The Storm's a'brewin' #
http://www.isleofwightweather.co.uk/live_storm_data.htm
If you want to see the storms and lightning strikes across Britain right now this is almost certainly the best place to see it. Live data is overlaid on a decent quality picture of the British Isles.
Somehow, even though I'm in South Central England, I've managed to completely avoid anything more than a few rumbles and a brief shower. Almost certainly living in the shadow of the Isle of Wight has something to do with it.
Color Scheme Generator #
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html
A useful tool for finding complementary colours.
Google AJAXSLT #
http://goog-ajaxslt.sourceforge.net/
Google have released under the BSD License Javascript code for performing AJAX and XSLT operations in most modern browsers.
It appears to be compatible with (amongst other browsers) only version 6 of Internet Explorer, leaving out the 7% of IE5.x users (still a significant amount). On a commercial piece of software that's interesting - Google need as near universal support as possible, but they've chosen to either reject the users outright or degrade to a plain HTML version (as with GMail) over including IE5 support in this package.
Still, as more and more applications come online designed to work with XSLT and AJAX surely the incentive can only increase for users to upgrade their PCs.
Five Live blogging #
http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/programmes/upallnight.shtml
BBC Radio Five Live last night had a section on blogs (I think they do it every Tuesday night/Weds morning at 2AM British). The focus was on business blogging; how to make money from blogs, but includes a story on the forthcoming Iranian elections and an interview with Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble. You can listen to the show by following the link above, and choosing to listen to 'Wed' show (but it's only there for a week...)
Yahoo! buys blo.gs #
"the sale of blo.gs has been completed, and i'm proud to announce that yahoo! has acquired the service. as of right now, give or take a few minutes, yahoo! is running blo.gs." - Jim Winstead, today (http://trainedmonkey.com/entry/2251)
Veeeeerrryyy interesting. The Yahoo! favicon and copyright is already up there :-)
Letters to the DHSS #
http://www.mick.tilbury.btinternet.co.uk/index.htm?dhss.htm
" In accordance with your instructions I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope."
" I am pleased to inform you that my husband who was reported missing, is dead."
" The toilet is blocked and we can't bath the children until it is cleared."
Extracts from actual letters (written in good faith) to the UK Social Security.
It all makes sense #
http://www.dynamite.co.uk/local/
Google Maps with data showing travel news, speed cameras, local photos, local website, and potentially much more.
This kind of demonstration is a real eye-opener - both in terms of how dynamic HTML & datasets can make truly excellent applications and how otherwise unassociated data sources can be pulled together gracefully into a common interface. My head is already buzzing with new ideas after seeing this...
Processing #
" Processing is a programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound."
Runs from within Java, so the results are quite portable. Some of the exhibition material for this neat little language is amazing.
Thanks Dave M
Google Sitemaps #
Almost feels as if you need to do the work for them, but in reality Google's new Sitemaps XML system gives the webmaster more control over how often and where Google's bots will go. (via Dave Winer)