Darren Straight's Blog

ICT Enthusiast and photographer.

By - Darren Straight

Microsoft Next – Meet Microsofts next generation of innovators

From developing an online platform through Azure that helps ease the devastation caused by floods in Australia, to performing medical operations using Kinect, to developing the next generation of teachers in the Middle East, people are doing amazing things with Microsoft technology. Microsoft Next is a new internal competition that was created to showcase how these innovations are helping people

By - Darren Straight

Teaching community shares record number of classroom resources and ideas using TES Connect

TES Connect, the world’s largest professional teaching community on the web, saw a record five million classroom resources downloaded in March from its teaching resource bank www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resources – equivalent to a single resource downloaded every 2 seconds. A record five million classroom resources were downloaded by teachers in March 2011, from TES Connect That is equivalent to a single resource downloaded every

By - Darren Straight

Frequent Mobile Internet Users Love Their Mobile Operator

Research from mobile survey company On Device Research has revealed that the more people use the mobile internet, the more they love their mobile operator. The mobile research, which was conducted directly on the mobile internet, shows that frequent mobile internet users are more satisfied with their mobile operator, compared to those who only occasionally use the internet on their

By - Darren Straight

Britains superfast broadband lines set to pass 250,000 this month

Virgin Media and BT lead the way to NGA services High-speed broadband is starting to catch on in Britain, with the total number of superfast lines delivering speeds in excess of 25Mbps set to pass the 250,000 mark this April – according to the broadband analysts Point Topic. Whilst Point Topic’s Chief Analyst Tim Johnson says the number is quite

By - Darren Straight

Reading & Leeds Music Festival 2011 Official Lineup Announced!

Getting quite a few people still coming to my blog searching for past Reading and Leeds Festival lineups, it’s been a few years since I last went, I must go again, maybe next year! But for now I shall keep to just posting this years Reading and Leeds Festival 2011 Lineup: Main Stage Reading Friday Reading Saturday Reading Sunday Leeds Saturday

By - Darren Straight

Top 10 Search Keyphrases for March 2011

3392 different keyphrases were used to find my site in March 2011, here are the top 10 with the amount of times they were used plus their overall usage percentage. Nice to see the “tnt minecraft parody” video appear in the top 10. Now to work on getting more minecraft search key phrases and key words appearing in the stats, hopefuly looking for

By - Darren Straight

Top 10 Search Keyphrases for February 2011

2222 different keyphrases were used to find my site in February 2011, here are the top 10 with the amount of times they were used plus their overall usage percentage. It seems my fix/solution for fixing an Adobe Reader X problem (see here) is still helping a lot of people which is great! :). Also there a quite a few search hits for the

By - Darren Straight

Yahoo! has the inside track on the Royal Wedding

With the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton less than a month away, people’s interest in the big event is growing exponentially – searches worldwide on Yahoo! for the royal wedding have increased 8 million percent since the engagement was announced and 106% just in the last month on Yahoo! UK. To satisfy the millions of UK Web users

By - Darren Straight

Women Go Wild for Black Swan Style

Twenga, the most comprehensive shopping search engine, can reveal that the Black Swan phenomenon is influencing fashion with women expressing both their lighter and darker sides through elegant ballet-inspired clothes. Searches for leotards have shot up by 288% this year, worn with sports tights by Adidas (up 75%) or luxury tights by La Perla (up 850%).  Although ballet flats are

By - Darren Straight

What does the Internet look like? Check out this map of the Internet created by PEER 1 Hosting

Have you ever thought about how the Internet works? Or better yet, how it looks on a map? The brains at PEER 1 Hosting did. So they created something so geeky, it’s cool – The Map of the Internet! It wasn’t too long ago when some of us didn’t even know what the Internet was and it still is the case