These last weeks I have been working on my site Disney Comics Worldwide (which I’ve had since 1995). DCW is a popular website with information on Disney comics and magazines from around the world. I’ve completely updated the design and user interface and added new functionality here and there. I’ve optimised the source code by moving from a table-based design to CSS-based DIV boxes that are positioned relatively on the page. More »

Just five years after its first known public reference as a verb in a New York Post article, the word “google” earned an entry among the 165,000 terms in the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. The definition: to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web More »

Now that Space Shuttle Discovery has safely entered orbit it is a lot of fun to watch NASA TV online and watch live feeds of the many cameras on and inside the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle. There are also nice animations, voice-over explaining what is happening and you can listen in on the conversations between Mission Control Houston, Discovery and the ISS. In the coming 10 days there will be a lot of live broadcasts from space; check out the STS-121 Television Schedule for all the times and details. The streaming video is of very good quality. More »

The new version of my favorite news source digg was just released. The extremely popular site that allows users to digg for stories so that the most popular ones appear on the homepage, was always focused at technology news only, but today new topics have been added for science, world & business, videos, entertainment and gaming!

Unsurprisingly, Disney announced today that it’s free online broadcasts of ABC shows, including Desperate Housewives and Lost, were a big hit. The shows were watched more than 11 million times online in the first month of the test, and an online exit survey showed that 87 percent of respondents could recall the advertisers that sponsored the episodes they watched. A retooled version of the free site, with more shows and features, will be launched in the fall. Unfortunately the free site is only available to Internet users in the United States, but there are easy ways around this.

Back in November, I asked here if Google could please add map details outside the US and UK on Google Maps, and from this week it has finally happened: most of Europe’s street maps are now available. In addition, Google Maps received a huge satellite update. More »

After several years Disney has stopped offering their merchandise on eBay and has started their own auctions site. This move will enable Disney do more brand cross-promotions, as well as cross-link to other Disney websites. More »

Beware of your links appearing on the popular site digg.com. Last night a link to this site appeared on the homepage of digg.com, and almost instantly the site crashed from the sudden surge in traffic. It received thousands of hits instantly and that quickly used up our 5 gibabytes per day permitted data transfer. Our hosting company disabled the site as the traffic was affecting other customers. The site has just now come back online after being offline for nearly 18 hours. It was a true diggalanche.

One of the biggest hypes on the Internet this year has been Google Maps. The ability for web designers to use the Google Maps API free of charge and use the real-time satellite and map imagery software is just brilliant. Thousands of sites are using it, and I’m amazed that Google’s servers can cope with all the traffic. It’s dead-easy too — I had a play and set up this map of our travels fairly quickly. But what’s with the lack of map details outside the US, Canada, Japan and the U.K.? Not even capitals (like Paris, Rome or Sydney) are marked. More »