Have you guys notice about this feature on Google Reader?
There is this “Original audio source” link with flash-based audio player showing up for some posts that have audio links. I saw that on a few posts but I thought it was the blogger’s doing. But now I just saw that on my own music pick post and realised that it was actually one of Greader features.

Pretty cool huh? You can play all the mp3 the first mp3 source on the page directly without the need of downloading. Sweet!

I’ve tested the Google Reader since it came out but in the beginning it gave me errors while importing my subscriptions, messed up the folders and tags so I continued with my Bloglines.

After the newly upgraded Google Reader I was able to transfer all my subscriptions successfully. Now I’ve completely switched across Google Reader and loving it.

Some functionalities on Google Reader I like to see are:

• to check numbers of subscriber to individual feed,
• to show feed description,
• to have the left hand panel draggable or collapsable,
• may be improve in iconomy would be great too, like adding favicons to each feeds as they have for Bloglines and Rojo.

I’m sure the developers are improving as we speak cos’ just now I’ve discovered this new feature called “Trends” where you can view the stats of your reading trends by “Last 30 days”, “Time of day” and “Day of week”. It also tells you how much you’ve read in a brief summary as my stats here:

From your 453 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 5,008 items, starred 0 items, and shared 15 items.

There are “Reading trends”, “Subscription trends” and “Tags” where the more items a tag has, the bigger it appears. The more of those items you have read, the darker it is. In my case, my tags are my folders.

Seems like you got more control over your reading habits and quite fun checking out neat little stats along the way. Have fun analyzing your “Trends“.

Wishing you all a Happy and a Prosperous New Year 2007 from mayvelous.com

Happy New Year 2007

If it didn’t bring you joy
just leave it behind
Let’s ring in the new year
with good things in mind

Let every bad memory
that brought heartache and pain
And let’s turn a new leaf
with the smell of new rain

Let’s forget past mistakes
making amends for this year
Sending you these greetings
to bring you hope and cheer

Happy New Year!

Anonymous

Here are a few New Year noises.

[ MP3 ] U2 – “New Year’s Day”
[ MP3 ] Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – “New Year’s Kiss”
[ MP3 ] Asobi Seksu – “New Years”
[ MP3 ] Azure Ray – “The New Year”
[ MP3 ] The Lonelyhearts – “Next Year is Shaping Up to Be Real Awesome”
[ MP3 ] Jeremy Enigk – “A New Beginning”
[ MP3 ] Death Cab For Cutie – “The New Year”
[ MP3 ] The Robot Ate Me – “Celebration Time”

Via: plague of angels

May likes to thank all friends and visitors for stopping by at mayvelous.com. Looking back mayvelous visitor stats through out 2006.

I came across this site, “World’s Hightest Website”, via Eric Meyer recent links and was confused.

Welcome to the World’s Highest Website! Currently, it’s 18.939 kilometers high (that’s about 11.769 miles), and an enormous pleasure to scroll.

What exactly are they trying to prove or what exactly is the purpose of that website? Ok so it is very tall. It’s valid and accessible. I checked the code, it’s sweet and simple…but I still don’t get the point. Am I missing something?

div#whws { font-size: 100cm; height: 18939em; line-height: 1.0; }

div#whws { background: url(../../img/tape.gif) repeat-y top center; margin: 42px 0; }

div#whws + div { position: relative; }

So with that CSS, all they did was use this div tag, and it generated that long repeated images.O…K!!! So…what? What is it exactly? Is there any hidden meaning that I’m missing? Or it’s just that some people with lots of time in their hand having fun?
Hmmm…makes me think, wanna know proper answer.

Work in progress sites are somewhat interesting. I’ve seen a few in the past like my friend’s, Sarnil.com, site where he publishes his site in the state of progressive development. Now my favorite, “SimpleBits” has stripped the style and full on redesign in progress as well.

I like the very idea of in progress sites for:

• you got to see how actual work (layout, design, typography, ideas, structures, etc) is done,
• you got to study how developer/designer plan things through,
• you got to learn some tips and tricks along the site progress,
• you got to observe lots of things such as
  - how developer handle each task,
  - how much time/effort he put on the site,
  - how dedicated he is to the site,
• and many other professional and personality aspect of the developer and the whole site development.

I also was thinking of posting site development in progress posts as I work on a few site but doing things in your head is alot easier than actually putting them down and working on it.

I guess some great minds think alike but when it’s with a role model like simplebits, it spread alot faster. You bet, I’ll be checking those sites regularly on their progress.

I hope Sarnil find some time to work on his site again soon as I heard he is very busy and on business trip. That reminds me, I’m still waiting for Jachin new posts.
Man, these guys are just so busy…or rather lazy?

Every time a customer asks you a question like “How much going to cost to make a website?” or “How much for a design?”, I got a problem answering and most of the time I say, “It depends…”. And most of the time I transfer the call to my senior colleagues or project manager.

Seriously, I don’t know the exact figure and I don’t want to talk about money matter first. Most of the time, I ask why they want the website for, what are they going to do with it, get to know a bit of their requirements and general site audience. Depending on those, you start slicing your time against the tasks and provide the figure. So there is no set price for a website.

Some people think making/getting a website is so easy as 1 2 3. May be so. But it depends alot on how well you want your website to be, what platform or technology to use and many many factors.

I got this article a few weeks back from a friend and I thought of writing about it. Things are so busy this week and just now I can get back to my deferred posts. There is a great article and a good discussion at personified.com : How much should a design cost?, that you should check out for more understanding of how they decide on the cost factor.

One thing to note is that, the author is talking about the design cost based on ready-made CMS platform such as (WordPress, MoveableType etc) and not custom made CMS. More like the whole website functionalities part is not included as it’s open source and free of charge. His figures are only on DESIGN part such as creating CSS, valid code and abit of customizations. Plus he is concentrating mainly on Blog design. For those it costs around US$ 1500 – 2500. That would be around Fj$ 5000.

A blog is quite different from a website in terms of functionalities as well as a requirements. Blogs are more like news post or articles based publishing whereas website are different nature such as ecommerce site, portfolio site, portal site etc. For those kind of site, the cost will go higher because of custom made functionalities and you cannot use wordpress for that (well you can, but not advisable…so I think).

For those kind of websites, you have to start from scratch. Requirement gathering, specifying technology to use, database design schema, layout design, the backend codes, front-end codes, graphics…etc etc etc. Every steps require time and time is money. So the more requirements you have, the more steps involved, the more time you need and the more it’s going to cost you.

I think I’m not the right person to talk about it as I don’t involve in cost decision making but I only involved for specifying tasks and adding time against it. But you get the general idea of how we charge for website design and development. So comparing our (Fiji) design prices with overseas (US – personified.com) prices, we are way cheaper. We make custom content management systems, we use expensive and latest technology – MS SQL + .Net platform. Ofcos’ there are quality factor to consider too. If I must say and be fair about it, we are a bit lack in design quality factor cos’ most of our sites are not valid standards yet. But it’s only a matter of time we improve our quality…ie. our developers’ responsibilities.

You should check this article for more detail explanations: How much going to cost to make a website.

I like the first comment. I must add if (($CMS != “Word Press”) || ($CMS != “PHP/Open Source”)) { echo “price goes up”; }

I was reading about this lipstick article (Feel Naked Without LipSticks) on 9rules which actually got some quotes from this lovely site, “Meriyas Lounge”, so I thought of checking it out for more articles.

I was expecting to find some female fashion shop or rather, female accessories and widget review blog. Whoa! It just took my breath away. Seriously!

“Meriyas Lounge”

I’m looking for something to read or click on. I don’t know which one is the site content or site logo or heading at all. I’m seeing… Ads, ads, ads, and ADSSSS! I have no idea where exactly they got that lipstick quotes from, may be some sub pages but from the very look of the main page, it just taking me off from browsing farther. It took me a couple of minutes to find the actual site menus, oh yah; they are right at the top-left corner. Kind of lost in the overall ads contexts.

I guess the site is seriously after afflicted $$$, and yes, it’s good for them. But as for the site visitors…I doubt if they wanna revisit the site for the second time. I wish they added some information about the site in the main page and reduce some ads or move a few to sub pages. In that way, visitors can easily make out what the site is about and the content is more accessible. The site designer should reorganize the ads placements and layouts to blend in with the content rather than using too obvious packs which everyone might tend to ignore. But then I don’t know much about online ads business so who knows their ads placing suit their purpose. I’m just talking from the user perspective as it’s very hard to browse the site and the main content is lost in the ads.

For my own satisfaction, I’ve clean up the site to see the relevant content. I blocked up all those ads and finally got this very clean site. Lovely!

Blocked Ads from Main Page

Clean Site

Now…what was I come here for again? Oh rite, cos’ of that lipstick article.