Posted by admin on Apr 10, 2009 in
blackberry In the following article, they talk about how to Create BlackBerry applications with open source tools. This is something that I will need in the near future, so I am adding it here for myself, and for you should you choose to take the challenge.
The most intriguing and powerful phenomenon in the digital age is the impact of social-networking applications on the consumer and business markets. Marketing professionals are changing how they interact with prospective clients, peer groups can easily form, and, as demonstrated in the fall of 2008, social networking can be part of a successful political campaign. Combined with the popularity and power of the BlackBerry platform, you have the makings of a dynamic combination. Part 3 of this “Create BlackBerry applications with open source tools” series explores how the BlackBerry is a great device for writing and deploying social-networking applications.
Tags: app, blackberry, development, social networking
Posted by admin on Mar 31, 2009 in
iPhone There are various reasons and ways to use flashcards. If you are like me, you want to take them with you, hand an iPhone or other device to your child while you’re on the go so they can study up on absolutely anything. That is where Study Stack and gFlashPro come in. Study Stack is the back end providing the flash card data, and gFlashPro is the iPhone app which allows you to take your flash card deck anywhere you go. The combination helped my daughter pass a music vocabulary test she was worried about, as well as improve grades in other subjects. She simply created her flash card deck on Study Stack, then grabbed the stack using gFlashPro, and now she can take it with her anywhere we go. In the car, in a restaurant, or in her room – Study Stack lets her study when and where she wants without taking a bulky stack of cards anywhere.
Tags: flash cards, iPhone, study
Posted by admin on Mar 20, 2009 in
Uncategorized Interesting article on browser security…
Browser vendors often make strong claims about their responsiveness to vulnerability reports and their ability to preemptively prevent exploits. Security is becoming one of the most significant fronts in the new round of browser wars, but it’s also arguably one of the hardest aspects of software to measure or quantify.
Chrome: Last browser standing
Posted by admin on Mar 19, 2009 in
internet explorer Internet Explorer 8 was released into the wild today. The enhancements are great, but what about CSS3? Looking at my Blog, I have created some very cool styles that highlight and bring the text more into a 3D view. Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browser supports all of these enhancements, Firefox 3 supports some, but the major player, Internet Explorer continues to leave us swinging in the wind.
A quick sample is this page: Kitty Code / Products When you look at this page in Internet Explorer, you find image icons which are square. Take a look at those images using an iPhone/iPod Touch, Safari under Windows or OSX (all of which run Safari, so maybe that’s not fair), then look at them using Google Chrome (which again probably isn’t fair since the underlying engine is WebKit which Safari shares), then look at it in Firefox and Internet Explorer. This is only one sample of the very cool effects you can create just using a little CSS, which is portable and allows you to use the same image anywhere.
Why is this important to me? Why does it matter? Simply put, Internet Explorer is still the market share stake holder. All large companies acknowledge this. So how are those large companies going to be able to move toward the future if they have Internet Explorer hanging on them like a noose? I find myself dumbing down the websites which I write for this very reason. The website is written to look the same in each browser, which means rounded corners in all browsers are only attained by images, which weigh more than a simple CSS border. This makes those same websites load MUCH slower on hand held PDAs, like the iPhone, PSP, Windows Mobile enabled Cell Phones and more. The point of CSS was to take the design away from the programmers, and leave it in the CSS where it can be manipulated in just about any way without the need for a code change.
So really, until Microsoft decides that CSS2 and CSS3 should be fully incorporated, we will have slow browsing ahead for all.
Tags: css3, ie8
Posted by admin on Mar 13, 2009 in
browsers,
iPhone Have you ever wondered how iTunes manages all those cool effects with the iPhone App images? The neat text shadows and box shadows for images, the curved corners… I thought it was something they were using an image tool for, but the more I looked at the feeds, the more I noticed that the the feeds were just that, straight text with not a lot of graphics. Yes, the app image is an image, and yes they are manipulating it, but does it surprise you to know that they are simply using CSS3 effects that are available in WebKit?
I was going through styles at the end of my work day today because our pages just look so bland. I was looking for easy ways to spice it up, even just a little. I started playing with shadows, and instantly fell in love. I made the title of the page look like it was popping out of the screen, and the boxes appear above the page. These were VERY cool effects, but they would only be available to webkit browsers – Safari on Windows and OSX, and on the iPhone and iPod Touch – pretty much anywhere if I understand the documentation correctly.
And that’s when it hit me. Isn’t Google’s Chrome web browser based on WebKit too? So I open it up to the page I was testing and wow! My shadows all worked wonderfully!
I was upset because I know FireFox 3 does not support shadows, but then found a reference to FireFox 3.1a saying that this will be the first version that allows for the shadows. About time I say!
But here we are, supporting an 8 year old browser which will never support these cool effects. I even looked to see if IE8 will show the text shadowing, and even though it’s in RC1, it does not support text shadowing. Maybe that’s why there’s word on the street that IE8 will possibly be the last version – which I’m sure only means for the engine, which is already out dated before launch since it does not support many of the visual effects that WebKit does, which really amounts to the coolest browsing with the least overhead.
With any luck, the tide will turn, and we will be able to produce more and more rich web applications, with eye-popping effects by simply using CSS. Here’s to hoping!
Tags: css, css3, firefox, google chrome, ie6, ie7, ie8, iPhone, safari
Posted by admin on Mar 13, 2009 in
Twitterverse If you have never heard of #FollowFriday, you may not be a Twitter user, or you may be new. #FollowFriday is the Twitterverse’s way of letting the community know about people you follow, and a little bit about them. Really, it is kind of a shout out.
I have been part of #FollowFriday before, but this one struck me because while I talk to various people in the Twitterverse, I generally think I have too much to say — I’ve always been told I talk too much, so I’m self conscious about it. I get excited about something and that’s the end of all sanity — I just start talking until I realize I’m doing it then you won’t hear from me because I feel that I’ve embarrassed myself. But I have good friends around me like @fsuToby who will set me straight on that, any time I get down, and poke fun at me and my habits just to be funny.
I’ve actually been amazed at the amount of people who are following me at this point. I have varying interests, all of which seem to be geeky. I geek out on weather — severe weather, hurricanes and the like, or I geek out on work which for me is programming. I enjoy both immensely, but they’re in a lot of ways two different worlds… My first thought was that maybe I needed to split into another username, but then I have some friends that are interested in both, and I like checking only one place… I finally decided that my personality is who I am, and well everyone can take it or leave it. So back to my opening sentence, I’m amazed at the amount of people following me because I don’t consider myself all that interesting…
So what is the point of all of this? I’ve been part of #FollowFriday before, and it was part of a group — I considered it a kind gesture that I was even in the group. Today, I received this very thoughtful #FollowFriday from @kpkfusion:
If what he says is true, then I am being the person that I am trying to be. In this world of falseness, where everyone has to be better than everyone else, this made me feel like what I’m doing is right…
So Thank You… because it means a lot to me, and 140 characters just wasn’t going to cut it 
Tags: #FollowFriday, basic beliefs, Twitter
Posted by admin on Mar 12, 2009 in
iPhone I just found this about inlining images, they say ideally put the images in the external css since it’s cached…
iPhone Web App Performance Tip: Use Inline Images
Another tidbit of information that I want to be able to find again:
iPhone URL Scheme Referece
Of course, there is always the good stuff: Safari Events
Tags: inline images, iPhone, mobi, performance, web app
Posted by admin on Mar 11, 2009 in
work It always amazes me when I mention a well known tool and my co-workers have never heard of it. Okay, yeah, they are windows guys and this is widely known as a Linux tool. All of these guys have degrees. I have on the job experience, digging in the trenches. Apparently when you are getting your CS degree, learning what the community has made available for your use is just not a high priority.
Okay, maybe I’m being a little hard on them… Do you know what imagemagick is? What it is used for? How it could be useful to you? No? If you deal with any sort of image automation, you need to know about this software: http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
In short, an awesome, easy way to automate the resizing of images, and the rest of the kitchen sink… The kicker is, it’s been around since the mid to late 90′s. Very long history indeed! Give them a look if you haven’t before, even if you don’t need it now, just knowing about it could mean the difference between PhotoShop hell (to the tune of 15,000 images) and complete image automation.
Tags: automation, image manipulation, imagemagick, linux, tools
Posted by admin on Mar 2, 2009 in
Politics & Economics,
SEO,
browsers SEO is a big thing, this much everyone knows. But some people still don’t know the importance of great descriptions, or how to get those descriptions into places like Google and other search engines. I started re-researching the various meta-tags available, and came across a new one that I didn’t know about – NOODP. I didn’t understand why this was important until I did some research, and found that Google will pull the Open Directory Project (ODP) description for your site if you do not specify one. Well, that’s handy! But what if I don’t want every page on my site to use the ODP description? That’s where this handy article comes into play:
One source we use to generate snippets is the Open Directory Project. You can direct us not to use this as a source by adding a meta tag to your pages.
To prevent all search engines (that support the meta tag) from using this information
for the page’s description, use the following:
<meta name="robots" content="NOODP">
To specifically prevent Google from using this information for a page’s description, use the following:
<meta name="googlebot" content="NOODP">
If you use the robots meta tag for other directives, you can combine those. For instance:
<meta name="googlebot" content="NOODP, nofollow">
In short, these meta-tags should be used when you have a page specific description you would like to show on the search engines.
For more information, check out the Google answer here: Changing your site’s title and description in search results
Tags: google, noodp, SEO
Posted by admin on Feb 14, 2009 in
iPhone I absolutely adore my iPhone. It goes with me everywhere, and it does everything I need and more. How did I ever live without it? Right now, I’m asking how can I live with it? I have the ringer set to full-blast, and even have vibrate turned on. But for some reason, half the time I don’t hear the thing, or feel it in my pocket! Every other phone I’ve had has had a significant vibrate feature, which allows the vibration to be felt even in a purse. My iPhone, not so much. I have missed many a call (one right after the other no less) because of this. I’ve even been yelled at for not answering my phone, when I had it right there!
Sigh — the next iPhone needs to have a more significant vibrate feature so that when someone calls, I feel it.
Tags: iPhone, ring, vibrate
