November 30th, 2008 |
2 Comments
Yesterday I was at GeekMeet, a very informal gathering of people (geeks) who shares the same interest as me, web development, business, marketing, startups and everything Internet.
There were interesting presentations about web freelancing, mobile internet widgets and also presentations on happiness, passion, economical depression, etc.
One particular presentation caught my attention from Alex Deva. He presented his web application called Arabela.
This web application is basically a voice reminder that can be accessed through a regular mobile phone call and what’s cool that the application also can call your phone to remind you about anything, such as new comments on Twitter, weather forecast. It can be implemented on a wide range of online services like Facebook, GMail, Yahoo to mention a few…
I think Alex tapped into a relatively wide niche where the possibilities are endless. When he presented it, a few ideas popped into my head where his web app. could be used. Good work!
November 30th, 2008 |
No CommentsI thought I’d share the articles I’m reading lately.
November 28th, 2008 |
No CommentsI hadn’t marked a spam message since I installed my spam filter form and Akismet, until today.
I’ve got 5 messages, all spam. It had to be written through the form by hand. Spammers are getting desperate from what I can tell…
Another interesting thing is that the spam messages are constructed intelligently. All 5 of them are different and have a meaning. Every message wants you to visit some link, etc.
For ex. Hey, visit these pictures on MySpace …
The bottom line is, spam messages are getting intelligent and spammers are lame!
November 25th, 2008 |
No CommentsSimply, you can dictate the rules of the game. It’s a fact that is hard to do something that nobody done before, but it’s not impossible. Or to create something new from an existing idea. Just look at the iPod, the technology MP3, music, flash memory was already there.
Apple simply used these technologies and created a beautiful product, targeted for a specific consumer market.
Being the first has many advantages, as I wrote above, you get the opportunity to set the rules and if you do a good job, you will be one step ahead of your competition.
Doing something entirely new could easily drift you to unknown territory, where even the best marketer can’t be entirely sure what to do and how to handle problems. Planning ahead is a good thing, setting simple goals and philosophies about a service or product is also great. For example, Apple set that the iPod will be a quality product no matter what, the first generation iPod price was $500, which is a heavy price for an MP3 player, but even so the sales went to the roof, because the network effect kicked in around one simple rule which was quality.
Later, I was reading different news posts on iPod fakes, and how everybody wanted to copy the design of the iPod. Sure the design played an important role in the iPod sales, but it wasn’t the most important feature. Original iPod 1, fakes 0.
Another lesson we can learn from the iPod is to treat every customer as an individual and not as a group. A good example to this is the white iPod earphones.
My advice is to think 2 days on creating something original, than trying to copy a good idea in 1 day. The original idea always wins.
November 14th, 2008 |
3 Comments
I always hated Beta badges on websites and web application. Beta suggests that something is under construction, buggy, still testing. It’s not finished.
These badges became a phenomenon on the Internet and the “web 2.0″ world.
I think beta is wrong, when you release a project you don’t want to suggest your user-base that this website is still under development, it’s just unprofessional, but unfortunately web developers putting up this status if it were some kind of trophy.
November 13th, 2008 |
No CommentsAs you may know Server-Side Magazine is currently running a contest.
If you want to write programming (PHP, Ruby, ASP.Net) related articles and you want to win $200 in Amazon Gift Card, make sure you participate and send an article before November 27th, 2008.
Link: www.serversidemagazine.com/news/write-articles-and-win-200-worth-amazon-gift-card
November 12th, 2008 |
5 CommentsTime is the most important thing for web developers, this is the only thing that matters. Deadlines and whole businesses depend on it. If you don’t have any, you’re lost.
Managing time is a complex task, but let me show you how to actually finish your set tasks in a reasonably small time frame.
It’s all about optimization and refactoring, you as a web developer should know best how to optimize and refactor source code, why not do it with your time too?
This is how I do it. I list all the tasks that I want to get it done right now. I just list a bunch of items that I consider I can finish in a day or two, but most importantly I collaborate with other developers and/or clients to know exactly what the work is all about.
I set myself a ridiculously small time frame when I will work on a single task and NOTHING else such as talking on the phone, skype, chatting, googling around, watching Youtube, etc.
I just simply cut out all the distractions. I found that you can do a lot and I mean a lot of things when you don’t get distracted.
I must emphasize that if you want to do things this way, you need to have a solid plan beforehand (a task list, etc).
Merlin Mann at 43 Folders has a really good post on how to minimize distractions when you work. What software you should use, etc. Worth reading that post too.
November 12th, 2008 |
2 CommentsI just installed a brand new custom theme.
Do you like it?
November 11th, 2008 |
22 CommentsI just noticed this, that when you want to add some text to a textarea element with Javascript you can’t do it under Firefox simply by adding to the textarea’s innerHTML.
This would be the normal thing to do, because textarea is not an input tag, where you usually add text to it using the value attribute.
What’s interesting is that when you add text to a textarea using innerHTML the code actually works, under Firebug I can see the text added between the <textarea></textarea> tags, but it won’t refresh it on the actual page.
Strangely it works if you’re using the value attribute of the textarea, but that’s just wrong. What is even more interesting that this approach works the same in IE 6 and IE 7.
In IE7 the innerHTML method works correctly.
I couldn’t find any documentation or post on this issue… is it that maybe that I’m missing something?
November 10th, 2008 |
8 CommentsThis is a totally subjective post, I will write down how I’m handling todos. What works for me doesn’t have to work for you, but if you check it out, test my method you maybe find that it’s very effective.
As with all the daily tasks I have a few rules for todo lists too.
- Don’t categorize the items into dates, weeks, months.
- Give each todo item a priority.
First of all, back to basics. My todo list is as simple as possible. I don’t use any fancy software to handle my todo list, just a simple text file.
I’m mainly coding in TextMate (code editor), so I write my todo items in a separate text file, that is always open when TextMate is, or when I’m working in another program.
In the early days I categorized my todo items into dates, what should I do today, what tomorrow and what next week. I found that it doesn’t help me do the tasks quickly. I don’t use dates anymore, I just make a big list of todos.
When I add another task, I prioritize the whole list again, because the items in the list are not isolated from each other, each item affect other items, regarding my available time to work on them.
The lowest priority is actually the number of todo items. If I have 12 items in the list the last task that I will work on will have a priority number of 12, but I don’t number the items. I just place it on the list according to the priority, the last task will be on the bottom of the list. I found that numbering many todo items is a tedious work, so I skipped it.
Every day when I start working on the list from top to bottom, finishing the tasks in order.
It’s simple. I hope it will work for you too, if you decide to try out this method, please let me know how it goes.
