Web Development

Every so often, I find a web service that actually returns something semi-valuable in exchange for my dollar. This may sound outlandish -- a valuable subscription based web-service -- but I insist they do exist. And Safari is definately one of them.

Recently, I stumbled on to O'Reilly's Safari. Safari is a subscription based service which offers thousands of books, from programming references to business guides. I think I'm paying 20 something dollars a month for access to every programming reference I could possibly need. 20 dollars may sound like a lot -- but, given that the books I'm reading average somewhere's between 35.00 to 70.00 a pop, I'm alright with a monthly fee.

Wow, these thoughts are pure gold. No really, I hate the word "wow", and yet here I am saying "wow". 77 houris to the author Jared Spool. A teaser:

The VP leaned forward and asked me, "How do we orchestrate a re-launch on a site this big without upsetting our customers? Any change is going to be so dramatic that people are definitely going to complain. How do we do this?"

I leaned back in my chair, paused for a second, then dropped the bomb. "You don't, " I responded. "A re-launch is a very bad idea. I highly recommend against it."

Group intelligence is multiplicative when idiots are involved - combining a half-wit with another half-wit does not result in a full-witted person, it results in a quarter-witted person (1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4). Combining a full-witted individual with a half-wit still only yields a half-wit. The more of these "wrong kinds of people" you have involved in the process, the worse things get.

- Matt Inman, SEOMoz Blog

For a long time I've been using dreamweaver to do the majority of my coding. However, I've found a better code editor. And unlike Dreamweaver, which runs for close to $400.00, this one is free, and released under GPL.

As you can see from the screenshots, this editor was clearly designed for, and by hardcore codemonkeys. It features all sorts of useful stuff like zooming in and out, tons of visual guides to help you see where your loops are starting and ending. Really clear color coding, and so much more.

Not long ago, a combination of too much coffee, persistant stress, and my uppity temperment led me to write a fiesty post about my frustrations with Site5.com's suite of account and website management tools. In retrospect, I was not warrented to have made the critiques that I did; especially considering that the problems I had resulted from the account's owner forgetting to send me all of the necessary passwords, and account info I needed.

Regardless, Adam Greenfield, Site5.com's Chief Technology Officer ,took what I wrote to heart, and posted a very comprehensive reply on site5's engineering blog. He addresses every concern I raised; but much more importantly, he describes a number of new features, and components that are designed to prevent future users from having the troubles I describe. Back in a former lifetime, I used to train teenyboppers and potheads on the art of good customer service in the service industry. In otherwords, I have an eye for stellar service.

Finally, a startup that does something useful. Krugle is a search engine that seeks to help developers find code and documentation.

Link:Wired article on krugle 

In an earlier post, I listed some phrases which I had begun using frequently. One of them was "Like herding cats".Following up, Chris Brown from Liquidvisual.ca sent me a video to let me know that I wasn't alone -- in my tireless efforts to herd cats. 

So what if its a commercial?! This is like -- the best commericial --  EVER... ...man.

VIDEO: On Herding Cats 

Stumbled across this cool word dependency tool that takes a word, and uses some algorithm to find closely related words. Guess what word returns highest for "industrial-strength".

For the 4 of you who may have wondered, I did not forgot about my promises of delievering a new super-theme for developers. I've in fact been working non-stop on it. Bugs, new insights, and new techniques have all contributed to the delay. So here's the latest update.

Major changes since last post

1. I've dropped the nifty corner's technique in favor of rico's curved corners. The rico method is far less buggy, does not require additional CSS, is easier to implement, and appears to be licensed under the more flexible Apache 2.0 License.