I was at Tesco checkout last night behind a couple who looked like they were doing their weekly shop. They had all the normal products including a couple of boxes of Fosters. The guy behind the till asked for his ID and he presented it without a problem, he then asked for her ID which she didn't have.

The checkout assistant then explained that he couldn't serve them alcohol unless they both had ID - as you can imagine a big WTF moment followed before the checkout supervisor clarified that unless they both had ID they would not be served, just in case he was buying for a minor. 

I can imagine in this case that he simply ditched the girl in the car and went back to someone else on the checkout however as you can imagine this has huge ramifications. What if you were in a supermarket with a baby and wanted to buy beer - does this mean that instantly you are buying it for the baby and won't be served? If I stand next to someone under 18 in the queue they could have asked me to buy it for them too.

Does anyone work in a supermarket and can clarify any of this?

I often read comments on Digg and Slashdot about the poor quality of some news site therefore I've come up with five golden rules for any news site:

1. Put the Entire Article on One Page

This must be one of the main gripes when it comes to reading articles on-line. It frustrates me, you start reading an article then for some reason it stops and you have to wait for the next page to load. There is no logical reason to it, almost everyone has scroll wheels and the concept of scrolling is well know with operating systems so why do news sites think they need to break up an article into two or more pages?

Rarely do I click past the first page of an article unless its really good, surely their site statistics tell a similar story for most users.

Good: BBC, Techcrunch

The BBC among others get this right providing the whole article on just one page

Bad: Reuters

Reuters do have a 'read as one page' link however if its only a two page article it is defunct anyway. It's sites like Reuters that make me sympathise with Adblock users.

2. Use Large Images

Good: Boston.com

Boston.com's big picture features are an amazing way to display images. Their recent Earth Hour article even allowed you to click on the images to see a before and after shot.

Bad: BBC

In a recent BBC survey one of the main points that came up was the size of the images within their articles so in their redesign the BBC added 20% to the size of the image. Unfortunately this is still 200% too small, I wouldn't mind if it was a thumbnail link or they made use of a lightbox like on the DailyMail website.

3. Don't use Slide shows for Images

This is mainly aimed at Forbes.com, their content is good but they display it in the worst way possible.

Good: Almost every site apart from Forbes.

Bad: Forbes

Its bad enough that they use a slide show in an inappropriate way but to make it auto run and the controls barely work is a total waste of what could be good content.

4. Provide External Links Within the Article

Good: Mashable, Techcrunch, Cnet News.com
Bad: BBC, Yahoo, ITN

The BBC waste precious sidebar content with an 'External Links' section, rather than reading the article and clicking on something that interests me I have to search the sidebar for a potential link.

5.Write about something on-line without Linking to it

Bad: BBC

A number of news site do this, especially when they are covering something slightly controversial. For instance the article talks about a video on YouTube yet fails to provide a link to it. Its like talking about an architecturally stunning building/landmark without providing a picture.

This article from the BBC about Two students who dressed up as the TV character Borat then put the video online is a prime example, the BBC talk about the video online yet fail to provide a link to it.

So I was feeling a bit left out, people post these mega useful things on Facebook about what they are doing, why they want to commit suicide and how they couldn't live without Facebook but I don't.

(Common updates to peoples status)

I wanted to be involved and I'm sure people will want to read what I have to say like the 73 (and dropping) who subscribe through Feedburner here on ImAFish. I read on Mashable, Digg or Techcrunch about Twitter almost every day and I will admit I've tried to stay away from it. Why would anyone want to read about what I've had for breakfast or how I curled the longest one off ever into the toilet afterwards.

It turns out people do like to know these things, weather it makes them feel more normal by seeing what others are doing or they are just generally interested I don't know. So I signed up to Twitter and configured it so I can post from my mobile phone, instant messenger and Mac dashboard. I had no excuse not to post.

I've never been a fan of Facebook (even though it sends me shed loads of traffic), in fact it pisses me off how I can't put my adverts on there (and I've tried hard - not that anyone clicks ads on Facebook) however I do already have a large number of friends on there that I'm sure are interested in my daily life. Fortunately there is a Twitter application on Facebook that will automatically update my status based on what I send to Twitter.

You will be please to know you can be expecting a lot more updates from me.

It's new year and you're looking to cut your outgoing bills but can you really justify that expensive gym membership? Without it you could get fat and die, or so they like to remind you. Here is a list of ways to help justify getting rid of that costly health tax.

1. Is it really worth what you paying? My gym is

**this post has become corrupted**

I've just been reading this article from The Register about how badly the BBC have messed up the iPlayer . The author writes about how the "iPlayer is of a multi-million pound failure that took years to complete, and was designed for a world that never arrived". I first wrote about the iPlayer back in July, two days before its launch. Soon after the launch I signed up to the beta and was accepted however my username and password never worked. After a couple of un-responded emails to the BBC I gave up. The press coverage since July had been minimum until The Register's article was featured on the front page of Slashdot yesterday.

I thought it would be worth giving the iPlayer another chance to see if it was really as bad as The Register said it was.

After visiting the iPlayer website for the first time you need to install some software - note you have to be in Microsoft Windows XP using Internet Explorer - if you are using a Mac or Firefox it wont work (also it wont work if you are one of the 600 Linux users out there either ;-)).

Installation doesn't take long and you can select what you want to watch through your browser.

Once finding something to watch and clicking download the application launches and the TV show starts to download. This took forever, I only have a 1mb connection but this 46% (125mb) took two hours before I got bored and just decided to finish this article. Whether this is the BBC's fault or BT's aggressive traffic filtering at peak times I don't know.

Anything downloaded in the iPlayer will only last for 30 days, this is because the DRM (digital rights management) attached to each TV show disables the video after this time (and stops you from doing other stuff like copying it to DVD). Why the BBC have done this I'm not sure, with the current backlash to DRM in the music industry at the moment it seems odd to do the same to video.

Broadcasters like Channel 4 are paid for advertising they sell in between shows, the BBC on the other hand is funded by UK license payers. Why would then the BBC need to protect something that has already been paid for by license payers? This makes the BBC's decision to restrict access to TV shows seem bizarre. Whether a technology sales man has sold DRM to the BBC or its poor management I don't know.

The iPlayer is not a bad application, it works and albeit a bit slow you do get to watch shows for up to 30 days after broadcast. The problem however ultimately is not the program but the reason for its existence in the first place. There are plenty of other easy ways to watch video online - Flash (YouTube, Google Video etc) and Bit Torrent (The Pirate Bay, Mininova etc) being the main two delivery methods. So why would the BBC invent their own content delivery method when there are perfectly good/better already available?

This leads to the only reason for the BBC iPlayer and that's DRM - a reason we have already pointed out is irrelevant because of the unique way the BBC is funded by license payers. It annoys me as a license payer because it seems the BBC have invented a problem, then spent almost

I will admit I've done it, I get a newsletter I don't want to read and either its not easy to unsubscribe or it requires too much downward scrolling so I've just hit the 'Report Spam' button in Gmail. I know its bad tricking the spam filter into thinking something I most likely accidentally signed up for is spam but its just too convenient.

(Is reporting spam too convenient?)

Everyone hates spam, and I love the fact Gmail does a good job in filtering out the junk but it seems everyone sends newsletters now. I booked a holiday online with some obscure company last year, now I get weekly emails from them asking where I want to go next? I once booked a dance event tickets through Ticketmaster, now I get emails asking if I want to see Bon Jovi - not even targeted advertising.

It goes on and on and on, some make it easy to unsubscribe others not so easy. The most recent culprit to Gmail spam has been Facebook, I get daily emails asking if I want to be super poked or if I want to turn my friends into Vampires by biting them. It all gets too much, Facebook does provide a link to find out about not getting these emails but it simply goes to the application overview - hardly useful.

Here are some examples:

1&1 want me to visit their site, find my log in details, navigate to Newsletter Settings then unsubscribe - is this too much to ask when Report Spam is just one click?

When trying to unsubscribe from Nectar emails, they want my email address and account number - shame I cant memorise my account number.

Trade Doubler write their emails in such a small font that its impossible to read the unsubscribe part (I believe it says something about logging in and going to settings - account information - mailing options.)

Not everyone gets it wrong:

Ebay give you multiple ways to unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from box.net you just click the link which sends you to a page saying you have been unsubscribed - easy.

Has anyone else been tempted just to click report spam instead of actually unsubscribing to a newsletter?

In part one of my problem with DVD's post I talked about my frustration of buying a DVD then having to wait through 2 minutes of film about telling me of how I shouldn't steal the DVD I just brought.

It seems this bugs a lot of people from the emails I get and earlier today I stumbled upon this image:

Lets hope they will get the idea at some point that they can't treat their paying customers so badly.