend voice recognition software to anyone that uses the keyboard for long periods of time writing essays, dissertations, articles, newspapers, weblogs, and really anything that matter where you have to spend a long period time writing.

It does take some time to get used to punctuating your sentences for example you cannot simply pause to insert a comma, you have to say the word comma and it seems near impossible to actually say the word comma, unless you actually mean to insert a comma. I am told it becomes second nature after some time, and I have to agree so far.

In addition to receiving the software and a microphone, I also had some training, the training was by a lady called Alison Thompson who are highly rated the use of these software, although she had only used DragonDictate, on which the MacSpeech Dictate software was based on.

Finally, I find it amazing how easy it is to write massive amounts such as this post without even realising it, it will definitely make the 6000 word dissertation and easy walk in the park, if I get my research nailed and have a good writing plan.

Dissertation Time

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As part of my degree at the University for the creative arts – Epsom I am required to complete a 6,000 word dissertation on the subject of my choice, and being dyslexic this is going to prove quite a challenge so I have decided to start early. My skill support lecturer, Ray has suggested that I start by writing 100 to 200 words each day on my chosen subject.

The final decision on the topic has not been made however, I believe it will be along the lines of communication on the Internet past, present, and future including, photo and video sharing, social bookmarking, social networking, social news, virtual worlds, online forums and other forms of Internet media which allow multi-user communication and sharing of information.

That rather wordy list above may sound confusing but really it translates into the following…

  • Photo sharing – Flickr
  • Video sharing – YouTube
  • Social bookmarking – Delicious & Stumble Upon
  • Social networking – Myspace & Facebook
  • Social news sites – Digg
  • Virtual worlds – SecondLife & There
  • Online forums – Penny Arcade, Overclockers UK, etc…
Obviously it’s not enough to talk about what the sites are how they work and where they came from, I will need to analyse and investigate how people use these sites now and how the Internet communication has evolved since the invention of these sites known as Web 2.0 (excluding online forums which have obviously existed prior to what is known as Web 2.0).

Family news

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I didn’t post this initally but I am making an effort to blog regularly, so I wanted to say that my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, although it sounds serious at this point in time we are hoping for the best, she has stage one cancer, which was picked up at a screening very early so she has a very good prognosis as I understand.

She went in for an couple of biopsies and now has been in for an operation to remove the cancer and she is returning to hospital for an update on Tuesday, as it currently stands she will be going into hospital in Southampton every weekday for 5 weeks (25 times) for radiotherapy which will kill any cancer cells which were not caught by the operation.

With any luck this will be the end of it, she has been very lucky so far and we are all hoping this will continue, at this point in time there is no reason the expect she will need any chemotherapy or other drastic measures.

At the moment its a waiting game to see what they say on Tuesday and how the radiotherapy goes.

I love you mum and wish you all the best!!!