Author Archives: David Artiss

David is the owner and main author of Artiss.co.uk.

By day he's a developer for a well known UK retailer, by night he looks after this site and writes WordPress plugins.

16Feb 2011

Is Poker and Bingo the Future of Android apps?

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My earlier post about the future of gaming got me thinking.

For over a year now I’ve been earnestly intending to start developing Android Apps. That requires me to learn Java as a starter – and then onto the Android specifics. Unfortunately, time has been my enemy and I haven’t really got anywhere with it.

None-the-less, I keep my eye on the market to see if there’s an obvious “hole” where an app could be desperately needed. At the moment, games appears to be the way to get a “hit”, with few “paid for” apps being enormously popular. Certainly, this is the case in the Android market, although I believe it is different for Apple.

And after mentioning bingo and poker online, I realised that this is possibly where a big explosion in app development may occur in the future. If you look through the Android Market you’ll find few bingo or poker apps from the big online companies, and those that are there are often rated poorly. Small screens and no way of making in-app payments severely restrict their impact.

It’s only a matter of time, though, before Android (like Apple) allows in-app payments (and, indeed, is something they are working on), and with the popularity of the larger screened tablets on the increase, is this the way forward for such apps? It would surely be a lot easier to kick back at home, feet up and play these gambling games on a tablet, rather than sitting at a desktop or laptop. Not that it’s my intention to write such an app – these are probably best left for the companies already dominating the online gambling market.

Meantime, I’ll keep thinking of that ultimate “killer” app that I’ll make my fortune with. Although I suspect the first one I’ll write will simply be a mobile version of this site.

15Feb 2011

Site Changes

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Draft version of the new site design

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been working on a revised version of the site. More than just a theme change, this has been a review at every site component. I’m now nearing the end of this work and will launch the new site design soon. However, I thought I’d take the opportunity to provide details of some of the things that have changed – bear in mind that I have a list of 70 changes that I made (many of them individually wide ranging) and 17 things that I didn’t.

Theme

First up is the theme. It’s darker and much more professional. Images have been reduced to save bandwidth (yours and mine!) and new fonts are used. A new “social bar” in the sidebar provides quick access to the sites Twitter and RSS feeds along with the PayPal donation option.

I’ve also implemented “margin reduction”. The site uses a new width, designed to fit perfectly horizontally on screens with a resolution of 1024 pixels or higher. This is in combination with a reduction in blank margins, fitting more information on the screen.

A new drop-down menu has been introduced, including quick access to blog categories and the most popular WordPress plugin pages.

Oh, and XHTML validation has been fixed ;)

A screenshot can be found to the right of the new design – this isn’t the final

Performance

Performance changes have been critical. The site now has a YSlow A Rating (that made me very happy!) with improved caching and compression. I also copy external scripts (e.g. those provided by Google, Twitter and Facebook) to my own server, so they can be compressed and delivered quicker. Numerous plugins were removed after investigation into what was hogging resources the most.

A bizarre change, but bandwidth has been reduced by changing the 404 error page. Originally showing a large image, this now contains an embedded YouTube video. The 404 page is visited every time an invalid page is visited, so a reduction in this page size can make big savings.

Plugins

For those of you who are interested in my WordPress plugin work, 2 big changes have been made.

First up, I’m now using Mantis Bug Tracker to record bugs and enhancements. As part of this I’ve written some code to integrate the results of this directly into the plugin pages on the site – at the bottom of each it will list any bugs or enhancements for that plugin.

Secondly, I’ve added a forum for plugin discussion. Using comments tended to get a bit crowded after a while so comments on plugin pages are now closed (but viewable for historic reasons!) – instead there’s now a link to the forum.

Comments

Speaking of comments – the commenting system has been much improved with a better layout (for those WordPress geeks, I’m now using the automated comment features that WordPress offers, rather than the manual method that was implemented before).

I also now show how many comments are awaiting approval.

Reviews

Any reviews on the site included hidden Google “microcode” – information that Google can pick up and integrate into search results. This was present before but how now been improved.

Anything Else?

Tonnes more, but I’m now going to list them all – when the new site designed launches, I’m sure you’ll find them :D

15Feb 2011

What’s the future for gaming consoles?

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With the recent announcement of both the Nintendo 3DS and the Sony NGP consoles, I wonder if these may be the last of their type.

Smartphones are becoming more and more powerful (dual core Android phones are starting to become the “norm” and quad cores are on their way too) and LG’s Optimus 3D is now bringing, ahead of the 3DS, a 3D glasses-free screen to phones.

Powerful processors, 3D screens and games companies lining up to author for them – why will the console be needed in such a phone market?

Sony Ericsson are already bridging this with their announced Xperia Play, a smartphone which can run Android games, but will also run their own branded games and comes with a Playstation style slide-out control pad.

I can’t see this impacting the home console market however as they are expanding away from just purely games to attract to a wider audience. Whilst connected to your TV it makes sense for them to offer further services, such as TV on-demands and film downloads (in fact I’m saving up for a PS3 at the moment for just this reason).

It won’t be long before the only non-console and smartphone gaming will be the various free online poker and bingo sites. And I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before they move to these mediums as well. The PC will probably be relegated to complex-control games such as flight simulators and World of Warcraft.

3D I think, will be a gimmick – particularly the TV-based 3D which requires glasses. As one of the (apparently) 1-in-6 people who can’t see 3D properly anyway (and it gives me a headache, no matter how well it’s done) I’ll never buy in anyway (this from someone who still has a CRT television in his living room).

Having said all that, though, I’m usually rubbish at predictions (this is someone who in the 90′s said that DVDs would never be popular).

07Feb 2011

O2: Our Home Broadband prices are changing to… something

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I’ve just received an email from O2, who provide my home broadband…

Internet use has changed dramatically over the last few years and this is likely to continue. We need to increase our prices so we can still give you the level of service you’d expect from us. From 31 March 2011 Any discount or free period you already have – like a three months free offer – will stay unchanged. You don’t need to do anything, but if you’d like to know more about your options, or want to compare our prices to the market, go to A Best regards Felix Geyr Managing Director, O2 Home and Broadband

No, that abrupt ending isn’t a mistake – they really did end it with “go to A”. Following the link on “A”, however, takes you to a “Price Changes” page on the O2 website.

There it tells you why they’re changing their prices and show a comparison of the cost of other broadband providers. However, at no point in the email or on that page do they tell you exactly what it’s changing to. I guess they want you to guess.

In the end I had to ring O2 to find my account would be the same (an unlimited account, which they don’t provide anymore) but £2 more.

Announcing price increases such as this rarely bring customer praise – indeed, more than likely people would leave as result. So you’d thought it would be handled well. Surely it can’t be that hard?

 

03Feb 2011

Personal Finances

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Image courtesy of Christian Ferrari

As I prepare to meet with my IFA tonight, I like to use my computer to balance my personal finances. In particular, I use Microsoft Money – a product that, sadly, Microsoft stopped updating and selling some years ago.

And it’s a shame because it’s a simple product that’s ideal for the home user. There are alternatives, but they’re aimed mainly at business.

Personally, I balance my budgets by retaining receipts, adding them into Money and then downloading my statement from my bank – Money will then reconcile the two, showing me discrepancies. At a time when identity theft is an issue, this also helps to ensure that nothing is being spent that I don’t know about!

The solution are online providers – this has the added advantage of not having to download your data but, then again, you have to trust the provider with your financial information.

I’ve tried some but few work outside of the US and those that can be configured for the UK often miss key features. The best I’ve found so far is Money Dashboard, but that only lets you view and report on finances – you can’t add any details and perform conciliation.

The best, as far as I can tell, is Mint, but that’s US only at the moment.

If anybody has come across anything that works for the UK market then, please, let me know.

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