Jason is a technology writer based in Shropshire in the United Kingdom. Jason has a passion for technology, gadgets, writing and blogging and a love of learning new things (and old things especially technology history).

Everything I write about here is based on something I have seen, installed, tried, played with or just have a view about. From time to time a vendor may ask me to include my view on a particular piece of equipment, service or software application or may approach me about sponsoring a page or article - I keep these to a minimum and I aim to make it quite clear when this happens and if I don’t like something I have no hesitation in saying so.

I live in the heart of England, in the United Kingdom, with my family, and work managing information technology systems for a local manufacturing company. I started out in the computing industry twenty eight years ago when I got my first ZX-81(I still have it!) and sold my first computer program twenty six years ago.

Things you are likely to find on this site include technology hints and tips, articles about blogging and social media, software and hardware opinions and experiences, talk about computing history and in depth looks at specific technologies. I also write a lot about best practices in technology fields.

I am a member of the Online News Association.

Elsewhere on the Web

• Twitter, I am @jasonslater – drop me a note to say hello
• IT Pro
• Computing
• Abbey Days (formerly Monk and his I.T. Junk) – A technology cartoon strip
• Bev and Catey Adventurers in Catering – cartoon strip
• EggnChips – A cracking good technology website talking about consumer technology

You can contact me by sending an email to hello @ jasonslater.co.uk (you will need to remove the spaces either side of the @).

What is this site?

Jason Slater Technology Blog is a website about technology. In its present form this is primarily a blogging site so the content of this site takes a dynamic approach with often shorter articles linked in series either by date or category of interest. Current categories on the site include Software Development, Technology Management, Website Design and Blogging Discussions, How To and Tutorials, Technology Industry News, Software Applications (online and locally installed applications), and Technology Terms. As I live in the United Kingdom the topics covered here may tend to have a more UK oriented nature.

For clarification – in terms of this site (http://www.jasonslater.co.uk), a blog is an online journal.

Behind the scenes, I use the WordPress content management system for administration and maintenance of this site with a number of plug-ins to extend functionality. The look and feel (theme) was originally developed by Michael Hutagalung but has been highly customised by me for use on this site under the terms of the developer license. The logo identity has been used by me for a number of years but was helped along by work from the nice people at Logowind (though I am not affiliated with these providers).

What are the aims of this site?

Jason Slater Technology Blog has evolved over a number of years, at one time it was known as The IT Managers Journal, however, the aims have remained consistent:

• To act as an online journal for my experiences working in the technology profession
• To actively participate within a community of people who are interested in technology
• To share technology knowledge and experiences and to learn and discover new technologies
• To provide a central place for my interests including development and technology history

Who is the intended audience of this site?

Although I may cover a wide range of topics the intended audience for this site is ideally:

• People working in Small/Medium Enterprises(SME) or individuals with technology interests
• People who are trying to deal with particular technology issues
• People who have a varying range of technological knowledge but want to learn more

Wherever possible I aim to explain technology issues in everyday terms however the technology industry is awash with technical terms so at times it is unavoidable to use them. I include a glossary style section of technical terms to help explain particularly complicated ones.

What characteristics of the web does this site employ?

For this site to really perform as I hope it relies on reader interaction, from using the commenting system to taking part in the polls which appear regularly. A number of downloadable resources are on offer and I welcome feedback about improving them and welcome ideas for new resources which might be useful. I use a number of rich media elements to support the site including appropriate movie clips from YouTube, slide shows from Slide Share, and supporting graphic elements.

A subscription service to the site is offered through both the use of an RSS feed which you can subscribe to using a feed reader and through email delivery of recent articles. The site also works with an number of plug-ins such as those found on iGoogle.

This site is supported by a number of external elements including social media. I use Twitter a lot and FriendFeed. I am also active on LinkedIn and do a fair bit with Facebook. There is much more I could do in these areas and I am always on the lookout for novel and interesting ways to use social media.

What standards are applied to this site?

The majority of the images on this site have been created by me and taken using my digital camera. For other images I approach who I believe to be the owner of the image and seek permission and I include the credit for the image where this is appropriate. I do subscribe to Amazon Associates in order that I may use product shots of images, for ease, clicking on these product shots often takes you to Amazon to purchase the products. Personally, I use Amazon a lot for buying products but please don’t take the link backs to Amazon as a recommendation by me.

In 2009 I joined the Online News Association in order to better understand, and engage in, the professional aspects of online journalism. As blogging is evolving into a new media standard I feel it is important to be aware of the upcoming legal issues and other risks associated with blogging. I hope membership of this organisation offers some comfort that I am aiming to provide high quality researched information on this site.

I am also a member of both the British Computer Society (BCS) and the Association for Computing Machine (ACM) in order to engage with others and keep up to date with longer term technology trends and developments. I also subscribe to Microsoft Technet as I find it a valuable resource for information.

There are a number of areas where I am working to improve this site. As blogging is an ongoing and evolving publication method ways of working and best practices are still being addressed, however some of the areas I am working to improve include:

Standards Compliance

I use the W3C tools to gain and try and maintain XHTML and CSS compliance to standards. Sometimes things fall through the net but I try and run these compliance tools regularly. As the site grows in size and standards evolve it does become more difficult to address however I aim to review this regularly.

Accessibility

I would like to make this site more accessible. I do aim to include ALT and TITLE tags on links and posts and always try to ensure images are accompanied by suitable explanation. This is an area where I am aiming to place more focus and apply additional formatting elements.

Mobility

Another aim for this site is to be available on the increasing number of mobile devices – an area I have a particularly keen interest in.

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