Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

Sinatra itself has useful help pages, but (so far) this the best tutorial I’ve found. Creating Database-driven Apps with Sinatra

An up-to-date set of comparison tables for browser support of CSS3 selectors and HTML5 properties. It doesn’t include IE9, because they have a whole separate page of tables previewing IE9 support for HTML5 and CSS3. Visit Web Designer’s Checklist

This page has been around for a good while. I’m flagging it up now because I’m trying to build up a sort of toolkit and primer for colleagues managing websites; the rather unsophisticated ‘every user should have exactly the same experience on our website’ is – sadly and surprisingly – still a common attitude. This [...]

One of the challenges facing proponents of open data is persuading others of its value; particularly persuading the custodians of data that making it publicly available is a valuable thing to do, and is in their interest to do it. Dan Slee (Walsall Council) and Stuart Harrison (Lichfield District Council) and myself have compiled some [...]

In my desperate attempt to grapple with Ruby people keep introducing me to new and 'better' ways to use it, before I've had a chance to understand what I was doing with the previous one they lauded. Currently under my nose is Sinatra, which would probably be great if I understood what I was doing. [...]

This is a very nice demonstration of what HTML5/CSS3 is capable of, and shows how ready the various browsers are for it. Visit HTML5 Readiness

Education Eye is a pretty tool from Futurelab, showcasing online educational innovations. “Education Eye is a free, engaging and easy-to-use online space that gives access to a wide range of useful and relevant innovations across educations’ varied communities. Connecting people with innovative uses of digital technology, new resources and new approaches to teaching and learning [...]

Nibbler is a free online tool for testing websites. Give it a URL and it will test five associated pages against a range of criteria. It's still in Alpha, and I haven't looked closely to see how it actually works, but it could be very useful as part of a web developer's toolkit. Visit Nibbler [...]

In response to Gordon Brown’s speech on ‘Building Britain’s Digital Future’, Ben Whitnall of Delib asked if interested parties would like to group together to take a lead: ‘let’s get some interested people together and help design the future of digital deliberative democracy for the government. It’ll be faster, better and, with any luck, more [...]

This appears to be Google's belated answer to StumbleUpon, which has been around for ages. It claims to find cool stuff on the internet based on your interests. I quite like it, but it's bloody hard to find. There was a temporary message in Google Reader shouting 'Try it now!', but that's now gone and [...]