http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/odds-n-ends/ en-us Wed, 16 May 2012 23:55:35 PDT Wed, 16 May 2012 23:55:35 PDT SiteCrafting.com GearBox 1.1 (beta) http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/to-blog-1/ Welcome, and thanks for coming to the long-anticipated Blah Blah Blog! What you're going to find here is a rare peek behind the curtain at the inner workings of a leading Website and Web Application Development company. Our aim is to make this Blog different than the billions of other Blogs you could be reading. So start by expecting the unexpected. For starters, we won't be afraid to reveal secrets or point out how we've learned from our mistakes. The main focus will be technology ? but we'll also include proprietary Web tips & tricks, relevant business news, stories from the workbench, and more. Use the navigation on the right to get around, and check back regularly. Your category choices will grow as we add posts. And you never know what you'll find from day to day. Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:24:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/printing-dialog/ One day, one of our clients came to us with a very unusual request - they wanted to be able to print something directly from the browser, but without displaying the usual print dialog box. I don't have much time in the webdev business, but I've never heard of this kind of request, and neither had anyone else in the office.Initially, we didn't think that it was possible. The browser File > Print command uses a dialog box. So does the javascript print() function. The only reason that we knew this was possible was that the client's current system was already doing it. With a little research, we figured out how to print directly from the browser without displaying a dialog box.Tools you'll need:1 local Unix or Linux serverA pinch of Javascript1 PHP exec() callPHP to format your dataFirst: your server MUST be a local server, on the same network as the printer. This is because we'll be using the lp command to shoot off the print job.Second, to get this to work from the browser, you need a little javascript to call a file using XMLHttpRequest that will call the lp command and execute the print job.The actual command to start off the print job looks something like this: lpr -p printer file.txtThe final ingredient of this system is to use PHP to format the data you need to print, and then save it to a file. The lpr command then works on that file.In the end, we were able to get this whole thing working, but only because Dustin over at out co-location facility knew what needed to be done. Part of the command line printing involves manually creating a print spool - a task not for the faint of heart. The spool is defined in /etc/printcap, and looks something like this:printer:\        :ml=0:\        :mx=0:\        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/printer:\        :af=/var/spool/lpd/printer/printer.acct:\        :sh:\        :rm=XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:\        :rp=text:\        :if=/etc/magicfilter/ibmpro-filter:\        :lpd_bounce=true:Replace the XXX string with your printer's IP address. Then, when you click on a print button, the javascript fires off the XMLHttpRequest, which calls the PHP script to create the print file, and executes the command to print that file. Or, you can call the script with a PHP function on a page load.Shout outs to Dustin and Andrzej, for making the printing work, and for getting the scripts to call the print action. Mon, 09 Apr 2007 16:36:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/service-in-storm/ With all the storm-induced power problems in the Puget Sound area a few of us were able to make it into the office today. The area is a patch work of service availability -- I know of houses with power and phone but no internet access, some with no power but the phones work, and yet others with power but no phones. A stroke of service my co-worker Ken displayed today was brilliant in its simplicity but it probably meant the world to one of our clients. The scenario was simple. A client with a small business was also open and working today but was unable to access their website where orders were still coming in. Being a food services company, timely filling of those orders is key. They made a phone connection with Ken who was able to access their site, grab a copy of the day's orders, and fax it off.For predictable reasons on a day like today, however, the fax didn't get through. Ken then opted to go the more manual route and read the order to our client aloud over the phone.I merely overheard this taking place but hope this made our client's day a little easier. After all, how do you feel when someone goes the extra mile for you? Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:15:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/best-advertising-just-be/ Last month, I was doing some major work on a house when I ran into a problem I couldn't handle. I needed a plumber, so I did what a lot of people do -- I turned to the nearest telephone directory. At the top of the PLUMBING section, I saw the name AAA++ Plumbing*, and promptly skipped right over it. (More about why I did that later).First, a short history of plumbing industry marketing? many service company names begin with A, or AA or AAA (often with symbols and/or numbers following the A's). Why? In the dark ages (before the internet), this marketing strategy was adopted to catapult the company with the most A's to the top of the telephone directory heap. It was like an alphabet arms race which, in our infinitely wise hind-sight, surely could only be won by the next guy who was reckless enough to put even more A's at the front of his company name. The madness could have led to AAAAAAAAAA Plumbing, but just in time the directories started offering display ads. Effectively moving the alphabet war mentality to a new front. Today, those same companies with names containing a bunch of AAs are pouring their marketing dollars into larger and larger space ads. Seemingly small companies are buying two-page spreads, while the larger conglomerates pay for a spread, the back cover, a magnet pasted on the cover AND are now buying billboards and television ads. Now as a marketing professional, I'm very supportive of companies spending money on advertising. But those ad dollars need to be spent well. You see, as a plumbing consumer, I shied away from calling the plumbers with the biggest ads, billboards or annoying television commercials. I just wanted to know which plumber could do the work quickly without charging me an arm and a leg. All the ads that I saw told me that these companies were spending a small fortune to get my attention but they weren't effective at differentiating themselves from their competition. So I closed the phone book, picked up my phone, and started calling friends and acquaintances instead of plumbers. I got mostly negative recommendations ? something you hear a lot when you ask people about their personal service experiences. In fact, I had a negative experience myself several years ago with the aforementioned AAA++ Plumbing. They may be the winner of the phone directory alphabet war ? but they've lost my business, and that of anyone with whom I've shared my negative experience. So, let's cut this long story short, and move on to the moral of the story. Through my word-of-mouth network, I did find a good, reasonably priced plumber who took care of my problem. He did great work, and I'll heartily recommend him even though his name is not at the top of the directory, and he doesn't have a display ad. As this plumber wrote up my paperwork, I got the chance to talk to him a little about marketing. He's planning to buy a phone directory ad, and he's hired a professional to build his website. Two good moves that I strongly believe are worthwhile. BUT I offered him some free advice, as I'll offer to anyone who's read this article through to the end: keep in mind that while word-of-mouth marketing is not glamorous, and there's nobody trying to sell it to you, it is still THE most effective advertising available, and it cuts through the clutter of the hundreds of marketing messages we're subjected to every single day. To sum it up, if you don't do good work and treat your customers right, you'll always be fighting an uphill battle to stay in business. But if you do exceptional work, and go out of your way to treat customers well, the free word-of-mouth generated on your behalf will be priceless.* Any company names used are hypothetical Thu, 04 Jan 2007 15:35:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/dependability-challenge/ The gauntlet has been thrown down. We can't hide now...we must be exceptional. While it is nice that we were recently recognized for dependabilty, I see it as more of a challenge. A challenge for us to do more, perform better, and have more satisfied customers. So, what are we going to do? How will we respond? How can you respond to your customers in such as way as to be known for dependabilty? How can your business garner coveted word of mouth referrals?While not perfect...here's what I recommend...feel free to add comments below on other things you think are important.1. Focus on your business.Don't waste time looking over your shoulder at your competitors. Instead, focus on being the very best you can be at what you do.  Get your house in order. List everything you do well, and everything that needs improvement. Address issues, deal with them, and don't sweep anything under the rug. Take criticism as an opportunity for improvement, not as a personal attack, and be sure to thank the person who gave you that opportunity. 2. Establish systems.Make sure you have set systems for dealing with all situations. Make sure your people know what those systems are. If something falls outside of that system, create a new one. We have systems for simple tasks like setting up new hosting customers as well as complex systems to track complex projects. 3. Empower your people.Stay out of the way of your employees. Give them the tools (systems) to perform their tasks, let them solve problems creatively, and give them the responsibility and authority to satisfy customers. 4. Communicate.Make sure email is answered within a couple of hours and phone calls the same day if possible (I'm trying).  Keep communication  professional, get to the point, and archive your messages to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.5. Follow through.Do what you say you will do. Everytime.We will continue to work on improving in all these areas, while not perfect by any means, we've made it our New Year's resolution to continue focusing on improving and providing exceptional service. Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:22:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/flexibility-in-foul-weather/ I'm working from home today mostly because Ma Nature dumped about six inches of snow on my house. In an area where an inch will shut down the city, this is a bit more serious. It really pays, however, to have a flexible employer so I don't have to brave the hills around town. The beauty of the web and digital communication is that it allows for these kinds of opportunities whether the weather, saving some fossil fuels, or even emergencies are concerned. Most of the web applications we create allow for access to manage your website from anywhere. When information needs to be available, especially on days like today when snow can effect your operations, it's just as easy for someone to make an update to their site from home. This kind of ease of access can really help your website or intranet become a resource others can rely on.One client I worked with a few weeks ago after a wind storm pelted the area was in need of posting an emergency-related notice on their website. We haven't yet helped them create a content managed system for their public website so while operating in their emergency center they didn't have the right software to get the job done.  They contacted me directly, and provided me with information to manually update their old site via FTP. Fortunately I was available, despite the weather, and made the change right away. If they had a web managed system, however, they would've been able to make this kind of change anytime on any internet-connected computer regardless of the software on it. If it can browse the web, it can be used to update a website.Clients should always be able to manage their site themselves without needing to ask a developer like me to do it for them. Putting content in the hands of the people who know it best -- it's a kind of "enabling" that makes my job so rewarding. And on days like these, it can make a lot of people's lives a little bit easier if the info they need is available when they need it. Thu, 11 Jan 2007 09:35:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/diary-developing-developer/ I never had any idea how complicated, confusing, and involved the development of web sites and web-based applications can truly be. When I was younger, every once in a while I would look at a web page and click the "view source" option and think, "Wow, that really doesn't look too difficult to learn."Little did I know there is so much more behind the code than what is seen in that one snapshot of HTML.Working for SiteCrafting has really been a great experience and has given me the chance to work in an area I've always been interested in and am starting to enjoy more every day. On-the-job training, however, can be both the easiest and hardest way to learning something that's very involved and complicated. It's easy because I have a wealth of knowledge sitting all around me at work that can answer my questions and give me one-on-one assistance when I get stuck. I never dreamed of getting a job where I can have 9 teachers to 1 student when usually the ratio is turned around with something like 1 teacher to 25 students or more. The hard thing is that I'm starting out by looking at, what to me are, very complicated applications and involved coding and working back towards the basics instead of starting with the basics and working towards more difficult applications. Although I've read through helpful tutorials for HTML, CSS, and PHP, that only goes so far. Actually coding, testing, finding it wrong, getting frustrated, re-doing, and having things re-explained is where the actual learning takes place. Fortunately, I am enjoying ( mostly :) ) every minute of it.Seeing what's involved in the development of web applications SiteCrafting produces has certainly given me a new appreciation for the expertise, hard work, and effort put into clients and their projects. I am certainly eager to keep learning as I get more and more involved in development work. Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:23:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/back-in-ussr/ It's not a huge secret that I'm a rugby fan. There's a mystique about the rugby culture here in America. It's a lesser known sport in the US, and so when one rugby fan bumps into another fan, as they are prone to do, they usually spend a few moments swooning over the fact that someone else likes their sport. Just last night, I was out at JazzBones in my All Blacks jersey, and someone who I'd never met before started talking about rubgy with me. It was fantastic.I didn't use to be a rugby fan, but I spent 6 months living in the heart of the New Zealand rugby culture, and that kind of thing changes a person. However, I still think Aussie Rules Football is confusing and silly. (I can't take any sport seriously if it's referred to as "footy" in the vernacular.) I'm eagerly waiting to see the All Blacks play in the upcoming Rugby World Cup in France this year.Because TV coverage of the non-US sports (baseball, football, basketball, and stock car racing) is quite spotty at best, I hopped online to the Rugby World Cup webpage to get more information about when and where it'll be on TV. I don't care if it's ESPN45, I need to see my Blacks embarrass everyone. They've got a form to submit your email for more information as it becomes available, and under the field to select your country or residence, I found this gem: Apparently, you can still live in the USSR. Our government better be concerned, because if they don't pay attention they'll get mauled, and then we'll suffer a tri-gap. And no one likes a tri-gap. Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:24:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/to-run-php-code-in/ If you have php code that would take longer than 5 minutes to run, what would you do? You could update the configuration file for apache, or whatever web server you're running, to increase the amount of time a script page is allowed to run  and then use php's ini_set("max_execution_time", seconds) to increase the amount of time php will allow a script to run.Or you could use a session variable to mark the last position of the script and then use meta-refresh to start the script at the last position.Or you could try an asynchronous call by using php's exec command.Asynchronous ExampleHere's an oversimplified example. Let's say that you've been charged with resizing all the images in the Products folder. You decide to write some fancy php script to iterate through all the sub-folders and resize each image. Everything works beautifully on your test server with 50 images and 10 sub-directories. You upload your script to the live server, with a couple thousand images, and attempt to run it. After about 5 minutes the page times out and only about 200 images were resized.Now what? One possible solution is to create two pages, one that does all the image resizing, image_resize.php, and another that calls that page, resize_exec.php using the exec command.resize_exec.php<%$command = "/usr/bin/php4 -f /var/www/myweb/image_resize.php";exec( "$command > /dev/null &", $arrOutput );%>$command is a linux/debian command for running a php page through a command line. Normally, exec() will wait for the script to finish running and will return any output to the array $arrOutput, like error messages. However, by adding " > /dev/null ", the exec() will not wait for the script to finish, allowing the php script to run in the background.Your image_resize.php script is now able to run completely to the end.What to watch forOn the page that does the actual work, be sure to use ini_set("max_execution_time", seconds) to increase the amount of time php will allow your page to run.Be sure to use absolute paths for the command line and the  working page.Make sure that permissions are set up correctly to allow the php command line to run.The command line and " > /dev/nul/" works with linux/debian. This may be different, depending on your system.This example will not work with windows, although it may be possible to do same thing using a similar method.Additional FeaturesWhat if you wanted to keep track of the image resize process. One idea is to have image_resize.php update a text file with the percent done as it's running. Then on the resize_exec.php page, have a little bit of ajax that reads that file every few seconds and displays it on the page.You could also have image_resize.php send out an e-mail informing you that it has finished. Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:19:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/usual-browser-suspects/ My search for the perfect web app testing environment yielded what I though would be a pretty ingenious setup. Stack up a couple Mac Mini's with a KVM and we could cover everything from XP to Vista and IE 6 to 7. The perfect solution, however, ended up being one Mini cheaper. Since it's nearly impossible to buy a copy of Windows today that comes built with IE 6 (still the most used browser) I hunted around for solutions to continue testing with this antiquated program. I then remembered a trick I summoned long ago to test sites in IE 5.5 -- a standalone Internet Explorer.I immediately headed to Evolt.org's browser archive. Their list of software reads like a museum of internet browser history that allow you to travel in time back to Mosaic or the "gold" days of Netscape 3. Aside from those trips down digital memory lane they have some other useful tidbits like standalone versions of Internet Explorer. I don't know exactly how it was done but these are copies of this browser that are not at all tightly woven into the fabric of Windows but run side by side with other versions. Luck have it, there's a download for a standalone IE 6 and it works like a charm.Now I feel any PC can be a powerful testing environment with tools like this and the new addition of Safari for Windows. Since, fortunately, the operating system version itself won't impact the browser or web experience much, one machine running all the browsers shown above easily takes care of 97+% of web users in one boot. Not only that, but the standalone solution easily saves us $750 in machine and software costs for a separate testing environment. Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:26:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/long-urls-create-interesting-wrap-1/ In the process of trying to figure out what in the world was wrong with my stylesheet, I went to W3 to validate it (and, although it is irrelevant to this post, I found my problem in a typo. Isn't it always a typo?) Since I am lazy about these kinds of things, I did the validation by direct input rather than finding and uploading the actual file, and something entirely odd happened: the URL bar contained something that looked like a solid black mess. After one forced shutdown due to being worried that something had gone wrong, I copied and pasted the content of the bar into a text document and lo and behold! It was the URL (a 34 000 word one, no less, due to the direct-input validation's method of incorporating all the CSS into the URL) and because of its length, it had wrapped over itself.Testing proceeded, and it turns out that Mozilla Firefox (currently 2.0.0.3)  wraps URLs at around 1800 chracters - and it wraps straight over itself. The result looks quite messy, but remains completely valid. Personally, I found it rather cool-looking, but it is obviously a problem as a big cloud of a mess in the URL bar would worry the unexperienced user (it worried me, initially) who unwittingly visits a page with a long URL. The bug has been reported, and I am sure it will eventually be remedied.  As for other browsers, Internet Explorer seems to solve the problem by not allowing URLs beyond a certain length to be copied into the URL bar, and  by not displaying long URLs of the generated variety. Safari simply allows the text to go on, sans wrap. More sensible. A little less nifty-looking.  Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:19:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/friday-office-creativity-gets-hand/ Who knew a seemingly innocuous internal email would make for some good laughs and groans? I sure didn't when I invited folks from the office to join in a Friday after work pseudo-tradition.Local pub Meconi's is known around downtown Tacoma as a solid place to grab a pint and a bite to eat. Add a foosball table into the mix and you've just convinced every twisty-wrist minded guy or gal at SiteCrafting to stop by. Somewhat earlier in the summer we made it there nearly every Friday but, as office and regular life tend to get busy when the Sun's high in our skies, attendance and interest waned.This week my schedule was clear enough (and those onion rings and cheese sticks were beckoning) that I sent out a quick email to everyone here. I let everyone know a few of us were "headed to Meconi's after work for foos, booz, eats and meets (sorry 'bout that)."Little did I know that pointing out the accidental rhyming would spawn such a clatter. It started off, innocently enough, with replies like "I, too, intend to attend," and "Since it's rhyme time, I'm in to win."Here's a transcript of some of the gems that followed:"Oh yeah? Well if it's foos you choose, prepare to lose!""I'm probably heading to the Fair, so I doubt I have time to spare.""Now that sounds like fun! But if I go I'll have to soon run.""Its been a really long week in sitecrafting land, Having a drink with you guys will be quite grand."And it all finally, thankfully and appropriately ended with this from Mark and Sarah:"Enough rhyming now, I mean it!""Anybody want a peanut?"Let this be a warning, spread far and spread near, creativity abounds working here for the Gear. Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:02:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/pirates-web-developers/ Unless there's a Seahawks, Huskies, or Mariners game going on, it's pretty rare that I listen to the radio in my car, let alone anything on the AM band. Saturday was the exception as I was driving toward Seattle right after the Atlas Foundry explosion. I kept flipping between the local AM news stations, hoping to hear of any updates as I was just down the street visiting some friends about 10 minutes before the explosion.  Hearing any updates required sitting through weather and traffic reports, as well as what seemed like an endless parade of commercials.  One of those commercials hit upon one of my pet peeves.The spot was for one of those big box office supply stores claiming to make your life easier. Featuring a pirate and a perky, but oh-so-helpful salesgirl, the ad was fine all the way up to the point where the pirate asked if he could get business cards printed as well. "Why do you need business cards? You're a pirate." "Aye, but I'm a web developer too."Stop it. No you're not. Just because you can operate Dreamweaver, FrontPage, or Word doesn't mean you're a web developer. Yes, web developers can build sites using those tools, but the majority1 don't. There is more to web development than just a copy of Dreamweaver. I can change the oil in my car, but that doesn't mean I'm a mechanic all of a sudden.Back in the day when SiteCrafting was just Brian, Ken, and I, we would have to justify our prices to potential clients. "$2500 seems like a lot of money. The kid down the street can build web pages too, maybe I'll have him do it." I don't know how many potential jobs we lost that way, but it seemed like too many. We've grown a lot since then, both in size and in the type of work we do. We don't experience those kind of clients as much anymore, but they are still out there. When you decide to get serious about your online presence, talk to someone that has been around the block few times. Someone that has been doing web development for years and knows the ins and outs of the online world. Someone that will be there to provide the service your business needs, and not just any old pirate.1 in my mind at least Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:52:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/2007-sitecrafting-company-retreat/ The SiteCrafting team spent the first weekend in October enjoying the Hood Canal area as part of this year's company retreat. Being as we suffer from a distinct lack of petty office politics and other Dilbert-esque characteristics,  "company retreat" is not synonymous with "endless torture" for us here. The getaway was designed to allow the team to take a break from the office routine and gain capacity to review and offer input on company strategy, successes and our roadmap for sustaining growth. As usual, our collective wit, insight and sarcastic humor made these discussions interesting, informative, motivating and memorable. The retreat downtime allowed our team to channel their creativity in cool/hillarious ways they don't get the opportunity to do back at the office. Michael launched the next great Web 2.0 idea with Beachipedia.com. It takes web applications to the next level by offering a free waterfront based social editable platform that allows anyone to read, edit, and engage in location based information. (For those not fluent in marketing speak: it's basically about writing on a sandy beach with a stick) Another great result of retreat downtime is Nick's gear-geous wallpaper that many of us our proudly displaying on our desktops. If you would like to raise the "cool" factor of your desktop by a considerable margin, you can download a zip with the most common resolutions here. And feel free to contact him if you would like a particular resolution not included with the above archive. There was also Wii gaming, Halo 3 shooting, wireless surfing, sleeping, scenic viewing, wiffle ball home run derbying, Mickey Mouse pancake cooking, guitar strumming, beach walking, nuclear submarine watching, silly certificate awarding, and Texas Hold' em playing. All in all, everything made for a good time and a great chance to get to know everyone we spend so much time with each day at work. Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:23:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/confessions-n00b-part-1/ Ahh.. where to begin?  Greetings everyone.  I'm Mandi and I'm wrapping up week 2 at SiteCrafting.  I was informed that it might be interesting to get a new hire's perspective posted on the blog, and now that I'm here, Paul is no longer the new guy so it's all on me. Let me give you an outsider's perspective on SiteCrafting:  It's quiet.  Really, really quiet.  Up until two Fridays ago, I worked in a warehouse where things are constantly clanking, smashing, beeping, being dropped, and people shout across the room at you (even if they're standing right next to you).  Here, I feel like I should whisper all the time.  Now I know that's silly and it's not a library and things can get plenty noisy.  Especially during lunch when people are playing foosball or talking to the Wii, but that was my first impression.After wandering around and trying desperately to remember everyone's name (still working on that), I was informed that as part of my initiation, I would have to... *gasp*... assemble my own chair.  Having purchased and assembled several things from IKEA, I felt up to the challenge but was saved the physical strain when a good samaritan (Mark) wandered over and just started putting it together for me.  Now don't get me wrong, I was grateful that Mark was being a nice guy, but I also started to worry that since I hadn't actually "passed" my initiation, I would have to swallow a live goldfish or something.  Luckily, no one's pursued the matter.So far everyone's been great and they took me out to lunch on my first day.  Let me tell you, nothing says "welcome to the team" like a sourdough bacon burger.  Mmm... bacon.That's it for the moment.  Check in regularly for the continued adventures of Mandi.    Thu, 01 Nov 2007 09:28:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/office-halloween-costume-contest/ Fully one-third of the staff at SiteCrafting participated in our office Halloween contest today. Though we dressed up to win today's prize a few of us even wandered about the streets of Tacoma on our way to and from a party at local design and architectural firm BCRA. A software pirate, blogging ninja, head-crab zombie, and "J" blockhead walking down Pacific Ave. certainly drew a bit of attention.Let's see if you can pick out the contest winner.Joe as "The Dude"Mandi as "You Should See The Other Guy"Kevin as "Blogging Ninja"Sarah as "Software Pirate"Nick as "Head Crab Zombie"Michael as "J Blockhead"The Line-UpWhat'd you and your co-workers dress up as? Happy Halloween! Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:48:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/windows-live-generation-web-apps/ So, I'm pretty much online all the time. I'm constantly looking for innovative applications and web services. I thought, "I'm going to have a look at what the 'big guys' are doing."We all know Google is creating some pretty great web applications like their maps or spreadsheet apps. Seems decision makers at the big "G" have squarely set their sites on building innovative tools for web users. Surely, I thought, Microsoft has its plan and it's called Windows Live. Once on the site I went no further in their online suite of products than this one word to know it will never work: Install. There was an "Install" button I was required to click after selecting the "web applications" I wanted to use. Not cool. One of the best things about creating web-based applications is that they can work for someone anywhere there's an internet connection and a browser -- no special downloads or programs required. Web apps should just work.Now, this may seem like an overreaction, but when will MSFT start truly seeing that always requiring ties to a specific OS may not be where the future of software tech lies? As we become further disconnected from the chair-to-desk scenario and more reliant upon wireless, always on and always connected devices it seems the path ahead breaks from having to care which this is compatible with which that. If a company like Microsoft were to design a washing machine it very well might be unable to wash my Levi's but have no problem with Calvin Klein's.As I've heard it said before, "Microsoft: the future is yesterday, the past tomorrow."Read Mike's post about another recent Microsoft de-innovation. Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:49:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/android-real-gen-web-apps/ If the iPhone is web apps to go, Google and the Open Handset Alliance's new open source mobile phone API, dubbed Android, is The Joy Of Cooking Webapps. Once again Google has seen a good idea (packing a cell phone full of convenient little apps and widgets that sync with websites and external systems) and figured out a way to make it a great one. If you haven't been following the news on Android, here's the basic scoop: Google has teamed with a group of phone manufacturers (T Mobile, Motorola, etc, just to name a few of the biggies) to create the Open Handset Alliance, who are running on a pretty basic principle (and one that Big OS Developers) have still failed to grasp. If everyone is competing to get the best developers to work on their system, nobody is going to get the best software. So much time is wasted working within proprietary systems and on cross-platform compatibility that the chance for true innovation is weakened, if not lost altogether. Let software engineers come up with what they're trained for: good software ideas. Someone who wants to write a killer chat widget for a cell phone shouldn't have to sit around trying to decide what phone they're going to sink their time and code into. The telecom industry is in such flux that it's impossible to tell just which company is going to be big, or bought, or gone tomorrow.Hence, the OHA introduces a common API, one that the involved parties are commited to using (some say they'll have Android-ready handsets come Q4 of 2008), one that allows open source developers all over the world to simply code, writing Java programs secure in the knowledge (unless something goes horribly awry) that they won't be tied to a single manufacturer.On top of the usefullness of a generalized API, this alliance fosters innovation in another way: once a group of competing vendors band together on something like this, proprietary development concerns go out the window. Apple is still stuck trying to keep most of the iPhone development in house. Android, on the other hand, is blatantly relying on the open source community. And since it is built on the backs of pure hardware vendors, no one has a service provider looking over their shoulder going "Oh no, what if someone ports Skype to this phone? We're doomed!" Well, maybe they are still looking... but they no longer have the power to stop it.What really excites me here, though, is just how much force Google is putting behind getting the developer community involved. With Monday's SDK release, a full year before the first Android-enabled handsets will hit the market, they took a major step toward ensuring the success of the project. I've toyed with the system a bit, and I tell you it is sweet. In addition to command line tools and serious documentation, they've also wrapped the whole toolkit up in an Eclipse plug-in, complete with an incredibly thorough simulation setup: a visual representation of a full-keypad handset, complete with already installed and fully functional browser, Google maps, and address book... you can even place calls (no, they don't go through, but it does record them in a recent call list for you). As if just putting the tools out there wasn't enough, suddenly there's the Android Developer Challenge, complete with $10 million in cash prizes to encourage innovation and development.I don't know about anyone else, but this whole thing excites me to no end. I don't really have aspirations of winning any of that money... I've only done minimal Java development in the last couple years. But it feels good to get in on the ground floor of something that feels like it could be genuinely revolutionary. This really is the next step. Here at SiteCrafting we've already started building mobile web interfaces for some of our clients' more complex business management apps. I'm eagerly anticipating the day when we don't have to put together tiny webpages for field managers to use, because they've got a genuine application on their phone, grabbing and updating live data from the system we've built them.So maybe I won't win $25,000 by having and executing one of the best 50 ideas by February, but everyone in telecommunications, software engineering, web development, and, well... pretty much everyone has a lot to gain from the work that's going to be spawned here in the next few months. I've already started work on my new Android app. Have you? Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:01:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/dns-propagation-explained/ There's always plenty of tech-speak flying around among developers in the office. I certainly try to keep such language at a minimum when working with clients but sometimes it just works its way in there. DNS and other domain-related processes can be pretty confusing, period, let alone to someone anxious for their website to go live. So how to explain DNS propagation? I overheard a co-worker use the best explanation of DNS propagation ever in the world. It went something like this:When a new phonebook comes out, I may already have the new one while yours has yet to be delivered. So when dialing the same number we might have two different expectations for who picks up on the other end.And that's definitely it. When a new domain name is pointed at the place a website is being hosted it can easily take up to a day or more for every corner of the web to get updated with that new information. The internet is certainly a strange beast but with solid analogies like that no one has to be left in the dark. Thu, 15 Nov 2007 06:50:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/office-star-trek-tng-marathon/ That's what we did a couple Fridays ago here in the office. Brian's wife Julie is an avid Trekker and was excited to plan a Next Generation marathon with us. And we definitely put her complete series DVD collection to good use. From about 5:30pm on we watched episode after favorite episode. After a pile of snacks, some great pizza, sharing Star Trek memories, 7 episodes, it was half past midnight and time to wrap it up.Thanks to Julie for making the trek (ha!) up and for those killer communicator cookies. We'll definitely have to do it again sometime.Pics after the break. Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:18:00 PST