Results tagged “web/tech” from jsstudios.com

I finished changing stuff on the ol' blog. Which, I must say is really kind of ironic since I haven't posted anything since . . . uh . . . a long time.

So anyways go ahead and look around at the new look. I haven't tested it with Safari, IE or Opera yet so we'll see how that goes later.

Still a bit of work to do on the archives and About page - so bear with me, I'll be filling them in as I get back into the swing of things. My goal is to get back to a regular posting schedule first.

I'm trying out a new feed reader this week. I wholeheartedly intend to try it all week long, too. I've grown accustomed to using Google Reader for following the blogs, news, and any other feeds I find. However, lately Google Reader's just not doing it for me. I tried the new and improved version of Bloglines, but still was left wanting a bit.

Not long ago, Feed Demon ( a product from NewsGator ) was released as a free download. I kind of spaced it off, but decided to try it out yesterday.

This is a screenshot of Feed Demon in the wild. As you can see, it lists your available feeds to the left in a collapsible pane with the text from the feed in the larger window on the right. A pretty common layout for most feed readers.

Feed Demon allows you to start out with a bunch of popular feeds from various categories like news, entertainment, gaming, technology and gossip. I went ahead and let it subscribe me to all the feeds it recommended as I can always get rid of them later.

You can also add feeds that you subscribe to by importing an OPML file. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to work using the OPML file that Google Reader allowed me to create. So I ended up importing all the subscribed feeds from the Bloglines account since I had used it when I started using Google Reader. That worked just fine.

Certainly, there are times when you want to use a web-based feed reader and times when a desktop reader is more appropriate. The nice thing about Feed Demon is that you can synchronize your desktop Feed Demon with an online account - NewsGator Online. The interface is very much like the desktop version of Feed Demon - although the desktop is packed with many more features. Regardless, either version will be aware of where you left off.

One week without using Google Reader. Is it possible? I'll let you know.

I felt it appropriate to resurrect an application that I put together some time ago just for the fun of it. Since Starbucks decided to get back to their customer-oriented, coffee slinging ways and refine their espresso techniques, I thought I'd make it easy for them to find great cofee recipes. Using it you can find the recipe for an espresso beverage - although there's a few other kinds in there as well that don't have any espresso. Go ahead . . .give it a shot . . .
 

Click through to read some of the details . . .

As I've pointed out in the past - I read a lot of blogs. I comment very infrequently ( I know I should do more ) and seldom trackback unless the urge to comment is so overwhelming that self-restraint eludes me and a flash of inspiration compels me to say something. Perhaps it was the asparagus last night? I don't know. Regardless, I came across David's post, Not a Destination, today and I had faith in the possibility ( no matter how remote ) that I could somehow expand and add value to his concept. In his post he talks about how the "web as a platform" concept applies to libraries.

Before web 2.0, people came to the library to do stuff at the library - they came in to check out books, read magazines, do research, etc. Even with computer use and the "old web," they still came to the library and probably thought they were doing stuff at the library. The library was a destination - a place to visit.But with the advent of web 2.0 and especially with the concept of web as platform, this has changed. Now, people come to the library to access the web... and then go somewhere else.

David says that they come to the library to use the computers to play Runescape, access their Facebook accounts or watch YouTube. But I have to ask myself if this is really the defining concept of the "web as a platform" that libraries really need to address? Before I go any further I should point out that I know David, I read his blog and I think he has a lot of great things to say. This isn't a rant - it's more of an exploration into areas that I think libraries need to address in order to win back people that are migrating to social sites or using google to find whatever it happens to be on any given day.

I know I've already raved a little bit about how much I missed until I finally broke down and bought an iPod. But I never really remarked on why I find it to be that great of a gadget. For me, it's all the free stuff. Yeah, sure . . . I could spend all my hard-earned dollars buying music. I've found all kinds of albums on there that I either used to have on cassette ( I never splurged that much on music once CDs came out ) or wanted to get at any given time. Eventually I'll probably buy them either on CD and rip them or straight from the iTunes store.

For now, however, I'm really enjoying all the podcasts in both audio and video format. I never imagined that so much quality stuff could be found. I'd never even downloaded iTunes and installed it. My son did, but he doesn't have an iPod yet. ( Hmmmm . . . maybe Santa will bring him one this year if he's really, really good ) My favorites right now are Good Morning America, WebbAlert, WebNation and a few others that I watch or listen to when, technically speaking, I should be working.

Don't tell my boss. Okay?

I'm sure this new found obsession with the podcasts will fade a little over time and I'll get back to actually getting something done bright and early in the morning. So, as far as I'm concerned, what really makes the iPod so great is the fact that there's so much content out there and how easy it is to manage that content through iTunes. It really makes it much easier than I thought it would be.

Ok . . . Ok . . . I give in. I now realize what I've been missing. I should have listened to my son when he begged for one last Christmas. Then again, perhaps he should consider himself lucky.

If I would have bought one for him it most likely would have gotten swiped by me.

My iPod Classic arrived today and I made a special trip home to go get it, bring it back to work and spend an hour or so getting music for it. Apple makes it way too easy for me to buy music from their store.

Surrender . . . Surrender

I'm jamming to Cheap Trick's Surrender in case you haven't figured it out. How in the hell did I manage to get along without one of these? I must admit this is one of the best purchases I have made in quite a while. Too bad the kids will have to go without shoes this winter as Daddy will need to fill all 160 gigabytes with music.

Sorry kids . . . Santa came early and he didn't bring nothing for you two.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably aware that Apple has inroduced a new and improved line of i-pods. I neither own a Mac or an iPod. However, I've been thinking about getting an iPod and I'm glad I waited. I'm eyeing the 160 gb iPod classic. Before today I was thinking about the 80gb version. But, since they decided to double the storage and not do anything with the price . . . well that pretty much seals it for me. While the touch iPod seems pretty cool, I would rather have the storage space of the classic versus the wifi of the touch iPod.

Since I upgraded to Movable Type 4 on this site last week and had a few issues with modifying my templates to utilize the full benefits of MT4's new tags and approach to modularizing the templates further. I decided that it would probably be a very wise choice to have an implementation to play with here at home. Doing this serves several purposes:

• First: I can make changes to the site without getting egg all over my face.
• Second: I can see how my site will react to the changes I make and experiment with it until I am satisfied with the outcome.
• Third: I can modify the source code or develop plug-ins and test them in an environment that is self-contained

In order to install this "sandbox" there's a few things you will need:

1. A database: MT is compatible with quite a few database engines. I chose to use MySQL. I've used it for years and I've always been very satisfied with its performance.
2. PHP: If you decide to use "dynamic publishing" you will need this. But that is not absolutely required.
3. Perl: MT's engine is based on Perl so you can't get around this.
4. A web server: I use Apache. But you can use IIS if you absolutely have to.

There's numerous sources you can find that will provide great tutorials on installing each of the above, so I'm not going to go into that. However, I advise the following sequence especially if you are using Windows as your OS:

1. Install your database.
2. Install your web server
3. Install PHP using the windows installer. The installer will automatically configure your webserver to use PHP.
4. Install Perl
5. At this point you should probably make sure that Perl came with the necessary libraries to connect to your database. Mine didn't and I did not know this until I tried installing MT. However, the Perl Package Manager made it easy to get and install.
6. Now you're ready to install MT4.

Once you have the database, web server, PHP and Perl installed it's as simple as placing the contents of the respective MT4 files in your cgi folder and and the root of your webserver. ( Note that this is not the most complex setup. I'm not using any virtual hosts or anything like that. It's simply a sandbox that mirrors the general makeup of my actual website. ) One little gotcha that you might run into right as you're all ready to start installing MT4 ( on Windows ) . . . Even if you download the windows .zip containing the MT4 package: Each Perl script contains the following directive in order to tell Apache how to execute the script:

#! /usr/bin/perl

If you install on Windows this directive will not work on a Windows machine. What you will probably receive is the following in your Apache error logs: "The system cannot find the path specified. : couldn't spawn child process: C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi" So, what your need to do is go into each of MT's .cgi files and replace that directive with something like this:

#!c:\perl\bin\perl.exe

What you are doing is telling Apache that the appropriate executable that knows how to execute Perl script resides at this place - where this place is the path to your perl.exe. Once that is in place - and your other installations are in place - the MT installation is a snap. Good Luck.

So I upgraded to Movable Type 4 - somewhat painfully. A brief account of what I went through . . . My original theme/style/layout - whatever you like to call it - was working fine, but I wanted to be able to take advantage of the new tags that came with MT4. So I went to MT's documentation to see if I could find the default templates. If you are looking for them, you can find them here. However, funny things happened. One of the most annoying things is MT4's use of this

<__trans

tag. MT4 makes use of modules. For example, your index page may "include" several modules like the header and footer. For some reason, MT does it like this:

<$MTInclude module="<__trans phrase="Header">"$>

The most hilarious ( in a twisted, cruel kind of way ) thing is that even when you have a module ( let's call it "Header" ) and that module exists but is included like in my example above, MT doesn't seen to recognize the fact that it exists. It tells you this in two ways. One way is through the designer. It lists the modules that any particular, other module links to. Another way is when you attempt to re-build your site. It throws an error that tells you that the module cannot be found. You can alleviate this if you go through and take out the

<__trans phrase="

part of the MTInclude tag leaving this:

<$MTInclude module="Header">"$>

It also makes use of trans for the text output on buttons or headings. I have no idea what "__trans" actually does yet. I searched the documentation and I can't find any reference to it. It seems as if ( by virtue of the name ) that some kind of translation may occur. Perhaps for other languages? If you know - I'd really like to find out since it is used extensively throughout the templates. And for some odd reason, it wasn't working at all. Every time the "trans" tag was being used, the code was being output on the site. This made for some pretty ugly stuff.

Frustration set in and I decided to refresh the templates. Basically that means rolling all the templates back to their original or back-up state. And voila . . .everything mysteriously fell into place. Of course, re-styling to get the look and feel I want will be another matter entirely. I think my best bet is to install a version at home so I can mess with it at my leisure without screwing up things on this site. Additionally, I'd really like to be able to explore this new platform and exploit the new features as much as possible.

For anyone who happens to be interested, I'm planning on trying to include my findings, trials and tribulations as much as possible in the future not only as implemented here, but also as content for this blog. I haven't installed any additional plug-ins yet, but I plan to after I've modified the theme. I'm going to stick with the default template for now - at least until I've had a chance to muck around with this at home. So if you choose to slam me because I don't have an About page or a Contact page - feel free. Better yet, if you're really that curious you can read about me here.

The new template system in MT 4 is giving me some troubles. Not sure exactly what the problem is, but I'll track it down pretty soon. Besides some styling issues, things appear to be functionally ok. UPDATE I think things are fairly stabilized now. It still kind of looks like crap. The sidebar isn't doing what it's supposed to and that means I'm incredibly dissatisfied with the way the style thing works. So it looks like a re-design is in order. I was planning on this anyway. Either way - it's something to do and I've been looking at some stuff to use as far as re-styling this blog. Perhaps by later tonight I'll be able to unleash it.

It didn't take long for my web host to get MT upgraded to MT 4. They are great at responding to requests for support. However, because the current templates are styled ( theme in wordpress lingo ) for version 3.35 I'm going to have to refresh my templates to the default style in order for things to accurately reflect the changes in MT 4. I'm ok with this. I get bored with my style after a while anyway. I guess it's time for a change. Furthermore, one of the plug-ins I was using for "Related Entries" is not compatible with MT 4. When I tried to rebuild my site, I received an error about that plug-in. So for the time being I won't be able to include related entries until I either find another plug-in or develop my own. Hopefully things won't blow up when I refresh my templates. More to come later if everything works out.

I've used Movable Type for quite some time for this blog, as well as other common blog software packages. While each one of those software packages has their own ups and downs, I've come to appreciate MovableType. My host regularly upgrades the MovableType installation and I have asked that they upgrade my install to MovableType 4. I'm currently on 3.33. I just fired off the request a few minutes ago so we'll see how everything works out. I have high expectations as it boasts a large number of new features. If everything works out ok, perhaps I'll be able to find a way to work some of those new features into the the content of this blog. We'll see what happens. If you're curious about MovableType, by all means, check it out. Better yet, if you have questions I'd be more than happy to answer them either by email ( fortywhat AT gmail DOT com ) or by simply commenting here on my blog.

Not much to say today. I finished my wifes theme after my son's soccer practice and got it all uploaded to her site. Might be a few things to get worked out - but I'm sure she'll find little things that need to be done. I never said I was a designer. I had pointed her to someone who does some fairly nice work, but they asked a little too much. So, I found a theme and tweaked it as she requested with graphics she had. Now I'm tired but I want to stay up and watch a movie.

A while back I said that I was going to start my own thing - a web business. I said was going to spawn something that utilized Web 2.0 concepts like social networking. That plan is still moving forward - a little slowly, and there have been changes - but it's still going.

For example, at first I wanted to learn something new while I made this happen. Computer programmers are always faced with learning how to use new programming languages. After seeing the momentum behind Ruby on Rails growing I planned to use it as the framework upon which the project was built. While I initially faltered and decided I would stick with Java - I changed my mind back to Ruby on Rails. Although I wanted to build this fairly quickly, ( which is why I switched to Java at first ) I decided it was more important to stick with the goals I had originally set.

The original idea I started out with has changed a bit as time has progressed. It now is based on an entirely different niche than I planned. I have a pretty good idea who my largest competition is and several ideas for the best way to compete with them. One of the biggest advantages I have right now is the fact that I am just starting to build - so I can build in the advantages that will compete with the competitor's deficiencies. I really do have to give some of the credit where it is due. If my wife had never mentioned something she was trying to do and my biggest competitor's flaw in allowing her to do it my idea would never have morphed into what it is now.

Meanwhile, I'm setting up my old domain to be the face of what will become my business. Since it isn't the most pressing issue, that's happening in baby steps. I still have many things to do before I need it ( besides the working web application ) like all the stuff needed to start a business as more than just a hobby. And, as usual there are the distractions that so often accompany progress. My wife wants her website to receive a facelift along with a blog and a customized theme, my son needs help troubleshooting bugs in his blog's theme, sleep, soccer practice, my damn JOB, bmx practice, eating, flute lessons, tv, the Internet and soon to be on the agenda . . . gymnastics. I'll admit, the last one was my idea. I didn't sign my daughter up for soccer since her team kind of dissolved because of a few players migrating to a more competitive league. That means an entirely new coach and new players. The girls were doing so well with what they had. It's really kind of a shame. However, I think my daughter will do well trying out a new sport. More to come as progress is made . . .

A few years ago an interesting thing happened . . . web applications started to evolve. The funny sounding technology known as AJAX became a lot more mainstream. Before you knew it all kinds of cool-looking and cool-acting web sites started popping up that collected data from here and there and everywhere in between. Interesting businesses came of age like myspace, del.icio.us, flickr, facebook and youtube and people were able to connect like they hadn't previously. People were able to submit their own content and share it with the entire world. These new Internet presences collected, organized and aggregated all that stuff like many others in the past had not. They were heralded as pioneers of a new Web.

This was called "Web 2.0". Why Web 2.0? After 2001 or so it appeared that a change was taking place on the Internet. 2001 is seen by many as when the Web 1.0 bubble burst. It was no longer about sock puppets and dot com ventures that would gobble up millions of dollars only to blow it in a few short months. Many believed the web had evolved into something that would ultimately become a platform much like we have in our desktop ( or laptop ) computer's operating system. We would no longer need proprietary software to write letters to Grandma, or call her on the phone, trade photos of the kids, or publish anything to the Internet. It would all be at our fingers and no farther away than the next .com we could type into our browser's address bar. This was because the browser would become the platform and the whole World Wide Web would be our software library.

Quite a concept. Yes? No? Some really fantastic ideas sprung up and it doesn't take much effort to reveal who the leaders of the Web 2.0 charge came to be. In doing so they have set the standard for what is becoming expected of the Web as we now know it. If your new, latest-and-greatest web idea doesn't have features like user generated content, ranking algorithms, social networking, some type of mashup, a rich user experience, blogs, wikis, and tagging then you're probably still operating at the Web 1.0 level. That's just so yesterday. And if you're not operating at that level you're also missing out on a huge demographic. If you want to attract the new breed of users you'll have to understand and incorporate Web 2.0.

Libraries have caught wind of this Web 2.0 phenomenon. They're no stranger to technology. They've been using it for quite some time to catalog, organize, and help those with low barriers of techno-frustration find what they're looking for. But really, with the Internet at people's fingertips, they don't really need to go down to their local library . . . now do they? Actually, they've come to realize they don't. And libraries realize that the Internet is their biggest competition. Not the internet as in the technology behind it, but that which makes up the Internet . . . those places we go, the websites we use to find book and movie reviews, the businesses where we buy books and music and movies and do research.

But are they really seeing the big picture? Is it just about the technology and bells and whistles or is there more to it? I know I have you all set up for a good discussion about this, but I'm just breaking ground here for my Web 2.0 / Tech Tuesday topic. Next week I'll dig a little deeper into this.

Imagine if the project was a tree swing. What would the end result be and how would it be interpreted by each member of the project team. See for yourself.

I stumbled across this site that has some very slick DHTML demos.

The Buttonator allows you to make your own buttons for use on your web site. Edit the text and download your button.

Are you building the next, latest-greates Ajax web application. At Ajaxload you can build your own "loading indicator" image.

Generate your own warning labels. I could have fun with this.

Powered by AJAX, here's a handy-dandy little app kind of like refrigerator magnets that allows you make up sentences and what not.

Google is now offering a calendar web service. Although I've only logged in briefly to look around a bit, it appears to be a decent offering. Not too difficult to use and plenty of functionality.

Here's a really cool link I came across via kottke.org. Using a photo or image you have at flickr, you can create your own magazine cover. I could have fun with this all day.

I found something new ( to me anyway ) at Flickr via BoingBoing - Interestingness. From Flickr:

There are lots of things that make a photo 'interesting' (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic photos and stories are added to Flickr.

Just browsing the photos it is no surprise that these photos are deemed, "interesting." There are some really great photos. Have fun with it.

As anyone who develops software, I have my very own development environment at home. If you are a developer who works for someone else during the day it may very well mimic the environment at work - but who knows, it may not.

Up until a few days ago my environment was this: Red Hat Linux 9, Java, Apache 1.3, Perl ( not sure of the version ) PHP 4, Tomcat 4, and mySQL ( not sure of the exact version ). I came across a product on another site I visit from time to time that prompted me to try something out. I re-installed Linux with no server components. Then I downloaded and installed XAMPP from Apache Friends.

Actually there isn't much to installing XAMPP. You just unpack it to the directory of your choice ( it suggests /opt ) and then execute the script to run it. No problem. There are a few security settings you may wish to change - but nothing major that will require a rocket scientist be nearby.

XAMPP comes with Apache 2 ( PHP 5 and Perl included ) and mySQL ( not sure of the exact version ) and phpMyAdmin. This makes for a very nice development environment that is current, portable, and easy to install and configure. As with anything new to try out, there are a few things that work great, and a few that work OK. All of the components provided with XAMPP worked well right out of the box ( virtual box that is ) with no configuration whatsoever. I did do the extra security configuration which was a piece of cake thanks to the script provided with the product.

The problem came later.

As a developer who uses Java much more than PHP or Perl I depend on having an application server ( servlet container ) to use. I generally configure my HTTP server to communicate with the app server for seamless development. This generally necessitates the involvement of mod_jk/mod_jk2. Tomcat is not included with XAMPP but mod_jk2 is - strangely enough? It appears as though people have asked for it, as suggested in their FAQs, but they decided against bundling it due to the size of the download. I hate to admit it, but I could not get this configured correctly. No matter what I did, this would not work.

I visited the forum, which is primarily in German or if it isn't has some fairly rough English, but could not find any solutions. I found a few posts that asked for help, but were never answered. If anyone has installed XAMPP and Tomcat and got mod_jk2 working, by all means comment here and let me know. However, all is not lost . . . As frustrated as I was - see I hate having something like this only done halfway - I wanted my environment working 100% with nothing done half-assed. I decided to make another big change to my development environment.

Recently I checked out a book from the library, Red Hat Linux Bible: Fedora and Enterprise Edition by Christopher Negus. It comes with disks containing the OS. Since I was in an experimental mood I decided to install it. Linux Red Hat Fedora is very nice. I was very impressed. Since installing Red Hat 9, I was never exceptionally happy with it. I liked the desktop and all, and it certainly made strides since 7.x - the last version I used, but it never seemed 100% stable and compatible with my needs. Fedora, however, does.

I ended up including the server components I wanted: Apache ( PHP 4 and Perl included ), mySQL, and VS FTP as part of the isntallation. Later I added Java, Tomcat 5 and phpMyAdmin. I set up mod_jk2 and got it working as needed. So, I have my development environment working as I want with a whole new set of components as well as a new OS that I never intended to install permanently. It kind of goes to show that you can package a nice development environment for developers. You can set it up so that it is easy to configure and use. But, the best environment is one that each developer sets up for his/her self because it will suit their specific needs. I think it also goes to show that an open, inquisitive mind willing to try new things will provide the best alternatives. I never would have installed Fedora if XAMPP had worked out perfectly.

I visited a lot of blogs yesterday that were discussing the buyout of Macromedia by Adobe. One can only wonder what will happen with Macromedia. Jason Kottke has a collection of links to many people commenting on the buyout.

I came across an article today via del.icio.us that has some implications regarding links in websites.

Sometimes, when you are building a website, or web page for that matter, you tend to build within the scope of your personal preferences. For example, one of the things I like most about Firefox is that I can open a link in a new tab. This is convenient because I do not have to navigate away from the page where I found the link. Additionally, should I find another link on the next page, I can open yet another new tab without leaving that page. To assume that everyone is using Firefox would be a mistake. So, I chose to allow users to open ( some, but not all ) links in new windows. According to the article - that's all wrong and a percentage of my users will be disappointed at my lack of sensitivity to their needs.

The article made a lot of sense. So, from here on out I will change that strategy and give people their choice. I will probably not make this change till this weekend - but its coming.

I found a basic cheat sheet that will come in handy if you use mySQL. It describes the syntax for a variety of SQL statements from describing tables to querying using regular expressions.

Brian McCallister has listed a few guidelines for building web applications.

#5 - View complexity is usually higher than model complexity..

Building robust, usable interfaces is one of the most difficult tasks in web application development.

This is cool. Google Maps has incorporated satellite imagery. Using the "Map" view you can find the address you are looking for and then switch over to "Satellite" view. I found the house where I used to live. Where I live now, the satellite didn't have the detail I was looking for. But for more populated areas like San Francisco you can zoom in as far as the software will let you. Now you can't zoom in to see people on the street or stuff like that. But, if you are looking for a particular building ( and the images allow you to zoom in close enough ) you will probably be able to find it. Have fun with it.