Marzipan

Apple.com Pooped Out

2007-10-31T09:05:00.000-07:00

Is it me or did someone hack apple.com? or Apple could of screwed with their master CSS.

Am I the only one who noticed this?

I tried Safari, Firefox and two different Wi-Fi connections. Hhmm.

ImprovEverywhere Prank: 100 Shirtless Men Shop at A & F

2007-10-19T13:53:00.001-07:00

Abercrombie gets a taste of its own medicine in this latest ImprovEverywhere prank.I think this is less of a "stunt" and more of some folks pointing out some of the stupid "image" stuff that A&F and others get caught up in.

read more | digg story

10 Ways To Speed Up Digg!

2007-10-19T13:46:00.001-07:00

Sometimes Digg can be amazingly frustrating%2C especially during rush hour. Here are 10 tips for Kevin Rose on how to make Digg faster!Giving advice to one of the most widely visited sites on the net is a pretty brave thing to do! Maybe the dude should rename "Questions I would ask Digg.com developer if given the chance", or "Ten Suggestions..."There are a lot of really really smart people in the tech industry, claiming to have the answers is BRAVE!

read more | digg story

Wilhelm Scream

2007-10-19T11:34:00.001-07:00

I ran into this on Wired Magazine:

No More "NEXT PAGE"

2007-10-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

The Humanized Reader

Boy oh Boy. This is really what I'm looking for! I wold love to use the same technology google does on it's google reader. It "knows" when you've hit the bottom of the RSS feed and start reloading more feeds.

I even thing, that aslong as your visiting a RSS feed Google is caching more and more article feeds behind the scenes, so the next "batch" will be ready for viewing when you let google know you've scrolled or hit the bottom of your webpage.

Well "Humanized" has done this aswell. I like it, but how can I replicate it on my sites?

http://www.humanized.com/reader/

http://humanized.com/weblog/2006/04/25/no_more_more_pages

Enso Verse Quicksilver

2007-10-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

I would like to play with these two items and compare.

Enso: http://humanized.com//enso/ (written in Python)

Quicksilver: http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

A Brief Message Site

2007-10-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

Cool site.

Long Awkward Pose

2007-10-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

Here is the site> :-)

It's pretty funny.

Universities can a bad place to learn...

2007-10-17T09:38:00.001-07:00

I got this from my man Frotzed.

CSS's Influence on Design

2007-10-17T08:03:00.002-07:00

I snapped these pics of the latest Wired magazine. This has to be the influence of CSS' boxey design restrictions on the web.

Someone tell me that this "H" isn't accompanied by a little "border-bottom: 10px solid #000"

I haven't got the picture to prove this one, but when I was watching 30 Rock on NBC and I noticed the same thing. Bright boxes with a bold colored text in contrast as part of the 5 sec. intro thingey.

Is it just me?

2007 webjamsession

2007-10-17T07:01:00.001-07:00

Crap, I missed the event. That really bites, because I totally wanted to go. Link: http://2007.webjamsession.com

Note to self, they are supposed to be podcasting some of the stuff. I wonder if the speakers mind that there stuff is shared out?

"...It’s a wrap! The 2007 Jam Session was great. We will be posting Podcasts here soon — Stay tuned..."

Who I have heard of at the conference:

Molly Holzschlag, and Dan Rubin. I haven't heard of Robert WeyChert but I have heard of the folks he's with- HappyCog. I heard of HappyCog because Dan Cederholm is a strategic partner with HappyCog.

I think I'm going to check some of Robert's work, he's also got this awesome red beard. I have a beard to, so there ya' go.

Anyway, the speaker list looks really inspiring.

Slideshow Pro - It's Quick!

2007-10-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

It's quick and it makes you look like a real expert. First of all you can find it here: http://www.slideshowpro.net. Second, the reason It makes you look like a pro, is because slideshow pro lets you customize the look and feel without having to constantly touch code. Your just playing with the stuff that is unique to your needs, verses building unique flash apps over and over.

This may not be super-related but I think a lot can be learned from slideshowpro.net's website. I've noticed that the layout makes me want to go to the site multiple times. A List of thing that I like about the site:

The Site has an huge example section: this lets you know that people actually use the tools, not just buy them. Also, Todd and Bradd (The Flash dudes) are constantly checkin' out how there product is being used in the real world, not just in their imagination.
The Site is simple, and easy to navigate. With buttons like "Extras" or "Slideshow Pro Director" you can get the gist quickly. I.e. there are 2 main products...
The Site is to the point: they don't have a lot of copy. Copy being the blah, blah my product is awesome. If you click on link "How Slideshow Pro Works" your not going to get high-falootant talk about functionality, you get a TUTORIAL. Not that's what I'm talking about!
The Site is updated a lot: you can go to the site and right away notice these guys update it all the time. The tutorial I mentioned in #3 has been updated recently. I watched the same tutorial a month ago and noticed this time when you see them open up Flash to show you something, it the Flash CS3 (the latest flash version). Novel idea indeed.
The Site has a nice look: the dark grays allow the high gloss pics to stick out in a major way. (May-Juh- for pronunciation see Victoria Beckham)

The one downer to the site? It doesn't validate.

Why go into all this detail. Well, for my personal benefit. The next time I build a site, I'm going to test it the way I test other sites.

My Heroes

2007-09-12T12:34:00.001-07:00

So who are my web heroes. Probably these guys over at PARTICLE TREE

they drive this killer, killer web app Se Llama " Wufoo"

I'm not speaking a different language, it a just a wierd name. It basically a portable "make an online database" toolkit. You login, and start Ajax grabbin fields and build your own database.

It's branded as a form creation, tool.. But it can build really standard databases. I helped a lawyer get his case files online (HTTPS). I ran an conference from it (online registration, travel itineraries etc.). You can catalog a ton of stuff for business purposes.

Love it.

D

PS, I'm diggin' the AMAZING DRINK COOLER. This payday, I'm gettin' one.

Mahalo Search Engine

2007-09-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

It means something like "I'll help you out" in Hawaii. Mahalo

Cool site. It basically people surfin' the web in sweet lookin' office in Santa Monica, CA combined with google. I think I saw a picture of these guys in Wired Magazine too.

These "professional" web surfers catalog their recommendation for the web. The idea being, people can catalog the web better than Google's algorithms. Also, for those of us who can't spell and first time visitors, it would be nice to have a redirect for maholo.com, or mohalo.com etc.

Love the site. Great Big Text too...

D

Amigo Web app

2007-09-12T12:27:00.000-07:00

There is a new web app available called Amigo . I think it's by the same people who made Dropsend.

These guys are workin' hard for the Benjamin's. I think Amigo is a way for people to use there email newsletter lists to make money. Honestly the concept took me a while to understand. There are many people involved in this business model. I would recommend a little flash video that explains the concept. Pictures of newsletters flying, and landing in people's email boxes... What is Amigo for dummies.

Take a look at salesforce.com's stuff:

How inviting is that. To me when I see "View demo" or "download XYZ" it almost like a drug. Gimme, gimme. I would definitely recommend this for Amigo.

View Here

Twitter and TinyUrl

2007-09-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

Afraid of being redirected to a crazy website. Look before you leap. TinyUrl now offers this cool feature called "preview". At first I thought this was some kind of mouse over, mini-preview thing, but it's just a text based view of where the "Tiny Link" is gonna take you.

Go Here http://tinyurl.com/preview.php?enable=1

and click "Click here to enable previews". That puts a little cookie on your computer. Now when someone posts a link on twitter, you can be redirected to TunyUrl to get a view of where your about to go.

Laterz.

Great Free Documentaries

2007-09-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

I love documentaries. This is a link to one on math.

Here is the site I found it on Here.

Agile Web Development with Rails

2007-09-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

So I bought the book (Agile Programming Ruby Book). If your at all interested in Rails this is the book that you can't escape. It's everywhere. And that's fine. It has the rails heavyweights as authors, and obviously great code.

The one thing I would say is not so good, it the book has "the 3rd Chapter" syndrome all over it. I forget where I first heard the phrase, but it totally applies. The author's start the book off at a snails pace, assuming the reader knows very little about rails. And then when chapter 3 hits, POW! Code is everywhere. Methods flyin', Classes, Variables...

I had to put the book down several times, and let things settle. I think what would help is if these dudes, or maybe a different author/book addressed the needs of folks who know there way around a computer, but who are also "first time OOP" programmers.

It seems ROR attracts a lot of people like me. People with a desire to learn new things without the desire to go back to school for Programming 101.

I would love some sort of list of methods and classes listed by "frequency" of use. Like when you learn spanish you might grab "101 Spanish Verbs". It's a shot in the arm to get you going.

Maybe there should be "101 Rails" methods to get your started. The library online has a very formal layout. It was hard for me to navigate.

Helping People isn't Free

2007-09-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

I forget how I ran across it, but there is this site http://userstyles.org/ that gives you the ability to override styles on any web page you access on Firefox.

I was very excited to play with this, and come to find our buddy at http://hicksdesign.co.uk had created some awesome CSS for the google reader.

To my great joy, I popped it in, wha La! Beauty while you cruise the web at 100 miles an hour. A few days laters Google released a search bar, and Jon's code broke. I went to see about an update, to find out a million other people where buggin' Jon about the same thing. He ended up fixing it, which was awesome, but I started thinking. Even if you offer to help someone out for free, there are still strings attached.

Opensource code, free DIY tutorials, How to Install xyz. Usually when someone works to put these "helps" together they have time. What about 3 months later, when they need a little updating? 3 months later you may not have time to fix it.

I remember last year, Dan Benjamin of Hivelogic posted these great instructions on how to install rails from scratch on a mac. I was so pumped for the free help, and as I got to the bottom of the web page, I noticed he put a little note asking people not to email him asking for help.

I initially thought, what a jerk. Now I realize, Dan had a good idea. Maybe in the land of freebies we should have some kind of "don't bug me" clause. It makes sense. Doesn't it?

Awesome Collection of CSS code

2007-08-14T06:57:00.000-07:00

This is the sort of collection I would put together for CSS code if I had the time. Referencing the best of breeds is a wonderful ideas in terms of not re-inventing the wheel.

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/

Enjoy!

Hicksdesign Jammin on Textpattern

2007-08-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

It's cool that Hicks uses textpattern. Here is his rendition of a new backend /UI. Look like a few glitches though. I'm gonna give er' a try.

Hick's flickr & Textpattern stuff

By the way, I love textpattern. My one frustration is it's in-ability to import a bunch of names for user/password list. I can import a ton of people into expressionEngine with an excel file/CSV. I couldn't find out how to do this with Textpattern.

Skill Swapping

2007-08-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

I was tooling around the web wondering what happen to Andy Budd's SkillSwap site. The idea is still killer, and I want to get one started in Dallas, Texas. Interested? Email me at david kypuros (aht) gmail (dawt) com.

Here are some skillz I would love to grow and swap.

Mac: Keynote, Pages, iPhoto, iTunes, Garageband, iMovie, iDVD, Parallels, Transmit, Textmate, Quicksilver
Project Management: Microsoft Project and activeCollab
Creative Software Design: Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, Indesign CS2, Acrobat Professional 7.0, Dreamweaver 8.0, Contribute, Flash 8.0
Code: CSS, XHTML, XML, CMS TAGS, SQL, MySQL
Rich Media: Podcasting technology, Video Training, Recording and Re-broadcasting phone interviews online, streaming and static video for Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and Real Audio, Final Cut Pro Studio for Mac, Basic Lighting and videography for pre- and post production
Web Tools: Transmit, Textmate, WordPress, Joomla, Textpattern, and ExpressionEngine
More: Ruby On Rails, Advanced CSS strategies, and ExpressionEngine Bundle for Textmate
Web 2.0/Social Media: Twitter, GoogleTalk, GoogleSharedDocs, Adium, Skype, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Pownce, LinkedIn, LastFM, AIM/iChat, Virb, Vox, Rollyo, Seeqpod, and Delicious

Laterz.

MTV dumps Flash for CSS

2007-08-10T08:03:00.001-07:00

Who is the greatest media giant in the world.

MTV !

Ok, maybe not the biggest, but when MTV moves away from Flash and begins pushing the limits with CSS/XHTML many people in the industry perk up.

From MTV's blog - April 23rd 07' post, "Today, we’ve gone ahead and flipped the switch. The Flash site is gone. If you were digging that, we’re sorry. We have good reason to believe that you will enjoy our content via the HTML version even more."

Why the change. They say the flash site had a ton of flash and sparkle but "was also something of a headache for a lot of users, so we were told."

Hmm? Not sure what this means for the rest of the media giants out there...

The site design was either all or a huge part by Dan Cenderholm. Dan is really pushing web standards, and the way designers view CSS code.

On his site, Simplebits I've noticed Dan is starting to use "em's" for the Layout of the divs! Say goodbye to hard coded "pixels and points". As I understand them, em's are proportion calculations rather than screen pixel counts. This makes the web page relative to itself rather than the viewers screen. Don't be afraid to Wiki em's, and read more here. and Dan's book too (ver 2.)

Very cool. I think like many other aspiring CSS dude's, I continue to enjoy Dan's stuff, and now MTV's stuff.

SAP,Oracle and Ruby on Rails

2007-08-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

At the heart of enterprise apps built by software giants like SAP is a desire to not duplicate data across an organization.

How can we get all the data our company has and mash it up into one "area", and then "re-sort it". We can't align an organization that has it's data housed completely separately, right? We can't streamline our enterprise without normalization. This is what the ruby on rails community calls keeping your code DRY. D/R/Y standing for don't repeat yourself. Doesn't Rails share the same under girded philosophy as the super enterprise apps?

Isn't this the heart of enterprise apps anyway?

The ironic part of this whole thing is, Ruby on Rails is having to prove itself so much among big biz, and enterprise apps.

I recently heard a podcast where, Geoffrey Grosenbach was interviewing Obie Fernandez of thoughtworks. As I listened I became intrigued how Ruby would interface with monster apps.

The idea of Ruby and an Oracle bank app that has to "go through million and millions of accounts over and over again". This process would obviously kill rubies "Active Record Model" with all the hardware in the world.

It's interesting to see how Obie took a very unique approach (he didn't start with a 'rules engine'). He started with the business process in ruby code to live specification. A DSL script that generates a huge sql code and that is taken to the "big moma database" to get answers. Ruby is like a lea son, or a go between. It's like Ruby is sayin', "I talk business and I talk SQL - but what I don't do is sort through a million records a second". Ruby thinks, Ruby doesn't sweat.

I'm not a dude who whacks out a DSL script during lunch, but Obie's ingenuity is very inspiring. DSL blog, Obie's Blog, Great Article from Obie

Obie also put a plug in for Rails State Machine by Scott Barin. Says is awesome for "enterprisey business application" with a workflow. Very cool.

If rails flexes a bigger muscle in the area of handling monster size databases, will companies like SAP have to start watching their back?

More Here, Here, and Here

I know companies like twitter are talking about issues with size and monster databases. I wonder if there is a way to marry Ruby thinking more with huge databases like oracle?

Fake Non-profit enterprise applications

2007-08-08T05:20:00.000-07:00

Fake may sound a little harsh, but anytime an app claims to do it all for your business, and doesn't have a native financial module - Buyer Beware!

Non-profit Enterprise Applications

2007-08-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

Here are some enterprise apps for non-profits. These represent a wide spectrum. From cheese, to life stlyles of the rich and famous.

More Great Mac Apps

2007-08-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a little list of great mac apps that I found from a "how to use" Miro video. The guy demoing his Miro skills showed these apps on his computer.

By the way, the new look for Miro was thanks to a great designer.

Here is a Mac App I found from slideshow pro demo.

Why I Like Joyent

2007-07-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

My brother owns his own business. He recently started asking me to help him get some IT infrastructure. The problem is TIME! Ordering and speck'ing a new Dell server in not exactly quick. Not to mention doing something with the hardware, like making it work for all small business needs (Exchange, Outlook, Backups, Data, VPN etc...)

What's the quick solution to help out the ol' bro? It's called Ruby on Rails meets small biz! Joyent...

The thing I love about the world of Web 2.0 is, your never that far away from an online rails app that can do the trick.

I first found out about joyent from snooping around textpattern. I was curious to see a dude named Dean Allen helped build the thing. I was also curious what a dude like that does in his day job. And Bingo, I found him at Bingo. No pun intended, that was one of the business Dean was linked up with. Bingo, Joyent, Strongspace etc. I don't quite know how it all works, but Dean got me into this other world one day on the web.

Which led me to sign me brothers' small biz up for the packet of online goodies. Most of his computing is now run off of Joyent. Cool stuff..

Various Print Project

2007-06-22T17:05:00.000-07:00

Here is where I upgraded my the print work for my job from Microsoft junk, to a little program called Adobe CS2 Suite.

Rought Draft in Photoshop

Here is the conference Schedule:

Conference NameTags merged from enterprise app and Avery Labels:

Typical lutheran church print work (Microsoft world):

My Work Area (dual monitors):

My Work Area with notes: Here

Print

2007-06-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Do you need an example layout for a conference schedule. I have developed this schedule in Adobe InDesign. Feel free to use, and abuse it.

[DOWNLOAD]

Links in the InDesign file will be broken, but you can add your own graphics fairly easily.

Standardizing Web Code

2007-03-07T16:22:00.000-08:00

As we all know these days web doesn't really mean html any more. Html or (x)html is old skool. What matters today is how well graphic artists... you know, those people who have a green and blue adobe photoshop feather tattooed on there mouse finger

...can work with CSS and how well these two can integrate with some sort of backend database wizardry.

What does this process have to do with standards? Aren't those the guys who invent rule books? As much as I hate folks shoving the manual in your face I have to admit If someone has already developed a system of coding that is going to work in all web browsers AND help the visually impaired - I'm all ears.

This coding system is really just a standard. A way to say "this works" and therefore "re-use it". Olav at CSS Blueprint has done that. Olav has taken CSS code that works from other kind folks and built a system of stuff that works. The benefit of this is the ability to use the same body of CSS code to build other unique website. The "body of CSS code" becomes like a repository for "stuff that works"

Like any system or convention it takes time to get use to the lingo.

Here is an example of learning a new convention:

By default, the grid is 960px wide, with 14 columns spanning 50px, and a 20px margin between columns.

If you need fewer or more columns, use this formula to find the new total width:

Total width = (columns * 70) - 20

I am playing with the blueprint to see just how easy it is to modify to get the results I'm after.

This technique isn't for the bleeding edge CSS artists, but in many situations I can see its value.

First PLI Online Meeting

2007-02-11T17:32:00.000-08:00

This is Steve Wagner, Executive of PLI who is getting ready to broadcast to 20 pastors who will be watching his presentation online. He also asked the Board of Directors to join the webcast aswell.

I must say it was a very nerve-recking. Not because I'm afraid of an audience, but it was the first time we had used this technology and I would have liked to played with it a few more weeks. Well I went with the best USB logitech headset I could get, and the best Logitech camera I could get. To get the best rez on the camera you had to get the built in audio...it was a package deal.

I mapped the audio to soundflower (Graphic courtesy of Hugo) which is a Inter-application Audio Routing Utility...

Audio was routed to Audio Hijack Pro. Hijack along with mapping the operating systems audio to the logitech USB headset allowed for a lossless audio quality recording of the online meeting.

.

The audio was later compressed to MP3 a high quality and made available on organizations private website.