Posted May 9th, 2008 in Web
Tags: social-web, web-development
View my “Be Right Back” page
Enough of this blank “Be Right Back” pages we usually throw together when we need to do website updates. It is time for a nicer, more web 2.0 savvy under construction. Next time I do an update to WordPress, I’ll be replacing my index.php file with this one, and then switch back when all is ready to go.
Here’s what I have:
1. Links to my other web sites and web services.
2. Flickr gallery via the flickr.com’s Make a Badge tool
3. Twitter updates via twitter.com’s Make a Badge tool
4. Last.fm gallery via Jeroen’s Last.fm Records standalone version which grabs images from amazon.com. I actually copied the whole script and included it in the PHP file so that it is not dependent in other files. I also disabled album art caching since this page is really going to be up for a few minutes. If you are going to use it for longer, then you should consider enabling caching the images. Consult the original script for more info on this.
To do this yourself:
1. Download my “Be Right Back”. Note, PHP 5 is required for the Last.fm portion to work.
2. Open it in a file editor and change the following items:
- The page title
- The site links should point to your of course
- The Flickr user number in the Flickr javascript link. It might be best to create your own Flickr badge, grab the javascript and replace this one.
- The Twitter username in the javascript url.
- The last.fm username in the PHP code, right after $lfm->username.
- The footer info.
That’s all, it would be great if soe of you designer do some other designs and start posting them to share.
Posted January 17th, 2008 in Web
Tags: iphone
With the latest software update for the iPhone and iPod touch, users can now save webclips to their springboard(desktop). These act as a shortcut to a website. Now, the iphone/touch will remember exactly the crop and zoom that you saved and will create an icon automatically but the icon is not always the most desired visual representation of the site. For example, if I want a webclip of CNN’s latest news, it will show a screenshot of the news, not a CNN icon. And if I zoom into the icon just for the logo and then save the webclip, when i click on the webclip it will take me to the zoom in of the icon and not the news. Fortunately, the iPhone/Touch can use a predetermined icon provided by the website. Here’s how to create a custom webclip icon for the the iPhone/iPod Touch.
Save your 57×57px icon as a PNG, name it “apple-touch-icon.png” and upload to the root folder of your site files(where you index file is). The iPhone/Touch will automatically look for it here. It will also automatically round the edges and make give it that gloss look so you don’t need to worry about that.
If you want to name it differently, or place the file somewhere else, you need to specify it in the html file as a header item like this:
<head>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/pathto/mywebclipicon.jpg"/>
</head>
ps. thanks to abraham for letting me borrow his camera at work
p.s. Drew McLellan at All In The Head has posted a bookmarklet that dynamically adds the icon code to any page. This makes it possible for you to design your own icons for any website. Very clever Mr. Drew. Via Rob.
Posted August 4th, 2007 in Mac Geekery, Web
After many months of painfully slow internet service from Time Warner Cable, I’ve upgraded to a 20 Mbps connection from RCN. According to my first test, I got 15.6 Mbps. Not the advertised rate, but still 20 times faster than what I was actually getting from Time Warner. Even my upload speed is 2.5 times faster than the download I was getting before. At these speeds, I am seriously considering canceling my tv services as well. And since usually only the best shows end up on DVD, I think between Netflix and everything else available online, all of our tv needs can be met. So good bye loading bar, and hello multiple downloads.
Posted January 12th, 2007 in Web
In keeping with the whole mobile phone madness of this week, I’m spreading the word on this event for those of you in the nyc area.
via George Ariola
The MobileMonday NY committee, Antoine Quint of SVG.org, Scott Weiss of Usable Products and Dan Appelquist of Vodafone and MobileMonday London are happy to invite you to the “Rich Mobile Experiences with SVG” event held in New York City on January 29th.
This event has been set up to provide an exhaustive overview of the Mobile SVG ecosystem with a strong selection of leaders in the field — Sun Microsystems, Qualcomm, Vodafone, Ikivo, Opera, BitFlash and Beatware — coming together to present their solutions and visions around Mobile SVG.
Speakers will update you on everything relevant to this key rich mobile technology including authoring solutions, deployed and live services, integration in application platforms (J2ME, Brew, Symbian), user interfaces design, mobile browsing, etc. A closing panel and Q&A session, followed by a networking reception, will allow you to take part in the discussion and get answers to real-world problems related to creating rich mobile experiences with SVG.
The main event will run from 3pm to 8pm, followed by the reception, on Monday January 29th at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Center near Central Park. Registration is completely free and already open on our Upcoming.org page.
Link: Upcoming.org
Link: Mobile Monday NY
Link: Svg.org
Posted November 14th, 2006 in Web
Tags: snap
At last, the much anticipated Snap Preview has been released. The web 2.0 search engine snap.com is providing a way to automatically show an image preview of the site when rolling over the referring link. This is a free service provided to site owners and bloggers.
All that is required is a snippet of code anywhere on the page and Snap will sniff out any links and add the rollover preview automatically. Even better, you can tell it to do no previews for internal links, all links from a specific domain or even do previews only for sites you select.
So go give it a test drive: snap.com
Posted June 2nd, 2006 in Mac Geekery, Tutorials, Web
I got a frantic call from my wife who’s visiting my sister in NY. It seems her iBook has that forever spinning wheel we’ve all had to face at some point or another. After talking to her, I deducted it was a corrupt image in her iPhoto library. Probably from her last import. It’s happened twice before. The problem is that although she’s a digital lifestyle junkie, she relies on me to fix any technical issues and I’m in LA. So I venture out online to see if I can tap into her computer remotely and was delighted to find out Timbuktu’s new Skype ‘tunnel’ feature. The New Timbuktu Pro uses Skype’s connection to pass through routers and firewalls and establish a direct connection. In the past, you could only connect remotely if you had a static IP address, something most people don’t have. Best of all, you can connect to a Mac or a PC.
So here’s a tutorial on how to connect remotely to another computer over the internet with Timbuktu and Skype.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted April 24th, 2006 in Web
Tags: css-reboot
Only six days for CSS Spring Reboot 2006! I just signed up and will be working on a long time overdue redesign of All Forces. So the challenge is out there for all of you to join in on the redesign.
Link: cssreboot.com
Posted April 17th, 2006 in Web
Tags: ialertu, ical, Mac Geekery, paypal, podcast, prototype, ruby
iCal Exchange - A free way to publish calendars online, public or private.
Project24 - Dynamically generated calendars for iCal
iAlertU Demo - Must see video of iAletU, the coolest application of motion detectors on Powerbooks. So far it only works on the new ones but development is in progress for other models
Learn To Program - A gentle introduction to programming (ruby)
Prototype Disected - Jonathan Snook’s awesome visual guide to Prototype’s methods and properties
PayPal Helper - Using Javascript to modify a PayPal shopping cart
Affiliate Marketing - Tips and Tricks of affiliate marketing
Mac Se/Cube - A Mac Cube inside a Mac SE
Mac SE/Mini - A Mac Mini inside a Mac SE
Mosaic Podcast - After much technical delays with compression issues, I finally launched the video podcast at Mosaic. A 45 minute clip was compressing at 300mb through the standard QuickTime to iPod video export. I finally found an app called Podner which allows me to do 2 pass encoding, has cropping and batch processing. The size of the files went down to around 120mb, a much more manageable size for both serving and downloading. I’m also using Lostify, an app that allows me to edit tags on video files for Video Podcasting.
Posted April 1st, 2006 in Web
Tags: css, web-design
Check out Patrick Fitzgerald’s tutorial, Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps. A comprehensive guide to one of the most important elements of CSS, positioning.
Link: barelyfitz.com
Posted March 31st, 2006 in Web, Wordpress
Tags: microformats, Wordpress
This actually makes a lot of sense. Very cool stuff WordPress has been supporting through XFN links.
Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.
Link: Microformats.org
