Technology

Sideshow – Cyprus web design company

For years I’ve been complaining about the web design situation in Cyprus. Most web design companies here suck. And most of the websites that they do suck even more. Once in a while, though, I’d mention this or that website that was standing out. Finally, I can mention a web design company that stands out and that makes websites that stand out too – Sideshow.

Yes, like every other company, they have their problems (front page of their website doesn’t validate clean) and they don’t do everything the way I would have done it (they are using Vimeo for videos, not YouTube), but I am still impressed with their work. They use Drupal CMS extensively. They truly know what social media is about, with Facebook and Twitter integrations and team tweets, their own blog, RSS feeds, and more. Their design work is fresh and modern. And their portfolio is shining. Remember, when I was praising the new Cyprus Mail website? That’s the company who did it. They even print their business cards with Moo, what more can I say?

I’m so glad I found them. I have people left and right asking me where to go for a new website, and until now I have been very reluctant to refer them to any of the webdesign companies I know. But now I have a proper reference. And even though I haven’t worked with them personally, I think I am in the position to judge their work. And as I said, I am impressed. Respect!

P.S.: no, this is not a paid ad. I truly am glad and impressed.

P.P.S.: if you are a web designer or web developer in Cyprus, they are hiring. If there is one web company to work for in Cyprus, that’s this one.

Ad CTR ratio by browser

Download Squad attempts to analyze a recent report about advertising click-through rate (CTR) ratio based on different browsers. Apparently, more than 40 million impressions were used as the data for this report, and Opera and MSIE users came on top – they click the most ads. Firefox and Chrome users are further down the list, and Safari users are at the bottom.

I think this chart makes a lot of sense. While there are ad-blocking solutions for both Opera and MSIE, neither one of this browsers has a healthy plugin ecosystem. In other words, even if there are ways to filter ads in these browsers, most users don’t know how to do it or simply don’t care enough. Both Firefox and Chrome browsers are blossoming with addons and extensions which filter all ads, known ads, annoying ads, flash ads, ads on specific websites, ads of specific sizes, and so on and so forth. In fact, I don’t know any Firefox or Chrome user who doesn’t have some sort of ad-filtering extension installed.

That leaves us with Safari. Why Safari users are clicking the least ads? I don’t know. I’m thinking that might be a statistical inaccuracy or something along those lines. Or maybe they all are just broke from buying all those Apple products and have no interest in ads no more. Who knows?

Take.fm – a cross between Netflix and The Pirate Bay

One of the websites that helped me change my opinion on movie piracy recently was Take.fm . Something tells me that it will be shut down and humiliated by authorities when it will grow, but for as long as it is open, I think that it is a good example of how movie access should be.

Take.fm is a cross between the famous American video-on-demand service Netflix and the well-known pirated content exchange website The Pirate Bay. Take.fm brings the best of both worlds. Netflix, from what I hear, has an excellent selection of content and very user friendly interface. Too bad it is not available outside of the United States. And unfortunately to some – it is a commercial service. The Pirate Bay, on the hand, is free and offers pretty much the same content. However, most of this content is buried in tonnes of noise, porn, SPAM, and such. It’s not easy to find what you want, and when you get it, nobody can guarantee you the quality of the downloaded material.

Take.fm has a very easy, straight-forward interface. You can browse or search for movies. Poster thumbnails are a great help. Once you find something interesting, you can check IMDB rating which is integrated with the website (finally, somebody did it!), select your option for either DVDRip or BDRip (yes, Bluray), and click “Download Torrent File”. I don’t see how it could have been simpler, really.

While the selection of titles might be not as great as you’d find on Apple TV or Netflix, there is enough for everyone. They have new releases, old movies, and classics. They have movies in all genres. The quality of downloads is awesome. And the download speeds are amazing. At least my ADSL line is maxed out every time I get something from there. And the best part is that you don’t even have to register. You can, but you don’t have to. I, for one, am not registered yet.

If the movie industry wants me to change my opinion back, they have to come up with something as good or better as Take.fm – an excellent example to follow.

Submarine cables world map

Here comes an excellent map of world’s submarine cables. If you live on an island, like myself, using this map you can see where from you get your Internet. Zooming in shows the landing stations and which cables connect where. Also, clicking on the cable provides the details of the cable length and bandwidth.

P.S.: I have no idea how accurate or trustworthy this map is, but it sure looks legit.

My new stand on movie piracy

I have changed my opinion on movie piracy during the last few days.

Until recently I was strictly anti-piracy. Maybe not strict enough, but stricter than anyone I know personally. I wasn’t downloading movies from the Web. I was buying DVDs. I was renting DVDs. I was a frequent movie-goer. I was advocating people against movie piracy. I was wrong.

I am tired of being the “last samurai” pain in the butt. Nobody cares anymore. And the worst part, is that movie industry doesn’t care. Why should I then?

There is no way anymore for me keep watching movies, while staying an anti-pirate. I cannot rent a legitimate DVD anymore – everyone is using pirated and copy-pasted disks. I cannot share films with my friends, most of who are downloading them from the Web. There is no video-on-demand service around here, like Netflix in the USA. Our home ADSL speeds aren’t in the AppleTV ranges yet. And I can’t stay up-to-date using only cinemas, because all of the cinemas in Cyprus belong to the same people, they show the same movies, and they bring only about one new titles a week.

There is an option of buying DVDs from Amazon, but the prices (including shipping) are prohibitive, and, as I was reminded with my recent DVD player change, I have to pay attention to the regional encoding. Otherwise the DVDs that I bought won’t play at all. Oh, and, of course, if they play, I will have to go through a gadzillion of un-skip-able ads, trailers, FBI and CIA warnings, and the like. I am tired of this crap.

So, from now on, I won’t be paying much attention to all the movie anti-piracy noise. I will still try to get the movie legally – in the cinema or pay-per-view somewhere online, or whatever option will be available. But if everything fails, as it often does now, I will download and watch the pirated version. I have tried it recently, and it is a pleasure, indeed. It’s easy to find the film I want to see, it takes minutes to download it (compared to days or weeks waiting for it in the cinema or for a shipping delivery), I can talk about it with my friends again, and I can move on spending times on the things that I worth spending time on.

I tried my best and failed miserably, annoying a lot of people on the way. I won’t do it anymore.

P.S.: I won’t be producing or commercially distributing any pirated materials.

P.P.S.: The above opinion change for now only applies to the TV and movie industry. Software industry is different and I still stand strict on the anti-piracy stand there.

P.P.P.S.: If you were annoyed by my anti-piracy rants over the years, please excuse me. You should know how passionate and stubborn I can get, often for no reason.