Blogged thoughts, is our web blog. Expect views, opinion, rants and tirades about everything and anything 

Just read there on www.siliconrepublic.com (thank you very much Gordon Smith) that the team behind ebay.ie plans to integrate free PC to PC VOIP service Skype into their website to make communication between buyers and sellers much easier. The end idea for eBay Ireland (who recently celebrated their first birthday) of course would be an increase in transactions and thus an increase for them in transaction related fees which they charge the seller everytime he or she sells something. John McElligott, the Customer Development Head at eBay Ireland went as far as to say they expect it to dramatically increase both the number and values of sales so it seems to make great business sense.

I’ve used one or two Skype enabled services lately and I have to say that it did increase the experience substantially without increasing the cost of course so not only will the execs at eBay Ireland be happy but the estimated 200,000 registered users of their site will be happy too. It should allow Skype which has 39 million users worldwide (a figure that grows by 150,000 per day) to make further inroads into the Irish market. eBays move follows similar moves by sites like Bebo which also utilize Skype for improved communication between its users.  

Despite the fact that PHP 5 is still not yet supported by all of the webs main hosting companies, the show must go on and this means the ongoing development of PHP 6. The minutes of all the PHP developers meetings are available on the www.php.net website and provide us with a fairly reliable look at what we can expect from PHP 6. The exact location of the minutes is http://www.php.net/~derick/meeting-notes.html. This document is over 83 KB and your most likely not going to read it all, I however have gone through it intermittently over the last few days and although there are a tonne of proposed changes, only three of these proposed changes are likely to be seen as major and having an effect on the general PHP developer population. The three major changes are that register globals, magic quotes and safe mode are all to be ditched.

Register Globals is a PHP directive that when turned on automatically sets all EGPCS (Environment, GET, POST, Cookie, Server) variables as global variables. This means that to use a post form variable you need only reference it by its name and not by its full location within the post array. For example to access the value of a form (submitted by the ‘POST’ method) textfield called firstname with register globals on one would simply use $firstname, however with the register globals directive switched off one would have to use $_POST['firstname'].

Enabling register globals appears then to be more convenient but it is also more of a risk as writing insecure code becomes a lot easier. The reason for this is that with register globals on a developers script can be injected with all sorts of variables including HTML form values and URL get values (which can easily be manipulated by a hacker). With EGPCS variables and internal variables that are defined in the script itself so easily available the programmer can mistakenly open a ‘door’ or a ‘hole’ to a hacker by simply getting confused. A great example of a potential security risk created by bad coding with register globals on is available on http://ie.php.net/manual/en/security.globals.php (see example 29-1 near the top). Although register globals was turned off by default as off PHP 4.2, many webhosts use earlier versions of PHP and others simply manually set the directive to on. To eliminate any risks associated with having register globals on then the development team of PHP 6 decided to get rid of the directive altogether. This means that any scripts which made use of the register globals directive must be rewritten before being ported to PHP 6 as they will not work otherwise.

Next there’s magic quotes, this directive when switched on automagically escapes incoming data (such as POST form values) to any PHP script. This means that you will not have to run addslashes() to prevent MySQL (and others which escape characters with a slash) returning a syntax error when a user enters in a ‘ (for example) in a form textfield. Magic quotes (when switched on) helps beginners code more safely and it’s more convenient as addslashes gets run by PHP without any explicit calls by the coder. The magic quotes directive can however be set to on or off without any influence from within the script itself as input parameters are escaped before the script starts, this means that developers have the cumbersome task of having to first check if it is on and then having to run or not run addslashes() accordingly. Unexperienced programmers could simply assume it is either on or off and code accordingly which will of course effect the portability of an application as obviously some servers will have it switched on and some will have it switched off. In an effort to clean up the code and remove any ambiguity the developers of PHP 6 have decided to remove magic quotes functionality altogether, this is fairly significant and will require code rewriting for those applications and scripts that relied on the magic quotes directive being on (without checking) before these same applications and scripts will work on PHP 6.

Safe mode too is on the way out. PHP safe mode is an attempt to solve the shared-server security problem (according to PHP.net anyhow). When PHP safe mode is on lots of functionality is turned off and other functionality needs a higher degree of authorization (such as UID checks) to run, not only does this frustrate many developers whose hosts have safe mode on but it also gives off the impression that PHP is completely safe with safe mode on, even the most inexperienced PHP coders know this is not the case. The particular section of the developers meeting minutes corresponding to safe mode is found at http://www.php.net/~derick/meeting-notes.html#safe-mode. I don’t believe that the removal of safe mode will require major code changes for applications and scripts to work on PHP 6, please tell me though if I’m wrong on this one (it has been known to happen…)

Although the minutes of the meeting are not final it’s looking like PHP 6, if developed according to them is likely to go through an even longer ‘probationary’ period with webhosts than PHP 5 did (and is still doing) as an awful lot of scripts stand to be broken with any rushed migration to version 6 of this very popular web programming language.

Just looking through various sites and newswires which I like to read and noticed that the ICM Registry, the body behind the proposed .xxx top level domain which ICANN rejected on the 10th May (despite previously approving it) has decided to appeal the rejection. The .xxx extension for those of you that don’t know was proposed by the ICM Registry for porn and adult enterainment sites in March 2004. The benefits which the ICM preached included the idea that .xxx domains would be completely filterable and thus parents, workplaces, etc. could ‘protect’ their children and staff with ease.

Of course with these things, not everyone ‘plays ball’ and opposition came from conservative groups who believed a .xxx TLD would create a ‘virtual red light district’ and from many established players in the online porn industry who did not want their established and well known sites changed from www.theirdomain.com to www.theirdomain.xxx as it would ‘upset business’.

Personally I’m not sure whether I favour a .xxx TLD or not as I always try and see things from both sides but I can understand why the ICM has decided to appeal ICANNs decision. I think the decision to appeal was justified because of the strange goings on which surrounded the various ICANN decisions. First off let us not forget that the US government has a big influence over ICANN as it is under the direct oversight of the Department of Commerce, thus this means the US goverment has a veto on all major ICANN decisions. ICANN claim they make independent decisions but many of the worlds web watchers are not so sure. With this in mind let us continue with an overview the .xxx TLD related events.

In June 2005 ICANN approved the .xxx for use, the Department of Commerce voices its concerns in August of that year and thus final approval is delayed and as we know on the 10th of May this year ICANN reverses its initial decision and rejects the idea for a .xxx domain. Sound like government influence to you?, certainly seems that way to me. What changed in the few months between approval and rejection of the TLD? The presence of ideological pressure from the U.S. government of course. ICANN board members should make their decisions based on what’s good for the Internet and not what’s good for the George Bush administration, ICM therefore have every right to appeal if they believe something unfair has gone on.

Well folks I just got back from the sunny Algarve in Portugal yesterday afternoon. The touchdown of flight FR7067 from Faro at around 3 yesterday (Sunday 28th) brought an end to a very enjoying couple of days in the family place in Albuferia with some College friends. The trip consisted of some boozy nights out with the local portuguese people and other tourists on the ‘Strip’ but also involved some pretty heavy ’socialising’ with the good auld Irish tourists and ex-pats in the main Irish bars such as Erins Isle and Father Eds. When not sipping on €.27 cent bottles of beer by the pool or downing €2.50 pints in one of the aforementioned bars we were stuffing our bellys with amazing T-Bone steak, which in one place in particular was practically the size of a keyboard. One thing is for sure, the portuguese do a mean steak.

Anyhow while I was walking through Dublin Airport it reminded that their website was to be relaunched recently so after wading through 154 emails since Wednesday for the AKA Marketing.com website (please don’t tell me to get a Blackberry because I won’t listen) I decided to check the Dublin Airport website to see if the new site (located at DublinAirport.com) was live, it was and here’s a couple of paragraphs about it.

The new site was launched a couple of weeks ago, April the 7th to be precise. The web design house who took on the responsibilty of the redesign was Red Sky. Red Sky are well known and have worked with AIB, VHI and Fianna Fail to name just a few of their clients, their focus is on creating websites with strong accessibility and usability without comprising on asthetics.

The new DublinAirport.com site homepage is well constructed and contains information which visitors will most likely want when visiting an airport’s website such as live flight information, local weather information and the latest airport news which at the moment includes items about Ryanair’s new European routes, departure floor improvements and the relocation of Bank Of Ireland’s Bureau de Change desk. This news more than likely runs off a content management system so non-technical people would easily be able to update it, therefore it is very likely to be kept up to date.

The layout & navigation is an integral part of any website design, thus I will continue to talk about it for a couple of lines. The layout of the new site seems to follow generally accepted web standards which everyone is familiar with such as navigation along the top, navigation along the left, main content in the middle and then a right sidebar for advertisments or other bits and bobs. The navigation along the left often breaks into different sub-sections depending on the current page/section being browsed, this is done in such as way as to make it easy to figure out where in the site hierarchy you are. The homepage of the dublinairport.com site is available via a link on every single page, this is a big plus as often visitors will arrive at one of a site’s inner pages via search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN and will be looking for a handy way to find the homepage. Standard issue stuff really as far a layout and navigation is concerned then.

In terms of accessibility, the new design is quite good (the accessibility statement page mentions that an audit is currently going on so it might improve further when feedback comes in) and avoids many pitfalls which make a site less usable to those with disabilities such as the use of exact pixel or point measurements when specifying font sizes in CSS which means pressing ‘Ctrl’ and the ‘+’ buttons together does not increase the size of the text on the page in Internet Explorer; it still works in Firefox though for some reason. Other ‘features of accessibility’ include access keys for quick access to important pages and structured H1, H2, etc. tags which allow screenreaders to read through a page in correct sequence. Standard accessibility features such as alt and title tags are of course seen throughout the site too. Accessibility is very important to the web in general and dublinairport.com certainly does not cut any corners in this respect.

The web design company, the homepage, the layout & navigation and accessibility of the site have been covered so far. Lets talk then in terms of the actual content of the site. There are (from what I can see) five distinct areas of content on the site targeted towards the actual ‘user’ of the airport. I’ll first list them as links (which all open in a new window) and then go into a little bit more detail on each one, they are ‘Flight Information‘, ‘Plan Your Trip‘, ‘To & From The Airport‘, ‘At The Airport‘ and ’Shops & Restaurants‘.

The flight information section contains live arrival and departure information, flight timetables but also an interactive ‘Destination and Airlines‘ page where you can find out which airlines fly to which destinations, the times for these flights and whether or not they are direct or stop-over flights. The plan your trip section is full of useful information and also includes an ebookers.com interface to make booking a holiday easier. The section contains pages which cover topics such as Airport Security, Check-in, Passports & Visas, Imports & Customs, Foreign Currency & Banking, Car Rentals, Packing, Travelling With Pets and content regarding people with Reduced Mobility. 

The to & from the airport section contains information which is helpful for those visiting Dublin for the first time and contains information about travelling to and from the airport via taxi, coach, bus etc. The designers have even put in a ‘By Rail’ page which clarifies the fact that Dublin airport actually has no rail links just in case tourists are wondering if they can travel to the city by rail and I’m sure there will be plenty of those as nearly every major airport has some sort of rail links… expect Dublin airport of course, everyone can thank the ‘Department of Transport‘ for that.

The next section is the at the airport section. This section will allow any interested party to find out more about the facilities and services available at the airport, one of the content rich areas in this section is an excellent interactive maps page featuring all the different areas of the airport. Below the maps various shops, toilets, kiosks, etc. are listed and when one of the items in the list is clicked upon then that shop, toilet or whatever is highlighted on the map, very useful indeed. Other pages and sub-sections in the at the airport section include (among plenty of others of course) lost property, Internet access, baby changing facilities, postal facilities, religious facilities, customer services and aiport security.

The final section which is targeted towards the ‘user’ of the airport then is the shops & restaurants section, as the name suggests it covers all the shops and restaurants in Dublin airport, the information it gives includes the names of the individual shop or restaurant, its location and its opening hours. 

As mentioned above these five sections are aimed at the ‘user’ of the airport, but the site also contains a B2B section which focuses on the business aspect of the Dublin Airport Authority such as Doing Business with Us, Airport Developments, Health and Safety, Career Notices, Media Centre and the Environment amongst many others. For those of you that don’t know who the Dublin Airport Authority are they are basically the management company which manages all issues of the airport. They are a state owned company.

After going through an overview of the main sections above let takes an overhead look then at the good points and bad points about the newly designed site. The major attraction of the new site is the overwhelming amount of useful information covering just about everything and anything regarding the airport. The site is only new and thus many pages might not be indexed in Google yet but a ’site:www.dublinairport.com’ query already returns over 200 pages and considering the nature and aims of the site this is pretty darn good. This information is ‘packaged’ in a very user friendly and clean design which should be appealing to everyone (well almost everyone) including those with disabilities and difficulties using the Internet. In my opinion another clap on the back must be given to the design company for their use and reference of external resources (I believe in not reinventing the wheel) which are very useful to tourists and holidaymakers such as ebookers.com for easier booking of hotels/holidays and the AA Ireland route planner to help people find their way around the city and country a lot easier than they otherwise could have.

When I said ‘well almost everyone’ above this was in relation to in my opinion one of the major downfalls of the site, which is the lack of any non-english versions. An airport website for an airport that claims to be ‘international’ which is without support for German, Italian, French etc. speaking people is a big flaw. Even in the actual airport itself many signs are written in many different languages to facilitate non-english speaking people, not everyone is a Paddy or a Yank (no offence intended to my fellow Irish or indeed American people of course). A minor issue with the site is the lack of a sitemap which would enable people to get a quick overview of all the different sections and pages on the site, of course this is just my opinion but considering the emphasis Red Sky’s design team have paid to accessibility and usability I’m sure others will agree with me.

In closing then the Dublin airport site is now very very impressive. It is a site that looks good, is easy to use and is filled with excellent content, this in most people’s view is what makes a great site.

Nothing major here like insider trader information or betting tips for the weeks horse racing, no not at all. In this blog post I basically just want to commend camera company Kodak for their customer service and in particular the customer service they gave me in relation to a specific problem I was having with my digital camera. The digital camera is a Kodak EasyShare V550 and it’s got some pretty nice features such as top quality motion capture. Anyhow I bought the camera in November or Decemeber I can’t remember exactly, but it wasn’t a year old when it broke so it was still covered by the warranty (for legitimate reasons only though… or so I thought) which comes with the camera when you buy it.

‘Broke’ is very generic I know so let me tell you that the specific problem I was having was with the lens, which seemed to be jammed in place and because of this forced the camera to shutdown almost immediately. Now the reason why the lens was jammed in place was because I dropped the camera, I know I’m stupid and I should expect problems if I go around dropping expensive kit like there’s no tomorrow, but it was an accident and accidents happen. To make matters worse though I of course had to ‘fiddle’ with it to try and fix it but only ended up damaging it more.

I wanted to get it fixed as soon as possible, but after being quoted €200 for it to be repaired from a camera repair shop on Grafton Street and then being told by that same shop that there was no way Kodak would fix it under the warranty as there was clearly impact/fiddle damage on the lens I was not very optimistic about the camera or my wallet.

Not wanting to spend €200 on repairs for a camera that cost about €380 in the first place and because I’m a bit of a chancer I decided to ignore the opinion of the aformentioned camera repair shop and give Kodak customer service a call to see if they would fix my camera even though it wasn’t their fault it was broke. I’m very happy I made that call. The support person was very helpful and insisted they would fix this strange faulty lens issue that came from ‘nowhere’. Two days later a UPS courier picked my camera up (complete with extra bubble wrap) from my place of work, the camera was bound for the Kodak camera repair center in Germany. Cost to me so far was about €3, for a box and bubble wrap to store the camera. Today (the package actually arrived on Thursday but I was in Portugal) barely 10 working days since I sent the camera on its way with UPS, I opened a package without having any idea of what was inside, I didn’t think it could be the camera so soon. To my delight though it was the camera equipped with a nice new and fully functioning Schneider lens.

I’m certain that when the repair people at Kodak in Germany seen the damage on the lens they knew that it was dropped or banged and that they didn’t have any obligation to fix it under warranty. Fair play to the Kodak guys though they fixed it anyway and hence they go way up in my estimation because those of you that read my first post on this new blog (located @ http://www.akamarketing.com/blog/11-myhostie-lets-here-it-for-the-little-guy.html) will know that I consider customer care/support/service to be very important when purchasing anything. Kodak will definitely be getting my cash when I decide to change camera models, I can tell you that for a fact.

Just spotted there that Benchmark Capital, the financial backer of everyones favourite Irish sports channel Setanta has agreed to invest $15M / £8M in Ireland’s favourite social networking website Bebo.com. The investment is to allow San Fran based Bebo (pronounced bee-bo) to challenge MySpace for Global market share in the social networking industry but particularly in the UK, where MySpace is the more dominant of the two sites, but not by far. 

If your from Ireland and have not heard of Bebo where have you been? I thought I was bad for only seeing the first ever episode of Lost two weeks ago. Anyhow as mentioned above it is a social networking site which basically allows everyone to keep in touch with their friends, family and enemies (if they want to) regardless of where in the world they are located. The idea is that everyone who signs up gets a personal webpage which has interactive features such as a blog, a whiteboard (drawing), a flashbox (swf movie) as well as an area for comments to be added. Another very important feature of Bebo and one of the main reasons for its growth is the ability to build up your own network of friends and have them listed on your personal webpage. It is these features that have allowed Bebo achieve over 500,000 Irish members with an estimated 5,000 new signups a day from Irish IP addresses. With this latest investment of $15M / £8M it can only get bigger and better so watch this space.