David Windham

WWDC 2008

david — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:56:22 +0000

I've got to say and I think most folks would too, that I actually enjoy watching the keynote presentations from Apple and Steve Jobs. So here's the lowdown... of course the anticipated Iphone 3G was announced and it goes up for sale on the 11th for a lower price at $199. This was the focus almost on the birthday of the original release. They also quietly announced the preview of upcoming Snow Leopard OS X during the conference. I've gone through all of this before, but i'll say it again... Development for the iphone is super sweet with xcode. I've worked with it for about three months now, since they've released it. Let me just say the same thing as everyone else.. and while i've rarely ever worked on development for other mobile devices, i have no doubt in my mind that xcode is going to blow them away. They're calling the the interface cocoa touch and I'm sure that it's essentially the same as the old cocoa interface. The most important features include viewing all of course the 3G network, built in GPS, iwork and microsoft windows documents in the phone, the ability to save images from emails, the push email and sync capacities of Microsoft exchange for enterprise, some parental controls, a bunch of languages including character recognition, mobile me to push sync all devices with outlook/address/mail/web based and of course highlights from developers and their projects. They also got rid of the old headphone jack (hurah) and they went plastic on the back to lighten it up. I like the fact that the distribution for developers is absolutely free and an enterprise can verify phones so that only their apps can be run only on their phones. And now they are allowing of something they call "ad hoc" distribution that will allow you to distribute an app on up to 100 phones without using the app store.
What is also unique to the iphone vs other mobile devices is the "accelerometer" that works much like the controller of the Nintendo Wii console. This feature is what gives the screen the ability to rotate according the position that you are holding the phone and it in comparing it to other hand held gaming systems you are able to play games using the tilt features of the iphone. The built in GPS will allow some unique tools to be added to just about every mapping and social networking application that you already know. The associated press is releasing a mobile news platform that makes it easy to navigate video, images and text for their content on the iphone. Type pad presented how easy it is to blog with their software, but I'll say that it's just as easy with wordpress to do the same.

One part of the keynote that I would like to point out is that one of the developers featured illustrates a great point. One developer built a great application, not a team.. and in fact this guy actually works for the insurance industry and not professionally in a development capacity. I say that all the time to myself about web and software applications. Another feature of the keynote was medical applications. What is most important relative fact about these mobile apps is imaging. I know for a fact that imaging is very important the medical industry and the iphone capitalizes on this with it's display capabilities. Since the majority of us aren't as concerned about how our doctors will be accessing our medical imagery.. what will matter is that Major league baseball will be releasing video highlights as they happen for all major league baseball games and i'm pretty sure that most other professional sports organizations will follow.
During the keynote, they took a straight jab at the Windows ethic by pointing out that no applications will allow background processes to suck up your phones memory. They pointed out that windows mobile requires users to manage their own cpu cycles. (not good) In doing so the iphone will scale to allow apple to use a push notification service that only requires on IP connection to streamline push messaging from applications. They're also taking the direction of cloud computing with mobile me. It's essentially a take off of .mac (which it replaces and users will be updated to mobile me) but with applications that can push to any device and software.
The demo of the web application looked like it might take a go at google apps and I imagine that the web application is going to big hit especially for new mac users. I'm a bit skeptical of sharing all of this information online but apple is certainly making it compelling to most users that a synced experience will make using email, file sharing, calendars online is going to make your life easier.. and of course they're going to give out trials.
Jobs must be under the influence by the Disney thing.. as he wrapped it all up with "it's a small word after all" while illustrating that they added 70 new countries worldwide for distribution. And the new advertisement is once again "Apple Marketing-licious" I'm speculating that they're go from 6 million phones to 25 million phones within the year... that's a 500% jump in market share for those of you counting.

Man from Plains

david — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:38:03 +0000

All this talk of politics has affected my netflix lineup. Last night we watched the documentary "Man from Plains" about Jimmy Carter and his most recent book. I've got to say that Jonathan Demme is one of the better filmmakers of our time. Ever since Stop Making Sense, a video concert of the Talking Heads was released I've been a fan. What I like about Demme is the unbiased and personal approach. I've always said of good photographers and painters whom work with portraiture that the best approach is to be as transparent as possible so as to not influence the subject in any manner. This film does just that as it documents Carter's travels to promote his most recent and controversial book entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. The film gives an honest perspective on the man and his principles as Demme was obviously given good access the former president during the filming and what impressed me most was exactly how candid and emotional Carter was during the filming. He is obviously a very intelligent man in the way he handles conversation and which may also explain why he is a physicist by trade. What is controversial about the book is that Carter is trying to explain that perhaps the Palastinians have been wronged which is very bold and politically incorrect these days. But Carter does it with eloquence and good rhetoric in the face of staunch adversaries. After the film, I followed up with some research on Carter and his policies. What amazed me is how strong his opinions about peace and energy conservation. He actually reduced the dependence on foreign oil by half during tenure as president. He installed solar panels (which were later removed) on the white house! It's amazing how we continue to repeat ourselves in history as I think my third grade teacher began the first history lesson i remember with that exact phrase. President Carter had some interesting approaches to energy policy that may hold in todays atmosphere. Don't get me wrong...I'm not a political or economic expert, but I can tell you a good deal about the Laffer Curve and supply side, trickle down Reaganomics including the fact that Author Laffer and Wanninski, credited with coining the term did so over a meeting in 1974 with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld present...so I'll let you do your own research. But I am a good with the study of human character and I can tell you that I am compelled to believe that Jimmy Carter is a good man with honest motives or at least the film did an excellent job of concealing anything otherwise. I can whole heartedly recommend that you see the film for yourself.

this photo below is of Carter fishing when a swimming rabbit "attacked" his boat.. lucky the secret service was there to capture it on film.

**note: and let me say this... if you're concerned with gasoline prices, I've got a piece of advice for you and your employees to save gas... let em work from home. Telecommuting is surprisingly easy than you may think.... so don't let some guy roll into your offices and charge you umpteen hundred dollars to set up teleconferencing equipment as those of us in the web world deal with it on a day to day basis and I would be glad to advise anyone on different alternatives for video conferencing, audio conferencing, file sharing and collaborative work flow for telecommuting in your office using remote servers and web enabled applications.

KidZui

david — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:19:40 +0000

I check the Google Zeitgeist every so often to see what's going on out there and this morning I noticed that KidZui was on fire. So I checked it out by downloading the app, installing it and testing. I can see where this is absolutely essential for parents. KidZui is a self contained application that contains a browser of sorts that. It runs smoothly and has a lot of features that make it a customized browsing experience including social networking tools. What it allows parents to do is give the kids and internet browser that is safe to use. It claims to have rounded up 600,000 kid friendly sites and parents can add other sites to allow them to be accessed by the app. What is also nice is that you can create a parent account and keep tabs on what is being looked at by your kids. I can't imagine letting the kids at the computer and internet in a regular browser. We were talking about paid content this morning at breakfast. I think this is an awesome business model. They've set it up at $5 a month for a parents account, but you can download and explore it without the registration which you'll need for the social networking tools and admin (parents) account. I'm not sure how safe it is yet, but it looks like Will von Reis is the tech guy on the project. I downloaded and tested and it seems to be relatively secure and smooth on os 10.4... and personally I think that this is a good product with a reasonable pricing scheme. I would suggest that since it runs full screen that a parent could possibly remove the exit button from the application or create a keyboard shortcut to exit and this would keep the kids off of the rest of the computer all together. Another thing to note is that Techcruch reports that there is an actually human element, and I commend that effort hiring real folks to review the content as there is no spider that can crawl as effectively as a human and this gives all of the white listed content more credibility. And yes.. there have been others, but not to this scale and professionalism....if you want to hear something kinda funny try this link to a competing kids browser. And if you're not into the $5 a month thing.. try Glubble, the firefox extension that has some of these features.

Drupal 6 Design

david — Sat, 31 May 2008 17:49:40 +0000

I've spent some time today dissecting Drupal 6 themes. I've had a bitter taste in my mouth for Joomla and Drupal since way back when I didn't have as much knowledge as I do now. But I'll say that Drupal 6 has a theming system that is far above par to say the least and it might push some more designers over to Drupal Here's what I've learned. First and foremost, my favorite javascript library JQuery is ready to roll in Drupal 6 as part of the core and targeting elements with it is cake. JQuery is light and easy to use. This will give some much better modules for Drupal design. So here's the brief on it. One thing i learned quickly with version 6 is that you must define what version of the Drupal Core you are using inside of the .info file. I'm still not a fan of the block or region system as I'd prefer to put the PHP wherever I chose, however version 6 does allow you to add additional style sheets and sub themes quite easily. I also found that you can now use special classes (much like this site is taking advantage of in wp 2.5 to display thumbs) so that you can very easily override any of the themes stylesheets using the .info file for the theme. This is a big leap forward for those who don't want to write the entire theme from scratch and this will give you a way to manually override the content of each block using php and to add custom blocks. Version 6 also includes the advanced theme settings without the api. I'd highly recommend for those of you who are good with css and don't want to tinker with code or tables with themes.. to install the zen template, which will give you a good base to style with. Drupal has come a long way since I first worked with it in version 4, but designing it is still a bit more complex than the average joe wants to deal with.
And as you can see this site is based on Wordpress and there has been some lame but raging debate over which cms system to use for quite some time... so i'll put my two cents worth in. I have used both in the past and find that drupal is more robust than wordpress from a development standpoint. From a design standpoint though.. I like wordpress as I prefer to have direct access to be able to style with just css and php. But, lets face it.. most online publishing isn't looking at it from a programmer or developers standpoint and most users find design and usability to be the most important aspects of a website project. In the case of larger data sets and multiple publishers/editors there is certainly a case for drupal but from a user perspective wp has it beat with it's ease of use. What i believe is that the structure of the two are essentially (at the root level) the same, using the same programming languages. The most important thing to me is the database structure... clean and simple is better as I truly believe that some of the robustness of Drupal can be better served using entirely different programming methodologies all together..like ruby on rails. Both wordpress and drupal are light and the code is clean, but the database structure on wp can be stripped faster than drupal. With that said... i want my data clean so no matter what happens with any cms platform or new developments for apache and server technology... I can always upgrade to whatever i want to use on as my cms on my servers. Clean database structure will help me do that more easily. I think that some developers get biased according to what they know best and forget that flexibility to upgrade to newer systems is more important than debating our current ones. And for the record.. I actually believe that Python and Ruby stand a strong chance of wiping this debate out all together because of the way that they handle data from whatever type of database structure you want. And it would be nice to see the two working along side one another in a way that would benefit both camps as long term development for either is only going to benefit from a larger developer and designer base.

Slice of Paradise

david — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:39:43 +0000

Why has it been a month since i've published anything new?
1) I will no longer be accepting freelance assignments with limited exceptions.
2) We are moving to the Aiken, Edgefield, Augusta Area.
3) I am going to work with Morris Communications.

Here's the scoop... I have lived in Charleston for fifteen years and McClellanville for over six years now with exception of the place we had on Franklin Street downtown for a couple years.... about six months ago we got rid of our house downtown and began living entirely in McClellanville mostly due to the slowdown in freelance assignments from real estate agents who I built a lot of websites for....and I began working with several local web development firms to pick up the slack. That turned out to be a waste of my energy so I put out three resumes looking to work with more established companies for a long run. I am proud to say that I got three job offers and strangely enough freelance jobs started pouring in.. I had two phone calls today and two yesterday for new jobs, but I am looking forward to letting someone else handle the business aspects while I just worry about building and designing awesome websites. The Evening News Co (post and courier) wanted a programmer but I'm pretty sure that it was going to be relatively limiting for me... but I do like how they are actively marketing Home Tours now :) I actually vied for Apple over them because they offered me a full time position training folks to use Apple software. I love Apple.. the offer was solid and the benefits were tremendous including the training in Cupertino... I am so sorry to have to pass up that offer, but the offer from Morris was too perfect for me. I went and met my future co-workers and I will be a member of a programming team. What I liked most about it is that Morris has a long and award winning history with online publishing and my bosses are well respected nationwide for their involvement with media convergence (online stuff). It will give me a chance to be a member of a great team that has a solid future. They have been building and hosting (they have their own data center) applications for newspapers since the mid nineties and they seem to want to grow that division which will give me a long run scenario and not a turn and burn give me your code setup. They host and serve more than 40 million page views per month from a data center in the building. Let's just say that I was thoroughly impressed with Morris Digital Works, it's a good opportunity and I am excited to be working with them.

Now.. how could I possibly want to go to Augusta vs Charleston or McClellanville? I have lived in Charleston for 15 years.. arriving here via Savannah via Chapin SC.. and yes.. I love it. I spent most of my time downtown and I have actually lived in about seven eight different homes downtown (some nice.. some not so nice), two years on Folly Beach (beachfront one of them), a year in the Old Village in Mt Pleasant and now six here. I particularly love McClellanville.. the people, the land, the lifestyle, the overall ambiance. We may try to keep our home provided that we can rent it, but as it stands now.. we are going to put it on the market because I also happen to be a real estate agent in order to have access to the mls data for websites. This will hopefully be the first and last house I ever list and a prerequisite to buying it will be that you have to absolutely love it which won't be hard.

The Bamboo House

10450 Old Georgetown Rd - McClellanville, SC 29458

So here it is.. the pros and cons of our house depending on how you see it. I'll get a gallery of images with maps and specs up soon.

The Town

the pros -
1)No close neighbors - surrounded by the National Forest - called Waterhorn Wildlife Management Area five boat landings all within several miles both the intracoastal the santee river and the black water swamps surrounding the area. They are pristine.. I kayak.
2)Very cool in the Summer - when you turn off of Hwy 17 onto 45 and begin to enter the "swamp" as they say... the temp immediately drops 5 to 10 degrees. The house is surrounded by a very established patch (acre) of bamboo which rises 45 to 50 feet in the air. This keeps it cool around the house and we theorize that it's absolutely great protection against a hurricane as the prevailing winds will be shielded by the bamboo laying into the house.
3)The neighbors and people of McClellanville are very friendly (although they will run off out of town-ers that they don't like) and very often I have the opportunity to trade bamboo for fresh seafood.
4)The Beaches on the islands just up the creek (although I probably shouldn't mention it because next thing you know.. all the idiots with new boats living in Mt Pleasant will start putting their boats in up here) and running out to the "beach" which is some pristine land and delta with the Cape Romain Island Lighthouse and the Santee Rivers Delta.
5) Charleston County has purchased 600 acres in McClellanville for a future county park.
6) The nature conservancy owns a large tract near our house and actively pursues property all around the area.
7) Ted Turner and some other rich folks have property all along the Santee rivers with an expressed interest in preserving the area.
8) The flooding of the delta that drove settlers from the area is no longer because of the diversion canals and Santee Cooper Dams on Lake Moultrie and Marion.
9) The fishing and hunting is excellent and varied.

the cons -
1) Location. there is no bank or supermarket nearby although the four restaurants, pharmacy and hardware store seems to have everything we need. The drive into Mt Pleasant is exactly 35 minutes (super walmart and all that crap) . The drive to Daniel Island is 35 minutes using back roads. The drive to Georgetown is 35 minutes. The drive to downtown Charleston can be up to an hour depending on traffic.. although the DOT is planning on extending the six lane setup entirely through Mt Pleasant almost to the awendaw side to accommodate the incoming Carolina Park (a uber big pre planned community.. they say it will have more commercial space than the towne center near the Isle of Palms connector)
2) Mosquitoes - nuff said.. but while some people say they're bad here.. I know for a fact that they are just as bad near the Marsh in Mt Pleasant.. and the county mosquito truck runs down our road about once a month during the summer.
3) The schools are not very good here, but this house doesn't have enough room for kids anyway and there is a private school in town.

The House:

(built in 1996, 1000sq/ft, 1 acre)
the pros
1) It has nine 6x4 Anderson Windows so that you almost feel like you're outdoors.
2) It has an 18' Barrel Vaulted Ceiling
3) Baldwin brass hardware throughout... on solid wood doors.
4) Brazilian Cherry Hardwood floors throughout with tile in the bath and foyer.
5) Solid Construction - Bill Youngman built it.. ask around he's known for being good. He built the Haiku House in Awendaw which won a bunch of architectural and building awards.
6) It is super energy efficient with Geo-thermal heating and cooling and special insulation. It actually qualifies for a tax discount. Not to mention that with the ceiling heights it stays cool in the summer. The Geo thermal runs on a closed cell that comes from a second well.
7)If you're into that equity thing... then you'll be glad to know that there are four acre lots being sold a mile down the road for $350,000 at the Oaks Preserve on Old Georgetown Road
8)the road itself is pre-revolutionary.. George Washington traveled it to get to Hampton Plantation, which is now a state park. Down the road a bit is St James Santee Parish (also referred to as the Old Brick Church - whiskypalian) built in 1758 and was a founding Parish for the Charleston. Both are national historic landmarks so they're is an expressed interest in preserving the road and area. You occassionally get guys carrying metal detectors walking the road and on or around easter sunday every year a bunch of cars go by to have a service there... but that's some of the few cars that pass by.
9)the landscaping is awesome... confederate jasmine, a ton of roses everywhere, daylilies, about six or seven dogwoods, and grand old magnolia, a fully mature Japanese maple, gardenias (one of the largest you've ever seen), honeysuckle vines, irises, blackberries, old oaks, gums, a couple white pines, about seven bald cypress trees, a cedar tree...
10)we have a fire pit in the yard where we roast oysters and clams.
11) the driveway is made of old brick and laid on sand for drainage.
12) the 3 car garage stays cool in the summer.
13) the geothermal unit pumps water into the pond so it never goes low in the summer or winter.
14) the house has a ton of built in storage with shelving.
15) we'll leave the washer, dryer and refrigerator.
16) extremely high speed internet via tds telecom dsl.. I get 3MB second download and 1MB/sec upload speeds because there is a fibre optic line on the end of the road and your not fighting much traffic on it.
17) Satelite TV - we'll make arrangements with Direct Tv so that you don't have to re-install.
18) the towel racks in the bath sit over vents so that they are cool in the summer and hot in the winter.
19) the layout of the house is perfectly east/west so that it has abundant sunlight in the winter and plenty of shade in the summer.
20) five ceiling fans
21) recessed lighting
22) custom built wooden spiral staircase

the cons
1) It only has one bedroom and one bath (a really nice one with a urinal and a picture frame window overlooking the pond.)
2) yardwork with abundant wisteria and bamboo which spreads like wildfire. if you don't keep up with it...
3) if you're the impress your neighbor type.. then the homes that border the entrance to the road aren't really of your most impressive.. but they are nice people none the less.
4) The well water has a bit of iron in it. I put a fresh water heater and water filtration system on the house a year ago... but when the salt runs low or out.. it will stain and we still drink bottled water (even though our plumber neighbor insist that they tested the water here against a dasani bottled water and it came out cleaner). The pump is a submersible and the water samples have tested excellent.
5) It's on the end of the line for power outages so a good storm will knock it out everytime... which also resets the oven and it doesn't want to restart.
6) With a serious rain and some traffic on the road it can become messy but never unpassable.. a honda civic has no problems with it.
7) The roof has begun to rust and needs a coat of ospho so that doesn't spread.
8) I almost forgot... Mosquitoes are terrible in the dead of summer after a rain and at dusk.

The bonuses:
1) Wild animals.. this area has one of the largest and most diverse bird populations on the east coast. Woodpeckers, fox, deer, tons of wild turkeys, snakes (some poisonous) , a black bear (that i've seen twice), some pigs, rabbits, an owl that sits on the window, a red tailed hawk that sits in the cedar tree and eats voles from the yard, a cardinal that taps the window, and a set of otters that find their way to the pond every so often.
2) I have soil test from Clemson and the soil is excellent for a garden. I have a compost pile that is six years old with worms which will help out with the gardening.
3) I have an established yard of coastal bermuda that seems to expand every year.

Who would be ideal for this house?
I am an artist and I have used the basement as a studio and often paint outside in the driveway. I imagine that someone who really admires nature or needs the quiet to study, recuperate, write books, or pursue any other artistic endeavor would find it ideal.
Maybe a second home as a weekend retreat... A hunting cabin... A fishing camp?

***this image is a quicktime VR - you can click your mouse and move it around

***this map is embedded so you may take a look around

Maintenance Mode

david — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:57:04 +0000

Excuse the mess, I'm working on the site design today. It's been a really long week with a bunch of cool things going on that I'll let you in on later. We had breakfast this morning at the diner and then later this afternoon it's the McClellanville, Lowcountry Shrimp Festival and Blessing of the Fleet! Last night I redesigned this site and since we caught up on yard work and part of the afternoon is going to be outside, I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend tinkering with the design of this site.. so, excuse the mess and if you want to see every article post and page of this website just do this search.

Here's what i'm thinking with the design.
The old one is too boring.. I just took a look at Ma.tt's and it's nice to switch em up..especially for spring. Old one was to Maze-ish, so this one i want all the links and nav within a 400 x 50 bar area with drop downs to conserve space. I had an overly customized design beforehand.. relying on too much hard coding in the php to be flexible and dynamic with all of the pages.. and I also have media formatted up to 800px wide and very little formatting within the post. I also had no images on the front page.. and while I liked the minimalist approach.. like most folks, I don't spend much time on a site and I like to be able to quickly navigate post with thumbnails.. I really like the layout of the nytimes because it is easy to navigate quickly....so that's what i'm going for. I also want a visual thumbnail on every element that links to that article or page...I don't want to have to manually create all of these thumbs for every article and to do this, I'm using the custom fields in wp. I've started by stripping down a version of Brian Gardner's Revolution design. I like it.. it's clean and has a good structure to work with. I still liked the navigation features of the old design showing only headlines as the results to searches and archives...adding archive info in breadcrumbs is a bonus, but I like the navigation structure of the old archives, so i rewrote the php for about ten of the fifteen template files and added some additional files and removed the right sidebar elements to handle some of the larger images, video and flash. This will give me an area to showcase flash designs without having to edit the source code to switch the files out every so often. I brought the whole thing out to 1020px wide..so I didn't have to edit those files to fit and the average screen resolutions are going up quickly with my analytics showing an average size of higher than 1040px nowadays. (**they're also getting smaller with mobile.. so i added another css for mobile that will be detected by a browser sniffer which has a clean iphone/ipod touch display) in fact.. i got all of these browser agents covered: Elaine/3.0, iPhone, Palm, EudoraWeb, Blazer, AvantGo, Windows CE, Cellphone, Small, MMEF20, Danger, hiptop, Proxinet, ProxiNet, Newt, PalmOS, NetFront, SHARP-TQ-GX10, SonyEricsson, SymbianOS, UP.Browser, UP.Link, TS21i-10, MOT-V, portalmmm, DoCoMo, Opera Mini, Palm, Handspring, Nokia, Kyocera, Samsung, Motorola, Mot, Smartphone, Blackberry, WAP, SonyEricsson, PlayStation Portable, LG, MMP,OPWV, Symbian, EPOC...

And this also gives a good chance to do some mobile editing of the site, which will be good sometimes. I'm used to surfing sites on the iphone, but it can be a pain when the site is not formatted for mobile.
It only makes sense to have a design that is appropriate for each screen size. I want to some functionality to the browser css that may work with the all screen resolutions since some of you may do our surfing on the wall and not the laptop. With that in mind, as far as video is concerned.. I debated Brightcove and Vimeo for some time as i don't want to serve up the video entirely from my server. Both have good HD capabilities, but brightcove is much easier to manage a lineup and syndicate players. Brightcove seems to have better javascript and actionscript api's for using they're setup and vimeo won't let you embed HD..to give the player expanded functionality in presenting materials. I'm not to hip on having to jump the player to full screen in order to view a larger version of the video and in this case, I can use the full screen button to format the video into the exact area..920px... of the featured part of the site without sacrificing any additional area to navigate videos.
Of the overall redesign.. I think the strong points are the javascript tabs on the front page, the thumbnail navigation and condensing the navigation to a smaller navbar.

Now... i've got this one error in a bit of javascript in the header... once that one error is fixed it's completely w3c valid for the xhtml and css. I'll be adding some additional pages so that you don't have to sort through my other site to get information on what I do.... and I'll be finishing up this article along with the design.

Social Programming

david — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:11:05 +0000

While the supposed grand ole days of helpful and responsive use net forums went by before i even opened a script on a computer.. what's evolved of so called social networking is seemingly working it's way with dynamic apps into programming circles which makes sense considering it really began there in the first place. Being entirely self taught, I've learned quickly that the best way to do things is to stand on the shoulders of giants and keep up with the user groups of the things that i want to learn. This concept of sharing documentation and information is ever so important to the open source communities and it has crossed over into an important step in venture capital funding. Say that google wants to make product 'A' (we'll say a mobile phone map with gps). In order for them to garner users and uses of this new technology, they will need a community of developers to broaden the spectrum of what this particular gps technology will be able to do when applied in day to day terms, as related to specific business need, and on a variety of handsets and operating systems. This concept is important in understanding why google might give away 10 million and why Apple put up 100 million in venture capital for development on the Iphone.

Apple, for instance has it figured out.. they make great products for the developers too. I mean you can't compare anything to the xcode iphone sdk for the cool factor, ease of use, and robustness.
What's evolving of this is that companies are able to build a developer base the old fashion way.. person to person instead of just hiring the programming talent. And this person to person aspect operates in a much more "show me the cool stuff first" sort of way than the old school "how much for ye developers toolkit" approach.

Here's a project that pretty popular project called GitHub (based on the open source Git ) ..that is a unique version control system that allows developers to use social networking tools..

and... here's a Git Textmate bundle.

I think i had a point to that but i'm not sure what it was.. oh..it's something akin to the article that i read this morning about the tea leave market in India.. and the debate over it going digital so that you can broker tea trades from anywhere. Brokers are afraid they're going to get cut out and it'll make the market unsteady.. sound familiar. It's not unlike open source programming in the sense that the information is readily available and the social aspect of getting developers and programmers involved in a certain technology is no different than moving market information to a public arena.. sure there'll be a ton of hacks/bozos like when our stock markets got inundated with day traders from the advent of desktop trading software, but that will tail off in a short time and in the end you will be provided with a much more stable and varied market.. supposedly but the last line of the article sticks with me. Still, Mr. Saraf, who began trading tea in the 1950s, said he could not stand in the way of progress. “The new generation feels the computer is better,” he said. ... and this reminds me that you cannot reinvent the wheel just add tires to it and in my case, I can deploy complex social networking sites like Lovd by Less, that'll end up sitting around with no users unless i call up all (4 or 5) of my friends to sign up and test it.

And for an idea at what's possible with this (besides my five user social networking site) and how far the digital domain has crossed...take a look at this site providing micro funding for the poor with social networking tools. Kiva.

Siddhartha

david — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:58:03 +0000

I took the afternoon off this afternoon as i was a bit worn out hunching over a bunch of sites, code, and monitors today. I put a chair outside to enjoy the sun and get rid of some of my programmer's tan... and I managed to read Hermann Hesse' novel - Siddhartha in one sitting. (150 pages) I give it a 9/10.. and while i'm no literary expert I certainly and immediately identified with Siddhartha, the main character and I would recommend that you seriously consider it for your reading repertoire. Or here is the whole thing via the Gutenburg Project if you felt like printing it or reading it in the glow of lcd ..
"Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish."

Benchmarking Beta

david — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:44:29 +0000

(this site over the last 30 days)
Google Analytics released a beta version of something they call benchmarking... it's good. I hear all the time.. my site got x number of hits, and i say to myself.."what kind of hits" because what most people don't understand is that a lot of internet traffic is automated (machines) and that only a unique visit or return visit with any substantial amount of time .. over a couple minutes, is really a valuable visitor... and everything else, i would consider spam. What benchmarking allows you to see with benchmarking is how your site stacks up traffic wise to similar sites. I imagine that level headed google style data is at play here.. it would only do them an injustice if the data was impartial in any way. Analytics is also now providing a way for you to compare timelines on a single graph.. which as they put it "may put you in a good position to ask for a raise"...but if you really want to know what's going on with your servers... get a host with a license for urchin that will give you a much more detailed analysis.

And if you want a grand piano that plays itself on real parts with Linux built in....

and this is a bit from AdTech:08 san fran... on what corporate companies need to know about online advertising... pulled from vallywag's "facebook needs to pack the crack pipe for madison avenue"

Postgres Python update..

david — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:32:59 +0000

Python 2.5.2, Postgres 8.3.1, and Django .96

i've been playing around again with python today... i went ahead and upgraded my postgresql and python on my machine... nothing too tough, although i spent an hour going in loops until i realize that the some of the python scripts were not in usr/local/bin as i always say.. if i'd only read the actual install.txt file before i started hacking away..

i also ran into a problem with psycopg.. tring tring suggested using macports for ver2.. as configuration can be tricky modifying the config for psycopg(PostgreSQL database adapter)
psycopg is different from the other database adapter because it was designed
for heavily multi-threaded applications that create and destroy lots of
cursors and make a conspicuous number of concurrent INSERTs or UPDATEs.
Every open Python connection keeps a pool of real (UNIX or TCP/IP) connections
to the database. Every time a new cursor is created, a new connection does not
need to be opened; instead one of the unused connections from the pool is
used. That makes psycopg very fast in typical client-server applications that
create a servicing thread every time a client request arrives. (**this has something to do with news organizations using ellington) or Django/Python setup with postgres.
Common problems while building psycopg:
1/ if your compiler does not find some postgres headers try copying all the
headers from the postgres _source_ distribution to a single place. Also,
if building postgresql from source, make sure to install all headers by
the "make install-all-headers" target.
2/ if you have the same problem with mx.DateTime, try using the source
directory again; the install script does not copy all the headers, same
way as postgres install procedure does.
3/ under MacOS X you may need to run the runlib program on the posgres
installed libraries before trying to compile psycopg. Also, if you
get compilation errors there is a change your python was not compiled
correctly and psycopg is grabbing the wrong compile-time options from
python's Makefile. try setting the OPT and LDFLAG environment variables
to something usefull...
i can confirm that this works.

Turbo Tax

david — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:36:47 +0000

I think i can endorse it...i'm certainly not an accountant or tax expert, but i like knowing exactly how it works vs. paying someone so i don't have to think about it. i have very little expenses and most of my work is freelance (services) with only some depreciation on computers and cameras.. i drive a good deal and it seems that turbo tax is picking up on all of these things and often double checking. I'm pretty pleased that it sync-ed up with quickbooks and was easy to use... now if i could just find a way to spend less time in quickbooks and more time with design and code... that might help. It seems business is 40% business stuff work (invoicing, emails, meetings, collecting, consulting, phone, paying bills, taxes, and other fluff) and 60% is actual work or services that you provide on a day to day basis.

= $0 ..or at least it feels like it.. now if only that government cash incentive was actually enough for me to catch up on my american express account... because right now my 30 year mortgage looks like a life sentence from Lehman Brothers bank. I'm of a school of thought much closer to the the fellow I met yesterday.. Mr Magwood, he called a couple days ago came out yesterday to cut bamboo because (the magwoods are old line fisherman around these parts and could swing a machete like no other seventy year old i've met. ) they've found that bamboo works as a great for clam and oyster beds.. it holds up in the water much longer than other wood like pine. I gladly trade it for the overall maintenance of the bamboo.. which i might add is quite a bit with near an acre of it... and I always get oysters, clam, fish and crab to boot.. when mentioning i'd been here six years he says "i bought a house back when on sullivans island for $50,ooo and kept it up all my life. i didn't want to owe anyone anything so i worked it off over the years and it gave me just enough to retire".
**tech side note: Textmate works great for finding payments from downloadable csv statements.

Facebook

david — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:24:49 +0000

gotta love it.. i was dragging this morning.. opened my email at 6:30am and sure enough there was my high school prom picture (thats me in on the far left with the strange expression) staring me in the face some 15 years later. (how about this one - with some sort of blasé 80's attitiude) Nostalgic.. yes and cool for the fact that it's so easy to network with anyone nowadays. I get emails from the most random people just google-'ing' my name and for the most part my brother always accuses me over researching into prospective clients 'files'. But I think it's good to keep everything in the open as it makes everyone accountable for who they really are and have been... it's always the transient types that sketch me out, or the LLC that has was just created by a guy who's had twenty of them in various states. I like being able to find out about a persons past and i think most people will agree.. just remember that if you put it online.. it may go down in your "permanent record" as i like to tell people. I have a great respect for a master craftsman of any trade and it really shows when someone has been focused and successful with only one thing for years. That's all i need to know about a person. And what is networking anyway? I got a note under my wiper blade on my windshield after work one afternoon that said something to the tune of "former scad alunmi.. call me we'll network" .. what is that? is that like being business friends or something.. network. I don't want business to ever dictate who my friends are and i say to myself...self "my friends are just progressive.. ahead of the curve, it's just a matter of time before fishing, gardening, art, bicycles, woodworking, organic farming and teaching really will stand a chance of being as profitable as legal, health care, insurance, hedge funds, ceo, lobbyist, stock option having, oil money, banks, developers, agencies, offshore manufacturers, investment groups, and box franchisees suck us dry"... then i wake up and smell the coffee...and read my emails.. and remember that 'social networking' site as folks like to call facebook is no different than the "who you know, not what you know" adage of days past.. I think i'm going to dig through my old photos and move them all online just for fun... so i'll go ahead and take the glory on my teenage looks with this one before i put up everyone elses pictures... and for those of you who actually need to get some work done online... try this link

REST and FBML (facebook markup language) has me a bit taken aback .. i'll try to make the time.

and for those of you skeptics about facebook... here's a quote from yesterday's Business Week.

These edges are fertile with innovation because participation requires such a small investment in time and money. Last fall, psychologist B. J. Fogg taught a class at Stanford University in which he assigned students to develop Facebook applications. During the 10 weeks of the class, 73 students developed applications such as Kiss Me, Oregon Trail, and Secret Admirer, that have since resulted in 25 million installs and, by the end of the class, were attracting about 1 million daily, active users. These applications have generated more than $500,000 in ad revenue since September. At least three companies were formed by students in the class.

Wordpress 2.5

david — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:44:03 +0000

The latest stable release of WordPress (Version 2.5) is now available. WordPress.com hosts 2.7 million WordPress blogs...and in honor of that i put up my own little space on wordpress. Let's put wordpress into perspective for those of you who don't understand cms (content managment systems), databases, blogs etc... it's like this.. a database is like an excel spreadsheet (oracle, berkleydb, mysql).. and an easy way to make content dynamic on a page is to pull the database content into the webpage with a variety of scripting languages (wp uses php) so that no content or data is actually coded into the application but rather is pulled from the database. This makes it easy to update using an interface for text images, video and data etc.. here's the six toothless kid explaining it... and my overview since i've run the beta for several months now.... faster, cleaner, dashboard widgets like stats, image/gallery manager with api's, almost the same table layout, more simple/full screen wysiwyg editor, multi file uploader with progress bar, secure cookies, and faster databases.

and ma.tt and the crew at automattic put up a modification of wpmu called buddypress..I installed it.. and i'll have to let it run for a while online before i can give you the pros and cons but it is certainly looking good.

Jeff Sells Charleston

david — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:19:44 +0000

To wrap up the week before Ginny and I have to run down to Savannah for a wedding I'll drop another case study on you. Jeff Dail is a great guy with a house full of young'ns.. even though he is originally from North Carolina (we won't hold that against him) Jeff has been selling real estate for the last umpteen years on the side while working in neo-natal departments at hospitals. (might be why he has a house full) I had done some home tours for him a couple years ago. He primarily helps his neighbors out in Hamlin Plantation in Mt Pleasant by giving them 4% brokerage rates to list their homes and he came to me recently after I had put up a multi-user site for another brokerage.

Jeff is not unlike 90% or realtors out there.. he has had several websites mostly through companies like advanced access where he paid monthly fees in the range of $30-$250 a month for sites and virtual tours and has gotten little results. I told him the same thing that I tell every client "there is no Make me money button" and you get out of it what you put into it... fancy searches, sophisticated seo results, etc... the ctar framed search works as good as any for actually generating leads and it easy to use with only and $10/month fee from ctar. People like to remain anonymous online and you're better off generating leads at your kids soccer games than online...besides the results come from google and I already take his brokerages listing straight to google with xml files. I set him up on our grid server at media temple.. ran the domain to google apps to give him email accounts on his domain, set up thunderbird on his computers, setup his contact list (basicly like spring cleaning for email) and stopped all of his real estate spam. (priceless) I took a bunch of my old images from home tours and some new graphics and mixed it with the existing look and feel of trident real estate and gave him some print materials to work with using templates from Illustrator for brochures and letterhead. I created a way to pull his images and listings via php and another database i have on the server and way for him to create his own pages as virtual tours for his listings using wordpress and some flash galleries... the kicker to all of that stuff is that it only took me fifteen hours and i'm saving him time and money to spend with his rugrats.

the cost: $600
the timeline : 3 days
the result: http://jeffsellscharleston.com

Fishing Lures

david — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:14:06 +0000

this is a recent conversation with my neighbor dan wheeler.

(me) "hey dirty, why are those chicken bones hanging on your fishing lures?" (dan) "those aren't chicken bones... they're alligator snapping turtle bones... you missed one hell of a stew" (me) "why are they hanging on your fishing lures?" (dan) "snapping turtle bones are what folks like howling wolf had around his neck"
next thing i know i'm knee deep in the history of the fishing lure.

Easter Moodle

david — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:33:14 +0000

easter humor...
...and today i put up a moodle site on a server for testing and customizing... and i've decided to try my hand at writing a flash based graphing plugin as my good deed for easter..
Moodle is a free software e-learning platform (also known as a Course Management System (CMS), or Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)). Moodle is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. Its open source license and modular design means that people can develop additional functionality.

Personally, i like to see open source used in education.. especially since companies like blackboard pocket millions of dollars of taxpayer monies for what amounts to quite amateurish applications.. here's a comparison of Moodle vs. Blackboard

but i will tell you this.. novell groupwise is an awesome application..

but some of the other applications that you see in schools are questionable at best.. and i don't see how a school district could possibly trust these web enabled sql driven apps for the security of school records.

Fonts

david — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:29:12 +0000

on a recent project.. i ran into some font troubles and learned some stuff along the way.. i've heard it again and again from various computer users... and on this particular project ...when i was handed the eps files to convert to adobe flash files... there was a note that said oh.. by the way my system fonts are messed up... so i didn't get copies of the font.. (side note: i prefer Adobe InDesign Files vs Quark or EPS files) and i used the font documented... well well.. the agency says it's not just right. and they were right as the font i had installed as a bodega sans was actually an italian knockoff of the original that you can see here. Well this area of web design is often misunderstood and can easily bog down a work flow of a traditional print advertising agency moving to digital.. if you don't understand fonts in websites.. here's a quick primer just on digital fonts as the type face and font business is another beast all together where each font is copywrite to it's founder and the foundry which produces it.
Digital fonts store the image of each character either as a bitmap in a bitmap font, or by mathematical description of lines and curves in an outline font, also called a vector font. In terms of how your website type looks you are dealing with several ways of displaying it. System fonts represent 90% of the fonts you see in websites and are given simple css tags to define the particular system font... what sucks about them is that while you may have a particular font, another use may not and they will default to their prefered font in the browser window.. this can be uncool if the font moves you text alignment and or sizes..

bitmaps
* Portable Compiled Font (PCF)
* Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF)
* Server Normal Format (SNF)
* DECWindows Font (DWF)
* Sun X11/NeWS format (BF)
* Microsoft Windows bitmapped font (FON)
* Amiga Font, ColorFont, AnimFont
* ByteMap Font (BMF)
Postscript fonts - Adobe
True Type Fonts - Apple
Open Type Fonts - Microsoft
Font Foundry
* American Type Founders (Kingsley/ATF)
* Ascender Corporation
* Berthold
* Elsner+Flake
* Emigre
* Font Bureau
* FontFont, a division of FontShop International
* Hoefler & Frere-Jones (H&FJ)
* House Industries
* Paratype
* T26
* URW++ (URW)

In Flash websites the fonts can be embedded as vector so that you may vary the kind of font you are displaying

so this is going to end up being a very long post to summarize digital fonts so take an intermission to draw or grab some free fonts from these guys

really nice free fonts from Eduardo Recife

from and Tom Murphy who is another whole article in himself.. pls visit Tom Murphy 7's Invincible Web Page and i was particularly amused by his Illustrated Notes from Computer Science

Advertising and the Idiot Box

david — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:01:28 +0000

let's face it.. that computer screen you watching as you read this post and it's parent network of millions of servers are full of junk and in many ways not to different than our old idiot tube. It's all in how you use it that makes it different... and the primary difference is dynamic data. You can ask you computer questions in the form of "search" and this is why we're seeing the shift. We aren't only being entertained by our computers, they've become a invaluable communications tool for information and business, but it seems that the focus on revenue online has been entirely through advertising in one form or another. The billions spent by banks, hospitals, manufacturers and distributors on internet enabled software and applications goes mostly unpublished excepting in the trade magazines. The shift to new media for advertising dollars is getting reported everyday and i figured i'd share these tidbits with you.

from silicon valley insider... see the spreadsheet data... and i believe that Newscorps MySpace will lose users and push them below Google for 2008... and this is coming from "no" valley insider or Google bull fanboy.. just the average computer user who knows that orkut or facebook are much better and less spammy than MySpace, and that Google's search is still the fastest way to get where i think i want to go online.
And while you may already know that Clear Channel likely owns most of your local radio stations..If you're in South or North Carolina, you may want to note that the Mclatchy Corp owns most of our newspapers.. The State - Columbia, The Sun News - Myrtle Beach, The Herald - Rock Hill, The Beaufort Gazette, The Island Packet - Blufton Hilton Head , The Charlotte Observer, The News and Observer - Raleigh...

and on another note.. last week tivo announced that they would be adding a internet video to it's content lineup.. no computer or equipment needed.. just the the broadband connection, the tivo box and your television... and with the advent of digital broadcasting and the federally mandated switch.. you can bet that your internet content is going to move to your tv screen without the addition of a slingbox, apple tv, or other specialized rig... Ginny and i saw a commercial recently from some pharma company on our Direct Tv Satellite.. and sure enought.. the click now button that appeared during the commercial took us to an interactive direct tv page.. it looked like crap but it had more info on the product.. and if this train stays on the track .. i should be very busy in the coming years hosting, creating and linking digital content to the traditional advertising streams, but i'd rather be playing super smash brothers... which seems so much more indicative of the idiot box i know. :)

Harbourtowne - 30th Anniversary

david — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:05:48 +0000

Fudgy Brabham, the broker in Charge of Harbourtowne and Trident Real Estate is celebrating thirty years this year. Fudgy and I have mulled over the impact of the internet to real estate in the last three years. I met Fudgy through my father four years back when I was getting my license from CTAR in order to download data about real estate for other websites and subsequently have had my license with him since. He is a 'larger' than life man.. with great ideas about politics, cooking, people, and novels. I began doing home tours for real estate several years back with the spinning pictures and all :)... video, maps and all that good stuff. I burned out doing it fairly quickly but since then.. i've had some solid opinions about marketing properties online. It's simple.. get your listing to look as good as possible online and get it everywhere with your name on it and then point all of your other marketing collateral there too. So we (kris and i) began syndicating real estate listing data for brokerages using a bit of rb, php, sql, and google base... we'll, recently Fudgy and I went over the common misconceptions and problems that agents have with online marketing and I decided to see if I couldn't tackle those for his agency.

1) email.. how do i manage 100+ email accounts (easy dependable and inexpensively)
2) website.. how do i manage a website (easy dependable and inexpensively) without learning to use software.. how do i add/edit pages what do i do with my current hosting and domains?
3) some agents want to use their own websites and listing pages.. do they work? who should do them? single property websites? virtual tours? email blast?

and voila... case study #2 in two weeks.

the answers
1) email.. for any size company... unless you have your own IT guys to troubleshoot and admin email accounts on your own properly configured servers with backup recovery .. don't be dependent on some third party web hosting company who is likely dependent on another party.. ie the hosting company who admins their servers to handle your email accounts.. and while godaddy and other hosting domain companies are fine as an email host, your ISP (internet service provider) is also fine (although i find comcast, time warner and the like spammy... and what do you do when you want to switch service providers.. give up your email?) so here's what i find works well.. I move all the dns records to google apps for domains. This solves all of those problems... it's mobile, plays well with crackberries, it's spam resistant and it's easy, cheap, and dependable... and now they've added backup recovery from postini for the larger (legal, medical, .edu) outfits..

2)Fudgy had been using microsoft frontpage and his home brewed copy and paste html skills to edit the roster and listings online. He told me that quite frankly he wanted to spend less time doing this.. so what i did is make it so that he can import or export excel spreadsheets for his roster pages and he can copy and paste listings from ctar onto his listing pages. With Wordpress controlling/editing/adding images and all that jazz isn't in code.. it's copy and paste.. and expanding or adding pages and features to the site doesn't require a web development company.. just a couple minutes of his time.

3)agent website stuff... there are a bunch of pre-fab ways to market online.. but let's face it.. every brokerage and agent wants them leading back to their domain, url, name and logo and sending clients to www.thissite.com/somepage/someotherpage/ect.com isn't a good practice, even though sometimes these places can work for you like google base, oodle, craigslist and vflyer... they will generate spam to your email and you should want those places generating traffic for your site and not vice versa..

so here is what i did (don't try this at home unless you add all of the proper precautions).. i put in a multi user wordpress install on a grid server at media temple.. i customized the back and front end, removed the bulky features, removed the wp-signup.php for security and spam reasons, added a bunch of security measures and only allowed users will emails from @hbrtwn.com, put a single sign on service to the google apps, gave every agent their own websites to control http://name.hbrtwn.com and added enough functionality so that listings can be copied and pasted into pages from ctar, galleries of images can be uploaded and put onto and page... and began a training page to teach all of these folks to use the site.

**the best part about a multi user site instead of individual sites is that everyone who works with their webpages will actually benefit everyone else in the group search engine-wise..

and ps... i took all of the images excepting one http://hbrtwn.com (a friend of fudgy's took the shem creek at dusk images)

The Result:
www.hbrtwn.com
Timeline: - exactly one week start to finish.. email addresses were up and down with no lag time or lost email. Every agent gets their own website that they can design with all the bells and whistles and multiple email addresses with less spam.. and Fudgy can spend less time on his computer.
Price: 40hrs x $35/hr ($1400)

Native Orleanian

david — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:52:04 +0000

Jerry Moran is a photographer in New Orleans that i had met while in a gallery there. He takes a lot of images of musicians from in and around norleans. he contacted me after we had left new orleans because he was in need a of new website and i was happy to help as he had given us some great advice about what to see while we were in town.

and viola - case study... and this is pretty typical of my work.

problems
1) a way to design and build a website without any knowledge of programming or code or hosting.
2) a way to showcase his photography and keep up with gallery shows.
3) a way to retail items on his site and control the images including downloadable stock imagery.
4) a way to keep up with all of the content himself in an easy way.
5) a site that is excellent with search engines and works properly and easily.
6) a way to keep it and modify it long term without worrying about me.

solution:
1) jerry emailed me a photo of a pencil sketch of what he wanted as a website. gave me the colors (#e1b500) and fonts (teckton Pro BoldExt). We talked on the phone three times in a week discussing some advice and options and we just published a moment ago.
2) i copied the old website, moved to gs hosting at mediatemple, renamed his dns to point to new server. i added a new directory where i put up the new site and he could preview and learn to use the content management tools.
3) i added a content management suite for images, video, audio, design, content, pages, private urls (to share downloads and proof sheets with clients), and with all of the content from his old site. I added an e-commmerce solution that is highly configurable with images including exporting reports to quickbooks.
4) i customized portions of each content management solution (slideshowpro director, google apps and wordpress) to work with one another peacefully and included the some security measures and only the most effective and useful add-ons.
5) i added sitemaps, submitted to search engines, set up analytics, used friendly code and urls.
6) and since the site is already there and running on his own hosting.. any half-wit of a developer will be able to work with or modify the existing design or code. I keep it up and running for a $200/yr retainer and i only bill out $35/hr for any associated elective work.

The Results:
http://nativeorleanian.com

The Timeline:
2/22/08 - 2/29/08
exactly 1 week from start to finish

The Cost:
$1200 = 30/hrs @ $40/hr or 40/hrs @ $30/hr or 35/hrs @ $35/hr.. (which is actually $12 more).. but either way.. to field the calls handle the request, setup hosting, move domain, go through several edits, explain how to use it, setup email, install databases, install apps, customize.. voila. approx 35hrs. I can do the whole thing in a single sitting (day) if you don't need any help with the design aspects or any additional features or flash design..but it usually takes me 2 weeks to get it all right and the client another month of questions until they'll feel entirely comfortable using the site to it's potential.

nginx

david — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:15:29 +0000

nginx (i'm guessing it's pronounced "engine x") usage on websites worldwide went up 800% from 07 as compared to January 08 according to netcraft.. apache still dominates in hosting, but i'm convinced that microsoft's portion will go down (even though the usage seems to still be trending up)... and lighttpd and nginx usage will increase.. as will google hosted because i must have recieved three different emails yesterday informing me as an admin as a user etc about the new google sites feature for apps.

there might be something to that..
this will get you started
curl -O http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.3.60.tar.gz
tar -xzvf nginx-0.3.60.tar.gz
cd nginx-0.3.60
./configure --sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin --with-http_ssl_module
make
sudo make install
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/sbin/nginx
That will put the executable at /usr/local/sbin/nginx
read on...

Web Design SC

david — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:24:22 +0000

Over the last three years working with the web, designers, and developers (interactive agencies or what ever you want to call yourself....i've made mental notes on some of the best web development and design firms in South Carolina and some of the best practices of those developers or agencies (as far as i can tell) trying to be as impartial as possible and taking into account that it's not just valid code and design on a page that works online publishing work ...what makes me qualified to make such a statement? a firm knowledge of hosting, seo, web standards, search engines, effective sites, flash, mysql, javascript, design, email, etc.. a background in media, the arts, and two years in the pits.. business experience. Considering every company or person may have differing needs. And many companies may underestimate the potential for using the web (for instance a small company may not think that they could put all of their forms online for clients to prepare before the meeting or purchase..and some people and companies may overestimate the importance of the web (for instance a company or person may spend thousands of dollars into building a website that will almost never generate a valuable lead or any good branding image or spend tens of thousands of dollars on internet enabled software or applications that are sketchy at best).. and don't underestimate the value of a full service ad agency to manage all of your marketing assets with one point of contact. What i've found is that quality and price certainly don't reflect one another from agency to agency and typically you find the real talent for programming, hosting, seo, and design working behind the scenes.
(in no particular order so don't email me and tell me that you should be number 1)
1. Demiurgic Design - Charleston
2. OrangeCoat - Greenville
3. Blue Ion - Charleston
4. Metatation - Charleston
5. Brains on Fire - Greenville
6. Scully Group - Asheville
7. Fuel Interactive - Myrtle Beach
8. Web Station - Charlotte
9. Period Three - Columbia
10. Josh Skidmore - Charleston
11. Perrin Hall Brunson - Columbia
12. True Matter - Columbia

1. always own your domains
- you may always move your domain to any host and work with any company at any time.
- there will be strings attached to your web developer or hosting company.
2. consider very economical solution options before employing a developer/consultant
- get a free typepad or wordpress website.
- consider doing it yourself with help from your kids or someone elses
- yahoo small biz hosting, google sites, godaddy shared hosting - site builder.
3. there is no "make money now" button and you will get out of it what efforts are put into it.
- adding more content, making the site valid, and accessable via search engines doesn't happen overnight
- you or your agency will have to devise and implement methods to drive traffic to your website.
4. there is no one size fits all and prefab solutions are not the way to go for 90% of you.
5. make sure that you developer is accessible and accountable to support your website
6. know what your hosting arrangements are and consider getting your own hosting
7. use existing dependable solutions for email. (ie.. google apps) for your domain.
8. fancy is not always better - consider usability and simplicity
9. keep all of digital assets and marketing materials in one place.
10. use dependable content management solutions that can be upgraded

worth a mention
1. sciway.net - almost as much traffic as major newspapers on a good day.. a value for effective online ads.
3. swampfox.ws - one of the most impressive and coordiated marketing and communications websites around.

if you can give me some compelling reasons to change any of this info.. please email me.

Saint John Coltrane

david — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:55:41 +0000

i'll be... ginny got me a really cool shirt since i have expressed on a number of occasions that 'lush life' by john coltrane would be my favorite album of all time if i had one. Anyway.. i opened the mail today and i saw.. 1286 Filmore, San Francisco as the return address.. The Saint John Coltrane Church is really a church.. and they have some interesting swag to boot.. they were featured in Time Magazine as the hippest church in America. I'll give a hallelujah to that.