I knew that the SDK would provide developers the room they needed to really spread their wings and succeed. My faith has been rewarded.

For best results, use with this.

(thanks Sean)

ShareThis

I watched with interest as people I knew tried out interesting combinations of domains, found cool ones then tried to think of uses for them, etc. It was very different than the normal .com domain hunt.

I don’t know if .me will take off - it’s certainly an interesting TLD, but the .com seems stronger than ever. Even the iPhone, the very model of a modern device, only has a “.com” button¹. Is .me any better than .info (except maybe for personal domains)?

I picked up a couple of .me domains that I thought could be useful down the road if .me becomes widely adopted. I’m not sure if I’ll actually use them - I’m tending more towards “.com at all costs” these days - which is pretty sad.

Time will tell if a good .me is worth more than a mediocre .com.

1. Which is, quite frankly, shameful. [back]

ShareThis

# | Visit Site »

ShareThis

ShareThis

# | Visit Site »

ShareThis

I see people complaining and whining about Twitter’s downtime and issues¹ all the time. I understand where they are coming from, but believe it or not I actually like the fact that Twitter isn’t a 100% reliable service.

I don’t want Twitter to become a responsibility; I like having a casual relationship with it. I read tweets when I want to, and ignore things I’ve missed most of the time. I’ve already got people asking me if I get their replies or direct messages on Twitter - I know it will only get worse if reliability improves.

Twitter is a fun service for me - a distraction, an amusement. It’s something I like to turn to when I have time. I don’t want it to become something I’m beholden to (like e-mail).

I know that other people have very different views on this, but I actually like the fact Twitter is a bit of an adventure .

1. I’ve had my own experience struggling to scale what some people consider a simple service, so I guess I’m also pre-disposed to be sympathetic to people trying to bring services to the web. [back]

ShareThis

The church folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, until the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means. The church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building’s demise in its reply to the court.

As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork. At the hearing he commented, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to decide this, but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that does not.’

I don’t know about you, but this was a much appreciated chuckle for me today - thanks Jim.

ShareThis

It’s a pretty cool system. When you log in to your WordPress blog with PhoneFactor enabled, you receive a phone call asking you to press # to authorize. When you do so, you are logged in. If you do not, then the login attempt fails.

Basically, this means someone needs to get your username, password and phone in order to log in to your WordPress site as you.

Crowd Favorite worked with the PhoneFactor team to build this integration on their API layer. This was a fun project for us - it’s always nice to enhance WordPress by integrating features from another service.

Besides building the integration with the API to authenticate via phone, we also built the PhoneFactor registration step right into the WordPress admin so that the user wouldn’t have to leave the WordPress admin when activating the plugin and getting it set up. I think it’s a much better user experience.

We integrated some instructional banners into the WordPress admin pages to let people know the next steps to getting things set up after activating the plugin. We also built in some more advanced user features like whitelisting IP addresses so that you don’t have to use PhoneFactor authentication if you’re logging in from your home machine.

The download and more information are available at the WordPress Plugin repository on wordpress.org.

Enjoy!

ShareThis

This was a fairly straightforward build. We created several different designs, went through a few revisions, detailed the custom features that were needed, and got cranking on them. With OpenedHand being located in Europe, all development was remote and all communication was done via e-mail.

Unlike some projects where we implement a design and configure it on their production server, in this case we created the theme for them and handed it off to them to set up. They are quite technical, so the configuration and set-up was not difficult for them and I was pleased that they were able to implement what we delivered without needing to ask a lot of questions. That indicates to me that we did a good job packaging and providing installation notes - things that are always a little hard to self-evaluate.

The OpenedHand team also made a couple of minor changes on their own to what we delivered to them before they put the new site live. This was very gratifying to me as well.

When you build things, you try to do so in such a way that they are easily maintained and modified. When your client is able to make changes without needing to ask for help, that’s generally a good sign that you’ve succeeded.

1. They do some cool stuff, be sure to check them out. [back]

ShareThis

ShareThis

• LaunchBar - this is the very first thing I installed. I’m hopelessly dependent on it.
• Firefox - I’d like to give Safari another try, but I need someone to build a PwdHash extension for it before I can really use it. Besides, I still believe Gecko is the best engine to develop on.
• BBEdit - still my #1 text editor.
• TextMate - I’m now using this for CodeIgniter development.
• YouControl Desktops - If I could turn off transitions altogether in Spaces, I might not need this.
• Path Finder - a much better Finder.
• MailTemplateEditor - I use this 3-5 times a day on average.
• Twitteriffic - gotta get my fix.
• NetNewsWire - an app that deserves more run time than I’ve been giving it
• Skype - for the times when I need it
• Skitch - haven’t used it much lately but it’s great for marking up design comps
• Pukka - I blame Ethan for this one, he got me hooked on Pukka a while back. It’s a nice lean del.icio.us posting client.
• LeanCalc - I use this all the time for quick calculations
• iWork (copied over, it wasn’t too happy about that and complains every time I launch it, but still works)
• SubEthaEdit - often used to take notes as a team on conf. calls
• PwdHash - I’ve talked about this at length
• Adium - the best IM client out there
• MsgFiler - I can’t use Mail.app without it
• Adobe CS3 - runs surprisingly well
• iStat Menus - the calendar widget is awesome
• shadowClipboard - totally reliant on this as well
• Vienna - for private feeds

It’s interesting trying to wittle things down to the essentials. I keep letting little things leak in, but in general I’ve tried to keep it fairly tight.

What makes your “must-have” list?

ShareThis

• Web Developers - someone with good back-end skills, experience building modern web applications (AJAX, etc.), knowledge of scalability best practices, etc. Should have good knowledge of PHP, SQL, JavaScript, etc.
• Designers - should be comfortable with creating designs in a variety of styles, including “web 2.0″ and modern web application UI styles. Should have good knowledge of XHTML and CSS, with JavaScript and back-end development skills being a good bonus.

We’re in the fortunate position of being able to work on the “fun” side of the web. We do a lot in the social web space; particularly WordPress work, building custom applications and we have a few projects of our own we’re working on.

We believe in hiring smart people and utilizing their skills - we’re not looking for “just another web developer/designer” to implement things. If this sounds like you, please get in touch.

ShareThis

Overall, increased usage of the iPhone has done more to reinforce my previous opinions on it than anything else - except maybe making me more dissatisfied with the browser in the BlackBerry.

Some notes:

• The iPhone is a two-handed device, where the BlackBerry is designed to work very well as a one-handed device.
• The keyboard on the iPhone is just awful. Whenever I need to type anything (e-mail, Twitter, etc.) I use the BlackBerry.
• The browser is just phenomenal, and I’ve found myself on the mobile web more with the activated iPhone than I was with my BlackBerry.
• Even with the browser being so good, it’s not nearly as fast as using a laptop.
• Having a native Twitter app on the BlackBerry makes me realize just how much better the iPhone will be in a month.
• Real IMAP support on the iPhone is excellent, for an “e-mail” device, the BlackBerry’s non-BES IMAP e-mail support is just pathetic.
• The web iPhone apps and info pages are really quite handy.
• I badly want a podcast app for the iPhone that supports downloading podcasts over wifi. I’m sure someone is building one - let me know if you want another beta tester.
• The BlackBerry Curve is significantly lighter than the iPhone, and the rubberized side panels make it a lot easier to grip.
• The upcoming OTA syncing for the iPhone eclipses what BlackBerry users have unless they have a BES.
• Having web page bookmarks on the home page for the iPhone reminds me of the old PQAs on the Palm VII and i705 from back in the day.
• The iPod integration in the iPhone is actually better than I expected. I’m noticing that more as I use the device more.
• I appreciate my BlackBerry keyboard more now.

Having 2 phones seems a little silly at times, but the iPhone is actually an “add a phone” to my BlackBerry line, so it’s not too bad². It’s pretty obvious to me that I’m going to need to be building great tools for the iPhone in the future, so… it’s a business expense.

1. For all those who have asked, it continued to work as expected the entire year. [back]
2. I actually have the radio off most of the time to save battery [back]

ShareThis

ShareThis

Leave a comment and let me know what you’d like to hear in the presentation.

The last Refresh Denver meeting was the first since a short hiatus. There was a great turnout for the last meeting and we want to keep things rolling.

We’re going to be tightening up the presentations with a new format:

• 15 minutes for presentation
• 10 minutes for Q & A

This should help things move along crisply - we’ll see how it works at the meeting on Wednesday.

ShareThis