Thomasmazur.com News

Web Analytics

2009-08-21T10:18:00.004+01:00

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

(definition from webanalyticsassociation)

Typically the data is collected on the website and the clients have access to a reporting centre where the traffic is analysed and shown in multiple sections, such as visitors, traffic sources, contents and goals (*optional).

Please contact me for more information.

Read more about web analytics on wikipedia

Find out more about my website services.

Search Engine Optimisation

2009-08-21T10:11:00.007+01:00

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

(from wikipedia)

At ThomasMazur.com years of practice in the field allow us to develop websites following search engine optimisations protocols and best practice, this usually results in websites ranking high in the major search engines on selected keywords. Please note that the results cannot be guaranteed, SEO is not an exact science, as lots of factors have to be taken into accounts and each project is different.

Please contact me for more information.

Find out more about my website services.

I am on twitter

2009-08-21T09:31:00.018+01:00

Feel free to start following me and I'll start following you.

My twitter page

My twitter counter

Thanks, Thomas

nintendo game - duck hunt - how does it work

2009-08-20T13:07:00.005+01:00

We were discussing video games with a friend some time ago and ended up reflecting on the old duck hunt nintendo game which, if you don't remember, let you shoot ducks on your tv screen with a video gun, plugged in to your console.

Well that seems something fairly common those days with the likes of touch screens, nintendo wiis etc innundating the market but how on earth did they manage to achieve this technicality about 20 years ago.

How does the console know that the video gun is aiming at the duck when you pull the trigger, and not somewhere else?

Well a little bit of research gave me the solution and I thought I would share it here as well as I'm sure this is an existential problem for lots of use, or not :-)

Basically the gun contains a photodiode which is able to detect the light coming from the screen. When the trigger is pressed, the screen is quickly reset and redrawn from scratch in white line by line. The console is able to figure out how long it took before the colour hits the sensor and therefore where exactly the gun is pointing at on the screen. That's the first way of doing it, the second one being that only the target is redrawn.

In both cases it seems to work perfectly, and I think this is a pretty good trick. Also in contrary to all beliefs, fhe gun is not firing at anything but the TV is in fact firing at the gun!

For more information read on the howStuffWorks website to understand. The page also includes a link to the patent nintendo filled in 1989 for that technology.

On March 28 switch off your lights

2009-03-20T11:50:00.004Z

On March 28 you can VOTE EARTH by switching off your lights for one hour.
Or you can vote global warming by leaving your lights on.

The results of the election are being presented at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. We want one billion votes for Earth, to tell world leaders that we have to take action against global warming.

http://www.earthhour.org/home/

French shopping site

2009-02-12T16:30:00.001Z

Just finished this shopping site called www.jenetrouvepas.fr (litterally translating as "I cannot find").
Now the fun starts, advertising it and seeing it showing up in the main search engines :-)
Hopefully I'll have some good news soon!

Credit crunch dating site

2009-02-12T16:08:00.001Z

Cheap dating site which gives you access to thousands of UK users for a tiny £4.99 a month! That's right, it's a bargain! Most of the other dating sites charge you up to £30 a month. Here you only pay less than a fiver, and you know what, you get the same services, that's instant messaging, secure payment, personal profile, who's online, personality profiles, who's online, blogs, diaries, advanced searching etc

There are already thousands of members, so why don't you sign up for free to find out more, check those other profiles out and see for yourself.

http://www.creditcrunchdating.co.uk

Hey baby

2008-12-12T15:45:00.000Z

Découvrez Buckwheat Zydeco!

British Internet Providers censor Wikipedia over child image

2008-12-07T22:41:00.000Z

Article from theregister.co.uk, I initially found the story on the following french website: ecrans.fr.

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"Six British ISPs are filtering access to Wikipedia after the site was added to an Internet Watch Foundation child-pornography blacklist, according to Wikipedia administrators.

As of Sunday morning UK time, certain British web surfers were unable to view at least one Wikipedia article tagged with ostensible child porn. And, in a roundabout way, the filtering has resulted in Wikipedia admins banning large swaths of the United Kingdom from editing the "free encyclopedia anyone can edit."

On Friday, Wikipedia administrators noticed that Virgin Media, Be Unlimited/O2/Telefonica, EasyNet/UK Online, PlusNet, Demon, and Opal were routing Wikipedia traffic through a small number of transparent proxy servers as a way of blocking access to the encyclopedia's article on Virgin Killer, a mid-1970s record album from German heavy band Scorpions."

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This strangely seems like censorship, and whilst it's hard to argue about the actual picture, I find it hard to take that my isp can block content without letting me know about it (please see the page in question, which shows as blank in my browser.

It makes me wonder how many other pages are blocked and I just don't know about it, it also makes me realise that the great firewall of China is not so far away...

Anaphylaxie - short movie

2008-07-18T11:01:00.001+01:00

Archive.org

jiwa.fm - more online music, not working in the UK (England)

2008-03-27T14:00:00.000Z

I just read this article about jiwa.fm - article in French.

They explain that jiwa.fm which made a deal with Universal Music will eventually contain more than 250000 music titles, which people will be able to play for free online.

The site is sponsored by advertising (banners on the site).

There are more titles than on deezer.com, on which I wrote an article previously, and I could not wait to try it out.

So I created an account and tried to play some music I could not find on deezer.com but I was able to find there.

I unfortunately was unable to play any music from the site, which looks perfectly fine (all the songs / albums are available, but pressing the play button does not do anything. I tried in firefox, opera, internet explorer and could not get it to work. I disabled pop up blocker, ad blocker, antivirus but it did not change anything.

I therefore have the impression that jiwa.fm use the same geo-ip technology as deezer.com to disable most of the site to other countries than France. I was not able to find any documentation anywhere regarding that problem though.

A couple of my French friends tried it from France and it worked in their end.

I will look for a solution, but at the meantime if anyone knows what the problem is, or knows how to use the site outside of France please let me know.

EDIT: the geoip problem is confirmed by this site (article in French). They explain that most of the music is only accessible from France. This is a legal issue (same thing as Deezer). I will edit this post if I find out more. At the same time keep me updated too!

Thanks :-)

Edit 20/04/08:
I have been trying to use the TOR network with Jiwa.fm and it never really worked. I once managed to get a french IP from the network but it was really too slow to use, and i always gave up. I tried again this morning, got a Canadian IP (Calgary) and it works perfectly fine! This makes me wonder why the site works in Calgary and not in England. It certainly has to be with licences as it was suggested by anonymous.
Now the only problem is that next time I start using the TOR network I will get another IP, likely to be from another country, which may not work or which may be too slow.
I am positive I will find a durable solution though :)

Facebook applications - users have their say

2008-03-07T14:15:00.000Z

I have been going for a few months to the Facebook developers garage where developers, entrepreneurs and companies gather for one evening a month to learn / discuss / think about facebook applications.

One of the trend discussed this month is that Facebook users seem to have enough of most of those applications that came up since the facebook API was open to developers. A poll was started live during the event, asking Facebook users what they think the application are useful for. The results are quite strong, and show that almost 90% of users do not see any real use for them.

Other signs are the multiple Facebook groups and petitions joined by thousands such as the "ban the inviting of friends on applications", almost a million user at the time of writing, the " ban apps that force to invite before you can use them" etc.

Well, the good thing is that the Facebook people are listening to those complaints. The layout keeps on changing so people can have a clean homepage not filled with dozens of apps anymore (there's a new layout coming up soon too). We also learnt yesterday that it will soon be forbidden to force people to invite their friends in order to use an application.

This is one step to the right direction, but I think that the most important task is for us, developers, to build interesting and useful applications, as most users are not interested anymore in using them just because it's new. This time's over

I reckon we should see in this phase 2 some very interesting applications, and I can't wait to develop some myself!

On a funny note, for those who have not seen it yet, this video illustrates perfectly this post (and my girl friend will be happy as she's in the video ;-) ).

Put an interactive map on your site

2008-03-03T22:10:00.001Z

I had to design a website for a house on sale lately. I was looking for the best way of putting up a map of the area and pinpoint the location house on it.

I came accross the google ajax map search wizard, which from a combination of information (postcode, house number, area name, etc) generates a control which code you can just copy and paste in your html.

The height and width of the control is adjustable, you can search for places on the map, zoom in and out and drag the map around from within the control, it really is having a google map in your site.

It's great, and the result looks awesome on the webpage (EDIT: there is now an English version of this page)

Deezer.com and how to bypass their GeoIP location tool

2008-02-26T17:57:00.000Z

If, like me, you have been using the site deezer.com , you may have noticed that most of the songs are greyed out, and there is no way of playing them.

For those who do not know it, the site deezer lets you play music online for free. The site is neat and the interface friendly and easy to use. And most importantly the choice of music is quite important.

After some research, I found out that the site is based in France (by that I actually mean the company), and if you are accessing the site from outside of France then for copyright reasons you won't be able to play most of the songs (they use GeoIP location for that, which is finding out where you are from your IP address).
Fortunately there is a trick, for firefox users (and opera users apparently, although I have not tried it).

First you will need to download greasemonkey , a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function.

Once you have installed it install the Deezer Version 2 Unlocker.

And there you go, you should now be able to use deezer as if you were in France, and have access to all of the songs and albums.

(once you're at it you might as well install the deezer ads remover)

Please let me know if you know of other ways to use deezer outside of France, say on internet explorer for instance.

Current Project

2008-02-22T18:03:00.000Z

I am currently working on the Bulgarian Partners Trust new website, in collaboration with a designer and an editor. The new site should be up and running within 2 weeks from now. Come back here for more information.

Welcome to my website

2008-02-22T17:33:00.001Z

Today is the 22nd of Feb 2008. The site has been up for about a month now. And this news section has just been added.

I would like to thank you for visiting my website. I really hope that you will be able to find here what you are looking for and that you will be happy with my services.

If you have any question please contact me by going on the contact page.

Best regards, Thomas