See Film First

Posted by David | Filed under Student Saving Tips, The Web

See Film First is one of many sites that allow you to sign up and receive invitations to cinema previews of new films. It’s a great way to save money if your a student as the showings are completely free, you also get to take along a friend if you apply for two tickets.

They are however often at times you would not consider going to the cinema, around early evening. One of the biggest problems I had was that the cinema I wanted to see it in was often filled before I got a chance to submit my request for tickets, you really have to be on the ball to get a pair as they go within a few minutes of the email invitation being sent! You may also not get invited to the films you’d prefer, often I’ve been invited to films that are of little interest to me, and not been invited to films I’d have loved to see such as Die Hard 4.0 and Indiana Jones.

It won’t be convenient for everyone either, these previews are not in every cinema in the country, and are usually limited to big cinemas in the large towns and cities.

It isn’t a scam though, when you are successful you are able to print out your ticket and go to the cinema to watch your film, as it is a preview there are often stricter rules in place, last time I went was to Hot Fuzz and there were two security guards outside the entrance to the screen!

It’s another great way to save money as a student, and the bonus is you get to see the film before everyone else as well! Its a win-win situation!

External Link: See Film First

Tags: ,

Read more | Comments (1) | Wednesday, 13th Aug 2008

Setting Up Your Own Website (Part 1)

Posted by David | Filed under Web Design Tips

Microsoft® Office Ultimate 2007 - Buy Now!

Setting up your own website is less difficult than you may expect, and it’s getting easier and easier as the Internet progresses. I think if you feel you are competent with with using your computer normally, and are not afraid of clicking things when you don’t know what they do then you are capable of making your own website.

There are a few things to decide when setting up your own website. The first before you do anything is what are you going to put on it!

Step 1 – What is it going to be about?

This step involves basic planning on paper, what are you going to have on your website? Is it a blog? Is it a company website? If you don’t know what you want then you are not ready to start a website, but perhaps you could consider some free hosting such as Angelfire or Lycos Tripod and have a play with some web software.

Step 2 – What do you want out of your website?

This step is again on paper, this time you have to decide what you want to do with your content, and what you want your website to be able to do. Is it going to be a simply HTML website you build in FrontPage? Or is it going to be a more complex website which has a discussion board or a shop?

Step 3 – Choosing a Domain Name

Now that you have planned your website carefully its time to think of a Domain Name. This can be a company name, keyword domain or blog title domain. Be careful not to get a domain name that might get you sued (e.g don’t put ebay in the domain name!) or one that could easily be misspelled. For example don’t get one that has a commonly misspelled word in our when you put two words together you get a double letter formed. Try and keep it short, memorable and try not to use non alphanumeric characters if you can. A rough price guide for a domain name is approximately £7 for a .com or .net per year and £4 for a .co.uk (you can only buy a .co.uk on a two yearly cycle). If you find yourself paying much more than this you are being ripped off! There are some hosts who will try and scam you, don’t fall for it!

Step 4 – Choose a Host

Choosing a host is a very important part of setting up a website, you want a host who will be supportive and have good customer services, as well as a good up time of 99% or over. Depending on your website you will also want one that can supply all the server features you desire. This can include MYSQL databases, PHP support etc. Ensure that you check with the host first before buying that it will work with the software you intend to build your website with. Hosting prices can vary, but for an average website built solely in HTML it can be as little as £25 a year, in PHP with MYSQL around £30-40. The most costly thing is bandwidth, and make sure your host is generous with it. If you are not getting much more than 10GB consider changing host.

Choose a host that installs cPanel.

The more controlling a host is the more you will want to avoid as well, certain hosts will try and get as much money out of you as they can by charging extra for features such as extra email and extra subdomains DON’T fall for this! These things don’t cost them a penny to set up! I would recommend using a host that pre-installs cPanel for you this is a great webmaster tool.

Bandwidth

You can always buy a cheaper package when you first start your website and upgrade as it gets more and more popular, in the beginning days it is unlikely you well get to use all your bandwidth, but the more successful you are and the more content and visitors you have the more bandwidth will get used. Bandwidth is the amount of data that is allowed to be uploaded or downloaded from your website in a month. Videos and music take up significant amounts of bandwidth, while text takes up relatively little.

In my next post I will talk about what software to choose for your website, justifying how much to invest in your website and whether to consider paid advertising to get things going.

Tags: , , ,

Read more | Comments (1) | Wednesday, 13th Aug 2008

Searchme Visual Search

Posted by David | Filed under The Web

Microsoft® Office Ultimate 2007 - Buy Now!

Yesterday I looked at supposed Google killer Cuil, to much disappoint. Today another search site, I don’t think they are going to oust Google any time soon, but I do genuinely like this search site.

Searchme Visual Search is a cool new search site where you get a visual image of your search result page, and you can scroll through the stack of images to get to the page you want. The search engine also helps you narrow your search down before hitting search by suggestion categories to limit it to.

For example if I type Senator Obama into the search I get the following suggestions: politicians, democratic party, US government, alternative vehicle fuels and educational testing. Pretty accurate I think! The first websites that is shows is actually the same for all but educational testing, showing the official Obama ‘08 campaign website. Followed by Wikipedia, and then by other links that generally do look relevant.

My second test was with the phrase ATI Radeon. Here I got some decent suggestion categories too, the first “computer hardware” taking me to results such as the official ATI homepage, while product reviews taking me to reviews of Radeon cards such as on sites like CNET.

My final test was using the phrase Human Genome Project. Here I also got very good listings in very good category selections. On clicking “biology” the first site was the Wikipedia page to the Human Genome Project, “US Government” was the National Human Genome Research Institute, even the odd category “Work and Career” was actually relevant supplying information on jobs involved with genome projects!

Searchme also has a really nice way of displaying listings…

It is sort of similar to the way, iTunes can allow you to scan through album covers, and it does work really quite well. It also highlights your keywords in the page, and a simple click will take you right to it.

SearchMe also has this rather nifty “Stacking” system which  I suppose is a funky way of saying bookmarking. But visually it is impressive allowing you view through your stack to get to the website you want relatively quickly. I can see an advantage to this if you aren’t sure on the site name but remember what it looks like! Stacks are saved and you can return to them at anytime. You can also have multiple stacks and share them with friends.

if you don’t like how dark the theme looks they even allow you to change to a lighter “Day” theme.

Final Verdict: It looks great, it produces good results, but is it a Google killer? Unfortunately I don’t think it will be I am sure that it will have a big cult following it is really useful, but I think the average user could find it perhaps a bit of a gimmick after a while and having to sift through images to find what you want is a less efficient method than text. I can see it being used more in a learning environment or in the home where time is not so much of an issue. I also noticed that it isn’t amazing at correcting spellings or suggestion alternatives. 8.5/10

External Link: Searchme Visual Search

Tags: ,

Read more | Comments (0) | Wednesday, 13th Aug 2008