Michele Neylon :: Pensieri

While I can understand that bloggers want to encourage people to subscribe to their RSS feed OR email newsletter, do they have to annoy us with popups?

A lot of bloggers seem to have adopted a really annoying popup system that loads EVERY single time you visit their blog. Every time.

Haven't they heard of cookies? You know, those little things that you can store so that you won't annoy your readers with the same damn popup every single time they visit YOUR site.

ShoeMoney uses it, for example, and it's really putting me off following any links he posts to his site on Twitter.

And he's not the only one ....

We've dropped the price on IE domains for the month of January to €19.95 / year ex-vat

Find out more here

So it's now 2009 - Happy New Year to everyone!

Here's hoping it will be a good one.....

Pat "Santa" Phelan is trying to outdo himself.

Following on from his crazy phone giveaway he's now giving away a TV and another phone (Nokia N79)

More details on his blog

Despair.com are releasing yet another cool tshirt - this one in time for Valentine's day:




There's only 1000 of these being produced, so if you want one you better order it immediately!

Since I arrived in Cork last week I've been doing some serious catching up on films. Carlow has a cinema, but it's not exactly "amazing" (the new one is still not open!!)

This morning I took advantage of the 11am showing's really low price (€3) to see Inkheart, while over the last few days I've also seen and Bedtime Stories.

It sure beats driving all the way to Dublin to catch a film!

I'd read a couple of Andy McNab's earlier books and found them to be reasonable reads, so when Brute Force appeared on a list I grabbed a copy.

I'm not convinced that it was a wise move.

The story follows one of McNab's characters - Nick Stone. Stone used to be in the UK special forces, but is now in retirement when he comes under attack. The rest of the book is Stone trying to find out who wants him dead.

While the basic plot is okay, the book's pace is really really annoying. McNab seems to relish boring the reader to tears with overly detailed prose. Do we really need to experience each and every sensation of the character? I don't think so.
The other problem is that the chapters are incredibly short. Whoever edited the manuscript must have had the attention span of a goldfish, as the chapters in many cases run to a mere two or three pages, so they serve very little purpose.

Worth reading?
If you can't find anything else - yes, but don't get a new copy. Borrow it from a friend or grab a secondhand copy.

I knew that this year's post-Christmas sales would be tempting, but I didn't really expect to end up grabbing deals before I'd even had breakfast!

AllPosters are running a clearance sale, so I picked up a framed Iron Man poster this morning with a 40% discount!

I've also got a few emails from other places, such as Amazon, with details of other crazy discounts. The next couple of weeks could really hurt my wallet!

Since upgrading to the E71 I've found myself using online services on my phone a LOT more. There are two reasons for this:

1. The data plan we are now makes it a loss expensive to use and abuse web services
2. The full QWERTY keyboard
   

One of the things that I would love to be able to do is blog directly from my E71.

For some odd reason Nokia did away with the LifeBlog application in their newer phones, so I haven't had much luck finding a usable replacement.

Most of the Symbian software options for blogging are either ancient and don't work with MovableType 4.* or simply are not compatible with MT at all.

There probably are some wonderful software tools out there that are compatible with both the E71 and Movable Type, but I haven't had much luck in finding them.

If anyone knows of any solutions please let me know!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nokia e71 Initial Impressions
• Software for your Nokia E71

Twas the night before Christmas ... and there's nothing on TV, but I've got a nice glass of red wine beside me and am enjoying the fire.

I could lie and say that I intended to spend the next few days away from computers etc., but I'll probably potter away at a few things that I've been meaning to get round to for months.

So Happy Christmas everyone!