My boss comes in and says:
Client !!!
Do accessibility, ROI and traffic,
Landing page, Adwords , ethic,
Adsense, Campaign, Usability,
Human resources, Deadlines, Accessibility.

Without a hesitation I go then and see the designer! I say:
Apache, PHP, MySQL,
C#, .NET, MS SQL!!

The designers reply:
So DIVs, CSS, Photoshop, Indesign,
Colour chart, gradient, Logo, Branding.

Ok then I say:
XML, Web 2, XSL, SEO,
Microsoft Project, CMS, let’s go!

Wikia Inc., the company behind Wikipedia, has launched ‘Wikia Search’ in its public alpha on the 7th of January. It is a new search engine, and its principle is meant to be a revolution, as it is the first open-source Web search engine.

Wikia Search uses ‘Grub’, an open source distributed search crawler. It means:

• Anybody can participate to improve the code of the crawler.
• Users can download a Grubclient and crawl the Internet. The result is then indexed by the Wikia search servers.
• Users can submit and review websites.

The results of a search with Wikia Search will be inaccurate still for some time, as Grub needs to be installed on users’ computer and crawl an estimated one hundred million websites worldwide.

Wikipedia is now the 9th most visited website according to Alexa, and is almost as accurate as Britannica. The same way, Wikia search, using the open source community, could become a very serious competitor for Google.

The cracker asked then a ransom of 650$ to recover it.

The technique used to hack the Gmail account is known as the Gmail E-mail Hijack Technique, but has been fixed by Google since then.

The Gmail account get Hijacked when a user goes to an evil website. A filter is setup in the Gmail account of the victim, which forwards all the emails to the email account of the hacker.

It is always a riddle to try to make the website compliant with all the browsers. But what are the constraints at the moment?

The ratio between the main browsers is roughly the following:

IE6
IE7
Firefox


45%
35%
15%

Source: www.thecounter.com

These three browsers count for around 95%, the rest being Opera, Safari and IE5.

IE7 is a better IE6, and IE7 would hardly fail on a layout where IE6 succeeds. Internet Explorer 6 has a poor compliance with web standards, but as it is broadly used, developers and designers will have to cope with it for still some time.

The good news is that Microsoft is putting a lot of efforts making Internet Explorer compatible with standards. Internet Explorer 8 passes the Acid2 test as explained in this post of the IE blog.

My approach is to develop under Firefox, using very useful add-ons like Firebug and Web Developer, and then to fix all the glitches under IE6 using a second style sheet called with conditional comments.

It is possible to obtain that way a layout compatible with 95% of the browsers.

• Carte de Voeux 2008 - F&C

Music: “Danke Schoen” - Wayne Newton
Directing and Editing: François Chatelain

• DoubleYou Live Christmas Card

This algorithm has been invented by two Israeli researchers and allows intelligent resizing of images. This technology, also called Seam carving or liquid resize, should be available soon as a plug-in for Photoshop, and maybe one day installed by default on browsers.

After trying it on a few images of www.eyecitysolutions.co.uk, my opinion is that this technology has some limitations:

• It is not possible to resize the image less than 70% of its original size. The image gets then too distorted.
• The image must not have straight lines or regular shapes like circles. Most of them become bowed and crooked.
• It doesn’t work when there are writings on the image, as the alignment of the characters is lost when retargeting.
• The protection mask, that allows protecting some areas lacks of precision. Often the areas around the protected mask are damaged when retargeting.

Excepted from these drawbacks of the current version of the algorithm, I think this technology has a great future and will be regularly embedded in softwares.

Resources:

• Flash Online seam carving implementation: http://rsizr.com
• Wikipedia article on Seam carving http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_Carving
• The website of Ariel Shamir, one of the authors of Seam carving: http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik
• The software used to test the image retargeting: http://www.thegedanken.com/retarget

I wanted to add a second ‘sidebar’ in the footer. I followed the instructions of a topic of www.blogohblog.com. For the rest, I played with the CSS and some images.

I will continue to customise this website, focusing on the design and the usability.

• God wanted to create the world in 8 days. Chuck Norris gave him 7.
• Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands, now they’re just the Islands.
• Chuck Norris is so strong that he has no chin under his beard, only another fist
• If you spell Chuck Norris in Scrabble you win… Forever.
• Chuck Norris sleeps with a pillow under his gun.
• Chuck Norris played a game of Russian Roulette with a fully-loaded gun… and won.
• Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. Ever.
• Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch, HE decides what time is it.
• Chuck Norris doesn’t sleep. He waits
• The dinosaurs messed with Chuck Norris once. ONCE.
• Chuck Norris is the real reason why Bin Laden is in hiding.
• There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
• Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.
• When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the Earth down.
• Chuck Norris beats the Sun in a staring contest.
• Einstein’s original Theory of Relativity was: if Chuck Norris kicks you, your relatives will feel it.
• Chuck Norris is allowed to talk about Fight Club.
• Chuck Norris floats like a butterfly and stings like a tomahawk missile. At mach 3. In the face.