This is my weekly post on some interesting bits and pieces I’ve found…
To kick off, a few good reasons by Davy Sims on why we should blog. I agree with all his points and many of them are the reason why I’ve started to proactively blog more in 2010.
The days of providing clients with a static site with no back end interface are now gone. Every client with any idea of how the web works will wants some control over their content without having to phone their web developer every other day. However, this does not mean a massive overhead of having to build bespoke content management systems. In fact, you would be very silly to try and reinvent the wheel here as there are a plethora of opens-source projects providing light weight CMS’s which can bent and shaped to suit most small scale projects. This week i discovered Silverstripe -which looks very promising indeed and I’m looking forward to giving it a whirl for my next project.
Sometimes, it can be quite frustrating to stare at a blank canvas when starting a web project. I’m always on the look out for sources of inspiration and 25 free online magazines for graphic designers is a great start. Don’t forget that some great inspiration can come from unlikely spaces, more than once I’ve found interior design magazines a nice alternative.
Despite preaching above about not re-inventing wheels, in the 9-5 job, I’m currently working on a custom admin interface and found this article on 34 Outstanding Admin Panels a wealth of useful pointers.
For any Javascript solutions, my first weapon of choice is Glow, and as such it can become very easy to put all faith in the framework to take care of everything. Christian Heilmann does a good job pointing out the 7 deadly sins of JS development and how to avoid them on Smashing Magazine.
This year marks Photoshop’s 20th anniversary, and it seems that there are as many blog posts highlighting epic Photoshop failures as there are lauding it’s successes. Do these atrocities ever pass under an editors nose?
Interested in space? There’s some pretty cool video content on the BBC Solar System website, launched earlier in the week..
Now that the iron fist of consumer law has came own on Microsoft, new users of Windows will soon be asked which web browser they want to use? I wonder how many will still click the only icon they recognise as “The Internet“. To prove my point, what’s a browser?
Shaun Inman has released a sneak peek of his soon to be released iPhone/iPod touch game. The idea that the graphics improve as you progress through the game is a nice touch. (no pun intended.)
Web forms power the majority of web applications and good form design can’t be emphasised enough, especially due to the many browser inconsistencies involved. Make the user journey as smooth as possible by deploying some of these form tips and tricks.
I was on a course this week focusing on developing web applications with the Zend framework and was introduced to the art of Unit Testing.
I’ve noticed it’s become quite popular for web apps to use their own URL shorteners, helping tie their brand to the link. I wondered how one would implement this, did a bit of research and found this review of 10 PHP URL shortener apps.
Now, if only I could get http://mcg.ee – any Estonians want to help me out? ;)
I arrived in London tonight for a couple of days training starting tomorrow. Upon arrival and saying goodbye to the nice air hostesses with the interesting headwear, I checked my emails to find a client in a panic as his website was falling apart in IE7 for some unknown reason.
He was quite concerned as, although it’s never good for a site to fall over, this week he received quite alot of media coverage and was getting alot of traffic off the back of it. Not a good time for a site to fail but as with Murphy’s Law…
Anyway, after a quite look on my iPhone I realised that a third party script had failed. I hasten to add, I did not develop this site, I’ve just took over the maintenance recently after the company that built the site went to the wall. Digging into this site, it’s not hard to see why, but that’s beside the point.
Speaking of the point, I suppose I should get to it, I just wanted to let you know about a useful little site, net2ftp, which is a web based FTP client. This handy little web app made it super easy, once I found the nearest Internet point in the airport, to jump in, disable the offending code and get the site up and running again until I can get a closer look.
Also worth a mention is FTP on the Go, an FTP client iPhone app. I have this as well but don’t store any usernames or passwords on it for security reasons*, and can only recall the FTP details of my own site off the top of my head. But, if you have the memory for it, it’s also a great little app that will allow you to edit code via FTP anywhere.
As I was reminded again tonight, this can come in very handy indeed.
*On that security note, always remember to log out of any remote FTP service or risk the consequences at your peril!
Yesterday saw the launch of a new Global Visual Language for the BBC’s digital services. This ultimately was in response to Seetha Kumar’s task to improve user journey and navigation through BBC Online as a whole, set to her by the BBC Trust.
I really like the look of the new direction and what I’ve seen so far. It’s not unlike a style currently championed online by The Times or The Guardian and I’m particulary pleased to see a new emphasis on typography. This was no doubt due to in the influence of Neville Brody on the project.
Anyway, for a much more through analysis, check out the BBC Internet Blog..
I write this as I’m sitting in Belfast International Airport waiting on a flight to London for a long weekend. It’s been delayed an hour. A mild annoyance but I suppose one has to put up with these things to experience man taking flight to the skies.
Glad to see someone has scratched this litte itch, its twenty ten, not two thousand and ten! Ask anyone when the battle of Hastings was to prove my point…
As I mentioned last week Palm are so keen to get people developing apps for their phone they are offering $1mil bonuses. One of the plus points is their low barrier to entry as they provide such a capable SDK, you could build an app using HTML/CSS & JS skills. Well this week, I found something similar but to develop for the iPhone and Blackberry. Tools such as these offer a great opportunity as the App Market is clearly lucrative if you get it right though the more accessible it becomes there is a danger that the app stores are flooded with even more terrible apps.
Well, that’s all for this week, I’m off to sample some free aftershave.
P.s I wrote this blog post on the Wordpress 2 app for iPhone, very useful indeed for blogging quickly on the hoof!
Today, I attended the first BizcampNewry, which I must say I very much enjoyed it. It was an all-day event & held in the Southern Regional College in Newry, a city about 30 miles from Belfast near the border.
For those of you unaware what a “BarCamp” event is, it’s basically a mini-conference where the attendees arrive and sign up to be the speakers for half hour slots throughout the day. You can generally talk about whatever you want but from experience of attending similar events, it’s wise to have done some preparation before hand, rather than jump up on a whim. It’s also advisable to speak on a topic you are very well versed in as you never know who may in the audience, and you could find yourself out of your depth very quickly.
It was billed a business conference but the talks I attended were very online business orientated although this may have been due to the effect that I was drew to the webby sounding talks. I did see, for example, a talk on auditing which I’m sure was business agnostic.
There was also a presentation in the morning (I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the gentleman’s name, if anyone remembers, please let me know in the comments), who told of how he had successfully built a business online selling inflated balloons. An amazing idea and he passed off some very useful tips and tricks to consider when distance selling physical products online but he did however advise people with an idea of selling products to start off by building their own websites. I disagreed and why I disagree will be the topic of a blog post later this week…
These events can sometimes be blighted by people only there to promote brand numero uno, but thankfully that didn’t seem to be the case today with many speakers clearly just giving up their time to pass on the value of their experience which was appreciated. If you were one of these speakers, I thank you.
All in all a great event so close to home, and big props to Chris McCabe & Nichola Bates for making it all happen, these things don’t come together magically and I’m sure there was a lot of hard work went on behind the scenes.
Incidentally, I found out about this event through the Digital Circle network and also see that there is a BizcampBelfast on the horizon. I shall certainly be there.
The iPhone app development is clearly the big daddy when it comes to mobile apps, so much so many mobile app developers much surely be thinking why would they bother to develop for any other handsets when with the iPhone sales climbing steadily all the time. Well, how about Palm offer $1Mil for top app developers. Interesting, while iPhone development requires quite a deep understanding C# knowledge, all you need to develop for Palm is strong HTML/CSS/JS. Oh, and a killer idea of course.
As IMAP ports are blocked in work, GMDesk is a great little Air app that runs Gmail from your desktop outside the web browser, WIN!
We’ve already had the first tweets from Space, now comes the first Twitpic from Space.
Need a test bench to test multiple versions of IE? This week I discovered IE Tester, although I’ve also heard that it can be inconsistent with bugs in IE6. But a useful tool if you can’t get to a vanilla install of IE6. If indeed, you even still support IE6.
Perch looks like a useful little CMS for small scale projects though a site license puts me off when there are other excellent CMS’s for gratis.
I’ve always liked Chrome, it’s lightweight and zippy and does what it needs to do well. However, Firefox has remained my primary browser and a big reason for this is Firebug, which I consider the most important weapon in my arsenal as a web developer. But this week sees the release of Firebug for Chrome, hurrah!
As I’ve started to train for the Belfast Marathon, I’ve been using Runkeeper app for the iPhone to track my training and I must say I’m very impressed. I had the free version but upgraded to the Pro version at the start of last week week. At £5.99, it is quite steep for an iPhone app, but having used this for only a week, I think it justifies the cost.
It’s incredibly intuitive to use and has the ability to track my run via GPS, my time, pace, distance covered, calories burned and altitude. Once I have finished my run, I just hit save, and this data is then uploaded to my Runkeeper profile where I can view the route I ran on Google Maps and get a more detailed description of my workout. This information is public by default but you can set it to private if you wish. You can set this information to then propagate across your various networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. I can also easily drill down stats in a nice graph on my to see what I’ve ran each week/month which makes tracking my marathon training a cinch..
Incidentally, Runkeeper can also be used to track cycling, walking, skiing, hiking and oddly enough, swimming, among others. I don’t know how confident I’d be taking a dip with the iPhone on my arm. Speaking of my arm, I use an iPhone armband for running with which I’d highly recommend as not only does it protect your iPhone but also doesn’t disrupt your running.
So, what has the Pro version got that the free version doesn’t? The Pro version allows you to set up custom training workouts with your own training play list. More importantly, the Pro version can be set up to give you updates through your headphones as you run. This can be set to update you based on time or distance. The update tells you how long you’ve been running, the distance covered and your average minutes per mile. You can also double tap the screen at any time for an update. I’ve found this invaluable as it’s a great motivator when I’m starting to flag. The Pro version of the App is also ad free.
The Runkeeper website is compatible with Polar heart rate monitors and although it doesn’t talk directly to the heart rate monitors, it seems very simple to just upload your data file after each run to factor it into your training summary. Runkeeper is also compatible with Withings Scales, which look like the daddy of bathroom scales. I really tempted to buy a set despite the pricey tag as this would really give a complete picture over time of how I’m doing. I’d also feel a bit like RoboCop powering down for the night after a run…
A nice community aspect of Runkeeper is the ability to create street teams. This is basically connecting with other users to track and measure your progress against each other. If so inclined, you can even buy a t-shirt to show your allegiance. If you think that’s a bit much, check out what some go even further. I currently only have one other in my street team so if you’d like to join mine or vice-versa, I’d welcome the invitation.
A couple of small issues I’d like to see improved – If you receive a call or text when running, the app pauses. I have a feeling this is due to the iPhone rather than the app but it is slightly annoying as I didn’t realise I got a text last week half way through my run and didn’t realise the app had stopped tracking until I’d finished.
On a geeky note, It would also be great if Runkeeper developed their API a little so that I could interrogate my own data. Right now, all they provide to work with is a GPX file which is far from ideal.
In conclusion, if you’re a casual runner, you should definitely download the free version, and if you’re anyway serious about running or training for an upcoming even, I’d highly recommend you download the Pro version.
This is a brain dump of some of the things I ran into on the Internets this week. When writing these weekly posts, I can’t help but think of a certain scene from Bo’ Selecta from days gone by. Just thought I’d share that, it’s quite an obscure reference, let me know if you get it. Anyway, the week in links from er.. the Internet.
Hopefully, I shall be attending BizCamp Newry next week, still time to sign up, nice to see these sorts of things happening in Northern Ireland.
The training for the marathon continues apace, which the image in this post also alludes to, check out my Runkeeper profile. (Runkeeper review en route..)
I know you’re dying to know what were the top Twitter Trends of 2009? All is revealed…
I found this handbags page from Jon Hicks that I’m just dying to use but have yet to get an appropriate opportunity. Clever use of the URL was also noted.
Oh, in case you’ve been living in a cave outside Bundoran, The Apple iPad was announced. Much hilarity ensued in my head when I discovered this parody from over nearly three years ago, little did they know.
If you’re from Northern Ireland, and if you haven’t already, you should check out Lookaly, a Belfast based start up which is fast becoming the definitive guide on where to eat/drink/club and whatever else tickles your fancy in Northern Ireland, certainly Belfast. Today, I have lunch in Rhubarb and promptly left a quick review.
Some interesting stats on the most popular ways to interact with Twitter. Tweetdeck FTW!
And finally, for a blow by blow account of what Blair said at the Iraq Inquiry, look no further than the excellent Guardian website.
As I traverse the internets each day I invariably come across a shed-load of interesting articles, blog pots, videos, jokes, etc. which I normally post to my Twitter profile but with my new years resolution to blog more often still fresh in my mind, I’ve decided to collate these bits and bobs each week and post them on a Friday. Who knows how long it will last, but let’s be optimistic at the outset and predict that it’ll last from now to infinitely. Probably.
Ever wanted to play out with the vast amount of data produced by the BBC Programmes application? Have a look at the developer docs and maybe you can put a nice modern twist on the Radio Times.
I’m frankly amazed and also slightly terrified by the story of a guy who was arrested under anti-terror laws for jokingly sending a tweet about blowing up an airport. If he had phoned in a warning, sure. Or announced it over a tannoy in the airport, I get it. But for sending a tweet? Madness.
Disillusioned with David Cameron’s campaign to become next PM? Make your own poster to voice your discontent.
In the vein of 24 Ways, I found 52 weeks of UX, where a new article on User Experience is published each week, subscribed. (p.s. Aesthetically, anyone else think A List Apart?)
I’m a big fan of Lost and am very much anticipating the return of the final season in Feburary on Sky 1.
However, a shitload has happened in the first five seasons and you could forgiven for feeling a little lost yourself. So, if you haven’t time to watch the first 120 episodes, here’s a nice little condensed version for your viewing pleasure.
