Lets start with the formalities and wish you all the best for the 2012, if you’re watching this site like an hawk then you should read this just in time for the New Year in the UK (please provide your own Auld Lang Syne music, but you can have the fireworks display above.) If you happen to reading this in the middle of July in which case ignore this first paragraph.

I titled this ‘Things have changed around here’ as I’ve taken the opportunity of the Christmas break to make a few tweaks to this website. Most of this has taken the form of me twiddling with the code in the background, learning all about child themes in WordPress and their pitfalls , so there’s only a few things you’ll notice as an end user which I highlight below.

The main idea is when accessing the site via your desktop to use front page to highlight some of the more ‘in depth’ pieces that I’ve written, allowing the other bits to be a little less ‘in your face’.

What is new if you access the site via a mobile phone browser you should see a ‘iOS app style’ interface which lists all the blog posts in a more mobile friendly style.

Naturally if you read my content via the RSS feed in something such as Google Reader you’ll continue to just get my new blog posts as they are posted. Talking of google in the main desktop version of the post pages there is now Google+1 buttons as well as Tweet buttons.

Finally to note in my introduction to 2012, back in 2010 I did a ‘Photo 365′ experiment, where I took a picture everyday and published it on Flickr - where I failed miserably part way through the year. In 2012 I’m going to repeat the exercise, with a twist of just posting a new picture everyday, which could be contemporary or from my personal photo archives of pictures I’ve taken over the past few years.

For the benefit of any non UK readers ‘Children In Need’ is a charity who hold an annual ‘telethon’ on BBC Television. This is happening as I write this.

Normally on Children in Need day when you walk through Manchester City Centre you are sure to encounter people collecting for Children In Need (CIN). Strangely today I didn’t see any (not to say there was none – I probably just wasn’t in the right location at the right time).

Watching the show tonight knowing first hand that CIN does support projects that do good work I thought I’d be generous and give some money. (Disclosure I work for organisations that have received CIN funding in the past.)

I didn’t fancy calling the number they kept promoting (incidentally a 03 ‘non geographic – geographic rate’ number) – mainly as I didn’t have my credit card to hand – which I assume they would want, plus didn’t really fancy sticking a donation on my card.

One failing this year – they didn’t promote SMS text donation on air very much.

However the rest of my experience was excellent.

Opening the bbc.co.uk/pudsey address, which was constantly on screen, on my mobile phone, the site detected I was using a mobile, and gave me a nice mobile friendly page.

I found the ‘how to donate’ link fairly clearly – which then gave me a list of links including donation by phone, post, paypal, you name it – plus donate by text.

Following the ‘text’ link gave me clear instructions to text a short code (plus explanation of costs etc.)

The short code was a hyper-link – pressing which opened my text message composer pre-entered with the shortcode number and relevant message keyword.

Hitting send and I’ll be relieved of £5 on my next mobile bill (well I bet it will be £5.12 – as the ‘one text at standard operator rate’ last time I did something like this did not come out of my free texts allowance.)

The confirmation text I received gave me a nice link to a special page to ‘gift aid’ the donation. Another mobile friendly webpage to confirm my mobile number and name and address in order to register for gift aid (where the charity can reclaim the tax on the donation).

Overall an excellent user experience which is worthy of note. I feel that “I’ve done my bit”  with minimum effort and at no point feeling that I should stop the process as it was too complicated or unclear.

I guess if you wanted a totally seemless experience this gift aid form could have been pre-populated with details like my mobile phone number (even name and address) – but that would mean that my phone company would have to pass on my personal details to a third party – I may ‘trust’ BBC CIN – but certainly wouldn’t trust some other companies who work in the mobile arena with getting my personal details from my telco. So I’ll live with filling them in myself.

As I’m not a big one for doing Twitter and such like I thought I’d share on this blog a few interesting little things that have crossed my path over the past week or so.

To be honest I’m not one for wadding through pages and pages of “social media comment” on the events over in Japan – reading the papers and the TV and Radio bulletins give a good over view. However one on the ground report I found was this one: Japan Earthquake – a full diary which I found from a pointer from John Myers blog.

Over on the CMA mailing list (the place were you often skip over e-mails from “Office -ccr fm”) I spotted that the guys at Canalside Community Radio have produced this Promo which they have offered freely to other Community Radio stations to play. If you do use it please contact the guys at Canalside Community Radio to let them know.

As part of my weekly Tuesday commute I normally listen to the Podcast of Talk Talk Radio, this weeks programme had some interesting chat about the events in Japan as well.

Finally I caught on TV yesterday morning this episode of BBC Click – looking at the use of the internet and technology in the quake. I hope the link I’ve given above is a world wide friendly link, rather than the UK geolocked iPlayer version.

Just one that amused me – PSquared’s music scheduling software, Autotrack, has an option to do a web lookup on a track’s details.

Above is what I got when I wanted to check the date of The Cult’s classic “She Sells Sanctuary”.

If you are a regular commuter via mainline train stations in the UK you’ve probably picked up your morning cappuccino or a sneaky pint on the way home and felt the premium prices in the coffee shop or one of the interesting titled “real pubs on stations” make a hole in your wallet.

What would you say if I told you of a not that well publicised way to get a 20% discount on your purchases?

What you need is to get a BiTE card – it’s free – and unlike my vain attempt at finding a illustrative picture above – girl is not included. However also not included is any supermarket loyalty card style tracking of your movements. This is no swipe card – just a piece of card you flash and the nice person behind the till puts through your discount. All they seem to want to know is a few questions of how often you travel and through what stations when you sign up.

Given the pounds I’ve spent at stations over the years I just wish I’d paid more attention to the unassuming little flags stuck on some of the tills sooner.