Spot us
One of client’s at Hashrocket, Spot Us, has posted a video on his blog that he recorded this morning during our demo, showcasing the work that was completed in 3 days of development!
Don’t get me wrong, the great work by the designers was key to getting this done, and there is a week of face to face time where the client (in this case David Cohn) and the lead developer(s) lock themselves in a room for 5 days, and make the tough decisions of what can really be done in 3 days. Please take the time to watch this 15+ minute video if you want an inside view of some of the work that I am a part of.
Great work Lark, Desi, Carm, Tammer, and Joe!
Spanning Sync
So Google announced support for CalDAV last month. I tried it out on my MacBook Pro, hoping that it would allow me to have a free way to sync my Google Calendar to iCal and to my iPhone (using Mobile Me).
I am sad to say, that if you have more then 3 calendars (i.e. shared calendars for work), that Spanning Sync is still the way to go.
The main reasons are:
- Each calendar is a new Account in iCal
- The Spanning Sync Pref Pane is so much simpler then having to go find some cryptic group email address and replacing the Google Calendar URL
- Spanning Sync “just works” and is worth the $20 ($5 discount for using the code MM397X)
Less Memories
BEHOLD the power of rails, and how a trained artisan can wield it’s power. A pretty useful web application in 7 hours! No kidding! Check it out and then go get your education on.
Microsoft Surface
So I had seen the old videos on YouTube, but as you would expect the marketing machine that is Microsoft has me saying HOLY SHIT!!!
For those of you that are tech savvy this is old news, but for those of you that don’t keep up on blogs, etc. and never click on the links I provide, I implore you to please check this out… IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND. Now if they can just deliver on the hype!
Microsoft Surface – a whole new kind of computer interaction.
TinyUrl Creator :: Firefox Add-ons
I am a big fan of TinyUrl. It is a very simple concept but one that has so many applications. If you have ever seen a long URL wrap around and therefore break in an email client then you have one of the use cases for using TinyUrl.
Another case (which I imagine is converging as mail readers get more and more mature), is to make sure that the widest audience can see the link. Now that we live in a world of RSS and syndication every where, you have no idea when URLs that contain “border line” characters are going to get truncated or cause parsing errors in one of the many processors that it must go through in it’s journey to the millions of consumers it is serving.
Now that I am using twitter often and blogging more often I find myself having to go through the following steps:
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highlight the link I want to copy and hit ctrl-c
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hit ctrl-t to open a new tab
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type in “tinyurl” and hit ctrl-enter
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hit ctrl-p to paste the link and hit enter
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select the link and hit ctrl-c
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paste it to where I want it to live
This was getting old to me… so I just googled “tinurl plugin” and found this wonderful little gadget, the TinyUrl Creator :: Firefox Add-on.
So now my 6 step process above is a right click, left click, ctrl-p. As Borat would say, “Very Niice!”
Updates: site, blog, & feed
I have spent the better part of three days giving my blog and RSS feed an overhaul. I can see the writing on the wall and as a software engineer I know that in 2 years, those that do not have a solid online presence, will not even get an interview.
I mean think about it, if you have a list of 10 candidates, and 8 of them have a blog with relevant links to their other web based personas you can weed out those that are obvious freaks, and you can get a much better feel for a person then by just spending two hours with them in a very un-normal process such as an interview.
I would rather watch the beast in it’s natural habitat, that is going to give me a better feel for what kind of person they really are.
Anyway, here is what I have been working on for my site:
Domain Name
I now have both www.beebe4.com and http://beebe4.blogspot.com serving up the same content… this blog.
Feed Burner
I have setup my feeds in Feed Burner to allow a better feed. Better why? Because of the following reasons:
- Simple to add social networking links, such as del.icio.us, digg and stumbleupon
- Allows for traffic analysis… sure I have Google Analytics setup also, but the feed is another data point, and it also lets me know how many people are subscribed
- Automatic flare for most of the common readers
- Pings a bunch of blog directories and aggregators
Random Videos
I have started using Google Reader to read all the blogs I am reading these days. Google Reader has a nice share feature that is available as a feed and they also have a widget that was easy to add to my blog via blogger’s API, and I think it is pretty interesting.
Random Videos
Blogger has added a video bar, so for now I am going to keep it on there and see if people enjoy watching random videos. When you add the widget, it asks you to type in some key words to search for videos… mine where “beebe4, funny, tech, google, blog, jacksonville, code search.” Feel free to provide feed back if it is interesting.
According to Wikipedia, Twitter is:
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in October 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.
Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and also instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter web site, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, or through an application. For SMS, currently three gateway numbers are available: short codes for the USA and Canada and a UK number for international use. While the Twitter service is free, posting and receiving updates via SMS may incur charges from the wireless carrier.
Guest Map
If you scroll all the way to the bottom, I added a guest map which allows users to add their location, so that over time I can see (along with the rest of the world) where people are checking into read this blog from.
Archive Links
I switched the archive links back to listed out as I am not sure how GoogleBot will crawl the links if they are in a drop down list. My thinking is that the list will allow more pages to get indexed, and therefore get more traffic.
What is RSS?
For those of you that are still learning how to use this fancy Internet, RSS is a very important feature that most web sites (blogs, news sites, etc) use to provide a syndicated feed of changes that have been made to their site. This allows a user to simple subscribe to the RSS feed and use a tool such as Google Reader to aggregate them and tell you when there is new content from your favorite sites.
I would recommend that if you are not doing so, but instead going around and checking out different web sites or waiting for them to send you an email you should really do the following:
- Watch this video to get your educations on
- Go to http://reader.google.com and create an account
- Click on Add Subscription and add www.beebe4.com
- Add all of your other blogs
Google Street View
Google has rolled out there answer to Microsoft Live Map’s Birds Eye View, and they are calling it Street View. I took it for a test drive today and went around South Beach and it kinda felt like I was in the back of a car driving around. Some things were annoying like the fact that as you navigate down a street, typically the same car is in the same scene.
I am sure that Google will continue to add lots more streets soon, but right now I still think that Microsoft’s Birds Eye View has the upper hand based on available areas of coverage.
Refresh Jacksonville
A few months ago I went to hear Carl Smith give a talk about Google Analytics. It was interesting, to see how a consulting shop was using the information they were getting from Analytics to tailor their website to adjust to how people were using it. For example they would check out the click path of customers that they were about to go give a demo for and see which area they were checking out and tailor their presentation around that also.
Since Carl’s talk, Google has overhauled the original Urchin interface for the better, and I have to say it is also noticeable faster. If you have a website and are not using Google Analytics you really should take the time to look it over. After all, it is free.
Damn you addictive little flash game
I have a problem with addition. Every once in a while i go on binges and drive my wife crazy. My father had trouble with alcohol, but I am addicted to video games. Every once in a while I will make the mistake of taking two minutes to load up a game just to check it out. I did so last weekend after reading an article on How to Get Rich Programming.
Damn you silly flash games. (WARNING… highly addictive… do not click this link.)
I have logged an insane amount of time playing this simple, stupid game. My wife is at wits end, and in complete befuddlement (is that a word?) as to how I can stay up to 3, 4, and 5am playing this game. I calmly tell her that there is no use fighting it, just let it run its course and it will pass. It will pass just like Civ III, Mini Putt 3, Lux and many others. She knows that it will, but still she hates going to bed with the same conversation every night:
I’m going to bed
Ok, I’ll be there in a minute
we both know I am lying.
Beebe4 
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