Just in time for tonights installment we have the latest BolegBros take on last week

Stumbled across a great little web app to share bits of code. Snipt is really simple to use and quickly share code with co-workers and the world. It’s geared up to being used with Twitter and produces a short url of your code.

Check out the great piece of PHP code we found in the source of a site the other day, This Array

Another great episode remastered

As the day that no one trusts anyone draws to a close I thought I would share some of the best April Fool’s announcements/pranks that I came across on Twitter, my feed reader and the web.

Once again Sir Alan has managed to scrape the barrel of business talent and get 15 arrogant idiots to make fools of themselves over the next few months. I will be there glued to the screen fascinated at how inept people can be whilst still thinking that they are the best thing since sliced bread. An amusing summary from episode one has been done by Watch With Mothers

The return of the Apprentice also marks the return of my favourite viral spinoffs. Yes, the episode spin-offs by Boleg Bros are back with more Lego based fun (episode one below).

Today saw the launch of the Skype iPhone app. I’ve installed the app and so far I’m impressed. A few initial calls to people in the office all worked really well. I have just try to call friends in America but sadly even the iPhone app doesn’t get round the fact they never answer the phone! The only downside is that I will now be subjected to those spam Skypers, who regularly send messages wanting to know me better, wherever I am.

VOIP has always been a very controversial subject as far as the iPhone is concerned. Until now the only way to use Skype was to brick/unlock your iPhone. So this is really a great milestone as Apple finally back down to mainstream VOIP usage.

Sadly the app can only be made whilst connected to WIFI and not on 3G or other data connections. This isn’t because of call quality (as 3 have been allowing Skype enabled handsets on their network since 2007) but O2 protecting their call revenues, again.

Skype’s next platform will be the Blackberry in May.

I think it’s fair to say that I love Wordpress! Whether it’s for a blog or a fully blown CMS Wordpress can handle it all. The power of the ‘press can be increased by adding any one of thousands of plugins. My plan is to bring you what I think are some of the hottest and most useful plugins each month.

I’m having a go at writing my own plugin so watch this space next month!

1. Related external links – It took me ages to find a decent plugin that allows you to add links to related sites/posts which then display in the sidebar. Most plugins of this type go through your post and pull out links you have made inline and then display them.
2. WP Super Edit – Not content with the basic functionality of the standard Tiny MCE editor? This plugin allows you to customise which editor controls you have through a really simple drag and drop environment.  I have used it to add table functionality to pages but other useful options include custom CSS styles, <div> tags and search and replace.
3. Yoast Breadcrumbs – If using Wordpress as a CMS then chances are you will want a breadcrumb. This plugin makes it really simple to quickly add a breadcrumb trail to your pages.
4. kPicasa Gallery – Upload all your photos to Google’s Picasa and the plugin loads them direct into your site in a nice gallery and light box environment. See it in action on one of my sites.
5. Addthis – Quickly add an Addthis button to your posts and let people share with their friends.

I didn’t realise the credit crunch was hitting Virgin Media that hard until I went on their new site.  I had a double take when the page loaded and I was met with what is essentially a red version of the BBC  homepage. Whilst the site does look good it certainly won’t become my news and entertainment portal of choice. It offers nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times before.
It’s fair to say that the BBC has always been a benchmark for good web practice and BBC type elements are common place across the internet but none as blatant as this! After a suggestions by @ojwestmancott I had a quick look at the source to check they there were no  references to the BBC!
Hopefully Virgin Media will pass on the money they have saved back to us the humble broadband customers!

Today is the newly created ‘Ada Lovelace Day‘ (AdaLovelaceDay09), to celebrate women in technology, and I thought it apt to look question why in over 5 years of professional web development I have never encountered a female developer. Given the fact that there was only a handful of girls on my computer science course at university this didn’t really surprise me. And then I started to look a little deeper…

As part of AdaLovelaceDay09 people have pledged to blog about a ‘woman in technology who they admire’ . The blogs are really starting to rack up and some can be viewed on the mash up. It’s well worth a browse through as it’s true, women in technology do tend to disappear beneath the radar.

I found some stats to suggest that roughly 25% of web developers are female. However, we all know that 99% of statistics are made up so we’ll take that with a pinch of salt! After a quick Google I can also see that there are a shed load of websites out there dedicated to female developers and designers. The internet is such a huge part of modern day life and it’s use is widespread across genders, ethnic and socio-economic groups, so why does this not knock on to the people behind the web?

I would be really interested to hear from female developers out there on their experiences of the industry.

Listen to any track for free right now. Surely this is either highly illegal or too good to be true. I couldn’t believe it either until I was sent an invite to participate in the private beta of Spotify, the online music service. With it’s iTunes like interface searching and playing music is only a simple search away.

Is there really such a thing as a free lunch?

Like a radio station Spotify pays royalties to the artist for each song that is playing through the service. At the moment the revenue model to pay for this (and hopefully make a profit!) is based on adverts. Every 20 minutes of playing tracks you are met with an audio advert from Spotify’s partners. In the early days these have been quite annoying with only a couple of partners on board. As more partners are added the adverts seem to get more bearable and is a very painless way of getting free music.

The other option is for users to subscribe to Spotify Premium for £9.99 per month. This will allow them to listen to unlimited music advert free.

Shaky beginnings

During the beta programme there has been a couple of wobbles in the service due to record label and international restrictions which have lead to a large tranche of music being removed from the service.

The other high profile event was the reports that the Swedish based company had had a massive security breach before Christmas and users login details have been lost.

What next?

Spotify is starting to get some high profile publicity including some interest by the BBC [LINK] so it is only a matter of time before it takes off. I believe that Spotify is really going to revolutionise the way we listen to music and will be the biggest step forward since the mp3.

Can’t wait to get involved?  Spotify is still in beta but you can sign up at their site. The music catalogue is growing rapidly and hopefully the full release will be soon, so watch this space!