Category: My Site

My Web

Much of the information below is now well out of date, and many of the sites are no longer around. Independent Radio News’ site no longer has any of the original code behind it, and Satellite Media Services went out of business a long time ago. I have updated some of the links to Wayback Machine links so you can get a taste of the early commercial web.

Since I have been online, I have been involved in the development of a number of websites. Nowadays, I do not work for a web development company, so many of the sites listed here are not the versions that I was involved in. Some of them have developed well, and some seem somewhat stuck and, dare I say, even basic.

In 1994, I was working for Satellite Media Services. During the next two or three years, we developed various versions of their web presence, including the online versions of IRN’s news service at The Radio Magazine. Now they have a new web address and a much better design, but they don’t seem to develop sites for others anymore.

The Radio Magazine has a new website that has absolutely nothing to do with me, but it still makes for good reading about the UK radio industry.

Independent Radio News has also gone through several revamps. I can still see some of the code we developed behind this version of the site, and I suspect the original audio scripts are still in place. IRN was one of the first sites in the UK to broadcast up-to-date news in a streaming format.

At the time, Satellite Media Services was partially owned by Capital Radio plc and was responsible for the original prototype of Capital Online. Capital’s web services have moved on dramatically, yet remain some of the best entertainment websites around.

My original personal sites were based on the SMS servers, and there remains no trace of them anymore. They were moved to various free spaces until I placed them here. The original UK Radio Information Pages were also based at SMS. They then moved to Onair before I removed them. James Cridland and the Media UK team do a much better job than I was doing.

SMS, back then, was a satellite audio distribution company. Back in 1994, I used to produce a site featuring a range of photographs of SMS’s satellite dishes, which became a something of a cult site for a while (I know, the whole thing was very strange). Media UK also became the host of those pictures, but somewhat wisely, they seem to have removed them.

The next few websites I was involved in are no longer in existence. Events Online, one of the UK’s first events listings services, has long since vanished. It was an idea ahead of its time. For something similar, try Whatsonwhen

A number of other sites were developed around that time. Fruit Machine is still an idea, and I did some of the scripting work behind the original Alternative Holidays site (working with Kevin from Incline Media – one of the best web production houses around).

The last commercial web development I was involved in was at IPC Magazines (now IPC Media). Yachting and Boating World still has massive amounts of content behind it, and if you have an interest in sailing, why not pay it a visit?

More recently, I’ve been working in the online advertising space. I spent several years with Engage. They were exciting times as, at one time, they seemed to be buying a new company every week. Following the end of the so-called dot-com bubble, Engage shrank, and I decided to move on. Initially, I went to Dynamic Logic, the online survey people, before being lured back into the world of online advertising.

I had great fun working on the development of all these sites above. One day, I think I would like to work with content again (rather than software), but for now, I am happy to be away from the struggles of generating commercial content.

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An early version of this page lived on Listen to Musak. There’s also a really early version of this page on The Wayback Machine.

Colophon

Health Warning

Most of this content is now out-of-date. I like to think it was written in simpler times, but actually, technology has made site maintenance much easier.  However, I think it’s worth keeping this around, and snippets are still valid. And who uses the word colophon anymore?  Web 1.o, huh?

Colophon

When some of this content was in beta form Mosaic had arrived and, I guess, the graphical web browser was about to change my life. At the time I was working the night shift in a small office just off Euston Road in London and learning HTML and using the Internet seemed like a good way to pass the night.

With one browser it was easy. HTML seemed logical (if limited) yet within months all that had changed. I used to be one of Netscape’s biggest fans; they pushed the boundaries and tested the standards. Several years, and the development of many web sites, later my attitudes have changed.

Graphical web browsers were created to help you, the user, control the way the documents you are reading look. Commercialisation of the web, particularly the insistence by content creators that they controlled every pixel on the page, meant the user was given less control. Add to that the fact that many users don’t understand that fundamental of the web, and you’re left with an industry that is moving away from that guiding principal. It’s a shame, but this kind of development has reinforced my belief that content creators and software vendors (including those that code the browsers) should adhere to standards.

I have always been in favour of standards and, for the basics of the web to survive, I believe those standards are even more important today. My site has been tested against the major browsers and also against Opera – which is a browser that I would whole-heartedly recommend if you are looking for a compact, compliant and fast browser. My current browser of choice is Mozilla which gets better with every release. If your site does not render using Mozilla, and I don’t need to read it, I’ll go elsewhere.

Originally, my personal site was written using Allaire’s HomeSite web-authoring tool. I had an email suggesting this went against my belief in the fundamentals of the web but unlike almost any other HTML coding tool I have tested over the years, HomeSite does not necessarily add unnecessary HTML or re-format HTML you have written. These days, however, I employ Moveable Type across all the web sites I run. Using style sheets it does a fine job of separating content from design as well as making sites easy to update. If I was the purist I wanted to be I would argue for hand written code every time but none of us has the time and Moveable Type twinned with HomeSite makes a nice, easy-to-use, alternative. HomeSite’s HTML validator is also useful if you want to try and keep some coding standards on your site (and before anybody else emails me, I know this site isn’t perfect).

Conforming to a standard does not mean you can’t implement many of the latest mark-up developments though. My site is built using style sheets and I make use of the JavaScript SRC command so I can control my scripts better. As such, you will need a CSS complaint browser and JavaScript enabled to see it the way I hope you would. I don’t require a certain screen resolution, colours or window size as I don’t like sites that try to tell you how you should view them. However, I don’t think it is a bad rule to make sure you are always using the latest version of your chosen browser.

You may also care you read my PGP public key page which contains some information on why I occasionally use PGP.

As I am not a graphic designer, Paint Shop Pro is my image editor of choice. It does all I need it to. I try to keep the image sizes down to speed your loading time and there should always be an ALT tag in my code so you can, if you wish, switch them off.

Like many other website I make use of the Georgia and Verdana fonts (available from Microsoft) which were designed for reading on the screen. However, if you don’t like the you can always set your browser to override them.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I’ve made the move to Windows XP at home (although I have fallen for Windows 2000 in my office). I actually write a lot of my content on my Palm Vx (which replaced my trust Palm Pilot Pro in February 2000). I use the QED file editor and pull them in after a backup. If you know a good Palm HTML editor, send me an email. My web pages are hosted with Instant Web and I recommend them if you don’t want a hosting company who bombards you with emails and offers and who let you get on with building your pages.

And finally a word about Copyright. When I produced the UK Radio Information Pages, other people passed off much of that content as their own (more about UKRIP, here). So, please ask before taking anything. All the images on this site are either mine or have been publicly available in newsgroups. If you own the copyright to anything, let me know and it will be removed. If, however, you want to link to this site, please feel free. Linking content together is what the web is all about – and I do get frustrated when companies try to sue over a few links.

Ratings

As you can probably tell I am a great believer in the use of the web for free speech. As such, curnow.org is voluntarily rated with the internet content rating association (icra).

Useful Resources

If you want to read more about web standards W3C is not only a standards creator but a useful starting point; try browser.com for more information on browsers and try JavaScript.com for some JavaScript starting points and a ton of links. For a useful style sheet resource try builder.com. The UK Copyright Licensing Agency is a useful resource and there is a good discussion about web copyright here. If you’re not familiar with the term colophon then you should read this or this.

Reasons

There are many reasons why I am happy to have a web presence. Some of them are simple and to do with how I first came across the internet. You can read about that, and my opinions on browser standards, in colophon.

However, I do believe in some of the underlying principles on which the Internet, as we know it, was founded. The ideals of a less censored form of communication, open and available to all, appeal to some deep belief I have in the basics of human community. A medium that is not owned or controlled by any one individual seems to make sense to me.

I believe in the power of connected networks to allow better communication and empower people who would not otherwise have a voice. The world is better for open and free expression of opinions and thoughts even if, sometimes, we disagree with those opinions or find them, somehow, unpleasant. I would rather thoughts and feelings were on the web than contained within and ready to erupt into violence (when thoughts turn to violence we all lose).

While I am in the spirit of the net, don’t forget to check out The Open Directory Project and play your part in creating the greatest web directory of them all!

Of course, this all sounds very grand but many years ago I just wanted to play with HTML and see what I could do. I’ve moved on a lot from those early experiments with the Mosaic Browser (yes, Netscape and Internet Explorer were some way off) but wish I’d held onto some of those early efforts. Where is the archive of the way the web looked in 1993? I wish I had the screenshots!

Digital networks may have changed our lives, but I do not think they should take over our lives, and that’s probably why there isn’t much here yet! Still, if you have anything to say, or more especially if you are a Curnow, why not drop me a note?