I can make your next web application whether it be a complex database driven system, or a simple static Web Site.
I have experience in most common web languages: HTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript. I have worked with a number of CMS' including Wordpress and Blogger.
From setting up web hosting, your personal web address, DNS management, Email through to database set-up, backup, storage - delivering your complete web application - I will find a solution.
I have worked with past companies and organisations to design, develop and deliver web solutions including:
The Big 5 Restaurant
Signpost Youth Project
University Radio York
So if you need fast, friendly, valid and functioning service - get in touch.
This Weekend: Rugby + Stereophonics
The Journey of the Bike
GeoTagging Application: LocalTags
Inspired by the fitfinder site, I wanted to make use of HTML 5's Geo Location API to allow a fast way for posting a comment at your location.
I looked into how to find out the name of a place after been given GPS co-ordinates by the browser. Google has a good API called reverse geocoding which you can submit co-ordinates to and get returned a nicely formatted address.
You also may want to search for a different place or may not have a HTML 5 compatible browser (IE) so need to enter your location manually - to do this the geocoding API was used. The user starts typing a place name and a search is done, returning a place name along with it's co-ordinates.
The Maps API then displays the location along with comments posted near there, +/-0.02 of its co-ordinates. You can then submit your own comment and move the marker to exactly where you are talking about.
All that is then stored in a database is the exact co-ordinates of the comment, the text and the time.
UK phone network O2 has scrapped unlimited data downloads for smartphone customers. All new and upgrading customers will have their usage capped at between 500 Megabytes (MB) and one gigabyte (GB) depending on their monthly tariff. Analysts said the move was 'inevitable' as more and more consumers switch to data-intensive smartphones that can surf the web and show video.
Oh no! - or that's what I first thought but when I headed over to my iPhone to see what my 'Cellular Network Data' usage was like, I was quite shocked! The figures shown here are my total use over the whole life of my phone, which currently stands at 8 months.
So it looks like I am not within the 3% that will need to be worrying about the data caps.
Thinking about when I am downloading 'big things', mainly podcasts and music, I am on Wi-Fi. When travelling to Leeds, I did use the 3G connection quite heavily but it seems that what I was doing, was not that data intensive - good to know for the future.
These caps make sure that everyone gets a fair chance to use the network without the data hoggers ruining it for everyone.
Lego
Mouse Tracking
This image shows 1 hour of my mouse movement - the large black circles indicate where the mouse was stationary for periods of time.
Dylan James Vernon Jones
Yes I know! Googling your name may be a bit vain but also perhaps a good idea!
Perspective employers etc are likely to do a quick search for your name and you want your best to come up top rather than some rubbish. My site appears 4th on Bing and 11th on Google when queried with Dylan Jones. However, searching Dylan James Vernon Jones my Facebook page is top of Bing and nothing of me can be seen on Google. This may be due to the fact I do not have my full name in an easy to read format. It is embedded, however in a hCard on the home page.
Never mind, maybe this post will help!
Number of Google Searches
5209 - is the number of signed-in searches I have done on Google since 22nd June 2009 up to just now - late on 5th July 2010
You can check to see your statistics, if you have a Google account, over at Google History. You can also check out trends including most searched for terms, top clicked sites and search activity over time (mine shown here).
MockFlow: Web Design Tool
I found a great web design tool from a Mashable article called MockFlow. The flash based app allows you to design and test web layouts from scratch or from existing templates. The drag and drop interface is very easy to use and there are all kinds of different content types available to add to your design. For example: buttons, text, bullet lists, charts and lines etc.
I am trying out a few box ideas for an updated design to my homepage. You can share your designs with others, collaborate and export it to a variety of different formats including powerpoint and PDF.
With the ability to upload your own images, link to other pages with seperate designs and use already made common components, it is really quick and easy to put together a mockup of a site.
Web Analystics + Design
Oh yes, it is that time of year again for a quick up haul of the CSS again! Updates include:
Horizantal Navigation
More Images
Bigger Images
Full use of width, whatever screen resolution
Page Tools
Better Browser Support (mainly IE)
What are you opinions?
The big job over the refurbishment was stepping back from HTML 5 tags section and article - the reason behind this was rendering in Internet Explorer.
I use Google Analytics on my site and recently read a post on forrst about browser versions and got interested in what my statistics say on visitors' browsers.
As the stats show, around 9% of my visitors are having a go with IE but up to now, would have seen a mess. So I would like to apologise and welcome you to this design. The word on the street is that Microsoft will be taking up some html 5 tags in the next version of it's famous browser. I am looking forward to seeing that.
iPhone Ringtones
I have just found a great tutorial on getting any song as a ringtone on your iPhone
Facebook privacy has popped up again in the news, yawn.
The personal details of more than 100 million Facebook users have been published on the internet.
Yes and why is this news? Those 100 million Facebook users gave their 'personal details' (happens to be name, gender, profile picture and locality) to Facebook on the internet. So, I am pretty sure that they were expecting to see their names on the internet.
Story Background: A security consultant put the list of users together using the Facebook Graph API. The dataset has now been uploaded to torrent sites allowing people easy access to the names and URLs of Facebook users.
So what is all the fuss about?
The data that has been collected is freely available via a search on Facebook or by a search engine. If people do not want their names 'published' on the internet, then they either need to:
use a fake name as their online identity
stay offline
Music Projects
On recently registering for the London Music Hack Day, I have been thinking of ideas for using web services such as Twitter, Facebook, LastFM and others, which come with beautifully wrapped APIs, to put together some fun music applications.
Introducing the Facebook Friend Artist Wall
This application gets your Facebook friends musical likes and displays a wall of artist images. Clicking on an artist fetches a related song from the Echo Nest API to play you.
It can also display a word cloud of popular artists amongst your friends.
I have a couple of other ideas that I am going to mess around with over the next few days including some geo-location stuff. Keep an eye out!
August Summary
A few notable things to mention for this, the least sunniest summer I have seen in a long time.
I have spent most waking hours at my workplace - Hotel Commodore.
I have passed first year Electronics (finally!)
I have grasped json handling using jQuery (just about)
The Victorian Festival is dead. There is less and less stuff each year now.
I have invested in an arduino board.
and I am looking forward to moving to Leeds in September
Music Hackday London - 2010
Hello friends!
Last weekend I attend the Music Hackday at the Guardian offices, London. It was super. I travelled the Saturday morning from Hereford so was lacking in sleep even before starting the 24-hour hack session.
In the morning, there were presentations and workshops put on by the companies and organisations attending. Some interesting ideas were put forward, I especially was interested in O2 Litmus' hashblue service that I actually signed up to a couple of weeks ago. It allows you to access your text messages, almost in real-time.
On a mobile theme, I decided for my hack, I would take up my Cleversounds idea.
You are walking around between shops, pubs, clubs and your house - they usually have some music playing in the background. Wouldn't it be nice if they played your favourite music?
In a nutshell: you register you bluetooth MAC address, tell the site what music you like by linking your Last.fm/Facebook accounts (or by just typing in artists). When your device is detected by a Cleversounds Jukebox, you are played your favourite artists and recommendations. Back on the site, you get a feed of what tracks have been played for you, along with where and when.
The application is live at cleversounds.info where you can sign up and use a demo Jukebox that simulates Bluetooth devices detected. I do plan to package up all the software and local scripts into something that you can download and run on your machine allowing you to have your very own Jukebox, so long as you have a bluetooth dongle (or similar).
There were some fantastic hacks demoed on the Sunday, a full list is available on the wiki. Lots of photos of the event are available here and videos here.
Well done to all the organisers and everyone attending that made it so much fun. As a final note, the food/drink provided was amazing. Photo accreditation to Thomas Bonte.
University: Year 2
I have never got this far in my university career before!
Day three of my second year at the University of Leeds, very exciting. I moved up a couple of weeks ago and have been enjoying getting to know my new flatmates. The work however, has begun.
My modules are: Mobile Applications Project, Energy Systems and Control, Communications Theory, Transistors & Optoelectronics, High Frequency Circuits & Systems and Embedded Systems Project
For the Mobile Applications Project, we are learning the basics of Objective-C and making an iOS application (for iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad). YEY!
We have 10 weeks to familiarise with the syntax of object orientated programming and the APIs and structure of iOS applications before finally demonstrating our application in the last week before Christmas.
We'll be working in the school's Apple Mac suite as the SDK can only run on Mac OS X.
As part of our assessment, we have to keep a blog-book (pun on log-book) and publish a tutorial on how to make our final application. I will add it here, on my blog (as well as the VLE), using the Mobile Application Project tag.
Interestingly, the 4th most read article on BBC News yesterday was: University gives students text books on iPhones
More than 500 medical students at the University of Leeds are being issued with iPhones which can access online text books.
The IT person behind this project will be coming in to speak to us about specific medical applications that they would like developing. I may be interested to take up one of their ideas or perhaps do something music based. I am undecided as yet but look forward to playing around with the different APIs the iOS has to offer.
My First Entry, Again
Hello!
I sadly lost all my previous blog entries when my host closed my account. There are some backed up however I am pondering whether to retrieve them or not
iTunes Announcement
The Apple website has been replaced with a very exciting advert.
What do you think? Will they be revealing a beautiful new look iTunes, an online music streaming service or the demise of Ping?
Notifo - Free iPhone Notification Service
I have just downloaded this iPhone application and am very excited! You can set up services to send push notifications to the phone or even use their API to create a new instance of sending a notification.
There is a chrome extension I have just installed as well which allows with a touch of a button, to send the page to the phone!
Brilliant
RSS Feeds
As apart of the full API I have made available, there are now various RSS feeds across the site. From photos, to projects and of course blog entries. A full list of feeds are detailed in the API docs. As you can see they are all available in JSON format as well.
In other news, I have managed to retrieve every blog post (except for one image) and the blog is back in full - well, except for the tags and comments.
Mobile Application Project
I have almost completed the Mobile Applications module. Code is submitted, tutorial is written up and poster made. All that is now left to do is a presentation on Thursday.
As promised, I am sharing what I have done with you.
The tutorial is available as a PDF and explains what the application does and how. It guides you through the processes to make the application yourself.
You do need background knowledge of iOS development and a basic understanding of the key frameworks.
The full code is available as well to see. If you have a Mac with xCode then feel free to build and use the application. You will need to edit a couple of properties before, feel free to get in touch if you need help.
This is the poster that gives a brief outline of the application along with some screenshots.
Embedded Systems Project
This semester, I am working on the Arduino Platform to design and make an embedded system. We have been given free reign (as long as Dr Evans things it's do-able within the time limitations) to make whatever we like.
In the labs, we have been learning the basics of the platform, getting familiar with the IDE and code libraries.
My first idea was some kind of remote control doing various things, but then I remembered my Electronic Clothing idea I had last year! So, I am currently toying with this idea:
Introducing the MAC: Multimeda Access Coat
From the fantastic sketch, you can see I am hoping to have a screen and keypad in each sleeve, earphones, possible connected to an iPhone dock type thing, temperature and wind sensors, GSM receiver (so that you can text the coat), maybe GPS?
Although in the early stages of development, I have invested in an £8 coat from Primark.
Quick Snapshot of Embedded Systems Project
The coat is coming along. The VDU in the arm is fitted along with the two scrolling buttons.
National Hack the Government Day 2011
Yesterday, I went down to London (on the 0505 train) for Rewired State's Hack day, held at the Guardian Offices. A busy day in London with the Boat Race (well done Oxford) and a protest.
Using open data from data.gov.uk, the theme was to create a tool for government, citizens or businesses. We had about 6 and a half hours to do it. Obviously I went along with no plan and no data ready so I began by going through some of the datasets to see what I could find.
There was a crime theme in the air so I decided on using prison population data.
Introducing: Where Should All the Convicts Go? A tool designed to help the government decide which countries to deport prisoners to. Coded primarily in Javascript, with a hint of PHP.
There were loads of fantastic hacks put together including games, crime mapping tools, complaint tools, weather, political and more.
Recent Projects
Hello
I have been working on a couple of quick projects recently that I thought I would like to share with you. The first one was inspired my my recent trip to India. Myself and Alice wanted to make contact everyday to the UK to either of our families by email or text. It worked out that we both ended up sending a message each so that both sets of parents knew where we were, what we had been up to and more importantly that we were safe.
Looking back at the bill from O2, this did not work out too expensive. I thought there might be a better way, be using some kind of relay service. There does not appear to be anything designed for travellers in this respect so I thought, that seems like a fun thing to make.
Keep in Touch Abroad lets users make posts via the site, SMS or email and then pushes them in real-time to the users subscribers who can decide to have notifications via the site, SMS or email. Users can attach location, photos, videos or audio to their posts too!
I have not officially launched it yet but am thinking a closed-beta release due to the limit of texts that can be sent via the O2 API (20 a day).
If you are interested in giving this product a go then hit me up on twitter @dylan8902 or email dylan@dylanjones.info
The second little project answers the question: Is My Train Delayed? - very simple use of the National Rail live departure board API but a lot easier to use than their website and at a cool domain.
Android
I have had my Samsung Galaxy S2 for a few weeks now and I have really enjoyed having a smartphone back in my pocket, after the demise of my iPhone.
Joining the Android Developer Program only cost $25 and I have now been experimenting with what I can get my phone to do.
A good starting point was to port ybsolo over to the Android Market. At the moment all the application does is open a web view but with the service being advertised in the market place, we hopefully will see some people trying it out.
Is My Train Delayed? is a perfect service for the mobile platform so I have been moving it to a native application. It is currently on the Android Market at version 4.0 as I have been adding features over the past few days.
Currently at 146 downloads, it is doing quite well. It pulls the live data straight from National Rail and creates a nice scrollable table view. It also auto-completes station names. On the website, you can locate your nearest station, I am experimenting with this on the android application as well as detailed journey information in a popup window.
Search Term - Now Playing
Looking at my Google Analytics, there was something starring me in the face.
I was aware that my BBC Now Playing application was a bulk of my total traffic, but it was surprising to see how many different ways people will search for what is the current song playing on BBC Radio 1?
The other interesting thing is that the most common browser searching for these related terms is Internet Explorer. So I am guessing that the majority of these people are listening to the radio using an Analogue FM radio, rather than via their browser. This is multi-platform radio, sort of working then. A listener is happy to be listening to an old analogue radio and then when wanting track information, will head to a search engine.
Great! I hope to add more functionality to the on radio application, including LastFM scrobbling and integration with on-line music stores soon enough.
I do not wear a watch anymore
A while ago, Alice said something about how the younger generation of today do not wear watches. This may be due to technology we live with in the 21st century, there is an abundance of devices around us reminding us of the time from wall clocks, to microwaves, computers, our phones, music players and TVs; there is just no need to have time strapped to ourselves any more.
The concept of attaching a mechanical device to our wrists to keep us informed of how many hours we have left to do things is quite funny really. Why have we been doing this for so long? To know the time, you say, time is precious, we need to look after it. Fair point. But I have taken the plunge and have not been wearing my wristwatch for a couple of weeks and I feel great! At no point have I even looked at my wrist to find out the time. I think I have been on time to my appointments and lectures, for the most part. I feel free and like I have all the time in the world.
dyl.anjon.es
Hello.
It has been a few years now and she has served me well, but it is time to say goodbye to dot info. My second personal domain name (first being djvj.eu back in my early teens) has been with us a few years and seen me through my web dev learning process well. It has pointed to some great stuff but now the time is here to say goodbye.
I was messing around one day looking for a better domain, I mean dylanjones.info is pretty good as it is a top-level domain with just my name, but then I thought how could I just have my name. I checked that the Spanish .es TLD was publically available outside of Spain. Before 2005, you could only get a .es domain if you held a trademark within Spain or some other naming exceptions.
dylanjon.es was already taken and is just a holding page to sell it to the Dylan Jones around the world. Screw that, I am not paying more than neccessary so I looked further into my name.
anjon.es was available so I thought, perfect - I can change my name to Ryan and use the sub-domain ry - only joking, dyl.anjon.es is my name.
The best bit now is that there are a few other names ending -an Jones so I am willing to give you a free sub-domain and e-mail address if you want it - Just get in touch.
So I have moved everything over and put in place 301 Redirects from dylanjones.info - I have even spruced up the CSS a bit and included a Google Web Font called Signika. There is still a couple of things that need to be moved over so some stuff still points to dylanjones.info
So there we go, a personal domain with just my name and if you Ryan Jones, Sian Jones, Brian Jones or Alan Jones etc would like a free sub-domain, drop us a message.
