This article about Virgin America abandoning Flash for it's website popped up late last week and it seems fitting since there seems to be a lot of discussion around Flash and mobile operating systems - specifically Apple and the iPhone and iPad. Actually there has always been a lot of discussion around the effectiveness of Flash and people usually fall into two opposing camps - yeah, big surprise I know.
My take is that Flash is a good tool when used in applications that could be made way more difficult to accomplish without it. I believe it is a good standard platform for video and some specialty drawing or gaming applications - but that is about it.
I've been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin and one of the things that Linchpin's do is let it shine. Godin says, "if you're going to go to all the trouble of learning the guitar, then SING IT! If you're not going to, why are you wasting your time?"
The famous Saturday Night Live skit says it best according to Godin. In fact, it takes Bruce Dickenson (yes, THE Bruce Dickinson) to convince Will Ferrell to play more cowbell when he is tempted to just fit in. The thing is, not playing the cowbell with gusto is the same as not playing it at all.
On Wednesday, I had the pleasure to attend and volunteer for the StackOverflow DevDays conference in Seattle. StackOverflow is a programming Q&A site, much like Expert's Exchange except without the nagging to register. It boasts over 1 million page views per day and something like 20 thousand active users.
There were many interesting topics covered, from ASP.NET to Qt, and there's a few new ideas that I want to try out now. Read more →
It is an unfortunate fact of internet life that not all browsers are made equal. Pages viewed in Firefox may look completely different in Internet Explorer or Safari. Most developers consider this a very frustrating part of the development process, and often wish there was an easier way to test things out. Enter Adobe's BrowserLab. Given a publicly accessible URL, BrowserLab will generate full-size images that depict how a given page will appear in various browsers.
The call came in about an hour or so ago from @uscgd13 "Coast Guard is launching on a man overboard off the Ferry Wenatachee on the Bainbridge Island run." The "tweet" was picked up by @King5Seattle which is how I learned about it.
During the next 15 minutes, I learned that the Coast Guard had scrambled a helicopter from Port Angeles as well as a boat from Station Seattle to assist in the search. Eventually, the tweet "@All the Coast Guard is standing down from the search" was posted after learning the report came from someone that thought they saw someone in the water. Better safe than sorry, I guess. Read more →
Is Data.gov the start of a more web-savvy government?
It seems the US Government has finally decided to join the rest of us here in the 21st century. Last Thursday our friends in that other Washington launched Data.gov which suggests a promising future for a transparent government on the web. Read more →
It's always fun to visit the places we do business with. It's even more fun when you go as a team and you go as an actual visitor and not as a vendor to a meeting. Such was the case Friday afternoon, when we decided to caravan out to Marymount to visit the LeMay Museum.
The museum offers guided tours and our group was led by the personable Pierce. He escorted us around the grounds through several buildings and answered our questions in a way that made even the least car-knowledgeable person feel at ease.
As I was checking out the consumerist.com today, I noticed an article about Aviary.com and their Terms of Use. Normally, Terms documents are terrifically difficult to understand. This one, however, includes plain English explanations alongside the legal-jargon.
This is a fantastic little step forward to a better web, and one that I would love to see become more popular.
It's no secret that nearly everyone in the web industry has some level of entrepreneurial spirit in them. Side projects are constantly being worked on and thought about. I, myself, run three community sites on the side. I have 4 Myspace profiles, 5 emails addresses, 2 Facebook accounts, 3 Twitter accounts, 1 Linkedin, 1 Friendster, 2 AIM accounts, 1 MSN account... now your probably thinking I'm nuts and wondering why...
Because so many of my projects are in different niches, having a way to manage the image and voice of that project is key. Many people are familiar with business incubators where when a client calls in on a number a shared receptionist answers the phone a certain way... same idea. By having a way to file people into different accounts it helps me manage all of the people trying to contact me and allows me to prioritize responses much easier.
This all works fine except with one type of contact. My phone number. When out and about, people have asked for my cell. If I have a personal connection with them I'll give it to them but if they are more of a business contact I tell them to just email me. Out of all of the ways to contact me my cell is definitely the "bat phone" so sharing the details are much more private since it is much harder to filter out the noise.
There is a solution just around the corner that I'm extremely excited about. In 2007, many of my friends turned me onto Grand Central, but they were quickly swallowed up by Google and I was unable to get an account. Well, news just came out about it, stating that it might becoming out of closed doors soon as Google Voice.
Google Voice allows you to get an alias phone number that is then routed to your phone. Also, all voicemail becomes digitized, allowing you to play via web interface!
Check out the video:
This solution will now make it extremely easy to give out a number that you can cancel at any point, all while keeping your personal number available and private. Another great advantage is if you are working on a site targeted at a certain state or city you can get a local number that gives you the image of being local.
I downloaded the new Kindle application for the iPhone last week and I love it. Prior to the download, my arguments against eBooks have often followed the same ones you've already heard -
What about the emotional attachment to paper - the texture the smell of books?
So at the risk of unleashing the wrath of my own team members against me I am going to have to say this...Safari is better than Firefox. So what if there are several different browsers? All you need is this one. This will be true until the ante is upped yet again by Mozilla, Opera, Google or Microsoft. But today, Safari 4 is king.
Now I'm not going to go into all the technical reasons, as I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of why one is faster, more compliant, etc. I'll leave that to the comments and the input from our team. I will say, however, that as a user I love it.
Leave it to Disney to get it right. We've all heard the stories. We all know about the legendary service, cleanliness, and fun. This story is a bit different as it is about all of those things, but more in my area of interest.
Here's the set up. I spent a week at Disneyland with my family. Fun was had by all. I enjoyed seeing my kids enjoy the rides, the characters and the fun that is Disneyland. All in all, I took over a thousand photos and a lot of video. Where the story gets interesting is in the photos I didn't take.
Today marks the first day Stack Overflow opens its doors to the public. In case you're not in the know, Stack Overflow is essentially a Q&A site geared towards developers of all kinds. It takes a language/technology agnostic approach and simply provides a framework within which the community can ask and answer techincal questions. Think of it as ExpertsExchange.com except free and much more community driven.
Today I discovered a very powerful addition to the PHP world. Phar is an archive extension for PHP that allows an entire PHP application to be packaged into a single file. It's basically PHP's answer to Java's .jar archive format. Don't get excited yet, it gets better...
Though adding another browser to our already rigorous bevvy of website testing doesn't appeal to me, having new such programs help drive web innovation is always welcome. Case in point: today's beta release of Google Chrome.
As mobile access to the web increases, it is becoming more and more important to ensure sites are usable on mobile devices. iPhoney attempts to address the iPhone camp with a desktop application that renders web pages within a virtual iPhone.
So I have a new car. Well three months old and I've been taking advantage of the FREE installed satellite radio. I have to say I was pretty certain that I'd let the system expire once the trial was over, but after commercial free radio with good music, I have to say I'm hooked.
So, when the extend your service email arrived in my Inbox Saturday, you bet I clicked to extend my service.
Changing the way an entire industry works is never easy. It can take a lot of time to get people used to doing things in a new way. Fortunately, during the past few years we have witnessed entire industries become disrupted by innovation. The Internet has changed the rules in so many industries - digital music, travel, banking - the list goes on and on. So one of our customers asked, why not Letterman jackets?
We all remember (at least those of us that were jocks) receiving our letter and going to the nearest sporting goods store and ordering our jackets. Typically, we chose from a limited set of styles, got measured, paid some money, and then waited 4-6 weeks for delivery. It's a process that still plays itself out in most of the country. Enter Lettermansclub.com... Read more →
I am amazed how many people are willing to ignore email solicitations from some mysterious contact in Nigeria that needs your help to get access to $15,000.000. All they need from you is for you to help. Your reward, you may keep two-thirds of the money. Yet these same people receive an email or phone call from someone they've never met promising search engine nirvana and they take it, hook line and sinker. Do these same people buy the stock picks recommended when they get an unsolicited FAX or email?
Look, we all want to be noticed. If we didn't we'd never buy flashy car rims that spin, add exhaust pipes that sound like F-16s, or wear perfume. Your website is no different, it wants to be seen and you want it be seen. Which is exactly what most Search Engine Optimization firms are counting on. Read more →
I recently had the opportunity to work with one of Google's latest search applances, the Mini. Having no previous experience with any of Google's search hardware, this seems an excellent opportunity to offer a newcomer's first impressions.
gotAPI.com is one of the most useful online resources I've come across, primarily because it places resources spread all over the internet into one simple site. I've been using this for quite some time, and have for the most part I have taken its usefulness for granted. Then it occurred to me that I might not be the only one that could find this tool useful (I know, it was a big 'DUH!' moment). So now I will share this gem with others...
I stumbled upon a fantastic PHP class today and felt compelled to comment on it. Originally written by Tyler Hall, this class allows you to send notifications to any system running Growl from a PHP script. For those of you that don't know, Growl is an application written for Mac OS X that is intended to act as a universal notification tool (much like the taskbar notification bubbles we've all come to know and love in Windows XP/Vista).
I've been a Facebook user for quite some time - even before they had the facebook.com domain. One thing that I absolutely love about it is the control they give you to limit what other people see about you. I've adopted a very serious set of controlls that limits only people I actually know to see anything about me. However, this is a false sense of security. Everything I post online that anyone besides me can access is inherently public. This is what initially drew myself and countless other people to Facebook.
However, their new advertising platform - Beacon - throws all this out the window. Beacon is a system that allows Facebook to track what you do on other websites. Let me reiterate that: Facebook tracks what you do online. They don't just track what you say you like on your profile, for example what movies you like; with Beacon they can track what movies you're actually renting.
Having stumbled upon RescueTime, I feel compelled to share my discovery as this concept is just too useful to keep to myself. The basic idea behind this website is to make it easier to keep track of where you spend your time while at your computer. If you find yourself filling out your timesheet at the end of the week only to realize you can't remember what you were doing all that time, this tool was made for you! Read more →
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.
