Andy Moore

Splitting hairs can get you anything you need: FTM

Hello and welcome to the personal home of Andy Moore on the web.

Hi, I'm Andy Moore, I'm a mobile web developer based in Loughborough, Leicestershire, I develop and SEO my own websites. I specialise in mobile sites as I've long thought that mobiles and the web are perfect partners. I am a .mobi certified mobile web developer, in fact I was the first .mobi certified developer!

I've run a ringtone site for nine years, in the last 12 months I've grown the site from having 50,000 mobile downloads to now having over four million songs which can be accessed as high quality mp3 downloads as well as being streamed online. There's also over a million lyrics to go with the most popular tracks. Royalties are paid, these are legal mp3 downloads. Songs are mainly encoded at 320 kbps making them suitable for broadcast use.

I became a web developer by accident, before that I used to work in radio, I've presented on air, managed airtime inventory and done production behind the scenes. I'd even been a flying eye till the words 'near death experience at work' became far too common for my liking; airborne power cuts and near misses with other light aircraft aren't fun!

My sites generate over a quarter of a million unique visitors a month and some software I released years ago but haven't touched since still generates over a million ad impressions a month for me. If I actually pulled my finger out I don't know what I could do!

I miss radio but working for myself is a far better income and far more stable. After spending a decade working for myself I don't think there's any way I could tolerate working for anyone else. Not that I'm stubborn, bloody minded and ruthless or anything; I'm just used to working in a BS and politics free environment.

What's hot off the press:

2010
03.09

I'm pleased to announce Ninentdo are one of my latest clients using my code to detect mobile browsers there's a new game for the DS coming out soon and the promotional site behind it is mobile aware. Very cool. Detect Mobile Browsers

2010
25.08

Marvin the Chat Bot This came about by my mentioning something in jest... chatbot.mobi is the most fun thing I've built in ages, it's a talking, chatting search engine that has attitude and does all sorts of things that are kinda smart. From idea to live site in about 5 minutes isn't bad going. Talk to Marvin the Chat Bot

2010
22.08

Limousine Hire I'm pleased to say that limo.mobi went live today. It's a limousine rental site designed for browsing on your mobile phone. It lists limo hire and limo rental companies in US states and cities. Now a limo is just a click to call away! Rent a limo on your mobile!.

2010
16.08

Location Detection Spawned from the geolocation on the limo site this project gives you the code to add geolocation and Location Detection to your own mobile site. The idea being you can give visitors a more locally relevant browsing experience by showing them content that's close to them or related to where they are. Make your website location aware!

2010
01.08

Mobile Web Design for Dummies is now in the shops! The author Janine Warner has been kind enough to mention the code I wrote to Detect Mobile browsers so your website can show a mobile specific version or perform a redirect through to your mobile site.

The UK's Hottest Mp3 Downloads

These are the most popular songs being sold on my site at the moment, it's folks buying these songs and others from the millions on offer that are putting food on my table and the tables of the artists too. With this being the case you can understand my personal dislike of illegal music download sites.

My mobile web links and books my work is featured in

For some reason I've gotten myself into a bit of a niche, all because one day my site needed to able to identify which visitors were on mobile phones and which were not. That was the day the idea behind Detect Mobile Browsers was born! Since then a few folk have been kind and cool enough to mention this site and my work in their books:

Detect Mobile Browsers - My PHP function to sniff out mobile browsers on your website
Mobile Web Book - a self published title by Cameron Moll
Mobile Web Design and Development - by Brian Fling and published by O'Reilly
Mobile Web Design for Dummies - by Janie Warner and published by Wiley

I am open to offers from publishers and encourage other authors who wish to feature my work to get in touch.

I wouldn’t believe your wireless radio

Being on the radio used to be the most fun you could have whilst working. Now it's nothing more than repeating the same songs, day in day out whilst reading the same lines again and again.

Mixing desk

BBC Radio Leicester - Guest on the Jim Smallman show 19th April 2010
Oak FM - Traffic Manager, Production, Drive Presenter Jan 1999 ~ Jun 2002
BBC Radio York - Broadcast Assistant, Saturday Sport Dec 1999 ~ May 2000
Minster Sound Radio Group - Group Traffic Manager Jan 1998 ~ Dec 1998
Yorkshire Dales Radio - Traffic Manager, Evening Show Presenter Jan 1997 ~ Dec 1997
Yorkshire Coast Radio - Production Assistant, Acting Head of Music Nov 1993 ~ Jun 1996

Whilst doing short stints for Traffic Link I've presented ground based Travel Bulletins on: Minster FM, Viking FM and Magic 828 plus I've done airbourne reports for Beacon FM, Northants 96, Wyvern FM and Leicester Sound.

Things I still want to do:

Present on the radio again, if only there was a station that I actually wanted to work at; I miss the buzz of being in a studio and being on air but radio these days is too bland for my liking. I'd love the challenge and fun of a drive show again, I'd be up for high octane gigs like a weekly chart show or the mania of sports production too. As a personality type I'm an INTJ, I'm at my best when juggling creativity under pressure. However I accept that the industry is a shadow of itself and am certain I'm better off with good memories rather than ever returning to the air.

I'd also like to take up Sky Diving as a sport to AFF (Accellerated Free Fall) Level 8 after having jumped out of a plane before. It is by far the best buzz on the planet; it beats anything else I've ever tried.

One day I will Write and publish a book, I have recently turned down an offer from a publishing house to co-author an existing title about mobile web development. I never rated the first edition and the idea of splitting royalties was out of the question plus there was no way I was going to share spine space on a book with someone else's name!

I'd also like to take up some kind of kick-ass martial arts. I think it would be a good way to manage stress.

Amsterdam is like a second home to me, it would be nice to have a second home there.

I just bought a guitar, it'd be cool to learn how to play it, I apologise to my neighbours for any vulgar noises I make! Right now I'm trying to get my fingers around the chromatic scales.

I'd like to build an application to combat music piracy, something that crawls the web looking for illegal downloads, cross references the files againsn't a database of millions of songs with IRSCs and label info, logs the location and host of the file, then sends something more powerful than a DMCA take down request to the owner of the URL and the hosting company plus search engines. This is something I'd like to find a partner to work on to get this prospect in front of the labels. I know it's a spider but as an idea it has legs.

So you wanna get in touch?

You're welcome to get in touch unless you work in search optimisation or recruitment in which case you're not welcome at all.