Phil Bradley's weblog

Momondo - Flight Search Engine

Momondo - Flight Search Engine. Not at all bad from the quick trial I gave it. Fast, effective, lots of options it really does pull out lots of options for you really quickly. I'll be using this myself in the future.

PHONifier

If you're travelling around and using a mobile phone to keep in touch it can be a bit of a pain if you're trying to look at a site that doesn't really work with mobiles. This is where PHONifier comes in. Go to the site, type in the URL you want, and it'll display the page in a phone friendly manner. Only that's not all.... it looks as though you can also use it to get around any banned websites in your organisation or place of work, or school etc. Since I have a very liberal employer I can't see if that's the case, so if someone does have sites that are banned, could they take a look and see if this works? Just out of interest of course, but don't do anything that could cause you trouble.

Thanks to the always useful Library clips site for this.

The 55 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit

The 55 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit. Very nice collection of links from the Read/Write website listing a bunch of resources that you can use with a mobile internet connection.

Traffic information on your desktop

Highways Agency - Traffic information on your desktop. They're offering an RSS feed and a little utility that you can add to your start bar that you can click on to see what's happening on da streets. Thanks to ResourceShelf for that one.

Frappr Maps

Frappr Maps IS a joke, isn't it? There are a few places that I want to visit, and I thought I'd keep a handy collection of them together in one place. I've vaguely used Frappr in the past, so I thought it looked like a good place to set something up.

Now, I may well be wrong here, but I'd have thought the easiest way to do something like this would be one of two ways. You either type in the address of the place you want to add a tag for, and the system will then locate it on a map for you, and give you some opportunity to agree/disagree with the place you've got, or you can go straight to the map, find the place you're interested in, then add it in.

Not apparently with Frappr. Oh no. I decide that I want to add in Coulsdon, so I click on 'Add place'. Then I get some whiney noise to tell me I've done something wrong. Apparently I should have entered a place name first. So I do that. Then I add in Coulsdon again, then click on 'Add Place!' Long pause before I get the whiney noise again, with the error 'Sorry, we could not understand your location'.  Let's try again then with Coulsdon, England, United Kingdom. Success! Place added.
Except for two things. Firstly, the placemarker in slap bang in Central London, not South West London, the way it should be. Secondly, the little markers disappear, so I can't find it again even if I want to.

Now, I'm reasonably intelligent, so let me try and work my way out of this situation. Is there a 'help' screen? No. Great. There's an edit option on the map itself. Does that do anything? No. (When I've managed to get it to do something previously the options given are a waste of space). Ah ha! Umpteenth time of trying I get the option to edit the group map. I can set the Center, which apparently allows me to move a marker. That's not the most logical thing I've ever seen, but never mind. Oh no, I take it back, it doesn't let me do that at all. Hang on, I take it back. (I'm sorry for all this, really I am.. but if it's irritating for you, just think what it's like for me!).

I click elsewhere on the map, and finally get to move my marker to the place it should be in the first place. I also get Longitude and Latitude options, which are great if you know what they are, or need to know, but I just want to put a little marker onto a map for Gods sake! How hard do these people want to make it for me? So, having sorted that, we click on 'Use this location' and then, Save Settings. Then we have to close the dialogue window. Clearly it's not intelligent enough to work out that when I click on 'save settings' I'm done and finished.

Has this actually made any difference at all? No, not a bit. That's another few minutes of my life wasted. Oh, here's an interesting thing. Don't put anything onto the 'Add Place' option, just click straight on [Advanced]. This pops up another dialogue box "type in a location and press Update" So we try 'Coulsdon' again. No luck. Adding in 'England, United Kingdom' actually gets me to the right country, which is the good news. The bad news is that we're still way off target. The good news is that I can actually click and drag to the place that I want to put my marker. Yes! We've finally managed it. Praise be.

I now get told that I've got 5 places on my map. I did add one earlier, so I should have 2. Or, even if I made a mess once, 3. But no, I have 5. So I go into Settings, Edit Places and delete the ones that I don't want. Except that they're all (with the exception of my first place) all saying the same place/location. All are wrong, with the exception of one. I can't go and look however, so it's a question of playing Russian Roulette to see if I can get the wrong ones deleted. Hurrah! I get it right. I now have 2 nice little markers, but my little dialogue box is telling me that I have 3 places listed. Zoom in, Zoom out, nope.. 2 little markers, not 3.

So, congratulations Frappr, I've just spent the last 45 minutes of my life trying to work out how your system works. And it stinks. And no, I don't actually care that you've got lots of happy users who can figure out how this rats maze of a thing is configured - I can't. It's not logical, it's not intuitive, it's not sensible. Dire, utterly Dire.

If anyone knows of a mapping system that will let me add in places quickly, simply, without any fuss please let me know, because I don't want to go through this again.

Dig a hole through the earth

If you dug a hole through the earth where would you come out? This is a fun little tool based on Google maps. Simply start over, drag the map to your location and see where you'd come out. Apparently I'd come out just a bit to the south east of New Zealand.

Second Life: Your World. Your Imagination.

Link: Second Life: Your World. Your Imagination.. Well, I finally joined Second Life today. It's an online avatar driven world, where you create a character, give it a name (mine is very original - Phil Bradley), create and appearance for it, and then you get talking/chatting/roleplaying. The interesting thing for me was that there is a library there, and I spent a happy hour or several chatting to some really interesting librarians about what they're doing there. It was also gratifying to hear that at least one of them reads my weblog as well!

It's a fascinating extension of real life (or as the game has it, First Life) into a gaming environment. There are regular meetings of librarian folk, programs, access to a wide variety of information, talks and so on. Unfortunately, most of them appear to take place well after I've gone to bed for the night, but that's life I guess.

I was struck by just how friendly people are - unlike other online games where the main point seems to be to be killed as quickly as possible, the environment here is very welcoming and positive. People are really keen to make the most of the possibilities, and to just explore what might be done. I was asked several times for my opinion on it, but I'll reserve judgement for a while longer until I can try it out properly, but one of the things that I think will be interesting is to watch the juxtaposition of people who want to live a fantasy/roleplayed life, and to choose names and appearances that are as far removed from them as possible, with a group of people who take a different approach, by bringing in 'real world' options.

It's certainly not for everyone; if you're not used to that sort of online environment I think it could be quite difficult to grasp - being able to fly between places, or teleport to them, but it certainly made a refreshing change for me, particularly being able to *talk* - real time, to other librarians. I think I like it - I know that I'll go back and spend some more time there. So if you see me wandering around, do come up and say 'hi!'