I have begun to use my old Nokia 770 as a sort-of dashboard for our company’s stats – a bit like a health screen. To achieve this I have created a webpage which just fits on the screen (in fullscreen mode) and periodically refreshes.

To keep the Nokia 770 display running, you’ll need the following instructions (note, not manufacturer approved, use at your own risk!)

Install XTerm and run two gconftool-2 commands (all shown on this page) – note, those gconftool commands do indeed extend for three lines. You need to enter them as one command.

Install Display daemon ‘acmonitor’ from here. This will allow you to set the display profile when on charge and on battery. Ideally you’ll not want the tablet running at full brightness when it’s on battery power!

I added 86400 (a day) which will show in your Display control panel as ‘1440 minutes’ – that should be enough!

This article from Paul Boag at local web design firm Headscape demonstrates some key features of their ecommerce site which apparantly lead to a 10,000% increase in sales.

It’s been a while folks. Due to the pressures at work at the moment I simply haven’t found time to write here. There’s no point in making vague promises; let’s just see if I can reignite this fire and get back into the habit.

A little summary of my adventures over the last eight or so months:

• We moved offices from Fareham to Petersfield
• I took on new staff – our company doubled in size overnight (!)
• We moved offices from Petersfield to Fareham

I’ve learnt far more than I ever imagined about running a business in the last year or so. It has been exhausting but thrilling. I hope to write more about this in the coming weeks.

Last night, Google released an update to its Street View system to include new locations across the UK, Netherlands and other European countries.

My home city, Portsmouth, is not on there yet but Southampton is so, clicking through my old university stomping ground I came across this little treat:

First shot: The Google Car may or may not have gone through the first red lights. Who knows… the lights ahead are already on amber.

Second shot: Lights are still on amber. Technically you should be preparing to stop

Third shot: They’re red. Is the driver still going? Watch the two cars in front – a white one and a dark blue one. Also, note the two schoolkids walking under the tunnel.

Fourth shot: The two cars ahead are further away – either they sped up or the driver is slowing down… maybe he stopped after all? Note the two kids are closer too, so it’s a continuous set of frames

Fifth shot: The two cars are well away now, already around the left-hand bend. There’s no reason to believe from this particular shot that it’s a few seconds after the last – the driver might’ve waited for a green and gone a bit later, right? Well, take a look for yourself at the car behind the driver, and the two schoolkids will still be there. In the distance, cars are starting to come towards our fearless driver…

Final shot: there are more schoolkids running under the bridge, and the oncoming cars are now having to wait for our Google Driver to get out of the way!

Conclusion: well, none really. This is a pointless, but mildly satisfying discovery. Enjoy.

Google’s 3D world viewer, Google Earth has been updated to version 5.

The headline feature is the ability to view historic satellite photos, as in this picture of Cherque Farm housing estate, near Lee on Solent, Hampshire, UK.

Housing estate nr. Lee on Solent, Hampshire UK

In the series of photos, ranging from 1999 (left) to 2007 you can clearly see the construction of the estate over time.

One notable thing about most location software is that it is usually fairly crude.

Most programmers take the easy route and simply work out the distance between two points via a bit of trig. Some smarter programmers are aware of the Earth’s curviture and bear this in mind.

Usually – this is as far as it goes. The classic “find my nearest” search is great for most places but is a rough ‘as the crow flies’ measurement.

Living for a while on the Isle of Wight, I came to appreciate that while this normally works OK, on an island it’s a profoundly dumb system.

If, for instance, you live in Ryde (north coast of the Isle of Wight) most systems will recommend a shop in Portsmouth or Gosport before the more sensible option in Newport or elsewhere on the island. A bit daft really, considering to get to the ‘closer’ shop might be one or two ferries at the least.

Today, I noticed that the Maplin website actually excludes shops which might fall in the radius of consideration, but are much trickier to get to.

Searching for an item from my Fareham (mainland) address gives plenty of options, but the Newport store (10.7mi as the crow flies) is not included.

Similarly, searching from an island postcode gives the Newport store only as an option.

I suspect that – instead of running calculations by travel time – somebody has manually identified island postcodes, mainland postcodes and separated them by zone so only those postcodes in the same ‘zone’ appear in the search… that’s certainly my first instinct (I’d love to think they’re doing a full journey check, but I somehow doubt it )

While it’s not perfect (maybe the Newport address could be grouped separately, in case I happened to be going over to the island anyway), it’s a step further than most location-based searches out there.

Jen has uploaded a nice set of textures to prettify your artwork. It’s all available with a fairly open license (use it as you will, but give credit).

Selection of textures

You can see all the textures from Jen’s flickr page.

Apparantly the big news in the Westcountry is that the A303 is to be closed some time early next year, with a 40 mile diversion. The BBC has more details and the Highways Agency press release is also available.

I wondered why neither the HA nor any of the press articles I’d seen bothered publishing a map. While they’re happy to describe an elaborate route in text, it took me less than five minutes to knock this up.

The visual view is – I think – much more explanatory than any text, and it adds instant impact to the article.

Good morning! It’s just gone 7am and those programmers out there involved in EPOS and e-commerce systems are either sitting smug or are running around trying to get the computers updated before the shops open.

Today’s the day standard rate of VAT (sales tax) drops from 17.5% to 15%, in a move by the Chancellor to encourage spending. Whether it works or not remains to be seen, I’ve heard that many shops are simply keeping prices as-is, and pocketing the slight difference in markup from each sale. Some high-street shops have bizarre “offers” highlighting the VAT drop as the reason but (in one case) “offer ends 3 December”.

In view of all of this number-crunching fun, I’ve produced a handy VAT Check Sheet for download, which allows you to see the VAT difference, new totals and how much shops should be dropping prices. I think the numbers are right but if anybody has any corrections, thoughts or comments I’ll be happy to update.

It’s been a fair while since my last post. Various reasons come to mind but for me the biggest focus of the last six weeks has been my company, which has taken a far greater chunk of my attention in recent times.

While plenty of things have happened recently, I’m going to try focusing on my business as the basis for a series of new articles on this blog. I’m hoping to talk more about my experiences, ups and downs with the hope that this kind of writing will be useful to others.

The usual common-sense disclaimer applies: anything I write is personal, (usually) unqualified and should not be viewed as definitive. Simply take them as they are: anecdotal.

I’ll be writing the first article real soon now, and you are actively encouraged to reply and give your own thoughts.