New Google Adsense Design?

January 30, 2007 | Web Design

I was writing a post over on Binary Joy earlier when I saw the image below pop up in the preview pane.

Ok it’s not the biggest news in the world but it’s interesting to see that Google are now using, or at least testing, images as part of their text ads. Google are well known for testing things live and then never using them so I will be interested to see if these are used or not.

I was going to say something about text being better then images for search engines but Google have an advantage there so I guess search engine optimization techniques are irrelevant.

Personally I think I actually prefer the text as opposed to the image and I hope it stays as text. However Google do appear to be doing more and more image/ movie based ads so maybe this the start of a move away from …

New Disney ads featuring your favorite celebs

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They have gotten quite a bit of press in the uk recently - largely (only?) because of David Beckhams move to the US, and I wasn’t particularly interested however now I have seen the final things I really like the recent Disney adverts.

You can download full sized wallpapers from the official Disney page. My favourite is Scarlett Johannson as Cinderella - shown above.

These were created for the “Year of a Million Dreams” promotion (anyone know what the name means?) which makes me wonder if they will be creating more of these images over the coming months. It would also be nice if they had larger format images that can be used as wallpapers.

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Creatures of Harryhausen

January 27, 2007 | Links

I watched some of Clash of the Titans at Christmas - I used to love the classic Ray Harryhausen films. With the progresses made in computers and special effects the models have lost their sense of awe, but the skill used is still vast and the stories are as fantastic as ever so I was very happy when I found this, The Creatures of Harryhausen, the other day.

The page lists all the creatures Harryhausen created for the various movies he worked on and there are some crackers in there. My favorites have always been the Sinbad movies and this was a nice little trip down memory lane.

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Yamipod - itunes replacement for your ipod

January 22, 2007 | Links

The title isn’t strictly true - Yamipod is a system for transferring songs to and from your ipod on any computer with no restrictions. It does not hook up with iTunes, or do any of the cataloguing stuff, but for simple music management it looks very handy. As an added bonus it doesn’t need to be installed so can be run directly from your ipod… and it works on any OS (windows 98se+, Mac OS10.2+ and any Linux version with gtk 2).

Very handy, and since I am currently considering the purchase of an iPod is something worth bookmarking, hence this post

Guitar Hero + Dragonforce combo

January 21, 2007 | Video Games

Woah - I’ve played Guitar Hero 1 and, well, am an embarrassment. The game is huge fun, especially after a couple of drinks, but I suck awfully. I suspect my major downfall is my total lack of rhythm.

Anyway apparently this song, the Dragonforce one in the video below, was actually added via a “hack” that let’s people add other songs to the Guitar Hero game. This does require modding your ps2, along with a bunch of different software, so isn’t worth the time unless you’re a hardcore GH2 freak. If you’re interested you can read more on the original scoreHero forum post.

… and here’s the original. Check out the insane guitar “solo” at 3 minutes. Try doing that in a video game!

Oh - and MTV got the song name wrong - but what do they know about music right?

George RR Martin tv series?

January 20, 2007 | Links

I have mentioned my love of George RR Martins books before. Since reading the song of ice and fire books, I have read a few of his other individual books/ collaborations, and a couple of short stories and they are all equally great, so when I read the news earlier today I was filled with a mixture of joy and fear.

HBO has acquired the rights to turn George R.R. Martin’s bestselling fantasy series “A Song of Fire & Ice” into a dramatic series to be written and exec produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

“Fire” is the first TV project for Benioff (”Troy”) and Weiss (”Halo”) and will shoot in Europe or New Zealand. Benioff and Weiss will write every episode of each season together save one, which the author (a former TV writer) will script.

On one hand it’s great that HBO have picked up the rights to …