11.19.08
9 Great Web Development Tools That Are Already on Your Mac
Preview
If you're like me, when you get a new computer you can't load it up with all your favorite programs and tools fast enough. There are tons of great web development tools out there for download, but one must be careful not to overlook some of the great tools that come pre-installed on every mac. Many of these tools are a result of Apple's historical focus on the graphic design and print folk. Here are the ones that I use most regularly.
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09.16.08
Launching My First Public App - Twitterless
Preview
It has been two years (almost to the date) since I first picked up "Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails" and I have finally released an app intended for the public that wasn't just a website for a client. It's called "Twitterless", and the idea for it came from the realization that Twitter doesn't provide an option for you to be informed when someone stops following you. When I realized this, I quickly coded up a prototype, ran the numbers, and realized it would be possible to create such an app despite the limitations of the Twitter API.
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08.17.08
Beijing Olympics Motivational Posters
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The Beijing Olympics so far have been one for the books. We've seen some of the most amazing moments in Olympic history and as of this writing the games aren't even over yet. And as usual, there are many lessons to take away from these games, and what better art form to express them in than that of "motivational posters." The following are some of the moments I found most compelling and the lessons I feel we can all take away from them (with the backstories included).
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08.16.08
Facebook Phishing Attacks Spreading Like Wildfire
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Today I received a link to a "crazy and funny vid" on my facebook account from a friend whom I would never expect to contact me. With this red flag I followed the link and was taken to an exact replica of the facebook login screen which might have fooled me had I not realized that I was already logged into facebook. Glancing up at the url the game was given away: fanebook.com (with an "n") instead of facebook.com. How clever.
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07.30.08
Use Flickr_Fu to Bring Your Flickr Photos to Your Ruby on Rails Website
Preview
It all started when I decided it was time to make nuttersmark.com xhtml and css valid. I had played around with various flickr wrappers and gems in the past to serve up my photos but this time around I decided to use the canned badge that flickr provides users to embed their latest photos on their blog or website. This seemed to be a good temporary solution while I got the more important components of design iteration #5 ironed out until I decided to see just how far away from valid this site really was. Turns out it was 'very'.
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06.22.08
Super Fantastic Resizable Pattern-Friendly CSS Rounded Corners
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With all the guides on how to create those wonderfully popular web 2.0-ish rounded corner boxes out there it is easy to say it's a crowded space. Although there are tons of guides out there utilizing all manner of technology, from pure-css to javascript solutions, I had a very specific requirement that wasn't satistfied by any of them (that I know): a method of creating resizable boxes with custom designed rounded-corners that could be overlayed on a patterned background.
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06.18.08
Spore Creature Creator Worst Crimes Against Nature
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EA's Spore team released the beta of their creature editor program this week and was met with much enthusiasm. Spore is easily the most hotly anticipated game of 2008 and why not - endless variations are possible in the ultimate sandbox experience. Moreso than even Sim City or the Sims, Will Wright has put us in God's driver's seat. And what do we do with it? Crank out the most perverted and disgusting creatures we can muster up with our sick minds, of course!
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06.06.08
Railsconf has_many :macs
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Last week I attended my first Railsconf in Portland, OR. It was a great conference full of incredibly charged up and talented people and was unlike any conference I have ever attended; people actually wanted to be there. Since I am relatively ne w to the Rails and Ruby communities I had the unique perspective of looking from the outside in. There are a lot of traits, personality types, and trends I noticed about the Rails community. For one, everyone seemed to love what they do. We are talking about passion for one's work here. There were more entrepreneurs, intellectuals, creatives, and pragmatists than I could shake a stick at. Technorati Profile
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01.30.08
Dragged Onto the Train Kicking and Screaming: Rails 2.0
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The rails team recently released version 2.0 as many of you know, and in it are a lot of neat features and simplifications. Having been developing RESTful applications for the better part of the last year I welcome the new integration, but when 2.0 dropped I was mid-project on a few different apps and didn't want to deal with upgrading. Well, as luck would have it, after a day of banging my head against the wall I ended up having to stick with Rails 2.0 on my new mediatemple (dv) server account, forcing me to make my apps 2.0+ compliant.
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12.18.07
The 6 Most Irritating Web Design Trends in 2007
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Web 2.0, the second bubble, new media; call it what you will, we are smack dab in the middle of the second coming of the web. And like in any industry, there are bound to be hiccups, starts, and an unending stream of innovations pushing the technology behind it ever further along. We can look back on web trends that were as ridiculous as the old-timey videos of people's first attempt at flight were, such as under construction images, animated gifs, dancing babies, scrolling text, and flash splash screens and feel confident we've come a long way in just 15 or so years. However, a new set of trends are sure to have their own awkward place in web design history, and it's worth pointing out what a few of these trends might be.
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