Defending IE6

Lately I’ve noticed an increasing trend among web designers/developers who are proudly announcing their decision to drop Internet Explorer 6 from their list of supported browsers, or advocating ways that enforce IE6 users into upgrading. Some of these methods are good for a laugh, some … view full post

The IEC saga: an early warning to other national standards offenders

As a long time advocate for best practices in web design, W3C standards compliancy, and the open source movement, this quite simply blows my mind on so many different levels:

The Independent Electoral Commission will spend R3 million to fix its broken website as complaints mount.

Wow!
Allow me to first provide an overview of the events leading up to this latest … view full post

TECH4FRICA 08

In late 2006 I blogged about an effort to generate interest and support for a web and emerging technology conference for Africa.

Well, the Technovated team (who were kept busy with the impressive Kindo) have now put plans into place, and TECH4FRICA 08 is coming to Johannesburg, South … view full post

Ster-Kinekor re-redesign

Once upon a time, Ster-Kinekor – the largest cinema exhibitor in South Africa – redesigned their website.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work as well as their users would have liked, and quite a few of them made that very clear. Others left complaints on public service site HelloPeter.com. While technology news site Tectonic … view full post

Jonga launches

Jonga, a new South African search engine, launched today. Via Tectonic:

After a two year labour of love, coffee and coding, Alistair Carruthers unveils South Africa’s biggest search engine. Carruthers marries open source technologies like Lucene with Microsoft’s proprietary .Net framework for a truly inspiring result.

The local search engine market has quite a history.

The first … view full post

Windows Live

The difference between Google and Microsoft as I see it, apart from both trying to dominate the world, is when Google release a Beta product, it does actually work.

I visited Windows Live (live.com) today, via /..

What is Windows Live?
Your online world gets better when everything works simply and effortlessly together. That’s the basic idea behind Windows Live. So

… view full post

This Photograph Is Proof

This Photograph Is Proof
(…also a brilliant song)

In September last year I had much praise for Flickr.

Now, I’m not so sure.

An increasing number of bugs accompanied by nonsensical workarounds, “database lag” issues, slow connection speeds, Yahoo!’s corporately/greedy buyout (which prompted this) and a lack of personal control are all contributing … view full post

Amazon.com open a software development centre in Cape Town

Online retailer Amazon.com has opened a software development centre in Cape Town, a statement issued by the company said on Tuesday. The centre will create innovative web services and help software developers build innovative applications using Amazon technology.

It is the third centre of its kind in the world, with the other two in Scotland and India.

Chris Pinkham, managing director … view full post

No display

My notebook of 2 years decided yesterday, without any prior warnings, that it’s display was working too well. So it threw in some random ascii characters and blocks of cyan & magenta on startup, and in Windows it… well, hard to explain. It’s unusable. Needless to say, I’m now feeling quite lost without my address book, calendar, … view full post

Microsoft’s MSN Music

I’ve finally gotten round to adding all the photo albums from my trip to Scotland three weeks ago. Check them out here. I’ve also added some photos from yesterday’s sunrise, and some spectacular “spring” scenes – frozen cherry trees – taken in … view full post