http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/review/ en-us Thu, 17 May 2012 00:02:27 PDT Thu, 17 May 2012 00:02:27 PDT SiteCrafting.com GearBox 1.1 (beta) 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/rescuetime-time-going/ 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!It requires a lightweight download (both Mac and Windows versions are available) that monitors what applications and web pages have focus and for how long. It then periodically sends this data to the RescueTime website where you can view an analysis of where all your time is spent.You have a fairly large amount of control over how the stats are handled. You can attach multiple tags to each application, making it easy to categorize things and see how much time you spend in different areas. Below is an example of how much time I've spent this week on different things:And of course they're using the well-known FusionCharts flash libraries to display their charts (meaning lots of eye-candy, without overdoing it of course).So give it a test drive and see for yourself - you'll be surprised to see where all your time goes... Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:02:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/facebook-beacon-social-media-spyware/ 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. This is a marketer's dream come true. Facebook has millions of users, all happily entering what movies they like, what books they read, what they like to do, and what music they listen to. From there, it's trivial to create user profiles. They can determine that 35% of white males between 18 and 25 like to listen to Led Zeppelin. I just made those figures up, however I can see that more people like Jack Johnson than Coldplay in my college network. Putting numbers on that would be simple for Facebook. So Facebook has all this data, but what are they going to do with it? If you're thinking, "sell it", you're probably right. They are sitting on a gold mine of information. Anyone with an interest in data mining would be cackling with glee if they got their hands on that info. This all leads to better profiling and better marketing schemes with the ultimate goal of getting you to buy more stuff you don't need. Coming back to Beacon, they are now able to track what you do on just about any site on the internet. They can see what you buy, what you rent, what games you play, and if you're getting your girlfriend an engagement ring. Even though Facebook recently changed Beacon's reporting mechanism on their site (you now have to actively approve stories for them to show up), they are still collecting that data. It just isn't published. The conclusion that follows is somewhat disturbing: Facebook may be great at making an adversiting platform, but they're not so great when it comes to their user's privacy. Their concern is obvious: to serve the needs of advertisers while paying lip service to "what the users want" - information about what their friends are doing. They're assuming that their ends of providing good advertising justifies the means where they invade the user's privacy to a degree not seen before on the internet. And as I learned from philosophy, the result of your actions does not justify any unethical decisions you had to make to get there.That's why I'm blocking Beacon, removing all my interests and likes from the site, and most other personal information I put up there. I don't like people snooping into my information, and I won't make it easy for them. They probably have a profile on that, too. Tue, 04 Dec 2007 11:41:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/php-growl/ 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). The class itself is incredibly simple and straightforward, and allows you to send notifications using only 5 lines of code. Consider this simple example:// Setup$growl = new Growl();$growl->setAddress('127.0.0.1');$growl->addNotification("Test");$growl->register();// Send Notification$growl->notify("Test", "Test Alert", "The body of the test alert!");Pretty nifty isn't it? One could very easily integrate this into a logger to notify you immediately of any critical errors with your scripts, or even tell you every time a given page is viewed. So if you want to check out my modified version (a bit more standards-compliant with PHP 5) you can see it here, or view the original author's site to see the original.Download: Growl PHP Classvar dzone_url = 'http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/php-growl/';var dzone_title = '';var dzone_blurb = '';var dzone_style = '1';  Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:41:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/got-api/ 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...gotAPI acts as a portal to almost any API/language reference available on the internet. Wondering what that PHP string function is that splits a string into an array? Pour yourself a nice tall glass of gotAPI and find it in seconds. Or if JavaScript is more your thing, browse the DOM to find the function or property you need. The advantage is that it can all be accessed from here, no need to remember countless URLs or stumble through a poorly designed site to find the documentation page. Simply hit up the site and you're set.Customization is another advantage, with the tabbed interface allowing you to pull up multiple reference pages (all searchable with an expandable tree view to your left). Load up all the API's related to your current project finding an obscure function is now seconds away. Fantastic!The fact that I am still excited about this site after months of using it should tell you just how nifty it is. So stop wasting time reading blogs and go check it out!Link: gotAPI.com Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:40:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/googles-search-appliance/ 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.I. Setup & ConfigurationSetting things up turned out to be more painless than I had expected. Upon opening the box, I found the contents to be only what was necessary. It consisted of 5 things: the Mini itself, a yellow Cat5 cable, an orange Cat5 crossover cable, a power cable, and the manual/quick-start guide (and a snazzy tshirt!). That's it, nothing else! No product catalogs, no coupons, no massive collection of multilingual warranty booklets, and most importantly no unnecessary clutter.II. User InterfaceThe UI of the administration panel is clean and to the point - very much what one would expect from Google, and consistent with Google's overall style across the rest of their product line. All the administrative functions are organized categorically and only one menu-level deep, making virtually any administrative action no more than 2 clicks away.III. API/Programmatic UsabilityAccessing the mini's search capabilities programmatically works very much as one might expect - executing search queries via GET or POST and returning the results in an easily parsable XML format. Additional options are also available, though I found the XML format to be the most flexible for the circumstances. It is so easy to use I actually had to debate whether or not writing a PHP wrapper class was actually necessary. In the end I decided it would make sense, though even then writing the class itself was a breeze.IV. ThoughtsOverall I am very impressed with this little beast. It clearly isn't over-engineered and for its intended scale of use it is not underpowered. I would have liked to see more flexibility in managing the crawling process and in how results were returned, but these things would have been icing on a cake that is already fantastic on its own.For anyone considering the acquisition of one of these, I highly recommend it. For small to medium applications you can't beat the price, especially when compared to the mini's bigger brother. And its usability both through the UI and programatically are very intuitive and easy to dive into. Well done Google, well done! Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:50:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/seo/ 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.What They Know You've made an investment in your website and you want to see a returnYou are probably willing to spend some money with them on a retainer to help you You probably aren't wise to what's really required so fancy acronyms and graphs look pretty impressiveKeeping it a mystery creates dependencyThis could be a trojan horse for them into more development/design work What You Should KnowWebsites do take work and successful sites require attention which as a by product increase your Search Engine ExposureThere is no mysterious Search Engine formula or advantage. If it sounds too good to be true it likely is. Short term tricks and gimmicks are not replacements for a long term strategy.There are simple things that you can do on several fronts (I'll explain more below).What You Can DoStart by trusting your website provider. Let them know you are interested in learning more about Search Engine Optimization and allow them to explain it to you. We've attached a planning sheet for you so that you can compare it to their answers. Better yet provide it to them and they can supplement it to what they are already doing.Follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines for content and make sure whomever you hire does too. Look to have other relevant sites links to yours.Submit your URL to Google and other search engines (this is FREE to do) Others include Yahoo, Open Directory Project Live (formerly MSN) Make sure your code is clean, you've included technical stuff like sitemaps, robots.txt, etc. Your webmaster will be able to help you here. Look to utilize the webmaster tools.Make sure your content contains the keywords you are looking to target. Make sure your content is relevant and that you are not trying to spam or trick the search engines with content. Overall, there are firms that specialize in Search Engine Optimization that are reputable, but essentially they are performing the work outlined above for you. You should not need to pay for ongoing maintenance of these items if you are willing to take a proactive approach to content and developing relationships that lead to links. If you are using a content management system your sitemaps, etc can be dynamically generated so they are always up to date. Just like anything there are some tricks you can play for short term gain, but like being a single in the carpool lane, it is not a long term strategy if one of your goals is not to eventually get punished for tricking the system.Other Links/Resources: Google on SEO Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:28:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/website-innovation-profile-1/ 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...The OpportunityThe folks at Lettermansclub.com found that the process of selecting a coat (now that multiple styles of coats and various patches are available) was time consuming. It was not rare for a student to spend 2-3 hours with a sales person getting measured, fitted, and designing the coat. Once the coat was perfect, the total cost for the coat would be delivered and it often resulted in re-working the coat to fit within the student athlete's family budget.The process was further marred by the lack of being able to "see" the actual jacket and how the color combinations would work. This is similar to viewing three paint sample swatches and having to picture how it will look in a completed room. Oftentimes the "leap of faith" that it would look good was too much and led to more and more indecision. Students would often take the safe road and not add back patches or color combinations they were unsure about.The SolutionThe solution was a fully integrated jacket builder and tracking system. Student athletes are able to login to Lettermansclub.com and design their jacket on their own time. They are able to create an account, color their coat, drag and drop patches, select artwork for their patches, select trim and embroidery colors and submit their jackets online. The system keeps track of the cost of the coat as they are building it so they always know the total cost of their jacket. Once the order is submitted, lettermansclub.com staff are able to print out all the jacket instructions as well as see exactly where patches and embroidery are to be sewn, minimizing errors and resulting in a smooth build of the coat.What's NextLettermansclub.com has a group of dealers across the region and will continue to add dealers across the nation. No longer do student athletes need to choose just the sporting goods store around the corner. They now have an easy online choice. Their local shop is going to be forced to change or will go the way of other businesses disrupted by the innovators. In what area of your businesses can time consuming processes be replaced by innovation? Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:32:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/lets-sirius/ 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. Getting me to click the "Extend Your Service" link should've been the hardest part of the process, instead I clicked it willingly. It was their website that made the taking my money so difficult. So difficult in fact that I'm not sure I even really succeeded in extending my service.First off they made me login, which is probably OK, but they may have considered skipping that part to let me pay and just keep track of me via the url embedded in the email. I can see where accessing other account functions (like changing contact info or payment method) would've required a login, but to just agree to extend and charge my card on file it may have been simpler to just let me click to agree. Once I was in the system it advised me that I needed to extend my plan by Sept 22nd, though did not give me a link to do so. I hunted around and found in the "my account" area a place to make a payment or extend service. So I clicked the link and completed the required billing/payment information. I received a credit card error for not typing the correct number of characters and the system took me to a credit card error page where it asked me to re-type the card number, which I did.Now, here's where most people would freak out! I did not get a success message or a thank you page, instead I was re-directed to my account home page. On this page there is an area for upcoming invoices (which was previously blank) which showed a renewal needed by September 22 (Isn't this what I just paid?) and a Pay Now link!?!So I did what any sane person would do...I uttered a few choice expletives and then headed to the payment history area to see "There are no payments in the system". So I checked my email for a confirmation. Not there. In fact, three days later, still no confirmation.I decided to login to my bank to see if there was a charge from Sirius. Sure enough, they not only processed my $142, but also a $1 transaction appeared as a separate line item. So apparently they have my money, but either don't know it or aren't telling me.The moral of the story, if someone wants to give you money, make it as easy as possible for them to do that. Do not put up barriers... let them point, click, and deliver it to you, and don't forget to confirm your receipt of the money via email (Say Thank You!) Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:11:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/iphone-goggles/ 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. After playing around with the app, it is certainly not without its flaws. For one, it is not simulating a true iPhone client environment. This means there is still room for the possibility that pages will display differently on an actual device. The UI is also fairly limited, with the iPhone graphic surrounding the browser window being purely aesthetic with no functional purpose or clickable areas. It would also have been nice to be able to simulate different network speeds to see how pages loaded using typical 3G/HSDPA, EDGE, and GSM connnections.The program does recreate an accurate pixel-for-pixel recreation of the browser window (320x480). It even lets you rotate the virtual phone sideways to view the page in "landscape" mode. It also does an excellent job of recreating the iPhone's browser UI, which can be extremely useful for developers building sites that complement the iPhone's UI appearence. Overall it makes aesthetic testing of a site extremely simple and straightforward, though is lacking in other areas like performance and browser testing. In the end it won't replace the need for a real iPhone to properly test a site, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.Link: iPhoney Product Page Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:44:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/first-look-at-googles-chrome-1/ 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. At first glance, the currently Windows only app is certainly slim, trim and offers up standards like tabbed browsing, a suggestion-centric location toolbar, and websites that look pretty much as one would expect (still a pleasant surprise since the days of IE6). Loading of complex tools like 37 Signals' Basecamp and busy sites like ESPN.com is snappy. The default lack of a bottom-anchored status bar is refreshing. I especially appreciate how clearly the page tabs stand out at the top of the program and I'm really into the color coding in the location bar that had an unsigned secure site's "https" red with a diagonal slash through it, and constantly keeps the core part of a domain name dark while all that annoying fluff that comes after a lighter shade of gray. I've even gone through to check on rich text editing functionality on some of our client's sites and things are looking good there as well.With the release of Google Chrome, I get a pretty strong sense that we'll be seeing more of this once mobile devices that utilize Google Android start hitting store shelves. It makes sense to me for any browser effort there to be ported for everyone's use on the desktop. Is this another move toward a full on Google OS for your desktop? Time will only tell.So what do you think? It's still early, but feel free to post your impressions, pro's, con's and other Google Chrome related thoughts in the comments below. Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:43:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/new-phar-php-package/ 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... There are a few things that make this particularly handy. For one, it is being integrated into the next major PHP release (5.3) which means that any standard PHP installation running the latest version will support .phar files right out of the box.The other advantage is of course in deployment. Using a .phar file you can deploy an entire PHP application by working with just one file, rather than a bunch of files and directories. This is where .phar really shines. Imagine deploying a popular web app like WordPress by simply copying a single .phar file to your web server's root, rather than figuring out how to zip it up, upload it, and somehow unzip it remotely. Piece of cake!The devlopment side is equally as simple, being able to access files within the .phar file as easily as if it were another directory in the file system. The .phar file itself can be included in a script using any of PHP's standard import constructs (include, include_once, require, require_once). This also means external libraries can be more easily integrated, having just a single file to include in order to utilize a given library. A .phar archive can also be accessed as a stream using the same functions used to read/write other types of streams.// Referencing a .phar archive or its contents:include 'userlibrary.phar';include 'phar://userlibrary.phar/internal/file.php';// Utilizing the Phar Stream Wrapper:header('Content-type: image/jpeg');echo file_get_contents('phar://userlibrary.phar/img/image.jpg');Certainly there are disadvantages as well, and this is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Using .phar files does result in a performance hit, meaning traffic-intensive sites and heavyweight applications are probably not the best place to use this tool. It also may not be ideal for a web app that is fairly modular, or other situations where source files might be added or removed on a regular basis. It does have its uses though, and for me it will be a welcome addition to the PHP core. Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:01:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/stack-overflow-liftoff/ 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. What I LikeOne thing in particular that really impressed me was the way in which the system is designed to build trust with its users. When you first open an account, your level of access is somewhat limited. You start out only being able to ask questions, rate answers, etc. As your involvement in the community grows and users rate your contributions (questions, answers, comments, etc.), your user score will increase. As your score rises, you begin to build trust and the restrictions on what you can do are lifted. After some time you can even edit submitted questions wiki-style, re-tag questions, and essentially moderate user interactions.Another handy addition adds an element of "fun" to using the site. Known as badges, users can earn them by meeting certain requirements (think Xbox achievements). These badges are visible to other users and help a user to build credibility in combination with their score. This type of formula has been proven to be addictive (think MMORPGs), as users basically "level up" the more they participate in the community. This creates the motivation to contribute to the site and ensure it continues to grow (rather than ExpertExchange's paid model, where users are motivated by free membership to what would otherwise be a monthly charge).What Could ImproveOverall the only areas for improvement that come to mind are the smaller details in how the system works. Some things are not quite intuitive yet, such as finding unanswered questions related to a specific topic (which is possible, but not immediately apparent).It would also be nice if the site would somehow encourage the growth of sub-communities. For example, one could borrow from the MMORPG concept of a guild and create user groups. Each group could be associated with a particular technology or language and could make tools available that would help facilitate communication between like-minded developers.ConclusionJoel and Jeff are definitely off to a great start with the site and judging from what they have produced so far, I'm optimistic about its future. Having been involved with the private beta, the team maintaining the site has bee fairly responsive and Jeff seems to be very receptive to user input. It will be interesting to see how the site evolves in the coming months. Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:18:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/disney-photopass/ 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.You see, there are/were a lot of photos of our family that I didn't have to take, they were taken by professionals. These folks are stationed at various spots around the parks, in front of the castle, near where character are greeting guests, and around parade routes. When they take a picture of you they give you a card, if you have already been given a card they can simply scan that one for you.When we got back to the hotel, we were able to use the code on the card to login to the website and view our pictures. We had the option to buy prints of the photos, create mugs or mousepads or simply print out the photos ourselves.There are obviously great sales opportunities for Disney here, but that's not all. There really was value in it for our family. While we did not elect to purchase any of the shots, we did get a lot of shots of our entire family we may have not otherwise have gotten. We were fortunate to have had friends/family with us to capture our entire family in pictures, but if we had not we would've likely had to ask strangers or employees to take photos.I think this is a great way to use the web to bring real value to an experience. What do you think? Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:20:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/safari-40-beta/ 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. Things I like: It's really, really fast Tabs at the top of the window save real estate -- Thanks Chrome! Top sites and Cover Flow for browsing most visited and bookmarked sites Did I mention it's really fast? I am an Apple guy, and have been for several years, but I've not been a Safari guy. I've always been left a bit disappointed by it. It seemed to not always work quite right, and seemed to always be part of the "second class." So I've hung my hat on Firefox until now.While I don't think this changes much overnight, for today at least it is the browser of choice on my machines. Safari is available for Mac or Windows and it's worth a look. Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:11:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/kindle-iphone/ 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? Who wants to read a book on a tiny screen? My new question: "Have you ever tried it?"I can't speak for the Kindle device itself (though it does look cool), but I can say the software for the iPhone works very well. Reading is very easy. Text is rendered beautifully - justified and easy on the eyes. The Whispersync software remembers where you left off reading allows you access to all your library of books via storage on Amazon's file system. Additionally you can sample the first chapter of a book for free. Most importantly to me however, is that applications like this continue to push forward the notion of access to content where ever you are on a variety of devices - all made possible by being connected to the Web. A few other things I like:I am able to stop reading, take notes on my phone to email to myself or others later. - I find I forget things when not having access to act on them right away. I can set up tasks on other applications like OmniFocusI can refer back to books later without hunting for them or remembering who I lent them toDog-ears and notes are now electronic and electronic means actionable According to some research I found, 40% of Americans read one book or less last year. So, I'm all for getting books to people in as many ways as possible.  Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:01:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/google-voice-to-rescue-1/ 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. Thu, 12 Mar 2009 07:51:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/making-legalese-easy-to-understand/ 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. Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:54:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/lemay-americas-car-museum-visit-1/ 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. The Marymount grounds are home to over 300 collector cars (a fraction of the entire collection I'm told). The list of cars is extensive and rare - including a Tucker (#7 or 51 I believe), a 1912 electric that traveled 112 miles on a single charge (still there 100 years later), and a solid line up of domestic cars from every year and era  The museum is currently open Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm - Sunday  12pm-5pm (June-September). Admission is by guided tour only and reservations are recommended.  For more information on hours, admission and for directions -  Visit the LeMay Museum website.  SiteCrafting is a proud Collector's Club Sponsor of the LeMay America's Car Museum. Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:09:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/government-20/ 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.While many of the latest changes in Washington DC have sparked quite a bit of political debate, one recent change has developers on both the left and the right buzzing with excitement. The launch of Data.gov is the start of an effort to make the vast ocean of data our government collects more accessible and more easily found by publishing it in one central location.Currently, the site has launched with a limited amount of initial data, though it is the first step in what will hopefully be a very successful endeavor. The site currently provides an handful of datasets from various government departments, containg everything from energy consumption and population statistics to births, deaths, marriages and divorces.Most of what Data.gov has to offer is more useful to developers directly. This doesn't mean that will remain the case for long. After all, writing applications and playing with data are two of the things developers love most. This is really the most brilliant part about this project. Rather than devoting time and taxpayer resources to build sites and tools that use this information, it is made publicly available in a raw format that can easily be sliced and diced for any purpose the public sees fit. That's right ladies and gents, our government is crowdsourcing! Tue, 26 May 2009 08:43:00 PDT