Under the covers
The companies, technologies and ideas that power the web.
Monday 7 July 2008, 7:20 AM
Back to blogging?
Haven't had much time for posting on the blog recently but hopefully that will change now that we've signed off the final bugs on our biggest project to date, launching a new parenting advice site for the NSPCC to supplement their “Your Family” magazine. It’s been a labour of love for sure (see my silicon.com column) and over a year in gestation but it’s live and working and looking great.
It’s a really clever mix of “Heat” styling but full of very high quality parenting advice all backed up by a team of experts at NSPCC. It’s a crowded market but the high level of trust endowed by the NSPCC brand should see us carve out a niche in the sector. We’ve got articles, videos, product reviews and loads of suggestions for family days out now that the summer is here.
Needless to say there are a large number of people to say thanks to for making my fist major site build a success. All the editorial and account management team at Redwood who write the content, NSPCC for the opportunity to do the project and the guys at Squiz who built the site on their open source MySource Matrix CMS.
In building the site we’ve invested heavily in the platform and hosting so that now we’re able to provide a fully hosted, enterprise level CMS. This is ideal for smaller publishers who want to get on-line without the expense of software licensing and hardware purchase. Look out for a further announcement about the launch of the “Compound Enterprise Platform” soon.
In the meantime, if your kids won’t eat their tea tonight or go to bed on time without a tantrum, take a look at www.yourfamily.org.uk and see where you’re going wrong...
Tuesday 27 May 2008, 10:54 AM
My worst nightmare
Being out on the road all the time has it's risks and my worst nightmare came true a couple of weeks ago.
My Sony Vaio laptop has performed flawlessly for more than 15 months despite being lugged around in a normal briefcase every single day and being left on virtually permanently when "docked" in my home office.
For a week or two it had been making a bit of a strange noise which I put down to a noisy fan. Then, one morning I got the "Blue screen of death". Booting in safe mode worked for a while and then another crash, and another, and another until it wouldn't even boot up at all. Seems like that noisy fan had caused the motherboard to overheat.
A call to Sony established that it was going to have to be returned to them by Courier and I'd have a 10-15 day wait for the repair to be completed. 10-15 days! Without the main tool of my job? Disaster!
I arranged for the courier to collect and set off for the local Sony store. I can't do my job without a PC and the salesman couldn't believe his luck when I virtually ran into the store and ordered the most expensive laptop they had in stock.
After a very long and protracted process to uninstall Vista (a 30 page Sony manual provided with the laptop!) and re-build the machine with XP, I was ready to restore my data. I blogged about remote backup services a few months ago and now came the acid test.
Mozy passed it with flying colours. My main project data was restored within 30 minutes and I was up and running. My last backup had been automatically scheduled and had run about 30 minutes before the laptop died so I lost no data at all.
Don't wait for it to happen to you, it's so easy to think it will never happen but hardware goes wrong, especially laptops that are subjected to the worst conditions of any computer. There are lots of backup options out there now and cost very little to subscribe to.
Oh, and even better advice is that when your PC starts making a funny noise, get it investigated sooner rather than later...
Sunday 13 January 2008, 9:41 PM
Gadgets to make you look cool(ish)
One of the things about being on the road is the amount of additional equipment you inevitably end up carrying with you. Laptop power supply, USB cable for my Treo (yes I know I can synch with Bluetooth but the USB charges the phone too which saves another charger), USB keys, modem cables (!) etc.
I'm an avid user of VOIP, I have a Skype In number for my business and use it on a daily basis but have always felt a little self conscious about wearing an earpiece or headset in public as (apologies to all those that do use these) I've always felt I looked like a bit of an idiot.
I also hate with a passion my Vaio "strokepad". It's not as bad as the IBM (Lenovo) "nipple" but for some reason I just can't get on with them. So I've always carried a small Kensington travel mouse with me when travelling.
Now I've killed the proverbial two birds with a mouse. Well a mouse-phone to be precise. For the last few months I've been using the fantastic Sony Vaio Mouse Talk Mouse and Internet Phone. It does exactly what it says on the tin (unlike most Sony product naming) and doubles as a Mouse and VOIP phone.
So now, I still feel like a bit of a fool when I get an incoming call, and I obviously have to use that damned strokepad whilst on the phone, but it certainly turns a few heads when I flip open my mouse and start talking into it!
Sunday 6 January 2008, 6:18 PM
Byte Night update
Now all the beans have been counted and totals added up, the great news is that we broke the £400,000 barrier for monies raised by the participants of this year's Byte Night event.
The most amazing thing of all is that with the dedication of the board, sponsors and NCH, the costs of staging the event worked out at less than 10% of the total.
Byte Night Local contributed around £40,000 with satellite events in Reading and Essex and we'll be pushing hard to expand on this next year.
A big thanks to all the teams involved and we're already looking forward to next year's event so be sure to put the 3rd October in your diary now
Saturday 20 October 2007, 8:24 AM
Byte Night breaks all records
This year's Byte Night was the most successful yet with over £340,000 pounds raised by around 270 people from the IT industry sleeping out for the charity NCH.
We were in good company with Martin Linton, MP for Battersea, Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes, actresses Lindsey Coulson and Jenny Agutter, Trinny Woodall critiqued our pyjamas and Sian Lloyd provided a weather report on the evening.
As predicted by Sian, the weather was kind to us with no rain and a pretty mild night for October and the Compound Media team managed to raise more than £4,000 with a last minute surge in donations meaning we beat our target.
I want to say a big thank you to the team and to all our sponsors who gave so generously, we're already planning how to raise even more next year...
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