my journal

So, been a while since the last time. I hate these types of posts but going do one anyway just to give an overall update...

I know I said that creating my own journal system would increase my blogging rate but, does not seemed to of help as of yet. I do have a ton of stuff I want to say, just I need some time and inspiration to get it done.

Since starting my first full-time job in the Web industry I seemed to have taken a back step to my evening online activities, well more of my laptop activities, still online using my iPhone. I have never spent all day at a computer then come home and spent the rest in front of another, and I took it hard to do it, maybe I suffered from some burn out. Maybe not.

In order to increase the activity around here I am changing my ways, even tho I never get in a way. I am going be changing the style of my site and the way I post. More of this will appear over time.

That reminds me I need to write a Feed for my site as well, so that if anyone is reading can follow in their favourite reeder application.

Joel Hughes is an Internet Strategist & speaker based in South Wales (UK). Some of you may have heard about him, or even follow him on twitter (@joel_Hughes). I recommend you do follow him and his blog if your interested in to social networking, and another person view on social networking. 

His latest blog post is about how he has gone about filtering his twitter stream, so he does not bore over tweet about certain topics some of his followers may not want. I recommend you go read his blog post about his solution. Note: this is not a solution for everyone but it's a very good option for the time being. I agree a lot with what he is doing and is proposing for others to do. Below is a copy of my comment, with my opinion on how twitter could implement a feature more appropriate for everyone.

Joel, another great post and I like your solution to a problem thats has started to appear more and more of late while using twitter. 

I can see what your trying to achieve, and like the solution, but find it to be more of a temp solution until twitter actually implement something (which is what you are probably doing it for).

The problem I have with this is that if everyone started to do this, people are going to struggle to keep track of all the shush accounts available, and when tweeting trying to remember all the account names to make sure you prefix your tweet with the right filter.

My proposed solution would be for twitter to implement a built in function for every user similar to the lists function but called something like filters, where each user is able to set their filters for their accounts, and when a user follows another user they get the option to select which filters to be allowed to be displayed in their timeline and which to hide. When posting tweets you get an extra option of which filter to assign the tweet to, this is then displayed in the small text under the user main tweet (web version). This aslo mean the user can still tweet 140 characters and does not have to remember all the shush accounts. 

With me now being a full time developer (Internet Industry), I do a lot of surfing the Internet looking at different website's in pretty much every sector around. This lead me to think about the quality of the sites out there. I don't know the percentages but I am pretty sure that the higher number is on poorly designed and developed sites. 

This is good as it gives us developers a job in creating a better site for them, thats if they finally see sense and actually call a (decent) design studio/ or freelancer to get their site redeveloped. 

So this lead me to a question that I started to ask myself over and over again while doing the research and long into the development of a clients site. As always we research the client, and their local opposition, and also look into national competitors to see what they are offering and what their sites look like, we usually look slightly further afield as well to get a feel for the sector and how people are pushing their message and information across. Some sites I came across are horrendous and should not even be online, and then there are the really nice ones that I wish I could produce, which I probably do, just you never quite see your work the way you see other (well I don't very often). 

The question: You are wanting my business, but you wont pay a professional to design your site!

For example, I was researching some sites the other week for Book Keepers and Accountants, and a majority of the sites I came across where horrible, out of date, poorly designed an gave me no confidence in the company, this lead me to think about my question. These businesses are online promoting their business and hoping to gain a few more customers out of it (you hope so anyway), but I thought to myself, why would I pay this business to look after my Books, if they are not willing to pay for a professional to design their site.

I might be wrong, but is that not how business works, company X is a professional book keeper, and company Y is a professional web developer, company Z is an professional electrician. In theory each of these business should each use each others services, as they are the professionals, but this does not seem to be the case with our industry (may be the same with our industry's), some businesses seem to think that someone in house could fire up dreamweaver and knock out a site in a day and hay presto, we are online. But would you start to re wire your house electrics? I know I wouldn't as its a fairly bit job and peoples lives could be put at risk. The same theory applies to book keeping, it may seem easy to do your books yourself, but why when you could save yourself time and money by just getting a professional to do it.

Have you ever though about this before? if not maybe you should, also are you one of those people who decides they can do things that really should be done by a professional, if you are, then why does your company deserve to have people to come to you for your services?

With a new release of Apple's iPhone operating system, and their release of an all new iPhone. I have taken some time to point out some of the new features available to existing iPhone users, which you may or may not know about. I am not detailing all of them, but merely the ones I have found interesting and useful. The following information is taken from my iPhone 3Gs 16GB, running iOS4 GM, things may vary depending on your set up.

Multi Task

As you may guess, I will start with what is probably the most talked about, and requested feature to be included in an iPhone and thats Multitasking. If you are like me it may take a while to find it, and the only reason I found out how to use it properly was when I went to use the camera by using a double click of the home button, (my double click preference set in Settings before iOS4 update) to realise it did not load the camera but activated the multi tasking feature.

Since Apple have released iOS4 there are mixed reviews about the double click home button for multi tasking as a lot of user had that option assigned already as a shortcut to certain applications. Once I had found out double clicking the home screen activated multi tasking, I went looking to see if they had replace the shortcut option from previous iOS versions to a different click strategy, and no they have not, its gone!

Camera

Another big update in iOS4 is the camera. Apple had obviously knew they would release an upgrade in the future. When I first got my iPhone 3Gs I was impressed with the ability to focus on different parts of pictures, and even more impressed with the ability to capture video, and then edit on the phone. You tend to get a bit of waste video when trying film a child. But then I realised that the focus feature was not available in the video capture, making for capture videos a bit average to poor with some slight out of focus frame on medium to fast moving subject. 

This has all been bumped up in iOS4, with the ability to zoom, and they have added the ability to focus when capturing video. 

Another feature within the camera app that I have only recently found out is the ability to view images by their type. ie. All, Photos, Videos. This feature is slightly hidden as its not available if you look at your photos through the photos app. You have to go through the camera app, then click the latest image in the bottom left, which brings up your last picture, tap on the photo and then press the camera roll button in top left, your will then see the album of taken photo's and videos, then from here you will see at the top a bar with four buttons, three aligned to the middle (All, Photos, Videos) and (Done) aligned top right. You can use the middle buttons to filter what is displayed.

Photos

In iOS4, there are a couple of minor UI tweaks and updates to note. The one you may notice first is once you have opened the photos app, there are now two option at the bottom of the screen. Albums and Places, Apple, have added some location based features, the default view is Albums, which is just the same as before. Where as the Places option is based on Geo tagging of your photo's. By clicking on Places you will be taken to a world map (using Google Maps) that has pins on, these pins represent where you have taken photo, click on a pin and it will tell you how many photo's were taken in the location.

Also in the photos app, a couple of small UI tweaks that may not be apparent to the average user. I only came across them when getting the screen shots ready for this post, as I decided to email the photo's to myself rather than mess about connecting my phone and pulling them off.

Open photos app, view a album, and in the top right you'll see a box outline with a arrow in, by click this you can now Select multiple photo's/videos, and perform multiple action. Share, Copy or Delete.

Mail

Yes we all know about the unified inbox, all your email account displayed as one, but also the option to view each separate, I love this new feature, due to having a couple of email account, making for a much easier and quicker way of dealing with multiple accounts.

The nice added feature I have come across within the mail app thats new to iOS4 is the ability to select the size of message you are send with attachments. Before mail used to just compress your image/video and send it for you.

But know you get the option on what quality you would like to send your attachments in. Its a handy feature for when you are on the move and don't have a WIFI or 3G signal you can opt to send the small file, or if you are willing to wait just hit Actual Size option.

Messages

Added the ability to view character count in your message. This is turned off by default, but to turn it on go to Settings > Messages > Character Count. 

Also spell check has been updated with mor ethan jus the auto completion feature, now even if you ignore the auto word from before, it will know if a word typed is spelt wrong. This feature is not just in SMS but throughout iOS4. So if you ignore the auto word feature the word will be displayed as you wrote it but with a red dotted line underneath (this has become the standard way of alerting the user of a spelling mistake).

If you now tap on the word that is underlined by a red dotted line, a selection of words will appear above, these are suggestions to the correct spelling of what you were trying to write. I've notexperienced a word that the spell check has not been able to change. So I guess the dictionary is up to date.The next feature that I am going to point out are not just in the messages app, but through out the entire iPhone, photo's have been taken from a SMS compose screen to show you an as example. The feature is Spell Check. When you type a word the normal auto spelling will appear as before, if you ignore the auto spelling and hit space and the word is not within the dictionary the word with be displayed with a red dotted line underneath telling you that it's spelt wrong, (this is become a standard to alert users of spelling mistakes). To correct your spelling mistake tap the word in question and above will appear some spelling suggestions either select the correct word or press back in the text area to ignore it. There does not seem to be a function where you are able to add spelling to the dictionary.

iPod

This is not a feature, but more of a UI update, that I would like to point out, not a hard one to miss but it's nice. The album view display has been updated as shown in the last photo.

So, after 2 years and 50 weeks. I leave my first ever full time employed job to begin another. The difference is that I am leaving one career to follow another. Well, actually I am leaving a career to follow my original career path, the one I actually wanted to do, and still want to do. 

The job which I am going to is what I trained for and spent 5 years in additional eduction for. 2 Years at college on a AVCE course, then I did 3 years at University on a BSc course. The college course was an all round course in Information and Communication, I then went on to a course aimed at one area of IT, being Internet and Multimedia, which was aimed at Web Design and Development. Since leaving school I had my eyes set on becoming a Web Developer, so I picked my route in education and stuck to it, all the way up until I graduated in June 2007 (actual graduation ceremony was September 2007). 

When I first started University back in 2004 my parents were so supportive they offered to cover all the cost for the next three years to save myself getting in debt and doing what I love. Now you may think Rich Kid, but I managed to reduce the cost of my University path by choosing a place to study near where I am from, South Wales. I looked for the course I wanted to do, and found that Newport University offered a very good course, and with attending Newport I could remove the cost of accommodation by living at my grand-parents in Monmouth. Which in turn, turned out to be an excellent choice as I don't think in the three years I ever attended the University for more than 2 and a half days a week. Another cost saving was the food, not having to buy my own shopping ever week.

So with my parents paying for my education, and staying with family during the three years. You may ask whats this got to do with anything. Well a little, during my first year I started help my father out on local british rallies as a mechanic, and some basic data analysis (computer background helped here), and by the time my second year of Uni came round I was registered as self-employed and doing a lot more work on rallies and in workshop, also making sure my Uni work took first priority, and with this I stopped taking money from my parents and started paying my own way. 

By the time graduation came round the following year, it was time to start looking for a real job, the self-employed rally thing was ace, but not a career path I really wanted to pursue. It had its ups and downs but mainly it was not what I just spent three years studying for, the best part was it was mainly weekend work so never interfered with Uni.

So I started to write my CV and started to send it to every web company in the area and up to 50miles away, also looking further afield to bigger studios such as places like London, Bath, Glasgow, etc.. But with no reply of a job, just the standard we will keep your records om file.

This led me, to look at some rally teams as a possibility of a job or some freelance work, just to keep income in while I found a web job. I applied to a few teams all over the country and ended up taking a job at M-Sport in Cockermouth, who run the Ford World Rally Team in the WRC (World Rally Championship). I started the day after my 21st Birthday.

The job was amazing; travelling the world for free, working in rallying which I have always followed, and still do. I met a lot of great people, not just in this country but world wide and made a great deal of friends, but my whole intention was to eventually get a job in the web industry. This was a stop gap, but once I was in I never really knew how long the stop gap would last, for about 18 months I never really looked at getting out and into the web industry, then I realised when I saw a few local adverts for web designers appear and after applying I kept getting the same responee, you have no experience and al ot of rally experience, are you sure you want a career in the web industry. But thats what I wanted deep down, so I set about changing this, and as you will know the recession hit so it made finding a job a lot harder.

I applied for hundreds of jobs in 18 months until I finally got a company that took me seriously and was willing to offer me a job as a web developer. Two days before I flew out to Rally NZ 2010 I went and handed my notice in - finishing at M-Sport on 27th May. I start my new job for a small web design studio based 40 miles north of Carlisle on 2 June 2010.