I am starting a new blog category for Brighton Web Design.

This is partly because there are a lot of web agencies in Brighton and it will be interesting to see start to compare them and their progress in this competitive market. And it is partly to see how the effect of the additional Web Design Brighton category and posts affect SEO. Let’s see.

StumbleUpon is a smart browsing application for finding great websites you’ll like.

The system works by recording user submitted websites against pre-defined categories. Each user specifies the categories of their interest and relevant sites are served to these users along with the ability to rate the site. This process means that the users of the system share their recommendations and qualitatively review them before they get to you.

This new way of finding and sharing interesting sites is fast and extremely entertaining. It has certainly changed the way I use the Internet.

Oringinally, the system worked on Firefox only and was, for a while, one of the best reasons to use the Firefox browser. It is now also available for IE7, allowing more people to participate.

This great 2D physics sandbox application would have made a lot of school physics lessons a lot more interesting.

You can find out more about the system here.

A lot of people complain about Open Office. These people just haven’t spent the few hours required to untrain themselves from the Microsoft Office way of working. There is actually very little difference between the two and, if cost is taken into account, there is only one option.

Open Office has been around for quite a while now and is obviously a very mature and professional tool. “But everyone else uses Microsoft Office! We won’t be compatible!”, is shouted an awful lot. Here are some very simple instructions to make that problem disappear:

1. Launch any OpenOffice.org application such as OpenOffice Writer.
2. Click on Tools and then Options.
3. Expand the Load/Save section in the left pane by clicking the + (plus sign).
4. Click on General under the Load/Save section.
5. In the area labeled as “Default file format” near the bottom of the dialog window, select the type of document you want, for example, Text Document for Writer files, in the Document Type drop-down list.
6. To the right dropdown list labeled as “Always save as”, change or select the format as “Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP”.
7. Repeat the above 2 steps for other documents such as spreadsheets or presentations that you want to save in Microsoft Office file format, and select the appropriate default save as format for them.
8. Click OK to save the settings.
9. From now on, whenever you want to save a document, the default format will be .doc, .xls or .ppt and other Microsoft Office file formats

If you want to thank me, send some of the money you saved in not buying MS Office!

Looking for a freee and easy to use ftp client? I was, and I found one and I didn’t bother looking any further because it did all I wanted. It’s called Filezilla and if you want it, you can have it too!

So, there it is.

I’ve been into Bowie for years and it’s his birthday today so Happy Birthday Bowie!

Probably the best resource for web design and development, Smashing Magazine is a great resource for anybody with an interest in the web.

It really is good.

An interesting video discussing the future of the Internet and modern media. Well worth a watch.

Poll Daddy is great (read free) customisable poll system for your site or blog. You can select polls from a number of different ’skins’ or play with the css of the poll to suit your site.

It’s an award winning website and quite pretty too.

This site offers a range of films from a non-traditional and sometime subversive viewpoint. It’s well worth a look and even if you don’t agree with some of the points these movies make they will certainly give you something to think about (unlike usual TV).