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Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 2010 Nomination – Vote For Zath!
November 9, 2010
Here at Zath we pride ourselves on bringing our readers high quality technology and gadget related content on a daily basis, it’s always good to get feedback from people on what they think and especially when that takes the form of an award nomination. So having said that, I’m pleased to announce that Zath has been shortlisted for Computer Weekly’s IT Blog Awards 2010 under their Gadgets category!
You may remember that Zath was also nominated for a Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards in 2009, unfortunately on that occasion we didn’t quite make it through to the shortlisted section where the public get to vote for their favourite that they want to win. However this year we have, you’ve got a chance to vote for Zath, so we’re definitely in with a chance of winning this time round.
Continue reading »Flatpress Review – How’s It Compare To WordPress Blogging Platform?
July 21, 2010
Flatpress is a blogging platform which is somewhat different to the more popular and better known, WordPress, because it doesn’t require a database to run it. Written in PHP, Flatpress stores data in text files making it the only real choice for people who want to set up a blog, but who don’t have access to a database, or don’t feel comfortable using one.
Installing Flatpress is simple, but unfortunately it isn’t available in either cPanel or Plesk, so users do have to download and install it manually. This is easier than it sounds, just unzip it – you may need to to do this twice because the download file is saved in tar.b2z format – then upload it to your server using ftp. When you’ve done that follow the simple installation guide – really, it is very easy – and it will be installed in just a few seconds.
Once installed, you’ll be presented with the admin area which is neat and uncluttered and fairly intuitive, especially if you’ve ever used WordPress. There is an options section which lets you change the name and description of your blog, change the date and time format, number of posts per page, and also gives you the option to add text to the footer section.
Continue reading »Have You Seen Zath’s Mobile Site?
July 15, 2010
If you love Zath (and let’s be honest here, you love Zath), and want to visit us when you’re away from your desktop or notebook computer, you can easily stay up to date with all our reviews, news and views via our mobile website!
If you just visit our regular URL (zath.co.uk, just in case you can’t see your address bar for some reason right now), you’ll be presented with the mobile version of our website, which gives you access to all of our latest posts, check out all of the categories on the site, just as you can with the full version, and even leave a comment to share your own views with us and other readers. You can even bookmark on sites such as Delicious, Digg and Reddit, as well as tweeting articles you like straight onto Twitter!
Continue reading »Win Cheltenham Horse Racing Tickets (Competition)
April 23, 2010
It’s now a few weeks since the Grand National and no doubt you’re either still celebrating or have long since forgotten about it, depending upon whether your horse came in a winner or not whether you used the Sweepstakes iPhone App or not.
However you did, you can now try your luck on the horses once more if you’re a winner in our latest competition. The Sun has very kindly given us 2 pairs of tickets to give away to our readers for a day at the races, namely the ‘Cheltenham Racecourse’s Hunter Chase Evening’ with access to the The Sun’s Best Mate Enclosure on the 5th May 2010. This is an exclusive opportunity that can normally only be secured through the paper itself.
There will be two winners of this competition, each one getting a pair of Cheltenham Horse Racing tickets for the 5th May 2010.
Continue reading »Think Visibility 3 Review (March 2010)
March 17, 2010
UPDATE: I’ve now reviewed the latest Think Visibility 9 conference, so be sure to take a look at that page if you’re interested in finding out how #ThinkVis did on its 5th anniversary!
This past weekend I packed my bags and headed down to Leeds for the Think Visibility 3 conference, as the name indicates, this is the third such event and the first of two in 2010. The whole idea behind these one-day conferences (organised by Dom Hodgson and his team) is that they cover “the things that usually get left behind in the web design process” and therefore typically covers topics such as SEO, social media, affiliate marketing and branding.
The venue itself remained the same as that used for the Think Visibility 2 conference in Sept 2009; the Alea Casino (near the Royal Armouries museum) in a very smart and clean Clarence Dock area of Leeds. Upon arrival to the event we received our ID badges and just from that you know that you’re in for an event with a bit of character – the organisers had only gone and created our very own “Twitter Top Trumps” from the statistics of our Twitter accounts! These made for a great talking point during the whole event as you met up with different people that you already knew and even more importantly with people you didn’t – this was a great way to break the ice I thought, so well done to the Think Visibility team for coming up with that idea!
Continue reading »Hodge On The Run…For Charity! – Jan 2010 (Video)
February 25, 2010
No we’re not talking about a Prison Break-style fugitive being on the run, no this is Dom “The Hodge” Hodgson who has set himself a challenge for the year 2010, other than working on his various projects such as organising Think Visibility 2010 and much like he set himself one for 2009 (which was to blog everyday on The Hodge blog). However, this year it’s more of a physical challenge, specifically he’ll be doing a series of runs during the course of the year and raising money for charity along the way.
Think Visibility 3 Preview – Final Speaker Announced! (March 2010)
January 26, 2010
That’s right, Think Visibility is coming back bigger and better in 2010 with the Leeds-based Think Visibility 3 conference that covers “the things that usually get left behind in the web design process”. Therefore, if you’re interested in blogging, SEO, affiliate marketing, PPC when it comes to your websites, then this is definitely an event for you.
You may get the opportunity to attend quite a few of these kind of events if you’re based in the south, especially around London, but obviously there’s less of these available here in the north, so if you’re based up here, then here’s your chance to attend a conference without having to travel so far as you might normally have to, plus it’s also takes place on a Saturday, so you don’t even have to take a day off work! Think Visibility 3 is taking place on the 13th March 2010 at the Alea Casino Conference Centre in Leeds, West Yorkshire and tickets are priced at £119 (cheaper than some other similar conferences).
Continue reading »Merry Christmas Everyone!
December 24, 2009
Just wanted to publish a quick post wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas from us all here at Zath, which is actually our third Christmas since I personally started blogging here at Zath.co.uk!
This year has really flown by, things have been really busy here in the last few months and moving in the right direction! We’ve got lots of exciting developments and plans for 2010, so we hope that you keep on coming back to the site, be sure that you’ve subscribed to our RSS feed, become a fan on Facebook and/or follow Zath on Twitter.
Continue reading »Growing Importance Of Geographical Location On The Internet
November 22, 2009
WordPress is one of the biggest blogging platforms on the planet with over 7.5 million bloggers using their hosted service. Recently, they rolled out geo-tagging, which allows you to label your blog and blog posts by location, with the promise of new features coming soon.
The ability to search by area as well as “showing the location of your commenters, the location of poll votes, a live map view of blog updates on WordPress.com, or an annual report showing you where your posts were written and where your comments came from” will gradually be implemented and highlight the growing importance of location in the digital age.
Continue reading »Windows Live Essentials Review: Writer (Blogging Client)
November 20, 2009
If you run a blog of your own, you may will be interested to know that Windows Live Essentials ships with a very capable blog editor called Windows Live Writer. When you start Writer for the first time, you’ll need to set Writer up to publish to your blog, and that’s virtually any blog service you may use, not just Microsoft’s ‘Live Spaces’.
You can set it up to publish to Live Spaces, SharePoint and ‘Other blog service’ which includes Blogger and WordPress. Once you’ve selected whichever applies to you, just input the requested information and hit next. For a service like WordPress, you need your URL and username / password, whereas for a Windows service like spaces, you just need your Windows Live ID and Password.
Continue reading »Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 2009 Nomination for Zath
October 27, 2009
That’s right! I’ve been nominated for an award in Computer Weekly’s annual blog awards, specifically in the category of “Individual IT Professional Male“.
It’s now over 2.5 years since I started up this blog here on Zath covering various aspects of technology, gadgets and gaming and in that time there’s certainly been highs and lows in writing and running this blog, but it’s certainly nice to get this kind of recognition by being nominated for a blog award from what is one of the top technology publications out there!
Continue reading »London Nude Tech Calendar – “Shut Up And Take Off All Your Clothes!” (#LDNnudetech)
October 23, 2009
The more this LDNnudetech calendar debate goes on, the more I’m just laughing inside. Laughing because people can get really uptight about the silliest of things and generally laughing because people assume they know more than others and feel the need to pontificate and/or judge because of it. The Evening Standard is behind it and so is the Telegraph. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s simple; 24 successful, hardworking men and women in the London tech scene have posed nude (naughty bits covered) for a calendar, of which there will only be 5000 copies made. All of the proceeds will then be going towards Take Heart India; a youth-run charity that has IT-based projects in India for blind and disabled students.
The main point of argument some seem to keep having is that people, especially women, don’t need to be taking off their clothes in order to make a point or raise money for charity. They need to use their brains, obviously. However, on the same vein, it appears it’s completely acceptable for men to do whatever they like. This argument has never and will never ring true for me for the simple fact that if you look around you, sex, in some form or other, is everywhere. Why are people still so outraged about this? I would’ve thought that, by now, it was quite clear to see that we actually quite like nudity and naked flesh – and that we’re not living in the 1950s! Both men and women can, and like to, look good naked. And, we like looking at them.
Continue reading »a4u Expo London 2009 Conference Review
October 20, 2009
You may have recently read my a4u Expo London 2009 preview which I wrote after I managed to secure a ticket (rather luckily) in a competition over at Kieron Donoghue’s blog called here.org.uk – well I’m now back home after attending the event at ExCel conference centre in London’s docklands and I can now report back on what was my first multi-day web-related conference.
The only other conferences that I’ve attended for the online marketing industry have been the Think Visibility conferences that have been run in the relatively local location of Leeds, so I was expecting a4u Expo London 2009 to be somewhat different not only given its size but also the fact that it’s more focussed around online affiliate marketing. However, as I was to find, these days that also involves a lot of work in terms of analytics, social media, generating useful and unique content for visitors and ensuring that your website is optimally set up for search engine optimisation – all interesting stuff!
Continue reading »a4u Expo London 2009 Preview
October 11, 2009
The a4u Expo will be taking this week on the 13th and 14th October and I’ll be there in attendance thanks to winning a competition that Kieron Donoghue was running over at his blog called here.org.uk to win a free a4u Expo ticket worth £349.
The a4u Expo is a big 2 day affiliate marketing conference and exhibition being held at the ExCel Centre in London that features over 40 conference sessions and no doubt some tough decisions will need to be made as to which ones you attend as there are some great speakers and sessions being held across both days.
Continue reading »How To Import A Blogspot Blog Into WordPress
October 8, 2009
One of the most common reasons Blogspot users give for not switching to WordPress, is the hassle of transferring a large number of posts from an already established blog. In the past they did have a point, but not anymore. For some time WordPress (both WordPress.org and WordPress.com) has come with a built in importer which works with all well known blogging platforms, as well as plain RSS. It’s very easy to use – just a few clicks – and will call in both posts and comments. If you’re thinking of making the switch, but are unsure about the importing process, read on …
Think Visibility Review (Sept 2009)
September 14, 2009
This weekend I took the chance to attend the second Think Visibility conference, held in Leeds that is described as covering “the things that usually get left behind in the web design process” – with speakers covering various areas of blogging, SEO, affililate marketing and PPC.
First of all, I think it’s always good to see these types of events happening outside of London for a change and giving us northern bloggers and online, web-type people to experience an event such as this without having to necessarily travel all the way down south – not there’s anything wrong with that, but the chance to meet other people is always good!
Continue reading »How To Improve Your Online Communication
April 5, 2009
Anyone these days can claim their own slice of internet territory, and be the authority figure of that virtual piece of land. No doubt many people reading this are either webmasters, admins, forum moderators, bloggers in their respective niches. Being a good authority figure on the web requires many talents, particularly when it comes to networking with partners, communicating with readerships and developing a community.
The grounds of this is obviously language, yet unaware to most, online communication is by nature destructive and problematic – destined to cause confusion. It’s embedded in the linguistic construction of online communicating and worth talking about if we are to become better authority figures within our community.
Continue reading »A Zath Christmas!
December 7, 2008
Well I think it’s fair to say that the festive season has well and truly arrived here at Zath HQ – hopefully you’ll have noticed that we’ve got our LED Christmas tree and decorations put up in our logo at the top of the page.
Watch out in the coming weeks for special Christmas Zath competition coming your way – more news on that as soon as I get things finalised!
What added to the Christmas atmosphere even more was that last Thursday was the first time in years that they’d been enough snow to prevent us getting to work to our day-jobs – so I used the ‘snow day’ to get a few things done round the house and also got some work here on the website.
Continue reading »Gaj-It.com – Happy 2nd Birthday!
December 5, 2008
The UK gadget site, Gaj-It.com is celebrating the fact that it’s now been going for two years – quite an accomplishment for any blogging website – well done guys! I first became aware of them after I met them at the LG Secret launch event and have been a fan of their’s ever since.
If you’ve not seen their UK Gadget site, which has recently had a design makeover, then be sure to take look!
Continue reading »How To Get WordPress Gravatar For Comments
October 28, 2008
Have you noticed how some of the people who leave comments here on the Zath tech news blog have avatar image/pictures next to their comments, do you want one for yourself when commenting on this and other blogs?
All you need to do is head over to the Gravatar website and register your email address with them that you’ll be using to comment with and upload the picture that to represent your comments, all this can be done within a couple of minutes!
Continue reading »