Comparison Christmas Shopping: Amazon versus Tesco
This isn't a post advertising one thing or another, but I was really surprised at the difference in prices when doing some Christmas shopping online today. Here's four of the toys we were considering and the prices offered at Amazon.co.uk versus tesco.com. You figure that prices do vary from site to site, but I've never seen them vary enough that it mattered. Today, anyways, it mattered plenty.
Reader in Safari is quite cool
I noticed the RSS Reader feature on my iPad after I upgraded to iOS 5. When Im reading a web page, the word Reader shows up in the URL bar. When I tap it, the iPad looks a lot more like a kindle. The coloured backgrounds drop off, fonts are ignored, ads go away, and I get a basic black text on white background. Much more readable.
Obviously the RSS feed doesnt include YouTube videos, and a bunch of other parts of the page. But it also doesn't include the ads! Some sites don't have an RSS version, so you don't get it. But where they do have it, it's so much nicer.
Fixing Firefox 4 on Mac to Always Search Google in English
I travel a lot and go to different countries fairly often. If I'm in Belgium or the Netherlands or (most recently) Israel, the helpful people at Google know this. If I click at the top of Firefox to my Google search box and start typing, I will get redirected to a Google page that is in the local language. In Belgium I'm redirected to google.be, in the Netherlands I'm redirected to google.nl, and in Israel I get google.co.il, which looks rather interesting.
It's easy to tell Google you want to see the web in English. In fact you can see the button to click right there ("google.com in English"). But I want it to know that I'm speaking English as soon as I submit my search from my browser. I don't want to enter my search, see the results in a language I don't speak, and then have to click a button for English.
Funny Pricing on Kids Furniture
I was looking for childrens beds recently, and I stumbled across Children's Bed World. They have a nice, database-driven site where they can automatically calculate your savings against recommended retail price (RRP). Unfortunately, their database records all the prices, including the ones they're marking up.
Online comics
I discovered stripgenerator.com. Pretty cool. Interestingly, I think their limited number of diagrams means that you have to have actual funny material. If you do, then they save you a bunch of drawing. But if stuff isn't funny, it's not going to become funny by having cool art applied to it.
I've done a couple. They're fun.
