Did you catch that?
Scientists capture (after years of failed attempts) the Darwin-with-a-twist moment when an African tigerfish snatches a barn swallow right out oNOMNOMNOM
Author Archives: Karl Monaghan
Castle Street, Dublin this morning.
Pic: Karl
Simon Schoar has lovingly crafted this wonderful standalone Floppy Disk Jukebox.
Housed in a machined black aluminium rail are 8 drives modified with LEDs.
These play MIDIs provided from a SD card reader, allowing the unit to act as a proper jukebox.
He’s even provided details on how to build your own should you have enough floppy drives lying about in your ‘man’ drawer.
His version of the Tetris theme certainly beats out a pair of drives, to be fair.
The Most Beautiful Floppy Disk Jukebox Ever
Thanks Ewok
[Karl at the Science Gallery in March last year]
The figures for Broadsheet in 2013 have been ‘totted up’.
Karl saw a…
4.9% INCREASE in visits to 13.8 million
5% DROP in unique visitors to 2.9 million
6.5% RISE in pageviews to 30.1 million
Popular posts
1. Dear Enda
2. Opposite The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre
3. Nasty Dublin Bike Rope Trick
Browsers
Chrome continues to be the dominant browser choice with 39% (up 6%) of users. Firefox stays in second place with 17.6% (down 4%), Safari takes third with 15.9% (down 0.1%) taking Internet Explorer’s place which now has 14.9% (down 2.9%).
iOS still accounts for 2/3rds of the mobile browser traffic to the site and Android taking most of the rest. The big winner though is Windows Phone from which pageviews exploded by 648% (for a total of 2.4% of the mobile traffic).
Apps
This year saw the release of an updated iOS app as well as new Android and Windows Phone apps. There were 8,522 downloads on iOS (for about 30K total) and 4,654 on Android. From that, there’s between 2,500 and 3,000 active users a day producing 2.5 million sessions and 15 million screen views between them. It very much seems like people dip in and out of the apps a few times a day.
Thanks all.
Broadsheet Yearly Stats 3: We’re getting a bit old in the tooth now (Karl Monaghan)
You may notice a bit of a difference in how Broadsheet looks today. I’ve finally stopped scratching myself and have updated to the latest and greatest version of WordPress and also have gone for slightly newer look.
It’s not so different from the previous look so you shouldn’t be frightened off by it.
There are two big improvement for our readers. The first is that the images will now only load when needed (which should result in a faster page load for you). Secondly, the theme we are using is properly responsive so should look much better on what ever mobile device you’re using.
You’ll also see at the bottom of a post some similar posts listed out in case you’d like to read more of our waffle.
For those that are interested, the version of WordPress we use with the associated plugins is available on GitHub. There’s nothing really out of the ordinary in the code but it’s there if you want to have a poke.
If you come across any issues, let me know in the comments.
Update: Hey folks, we’re aware there’s an issue with the apps at the moment displaying images and hopefully I’ll have it resolved in the morning.
Update 2: The apps should be working again.
Update 3: If you are really, really annoyed with the lazy loading of images you can turn it of for the browser you are using by visiting this page: http://www.broadsheet.ie/nocache.php.
Update 4: I’ve tweaked the lazy loader so it should only be noticable if you scroll really quickly though the front page. It basically will load the next screen worth of images as you move through the site.
From Dublin based digital consultancy iQ Content comes this app aimed squarely at first time fathers.
Based on the experiences of their lead designer and young dad, Tom Cunningham, it provides a timeline from conception to 6 months old.
For each stage, a list of tips and explanations are given to guide the nervous first time father through the nightmare journey.
Daddyo is available on the Apple App Store for €1.79.
We have three FREE codes to giveaway to the fastest typers:
Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie
As always, no favours, cuddles, or pints were given for this post. Some guidelines on submission are here.
Melbourne based Steve Sammartino sent out a single tweet:
Anyone interested in investing $500-$1000 in a project which is awesome & a world first tweet me. Need about 20 participants… #startup
— Steve Sammartino (@sammartino) February 29, 2012
He ended up with a 500,000+ piece air powered LEGO roadster built by 20 year old Raul Oaida from Romania.
It seems a little too good to be true, but I’m wishing with all my heart that it is.
There’s more about the project on Super Awesome Micro Project.
Neil Turner (of the Broadsheet Windows Phone app and Bus Nearby) has released his latest Windows Phone app, Fuel Nearby.
Using data from Pumps.ie, it lets you know the price of petrol and diesel as well as the services available in stations close to your current location.
It also lets you save your favourite so you don’t have to go searching for them.
It’s available now on the Windows Phone App Store for free (and with a promise of no ads or in-app purchases in the future).
For iOS and Android users, there are existing apps (by other developers) available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie
As always, no favours, cuddles, or pints were given for this post. Some guidelines on submission are here.
Today’s XKCD is a little bit of nostaliga for an undocumented feature in a Windows product. But for Colin Birge, it reminded him of the woman who talked to Clippy.
What a lot of people didn’t realize was that Clippy, by default, sent anything you asked it to Microsoft, anonymized.
— Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013
No evil intent. We had no idea who asked what. It was a way of knowing what we’d screwed up. Lots of queries on a topic? Bad feature design.
— Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013
Somebody, probably a woman in the US Midwest, was typing a sentence at a time. Clippy would answer nonsensically. She’d type another one.
— Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013
Somebody, probably a woman in the US Midwest, was typing a sentence at a time. Clippy would answer nonsensically. She’d type another one.
— Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013
She’d lost her job. Her boyfriend was beating her. She was so lonely, and so afraid. All her waking nightmares, told to a paperclip.
— Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013
We couldn’t help. We didn’t know who she was. We’d gone to great lengths to make sure that we COULD not know who she was.
— Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013
So we read her story. One sentence after another. Soul-searing honesty, told to a little paperclip that could never, ever answer her.
— Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013
It looks like you’re crying out for help, would you like some assistance? (Storify)
Go to church,
Ciaran says:
I’m a singer with the Dublin Gospel Choir we’d love to let your readers know about our special Christmas Concert in aid of the Capuchin Day Centre for homeless people on Sunday 22nd of December at 8pm in the adjoining Saint Mary of the Angels Church on Church Street, Dublin 7
Admission is free with a donation encouraged if they wish to the Capuchin Day Centre which currently provides 200 breakfasts daily (300 extra each Wednesday) and dinner service to seldom less than 450 people a day.