Miles Mendoza's Website of the Day ... and more!

Gone to France!

Website of the Day has gone to the Dordogne and it's taken Miles with it! Normal service will be resumed in a couple of weeks - in the meantime here are some of my favourite French links:

>> Stopover Connections
Directory of handpicked French B & Bs to break your journey while driving through France.

>> Online Ferry Bookings

>> Le Cheval Blanc
Family-friendly self-catering property (for large groups or house parties) in the Dordogne: Luxury accomodation at non-luxury prices!

>> Via Michelin
International route planning.

>> WineDrive
Buy your wine direct from the vineyards.

>> Day-Tripper
If you can cope with the horrible over-crowded design, you'll find everything you need to know here about nipping accross the channel for booze shopping!

>> Ferme De Wolphus
Cheap and friendly small farmhouse B & B - 20 minute from Calais. One family room sleeps 5 people for peanuts!

>> Currency Convertor

>> Asterix the Gaul (official)

>> Save money on phone calls in France
How to get a French pay-as-you-go sim card for your mobile, so you don't have to pay hiked rates to call back to the UK

Blogging for Beginners

Website of the Day: Tuesday May 25th

>> BBC Webwise: What is Blogging
>> BBC Webwise: How do I get my own blog?

One of the biggest online phenomena of the last 18 months or so is the rise of blogs and blogging. Blog is short for web log, and at it’s simplest a web log is a frequently updated personal website in the form of an online diary or journal, which carries copious links to other sites. Blogging is almost certainly the quickest and simplest way to get your own website – No special software or technical skills are needed – Just register with a blogging site, choose from a range of designs, and you’re ready to go in less than five minutes.

But which blogging site should you choose? Read on for a quick guide to some of the options

Blogger.com
This is the best known and one of the longest established of all the blogging sites – It was bought last year by Google, and has just been given a complete overhaul to make it even easier to use. To get started, you just register with Blogger, choose a name for your blog, then pick from a range of design templates and away you go. New features include the facility to update your blog via email and for site visitors to add comments on your posts

Diaryland.com
As the name suggests, this service is more geared towards online diaries than journalistic blogs, with features and designs customised to that end. Diaries can be password-protected and you can add other DiaryLand users’ diaries to your own favourite list.

Xanga.com
Recent recipient of Web User magazine’s gold award for best free weblog tool. A setup wizard guides you through the creation of your blog, helping you fine tune the design and add personal information and a photo. There are more features for personalisation than Blogger, with the option to add news feeds, background music, a guestbook and images of your favourite CDs, books and video games.

Livejournal.com
This is the biggest of all the diary-based sites, with a real sense of community and the opportunity to link the diaries of other livejournal users together to read their comments on a single page. IT has also spawned a spate of fictitious journals written by TV characters like the cast of Friends, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 24!

20six
Probably the best-established UK-based blogging service – A bit less beginner-friendly than Blogger, but some extra features including the facility to post by SMS and sending photographs from your mobile

Typepad
One of the most fully-featured of all Blogging sites – Unlike the others mentioned so far, Typead offers no free service – prices range from $5-$15 a month, but for this you get many more features, including complete design flexibility, online photo albums, and most usefully, the facility to sort posts by category (like on this site).

For more blog reviews see
>> Web User Magazine Blogging Site roundup
>> Guardian Online’s Weblog Software Reviews

Further Reading:
>> BBC News on the relaunch of blogger.com
>> Guardian Online’s Best of British Blogging
>> BBC News on Mobile Blogging
>> Buzznet Photoblogs
>> Eatonweb Blog portal
>> Germars.com: Blogging For Beginners

Take your email with you

>>Scribe: portable email programme

Very handy this, if you need to check your email on the move, but, like me, you find webmail a bit of a bind. Scribe is a free download - It's an email programme which will fit on a floppy disc or portable USB drive, so you can enter in all your email settings, carry your floppy around with you (Oooh, Matron) and there's no need to install it on the computer you're using - you can run it staright from your portable disc.

National Fostering Fortnight

Website of the Day: Monday May 24th

>> Fostering.org.uk

We’ve just reached the end of National Fostering Fortnight, which aims to raise the profile of fostering and encouraging more people to become foster carers.
Whether you want to become a foster carer or you just want find out more, you can go to the site, enter your postcode and get contact info for all the agencies in your area

How to get your photo taken with a big star

Website of the Day: Monday May 24th

>> Who is that with Jeremy?

Celebrities are usually rather guarded when approached by members of the public who want to be photographed with a famous name. But this site proves how open and friendly big stars suddenly become once you put a baby in their arms. Two-year old Jeremy has been photographed with more celebs than I’ve ever heard of including numerous Oscar winners, royalty, and former Beatles and US presidents. The site has evidence of all these starry encounters and also names and shames the only celebs who’ve refused to say Cheese with Jeremy!