The Venture Skills Blog

We rely on knowing who is coming to our site and how they got their our conversion goals are set by this and sometimes our authentication systems rely on them but what are these concepts and how can we abuse use them.

User Agents

A user agent is the client application used with a particular network protocol; the phrase is most commonly used in reference to those which access the World Wide Web. Web user agents range from web browsers to search engine crawlers (”spiders”), as well as mobile phones, screen readers and braille browsers used by people with disabilities. When Internet users visit a web site, a text string is generally sent to identify the user agent to the server. This forms part of the HTTP request, prefixed with User-agent: or User-Agent: and typically includes information such as the application name, version, host operating system, and language. Bots, such as web crawlers, often also include a URL and/or e-mail address so that the webmaster can contact the operator of the bot.

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[Update]Its over and here is the result entry 

Today we are doing an experiment online skypecast consulting, think of it as an informal chat with us at Venture Skills. The Skypecast is completely free and we will be happy to discuss any aspect of IT and new media but here are a few suggestions.

• Viral marketing
• Skype for business
• VOIP Solutions
• Web Development and in paticular Drupal

We will be there from 9 till 5 so enjoy!

p.s this post will update throughout the day with info as it happens

more info and to join the cast here

https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=81939

A quiet end to the week, it must be thanksgiving or something…
For those who are well not american here is a quick recap of things that have happened this week that you maybe interested in.

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I have been using Firefox 2.0 for a little while now and thought I would do a quick update on how its going, you can see my first impressions here. The biggest difference is I seem to be using more extensions and I don’t really know why? My Firefox install were already pretty “pimped” up but I seem to have gone overboard with all the extras. A couple of things really stick out these include the dictionary function which is fantastic! though I seemed to have some how lost the check by default it was easy to get back I also changed it to check every field not just multi line fields by
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One of the nice features in Firefox 2.0 and Internet explorer is the auto discovery of open search results for a full idea of open search try this FAQ while open search is not new A9 (amazon to you and me) have been promoting it for years its not really been useful until its integration into major browsers so how does it work, pretty simple really the code below is an example of the Venture skills test search engine: Read the rest of this entry »

Reviews are coming in as you would expect along with the tweak guides here are just a few of the more relevant ones.

• Firefox vs Explorer - via gizmodo
• Tweaks for Firefox 2.0 from tweakguide and lifehacker
• Interview with Chris Beard (Mozilla big wig) -via read/write web

5 out 14 of my extensions failed to work theses were

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While its not official till tomorrow Firefox 2.0 has been released (random blog|official site|official news), while perhaps not the spectacular upgrade everyone was hoping for its easily a match for IE7 more about that in another post, and is along with opera and safari back in the standards compliant camp after a brief walk in the park. Not many outstanding new features though microsummaries are almost certain to catch on.

Its nice to see XML and XSLT being used though I’m not yet convinced the average Firefox user could create a summary I’m sure most web developers will be adding summaries to their sites in the next few weeks, lets hope wordpress.com do, as there is already a WordPress plugin.

UPDATE: Darling wordpress seemed to forget this post, so its out of date but never mind firefox 2.0 has been released woot

Ignore Experiment Testing Ping Pong