Bytewire unveils www.myblogbytes.com a website based on users posting articles on absolutely everything more or less. Users can create and manage there own knowledge bytes on the site. Dont know the purpose of Blog Bytes? Well let us explain…….here at My Blog Bytes you can read thousands and thousands of Bytes about anything and everything you want. You can also share and create new Bytes as and when you please, all completely free! You can post and make articles for other byters to see and pass your judgement on a fellow byters bytes with a Bytement.

Go to the site – http://www.myblogbytes.com

We are very pleased and proud to announce our partnership with Fubra Ltd a media over ip company based in Aldershot, United Kingdom. Fubra Ltd are a very interesting company primarily run by Brendan Mcloughlin and Paul Maunders they own many large websites including OurProperty.co.uk and MyJobSearch.com.

Fubra expressed interest in our Online Game’s and we have since agreed to work together to produce more.
We hope in the future we can make some awesome new games and boost the profile of both our companies through doing so.

Established in 2000 they started out very much like we started out, two enthusiastic computer and web users who thought they could provide a service. Much like myself and Elliot they specialize in web-design. Eight years later they are now a very successful and ever growing company with some envious assets.

Fubra have been a very successful company in the recent years and have some valuable experience and knowledge in the field. In the past week or so we have already learnt alot from them and are very grateful. We are really looking forward to how our relationship will develop in the future and how our two companies can work together.

The first order on the menu is to build Street Crime into a massive pillar for online gaming. More will be announced on this in the coming weeks, so make sure you watch this space!

We have released our latest online game, Street Crime which is a thrilling gangster game mmorpg, emerse yourself in the world of a gangster.

What is Street Crime?
Street Crime is an massive multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG). Street Crime is based on a gangster theme whereby you create a character and aim to reach the top and become a Godfather. Along the way you will come across various hurdles.
What can I do on Street Crime
Street Crime offers a wide variety of features including Organised Crime, Property, Street Racing, Poker and more.
Who is Street Crime aimed at?
Street Crime is aimed at everyone and at any ages. Street Crime has a variety of players from different nationalities, everyone is welcome.
How can I play Street Crime?
To sign up to Street Crime visit: www.streetcrime.cc

Today, 18th December 2008, we release our Bytewire Ltd website. Bytewire Ltd specialise in website design, online gaming, computer and laptop repairs and home networking. For a full list of services Bytewire Ltd offer please see the services page. The aim of the site is to begin building our web presence whilst also advertising the services and expertise that we offer.

Over the last week or so we have been watching over street crime and noticed a huge overload of bullets in the system.

This is mainly due to a small drop in players and the city bullet factories producing far too many bullets per day for the amount of players that they serve. The consequence of which has meant that players have managed to get there hands on large amounts of bullets relatively easily.

So as of just now, the city bullet factories will produce only 500 bullets an hour. For the same amount of lead and cash as before. We hope by doing this it will provide more competition for bullets and thus more enjoyment for you guys.

We have also lowered the amount that personal bullet factories make to reflect the following:

Small : 100 bullets
Medium : 150 bullets
Large : 200 bullets
Huge : 300 bullets

Hourly, providing you have 100,000 cash and 100kg of lead and that you have turned your factories production on at the inventory page.

We have also fixed some bugs in kill which had been leading to some minor problems with crew leaders and crews not dropping. This has now been rectified.

Stay tuned to find out more about new moderators, editors and helpdesk members shortly.

Play Street Crime Gangster Game now >

Street Crime Staff

Having recently converted to Mac as you may have read in a previous blog “Moving from PC to Mac” we decided that it was also time to look for a new Text Editor to use for programming.

The first code I ever wrote I used a basic Text Editor which has no tools to assist you, a great way to learn how to code if your a beginner, since then I used Macromedia Dreamweaver but have never been fully satisfied with the way it works. Macromedia, being such a big company, can often mean less effort is added to the product to make them as good as they can be.

So in search for a new Text Editor which can be used on Mac’s I came across Coda, made by Panic. I have been using the software for a week now and I am impressed.

Features:

- Excellent layout with side menu to show list of files
- Ability to manage sites – including screenshot of the homepage of each site
- Built in terminal so you can use SSH instantly
- Supports subversion so you can update easily
- Allows split screen so you can view more than one file at a time – horizontal or vertical

The software is $99 but you do have a trial period to test it out and see if you like it. The staff at Panic appear to be interested in ideas to improve the software further so if you have any suggestions its worth dropping them an email.

Screen shot of Coda Text editor by panic.com

Adding google adsense to a facebook application has been a rather taboo subject for the last few years that you have been able to develop applications fully. It is now however becoming easier. Although still a taboo subject as to whether google will allow its ads to be displayed using an iframe and wether displaying google ads in this manor violates googles terms of service. Using these sort of ads on your application may run you the risk of having your adsense account closed or suspended at any time, but so far so good for those that i know.

My eCPM with Google varies from $ 0.50 – 0.75 (eCPM). That is reliable, since it’s been like that over a 6 month period.

Google does require you to have a website you own, that it will find acceptable to put Google ads on, that it is Google bots can view it, and it adheres to their policies so only having a Facebook App won’t work for getting you in the door.
You need to have something more than a Facebook App like your company or personal website to point Google at registration, then you are free to use the ads anywhere you want, including your Facebook App.
If you don’t, write up some basic html/php based website with a few pages, and it should be enough to keep Google happy.

Warning:
You run the risk of having the account suspended potentially, since Gooogle Adsense TOS does not permit the use of iframes to display their ads. so you take my advice at your own risk.

I recommend at most 2 ads per page.

Now to the ‘how to do it’ part:

Step 1:

Your first step is to create a page called ‘google_code.htm’ – This is going to be the actual ads page, you will need to add some keywords, targeted references and at the very least a paragraphs worth of content and of course your google ad box code itself.
An example of this can be seen below.

[sourcecode language='html']

keywords
keywords
Content – Atleast a Paragraph
keywords
keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords
[/sourcecode]

Step 2: The middle page

The next step is to create another page called ‘google_frame.htm’ this page has a frame which displays the google_code.htm actual ads page. (I think its a good idea to put some more keywords here too).

[sourcecode='html']

keywords
keywords
Content – Atleast a Paragraph
keywords
keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords
[/sourcecode]

Now for the final step

Okay now on your canvas page or on any page that you use for your facebook application you can now simply include the code below.

[sourcecode='html']

id=”games-header” name=”games-header”
marginwidth=”10″ marginheight=”10″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″
height=”105″ width=”740″ />
[/sourcecode]

Now you should have your very own targeted google ads in your facebook application. It may also be good to make some pages that google can crawl from your google_code.htm etc pages.
Make links to some other pages which will contain some content this will help the relevance of your ads.

Ever wanted to translate your website so that it appeals to a wider audience?

If you have then continue reading as ill take you through the steps in which to set this up. There is an excellent function in PHP called gettext. In simple terms instead of just writing “Hello World” in your document you would write <?=gettext(“Hello World”);?> or shorthand <?=_(“Hello World”);?> then PHP looks up the equivalent of that text in your desired language and displays it on the screen.

To me, the best way to get this working is to work locally then upload to the server afterwards, so thats what I am going to do. So to start with create a new folder on your desktop called “Translation”.

Inside the Translation folder create a file called test.php. Insert the following code into the page:

[sourcecode language='php']echo gettext(“Hello World!”); [/sourcecode]

Next you need to download a program called poEdit – this makes your life much easier when translating to different languages. Once you have downloaded and installed poEdit you need to setup the directories for the files to go into.

Inside the Translation folder create a new folder called: locale.

Inside this folder you create the folder for your desired language, for this example we are going to use german so we create a folder called: de_DE.

Inside this folder you create another folder called: LC_MESSAGES.

If you are getting confused at this point, don’t worry, we are just setting up the necessary directories ready for the translation steps.

With the directories now setup we now need to setup poEdit so that it creates the necessary language files. Open poEdit then go to File -> New catalog.

Insert anything in the Name of the project.

Language:  German

Country: Germany

Charset: iso-8859-1

Source code charset: iso-88591

Then go along to the paths tab at the top of the window. Enter the base path to the folder you created on your desktop for example “/Users/Bytewire/Desktop/Translation”. Then in the paths list below click the dotted square and type the path as “.”. Having set this up, press Ok. When asked saved the file as messages.po inside the LC_MESSAGES folder.

poEdit should now have the string “Hello World” displayed in the top half of the screen. Click on the string and it will display the text in the 2nd box down. The 3rd box down will be empty, here is where you enter your translation, so for german enter “Hallo Welt!”. Once you have done this, save the file, which will automatically create a file called messages.po.

The next step is to set the language of the page to german and then view the page again. So create a new page in the same location as test.php and name it “localisation.php”. Inside this file enter the following code:

[sourcecode language='php']
$locale = “de_DE”;
if(isSet($_GET["locale"])) $locale = $_GET["locale"];
putenv(“LC_ALL=$locale”);
setlocale(LC_ALL, $locale);
bindtextdomain(“messages”, “./locale”);
textdomain(“messages”);[/sourcecode]

The above code basically sets your language to german, so that when you view the page it will display the german equivalent of the text if available. Finally you need to open up test.php and include the localisation file so at the top of the file add the following code: require_once(“localisation.php”);

Now if you view test.php, you may need to upload all the files you just created to your server if you dont have a local server, you should see the text “Hallo Welt!”.

Although fairly time consuming to setup, gettext is a very good method of translating your website and is very commonly used. Having set this up you should be able to further this and translate in many different languages.

I hope this helps some people translate their websites.

Today we made some slight changes to the menu and adjusted a few features.

Property has been renamed as Real Estate.

We revamped and renamed the selling and buying of credits and as of tommorow morning non paying accounts will be able to buy credits to make themselves a member from other players. This can be done using the credit auctions page, found under the Investment menu tab.

Importantly we have re-jigged the menu and because of this a few of the features names have changed they are listed below:-

Property became Real Estate
Personal became My Account
Users online became Gangsters Online
Player ideas became Idea Box

And we also ordered the menu around slightly differently into a layout which we think is slight better for the game.

We hope you agree.

Thanks
Street Crime Staff

Ever wondered how daunting it is to move from a PC to a Mac?

Well try putting yourselves in my shoes! Having been a PC user all my life and having never used a Mac at all I was faced with getting to grips with a Mac to use for programming etc.

The Mac I got was a 24″ iMac 3.06 GHz, pretty impressive piece of kit when you look at it but would it live up to the hype I have read since I faced the prospect of using one?

Having used the Mac for a couple of days now the short answer is Yes it does. Its impressive to use as well as look at. Yes there are differences between a Mac and a PC I wont deny that but having used the mac for a few days they are changes I am willing to make.

Having set the mac up I was faced with the problem of how to navigate through programs and how to install new programs. This is a small learning curve and I got to grips pretty quickly. Anything you can do on a PC you can do on a Mac its just a case of knowing how to do it.

Thinking about moving from a PC to a Mac? Dont hesitate, jump in, its worth it. The speed of the Mac alone is enough to convince you, thats without the added bonus of the array of features it bolsters.

My only bad experience with the Mac so far is the mouse, hardly a problem here as I simply plugged in my old mouse and problem solved.

Mac all the way!