I was a regular user of just-eat.co.uk and recommended it to many colleagues who, like me, work away from home a lot, stay in hotels and quickly get fed up of the hotel menus. I did send them some detailed feedback suggesting how they could make their service more helpful to customers like me (adding a receipt option for example) – never got any response on my feedback though.
I recently noticed that there was a new option to enable you to store alternative delivery addresses so you can get deliveries to elsewhere than your home/base location (saves changing it for every hotel). Continued…
Posted in Eating out, Internet, featured.
Tagged with just-eat.co.uk, online ordering, take-away.
By admin
– 21 August 2009
I am a long term user of the Opera web-browser. These days it is free, in the past you had to buy it or use an advert supported version (yuk). There are many things I like about Opera but one aspect I have always been keen on is the support it gives to Web Standards which I have always been a proponent of for commercial and important social websites.
These days I like the built in email client although I mostly use a web front end to my personal email, it is a useful backup.
Probably the feature I use most is the quick scaling of web pages (just hit + and – keys and the whole page, images and text, gets scaled and, where required, reformated – this is also in Firefox these days, although not as slick, but not in Google Chrome).
Here is a summary of key benefits compiled by the Opera community:
- Opera is absolutely free.
- Find all top features preinstalled. No need to install add-ons!
- Use the Web at high-speed with the fastest and safest browser available.
- Easy to use, yet fully customizable. You can even remove your addressbar and make your browser look pink, if you like it.
- Probably you are using internet on many different divices already. Opera is the only way you can use the same browser on multiple computers and mobile devices. You can even synchronise different installations using Opera Link.
- Search in a flash using the integretad search field and search shortcuts in your addressbar.
- Tabbed browsing: We implemented tabs first and we really understand how to make them useful: reopen previously closed tabs, rearange tab order or even open tabs in the foreground and background.
- Save time when filling out forms with the Wand password manager.
- Tired of small letters? Wanna have a closer look? Zoom in and out with ‘+’ and ‘-’, and ‘*’ to go back to normal.
- You regulary open the same pages. Create individual sessions with different tabs saving your your favorite social networks, news sites, transportation sites. Just as you like.
- Speed Dial displays previews of your favorite web sites everytime you open a new tab. That allows you to navigate even faster.
- You are using email, Bit-Torrent and RSS feeds? Opera has all this included. Your browser can be your all in one internet application.
- Wanna get even more, check our various widgets.
- You will find it inconviniend to use the navigation bar once you use keybord shortcuts and mouse gestures. Give it a try and your will wonder how you could browse without it.
- No need to scroll horizontally anymore. Even if a pic is too big for your screen use fit to width.
I should also mention a new feature that I particularly like. It is called Opera Link and it lets you synchronize your Speed Dial links, Bookmarks, Custom Searches, History and Notes between your work and home computer; take your bookmarks with you on your phone. You have web access to this information and can download the bookmarks for other browsers.
Posted in Internet.
Tagged with browsers, web.
By kyber
– 8 October 2008
I have had a few queries about what I use to blog. I currently use Microsoft’s LiveWriter. It is good and free. There are lots of plug-ins available to add facilities. I tend to keep things simple though.
I have used most of the desktop blogging tools, some of the web front ends, and a lot of direct entry. LiveWriter supports most of the main blogs though and the main APIs as well which should cover the rest. It also produces reasonable code (unlike FrontPage in the old days). When posting images, it takes care of uploading them for me if they are not already web based.
I am someone who needs a spell checker – I do not always use it wisely, but it does help. LiveWriter marks incorrect spellings as you write and a right-click usually offers some good alternatives. (I also use WordWeb Pro – a great comprehensive one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. It can be used to look up words from almost any program, showing definitions, synonyms and related words. It includes pronunciations and usage examples, and has helpful spelling and sounds-like links.)
I contribute to a wide range of blogs, mostly technical, plus my own personal musings on my primary website so it is handy to have a tool to help keep things organised. Sometimes, I share content, and this too is made easier.
The fact that I can write bits when I feel like it (keeping multiple drafts) is handy as well. I get around to publishing when I feel like it. Some of my blogs (especially shared blogs and sometimes my personal blogs) do not put things live straight away (partly to accommodate feeds). Thus, sometimes, I write a post over several days, publish a few days later, and actually make it live sometime after that! Oh well.
Posted in Internet, blog, site.
Tagged with blog, blogging, live writer.
By kyber
– 6 September 2008
A model on one of the photographer/model forums I use asked about creating a simple website for herself. I thought it would be useful to put a copy of my response on my own blog.
Most of the internet service provides and the social networking sites providers you with free webspace and tools to enable you to build websites. There are two key BUTs with this:
- You are tied to using their web addresses in most case (e.g. www.myspace.com/yourid, www.youride.yourinternetprovider.co.uk, etc.)
- The site may well include all sorts of additional services and adverts that detract from what you want to say.
Thus, it you are serious about it (don’t worry, it does not cost much), I would suggest you need to do the following:
- Register an internet domain for yourself (e.g. www.yourname.co.uk if it is still available). This should not cost you more than £15 per year at most. This means that wherever you actually keep your images, store your "blog", etc, you will always keep this address and just have it pointed to the right place. This also gives you unlimited email address associated with that domain.
- Buy some hosting space (or reserve some with one of your existing providers) but only from somewhere that lets you put your own pages up without adding anything major to it themselves. You can find space for a few pounds a month (even for just a few pounds for a year) – it is the free stuff that tends to compromise what you do (if a provider gives you space for free, they have to have someway of recovering their costs).
- Find an easy way to create a webpage. There are lots of easy page creation tools for this. Remember though for a model’s website, keeping things very clean, simple and easy to use is really important.
Many companies on the internet can offer you any combination of the above three. I will not recommend any specific one to you. Combining 2. and 3. is often very good because the hosting provider will often provide a load of tools for you to make it easy to create a simply website and post a few pictures.
If you want to do anything more complex, then you will probably want to find someone to do the work for you as offering online portfolios involves using databases.
You might find an old blog entry of mine about building a website presence of some help as it explains a lot of the terminology although it was aimed at small business owners originally.
An alternative approach though might be for you to consider using one of the major blogging sites. If you go with something like www.wordpress.com – for free – (this will give you an address like yourid.wordpress.com BUT you can still register your own domain and point it at your blog). I set up one a while back. The great thing about Wordpress is that it tends to be rather more conservitive and less promiscuos that say myspace. There are a couple of other great things about Wordpress:
- Wordpress runs using software that is made freely available which can be used to run your own independent website in the future (i.e. you can migrate from the shared environment to your own space when and if you need to).
- Wordpress is so popular, there are thousands of layouts available for you to use and tweak.
- Wordpress is so popular, there are lots of addons available including things for managing photos, and lots of people know and support it.
You can host your photos on a free service like flickr (owned by Yahoo these days) and include them in your blog on Wordpress.
I shall stop now as that is probably a much more detailed and complex answer than anyone wanted or expected, but hopefully it will help a few people.
Posted in Internet.
Tagged with Work.
By kyber
– 31 August 2008
