Less bover with a Hoverboard

Ok I know its old hat - but like a billion other people I watched Jason (on the gadget show) build his hoverboard (Click for link ) - you cannot watch something like that without thinking I have got to have a go... So far purchased one old leaf blower and a million miles of pond liner ... All I need now a couple of hours of sun on Sunday and I will gracefully hovering a long!

Found other links re hovering boards
1) Ultra-Simple Hovercraft
2) Help you get the idea here are the original hoverboard scenes from Back to the future

Smart Documents - digital pen and paper solutions

Finally got our new company (Smart Document Solutions Ltd - which we shorten to SDS) together and ready for launch .. There is much more to do on the website but its a start... SDS is all about exploiting Anoto Digital pen and paper technology.. We have lots of stuff lined up .. more about that in a couple of weeks time.

Cool website

Found this cool Volvo website via Mike Taulty's great blog .. you will need the latest version of flash to view but still very well done!

Buyertools Reminder: Bid on eBay Automatically!

Over the last week I have been ordering large number of PC's and equipment on eBay for a new software test system we are putting together to automate some of our testing. Normally I want to control the bidding myself make sure I know exactly what's happening.. But it got too much over the last weekend .. I was becoming an eBay slave and found myself borrowing peoples PC's while out and about to make sure I was there to bid .. Very antisocial ... So I have finally gone out and got myself an eBay auto bidding (sniping tool) from Buyertools.
Found it through google not sure if its the best .. But its rather good !!! Now I can set my auto bids up and and get reminders of when my bids are due .. I can have a life and still win at eBay...
Still trying to understand all of it .. So far I would give it 8 out of 10 - one or two minor bugs and a couple of annoying behaviors. There are two versions a freeware version (the one I'm using) and the full version which I might upgrade to. It's spyware/advert free so well worth a punt.

My favorites

Silly but bright idea for the day - how about an extension to RSS feeds to publish website (URL) favorite lists - e.g. say the BBC were to publish a favorite list e.g. like those mentioned on Click Online. Then I could subscribe to that list (as I do with other RSS channels) and store/review them at my leisure (or simple automatically add them to my own list). There are one or two other people who views (on certain subjects) I really respect - it would be really cool if they also published their latest favorite list.

Again (see prev blog) if I did a search and one of those domain names came up (in the search results) that's in my the favorite list or in the combined list of mine and all the others I respect then it should be listed in a section at the top of the results as a repected place to go look at.

Domain name hogs

How many times have you searched for a domain name to buy .. and all the good ones have been taken by people who have never done anything with it?

The list of available domain names is dropping all the time. I think ICANN (and the others) should impose a new rule that if the domain name doesn't point to anything useful (say after 3 months of registration) then it should be taken off them and sold off (and they get their money back).

I think people should (for a small fee) be able to nominate domain names to be taken away from their current owner on the grounds that they are not making any use of it (or have simple pointed it at another unrelated website).

Mr Angry of England :)

Infernal list engines

Quick thought for the day- I'm for ever using google to search and spending most of my time trying to avoid list engines\link farms (i.e. websites that simple list other websites) .

What about adding a filter to the search engine to filter out results where the page they point to has more than (a user definable level) number of hyperlinks from it.

Seems to me that most "normal" websites don't have more than say 100 links in a page point out side their site.. yes I would loose a few useful ones - but if I could switch the filter on and off at will at least I could get them all if I was desperate.

Another set I would also filter out are those with domain names www.soming.rubish.com where rubbish is some (normally) short set of random characters.

Page Rank

Not sure about you but over the years I have amassed a huge list of favorites in internet explorer, but thinking about it I tend not to use them because I can never remember which ones were the best for which keywords.. So I find myself performing the same search for a phrase time after time.

It occurred to me that it would be very handy if my favorite search engine found sites in the results that also appear in my favorites list (because I personally think they are good) that it then it highlighted those sites in the search results page at the top.

Just an idea.