To kick off my first post in a series i’m calling Simples, I will explain in simple terms what FTP is and how you can use it. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is a way to exchange files over a network, such as the Internet. You would use it to transfer files between your computer to your server. You use an FTP client in order to handle this exchange. If you’re a bit confused about the whole server thing, don’t worry. Take a look at this post that will quickly explain it. Already lost, take the following example as an analogy (FTP is far more complex, but this should...

The web world is full of acronyms and abbreviations, some of which are baffling even to the most seasoned professionals. Do you hear terms such as FTP, PHP, HTML or MySQL thrown around and have know idea what they are? Fear not – this new series called Simples is for you. While I won’t be teaching you these technologies in depth, I will be offering an explanation to give you a basic understanding. In simple and plain english I’ll aim to explain many of the terms Web designers and Developers throw around, so you will no longer have to smile and nod when talking to them. I’m...

It’s no suprise – i’m a BIG Apple fan. I own an iPhone, iMac, MacBook and Apple TV. It’s not just the design and aesthetics that I love but the whole UI and user experience aswell as the great software that gets attracted to the platform. Sure, there are other products that work or have the same features as Apple do – but they don’t seem to be able to pull it off in the same way. So enough of the usual Apple fanboy babble, onto this post which is about three essential tools for anyone doing any Web Development on a Mac. I have included a local server, code editor...

Here is the video of the mashup in action. I’m thinking up a new idea using the Last.fm api that will hopefully work better. As this was just a proof of concept it won’t be released any time soon.

A month or so ago I hacked the last.fm for wordpress plugin to allow for integration with Spotify. The basic  idea was that the plugin would pull in your recently played tracks and then allow users to open those tracks directly within Spotify by clicking on a green note. A had a spare two hours this morning so decided to see what I could make in that time. This new mash-up is a little different. You give it your Last.fm username and it will go and find your top artists. It then uses this to find the top tags for each of those artists. It then orders the tags by the amount of times they occur across...

After changing my domain hosting to Dreamhost, I also set up Google Apps for my Mail and Calendar services. So far the service has been brilliant and I didn’t seem to notice any problems after Google’s recent outage. In response to the downtime Google has launched an App Status Dashboard so that users can see if their services are up and running correctly. Take a look at it here.

I have created the Wordpress widget that displays recent tracks from last.fm with the ability to open the tracks in Spotify. Read more and check it out here - http://www.blog.sizzla-media.co.uk/plugins/ Hope you like it.  Any feedback add them to the comments – enjoy

I have hacked the Last.fm for Wordpress plugin from here to search Spotify. At present I don’t plan to release the plugin but will do shortly after I have tidied up the code. You can test it out by firstly downloading Spotify from here. Then simply click on the green note icon next to the track in my sidebar (under last.fm) to launch Spotify and play the track. An image of my Last.fm side bar There is no API for Spotify yet but a bit of digging around in the Greasemonkey script enabled me to send the track name and artist to a search within the Spotify app. Hopefully an API will be available...

A new service called Spotify aims to halt the illegal downloading of music by allowing users to stream content to their PC’s and Macs. The idea is pretty simple; rather than the user paying upfront for the music it is funded by advertising, and rather than downloading a physical copy which can be shared it is streamed. The app is slick an works similar to iTunes in that playlists can be created. These playlists can be shared with other users as can individual tracks. In essence this is nothing more than a link as the music is not on a users machine (although music is cached and a P2P solution...

While creating mock-ups of sites its often useful so see what it will look like in a browser window. For this reason I have created a png of a desktop and mobile safari interface. I find that this is useful for clients to get a better feel of what a site will look like and also as a designer to scale images and element blocks. Below is also a simple script that will detect if a user if viewing the site from an iPhone/iPod touch and redirect them to a optimised version. It is always good practice to offer a link to the full desktop experience. <script language=javascript> <!– if((navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i))...