Simon Cook » Internet http://simoncook.org Home Page of Simon Cook Fri, 11 May 2012 20:28:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 tchs.eu – The Little URL Shrinker that could http://simoncook.org/blog/2010/02/tchs-eu-the-little-url-shrinker-that-could/ http://simoncook.org/blog/2010/02/tchs-eu-the-little-url-shrinker-that-could/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:55:21 +0000 Si http://simoncook.org/?p=375 Right, well this will only be of interest to a few you, and even a smaller set of those will know what this is all about. Some time ago I created tchs.eu, a small URL shortener just like any other. Think of it as a Techious branded tinyurl.com. And for a while things were good. But, as is the way with all good things in the tech world, good is not good enough. Things always need to be better than they currently are.

Then came along bitly.Pro, and all was better. It has more sophisticated tracking, allowed us to use it basically anywhere in any application. However there have been a few downsides to this. bitly.Pro accounts (from what I can tell) act just like any bit.ly account so http://bit.ly/mylink and http://tchs.eu/mylink go to the same place. This does however mean that all previous tchs.eu links are now null and void. Sorry about that, that’s the cost for progress, but I’m about 99% sure that we’ll never have to do something like that again. Unless bit.ly goes bust or something, but I doubt that would happen.

Also, this currently means that only I have the power to create tchs.eu links. The way bitly.Pro accounts work is that a custom domain can be used by only one user account, any links I create automatically become tchs.eu links, but only I can create them. Though there is a fix to that, which you will be able to see soon. Thanks to the power of the bit.ly API (well any API really), I can create a nice little wrapper that gives any user (I decide) on the SpcookCMS platform access to create links without giving them my username and password. Woot!

So that’s the story about everything that’s happened to tchs.eu lately. But rest assured, any links created since Feb 1st 2010 will still work, and should still work for the forseeable future. Oh yeah, have a screenshot ;)

bitly.Pro Dashboard

bitly.Pro Dashboard

Note: For those interested, the tchs.eu link for this blog post is http://tchs.eu/ddyB23 xD

]]> http://simoncook.org/blog/2010/02/tchs-eu-the-little-url-shrinker-that-could/feed/ 1 New Gmail Themes http://simoncook.org/blog/2008/11/new-gmail-themes/ http://simoncook.org/blog/2008/11/new-gmail-themes/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:41:33 +0000 Si http://www.spcook.co.uk/?p=116 Just got this update literally a minute ago, and it confused me… what the hell, my gmail looks different. It appears theres now themes built into it, which seem to be just like iGoogle themes. There are 31 themes at the moment, and I have screenshotted a few for you here:

Default Theme "Classic" Theme "Steel" Theme "Shiny" Theme "Summer Ocean" Theme "Planets" Theme "Terminal" Theme

Right now I am using the Planets theme, its offering me quite a good mix of image and transparency, though I think I may settle on the Shiny theme or some other theme that resembes a normal Google blank page.

Anyone else seeing this at all? To see, go to your Gmail settings page, and look for the “Themes” tab.

 

Edit: This is only showing on my Gmail account, not my Google Apps account at the moment, so it appears its a gradual rollout (I have give me beta stuff turned on in Apps)

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