Andy Millne

Just had a quick look on http://www.visitnorthumberland.com/ and was shocked to see Bedlington missing off their list of towns. What's going on eh?

New topic for a new season?

Doesn't seem to be much more progress in the last 2 months. Road has been narrowed for what looks like a "traffic calming" doofer.

Now going older on the games, anyone ever play 'The Dig' ?

No I'd never even heard of it but after some research it's another Lucas Arts one.

More info on the proposed parking charges...

http://www.bedlington.co.uk/2009/07/bedlington-car-parking-review/

I didn't think Twitter would become as succesful as it has but it seems to be gaining traction.

As a result I've started an account for Bedlington.co.uk to keep people informed of new articles, events and announcements.

Follow Bedlington.co.uk on Twitter.

What is Twitter?

For more information on Twitter and how it works visit the Twitter help pages.

Didn't think the planes would come this far North but their does seem to be a lot of noise in the sky above Bedlington today.

proof being that many iphone users I know find it hard to answer their phones, or make texts and calls.

I agree that there are a lot of senseless apps for things like, as you say, calculating tips which should be second nature. Interestingly I recently watched a video regarding the future of "augmented reality" in smartphones. The application used the accelerometer, magnetometer, gps receiver, camera and facial recognition technology to overlay information on the screen when you pointed the camera at people and objects.

Here it is....

Now that's pretty cool but it does give us another excuse for not actually talking to people.

One of the excellent things I like about the iPhone is it's the first phone I've owned that can reliably merge my desktop and mobile activities. Having email synced (not just the emails themselves but whether I've read them or not) across multiple accounts. Also, traditionally I could only sync my contacts between PC and phone when they were physically connected now they stay synced without my intervention between PC, phone, facebook, Gmail, and any other application I can think of.

Yes I know, abilities like this never seem to originate from Apple themselves but they have done a good job of bringing together/plagiarising? lots of ideas into one package to make a really useful product.

My favourite's are...

• Skype
• Tea Round - sorts out a few arguments
• Flixster
• Wordpress (Naturally)
• TwitterFon
• Shazam
• Last.fm
• Motion-x gps (for cycling)
• Nru

I'm definately an iPhone fan now although I was a bit sceptical beforehand. I'm expecting threegee along to to this thread shortly as I'm sure he will probably have something to say on the matter

Just stumbled on an advert for the new Monkey Island game. Guess that's the site upgrades put on hold Anybody else ever played?

Maybe a bug (or more likely an unset setting): When I hit the vote post up/down I get a "Action failed: You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day" modal dialogue box.

Fixed

"It's not quite as grim online"

It's OK once you find it and know where it is for the next time, but I expect it's more learning than the average poster will want to do. They will probably dismiss the info column never to restore it again - except by serendipitous accident.

Should be better positioned now.

Maybe a bug (or more likely an unset setting): When I hit the vote post up/down I get a "Action failed: You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day" modal dialogue box.

Looking into it

Maybe the New Posts should feature before the Top Posters? We know who they are likely to be anyway!

Done

P.S. Just discovered the tweet box doesn't side-scroll properly making input/editing VERY difficult. Using Fry-a-fox of course

Not quite sure what you mean by this. Are you saying the status update box doesn't scroll with the cursor as you type?

The disposable status column feature works very well - more sites should have this sort of thing to get rid of their clutter on netbook screens. Took me a short while to find the restore button though. It's not quite as obvious as the dispose one.

This is one of the features I am aware of it's a CSS positioning bug that I haven't zapped yet.

Thanks

- Andy

OK, I've been busy tonight upgrading the forums and I'm just about done. Have a play and let me know what you think.

Known Issues

------------------

• The header is a little messy and not very space efficient at the minute.
• The "show/hide" button for the top posters section on the forum homepage is misaligned.
• Increasing or decreasing post reputation gives an error.

I'll be sorting these tomorrow along with finally integrating the login and enabling the classifieds.

I think I'll probably give the forums and their descriptions a bit of a re-jig as well because I think they're a bit cluttered.

If anybody spots any more issues just let me know.

Just another pic from my hols.

though didn't see you making an appearance yourself!!

There was a brief communicatory exchange from a distance, then I lost him into the crowd.

Does this mean that news editors will get logged in automatically too? It's a bit of a hassle for them needing two sets of logins.

Yes, absolutely.

Is there any mechanism to time-out ads? It would be nice if users could select the display period themselves. Would save a lot of moderator work and stale material.

Yes, time out is currently set at 90 180 days and advertisers are notified of expiry.

There also exists the possibility of having a tiered fee structure for classifieds. i.e. extra images or a longer ad duration can be set for a fee. Free Free Free

All will be working soon. I'm currently working on upgrading the forums and integrating the login system site-wide. All parts of the site will be accessible with a single set of login details very shortly.

As for the classifieds section I'll set up some very wide-reaching categories to start with and then add sub-categories as and when new ads are posted.

The For sale and Wanted forums will be phased out over the next 30 days.

I'll post here as soon as the login is fixed.

I've just got back from the steppy stones with the dog where there's quite a bit of water.

There is now also software available for all modern smartphones that will allow you to publish content when you are out and about with no need for a computer. pm for details.

Whilst I am against the parking charges don't forget we have two monstrous under utilised free car parks behind the front street, are these also to be part of the new charging scheme?

so theres 47574 jobs available! thats not nearly a drop compaired to the amounts being laid off! plus most of these jobs are special skilled jobs such as teachers etc and the rest are cleaners!

I love it how people that aren't prepared to put in a little time and effort to gain some valuable skills are suddenly above manual non skilled jobs such as cleaners.

The free market will always provide work for those that are prepared to do it unfortunately the minimum wage legislation means that people that are often willing to work for less are unable to do so.

Also wage inflation creeps in as higher paid people try to maintain their pay differential. This cost-push inflation is why manufacturing in this country is no longer competitive.