I just got one of the regular phone calls from a mobile provider trying to get me to upgrade my handset. Usually I’m a little suspicious of these companies as they just want to get a sale so I asked a few leading questions to find out if they were “on the level”. Since they knew me details (not hard), knew what phone I had (must of bought it from them) and knew what Orange tariff I was on (which is different from when I originally signed up) I thought I’d give them a listen.
They wanted to renew the tariff but with unlimited texts and enough free minutes to last me a month (any network, any time) for about a third what my bills seem to be at the moment, plus they’re throwing in a free Nokia 6300 which I can either use or eBay. Seemed like a very good deal to me and as they said it negates my current Orange contract I thought I’d sign up.
The next bits were the usual bits along the lines of “do you agree to our terms”, “seven days to cancel” and then the “would you like insurance”. As I’ve got a eight month old baby who loves to chew anything and everything, I had a moment of unusual sensibleness and thought I’d sign up for it. They read out the short T&C and the only bit I can remember now was:
“You aren’t covered for wear and tear sustained in a war zone”
Well, I knew that you don’t get cover if you leave your phone on a bar. Now I’ve got to be careful when I’m in a war zone as well!?!
I’m just about to get started on a new project for a client and it’s going to be my first multi-lingual site. The site is Visit Pyrenees and it’s a holiday home and hotel advertising site based around three villages in the Eastern Pyrenees. As far as a brand new project goes, it shouldn’t be too complicated and the only technically difficult bit will be the French and English versions.
As the site is aimed at UK tourists wanting to visit the area, the default language will be English, but I also want a French version for a number of reasons:
- It adds to the USP of the site by attracting visitors speaking both languages
- There will be a slight SEO benefit from the dual language site
- Some of the advertisers will only speak French and will be editing their advert which will then need translating
There are basically two section to the site: the adverts for the various places of accommodation and the static information pages. Since I don’t speak much French, I’d like the static areas of the site to be editable by a none technical but French speaking person (such as the site owner). It therefore makes sense that the easiest way of implementing the site using a wysiwyg editor that lets the user select their language and then enter the text and any other HTML entities into the editor before saving it. The PHP script will then take the text and then create a version in the other language.
When I find something suitable that works, I’ll post a link or a zip file for download if I have to modify it.
I’ve recently upgraded to Outlook 2007 and as with the last Office upgrade, I’m glad it was a free download from our hosting provider otherwise I would have been reeeeaaalllllllllly pissed off. There’s some good advancements in it and since it’s a nearly new Microsoft product, a hell of a lot of bugs and problems. Top of the list at the moment is the fact that Outlook won’t exit when I close it.
It’s still running in Task Manager and even downloading emails although it’s not even showing up in the System Tray. This wouldn’t bother me too much except that it’s using 100Mb of my 1Gb of RAM which I sometimes need (for playing Command & Conquer).
After a bit of researching, I found out that it was due to the contact sharing with Skype. I’ve only recently noticed it so I don’t know if it’s an Outlook 2007 thing or part of a Skype update. To turn it off go to:
View > Show Outlook Contacts
and un-tick it. As soon as I did this, Outlook cleanly exited out of Task Manager.
There’s a number of reasons for having a blog:
- Something to pass the time
- Generate extra pages and hopefully PageRank for business and revenue generating websites
- Generating direct revenue from Google AdSense or similar
- Feeding the ego by getting onto page 1 of the SERPs for your name etc
Generally I use my blogs for all these reasons and as for the last one I’m doing OK, being top for “Devblog” and my nickname “Wellsy”. As for my actual name, “Andy Wells”, I’ve got a bit of competition out there as there’s a rock band and a mayor in the US both with the same name. I’m starting to make progress though and have made it up to number 4 on Google (even above Wikipedia).
Yay me!