Well it looks like Google have released a PageRank Update on New Years Eve, 31.12.09.

And actually, it turned out to be a great update for me.

I started this blog in the middle of October, and already it’s gone from PR0 straight to PR5. I have no doubt that it’s because of the support for all of my WordPress plugins. Thanks guys

Another rather interesting thing is that loaaaaads of my posts have PageRank on them. My blog is DoFollow. Get commenting guys!

I hope you all have a happy new year!

When is a laptop not a laptop? When it’s a netbook, of course. The line has clearly been drawn – anything 12 inches and below can be classified as a netbook while anything above is a standard laptop. In fact, most netbooks are actually perfectly happy to keep themselves in the 10 inch range where the added portability finds the best balance with control systems and screens. However, there’s a growing market for 12 inch netbooks which are easy to carry around and yet feature nicer displays and full size keyboards. The S12 is one of them.

The system looks good if not quite as stylish as efforts from Samsung, Sony and Dells ‘designer’ range. The overall plastic doesn’t look as good as some netbooks, especially the cheaper looking white version, although the actual build quality is pretty sturdy and befitting of a device that’s going to be carried around quite often. At least it isn’t

The two main reasons for having a larger 12 inch system – the screen and the keyboard – are both top notch on the S12. The glossy screen offers up 1280×800 in a world where most netbooks can only manage 1024×600 and offers up a 16:10 aspect ratio, even if the gloss means usage outside will result in all sorts of annoying reflections. The keyboard is a full sized laptop keyboard so if you’re major complaint about netbooks is not being able to type easily, the S12 might just be a perfect solution.

Entry level S12s come with a 1.3 GHZ processor but we strongly recommend spending the extra £20 and grabbing the 1.6 Ghz Atom, which is the standard for just about every modern netbook. The system speeds through XP with 1GB of ram although an upgrade to 2GB could make multitasking easier. As the deep technical specs of netbooks are all very similar right now, there’s nothing really remarkably ‘stand out’ from the S12s performance but really, it’s good enough.

Overall, the S12 might just be the perfect design for a netbook. Yes, the 12 inch screen makes it a larger and heavier choice but having a higher resolution and bigger keyboard alone will justify this for many people. If you want more screen real estate or you simply have bigger hands, the S12 is well worth a glance.

Hi guys,

I’d just like to wish you all a very merry Christmas, despite the fact that I’m not really in the Christmas spirit much this year

Some of you may have noticed the falling presents coming from my blog, which was made using my own JR Effects plugin. I feel that it added a bit of an extra touch, whereas every other blog is using snow.

Anyway, as for creating WordPress plugins, I will probably be back making them and releasing updates on boxing day (26th December) or possibly the day after. Obviously I can’t really create anymore today as I have other commitments, as will a lot of you who visit my blog.

I’d also like to personally thank everyone who has supported my plugins and are using them at the moment. Obviously they’re all free and it does take quite a lot of work to create them and manage them, the only thing I get out of it is a small link. I will aim to produce even better plugins in future, and keep updating the ones I have made. As usual, if you could give me feedback about any of my plugins I can work on the improvements, as quite a lot of people have found out. I do actually read the feedbacks.

One last thing I want to mention, happy birthday to my hero Tuomas Holopainen of Nightwish. It must be so nice having your birthday on Christmas Day and I’m sure quite a lot of people would wish him a happy birthday too. Just a shame it’s quite difficult to personally contact him.

Enjoy the rest of your day, have a merry Christmas!

Well in the last week or so, it’s been a big week for… URL shorteners.

To start with, Google have announced that they’re going to be releasing a URL shortener. The domain they will be running this on is goo.gl. If you go to the page currently, Google claims it’s only for google products at the moment. Nobody is yet sure whether (or when) they will release the use of it to the public, but at the moment, we just have to see what Google decides to use it’s shortened URLs for. I’m not fully sure why they’d need to shorten their URLs, Google seems to be pretty memorable and short, and to be honest, I’m more likely to forget goog.gl.

Not only that though, they’ve also released a URL shortener for their YouTube service. This is live right now. If you have a link, such as:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ9thA0bUkA

Then you can use their service by typing in http://youtu.be/jZ9thA0bUkA. This will then redirect you to the video you were looking for. This is absolutely pointless, I really don’t see many people using it. People seem to have got used to the old, traditional YouTube video URLs.

And finally onto the last one – The Facebook URL shortener. Apparently Facebook are currently testing out theirs, which will be put on the domain fb.me, which I suppose is much smaller than the original. I still don’t see this being very popular either, but I’m sure Facebook will make it a viable solution to use.

That is all the main URL shorteners announced recently. I’m still quite baffled how Google, YouTube and Facebook all seem to be getting these URL shorteners at more-or-less the same time.

Most of you will probably never heard the story about this song, The Heart Asks for Pleasure First. Originally created by Michael Nyman, Nightwish made a cover version of it, adding lyrics and other instruments to make it “Nightwish-y”. Nightwish weren’t allowed to release it though as Nyman refused to give them permission.

Nightwish then played the song as an outro on the last gig of the Dark Passion Play tour, in Finland. That is where everyone started to campaign to get Michael Nyman to change his mind and let Nightwish release it. Pretty much everyone seemed to love the song.

Well after months of campaigning, we’ve all won! Michael Nyman has officially changed his mind, and now Nightwish have the right to release their version of The Heart Asks for Pleasure First. According to Tuomas Holopainen, they WILL release the song, but aren’t quite sure when yet. I’m really hoping that I don’t have to wait for the next album in 2011 to hear this song, so let’s hope it’s released before then!

P.S. If you’ve never heard Nightwish before, you really need to listen to them sometime. Great band.