Photo application…
I was feeling creative in an actionscript3 programming sort of way and I created a photo gallery application in flash that loads images with XML. I must admit as far as design goes, I was inspired by famewhore’s website. I love the simplicity of it!
A couple years ago, I never would have thought I’d ever have the desire to do actionscript coding in my free time at home. It was so frustrating to me as a designer, but I feel I’ve accomplished a lot in the last few years! I hope it makes me a more well-rounded web designer 
Tracking packages with Google!
Did you know you can just copy and paste a tracking number into google (or your google toolbar if you have it) and it will track your package? It’s like magic! It know FedEx, USPS, UPS, DHL.. you name it!
ipod touch!
Josh and I were at an Apple store on Sunday and checking out the ipod touch that I’ve been pining for as well as the macbook air… not so much pining for that one. So we went to a few websites with safari, checked out the mail and music … and it was pretty sweet. Typing on it was easier than I thought. Some people prefer tactile response with real buttons.. but I gotta say the touch screen was pretty impressive. Spur of the moment Josh bought it for me I still need to get a case to protect it. I’m still in that common new-ipod-fear-of-dropping-it stage because it’s so dang slippery! It’s a lot thinner than I thought too, especially for 32GB.
I think the biggest draw back for people that prefer the iphone is that it’s only wifi not like the iphone that can use GSM networks for web access. So I started a list of places that have wifi in my town and there’s quite a few.. every Panera bread has free wifi, a few hotels nearby, almost every coffee shop that’s NOT starbucks or coffee bean/tea leaf has free wifi (Peet’s coffee, Java ‘n Jazz, etc.). Even the golf clubs in town have free wifi. Who knew?!
An iphone was just not for me because I spend way too much time on my iPod and usually kill the battery pretty quickly.. so with all the features on the iPhone that can kill the battery even faster i’d be phone-less quite a bit. iPhones cell phone plans also start at $59.99… which is far far more than I can afford or would like to even spend on a cell phone bill… (I’m at $25/month right now and doing just fine).
Overall I’m very impressed with the iPod touch on day 2 of owning it… Google maps is my favorite application. I’m a little bummed that all the free 3rd party webapps require internet connection. For those that don’t require internet, you will need to “jailbreak” your ipod, which would void the warranty and could have unexpected results… which is too much of a risk for me after all the money that was spent on it!
Cool Firefox Tricks
Wanted to share a few Firefox tricks I use often. Speeds things up in the internet surfing! These are specific to Windows… but just substitute Command (Apple) key for Cntrl and it works for mac too.
Keyboard shortcuts (true in most browsers):
- Spacebar (page down)
- Shift + Spacebar (page up)
- Cntrl + D (bookmark)
- Cntrl + T (new tab)
- Cntrl + K (Search box)
- Cntrl + L (Address bar)
- F5 (Reload page)
- Cntrl + R (Reload page)
- Cntrl + Tab (Move forward thru tabs) - Mac users, use Cntrl not Command
- Cntrl + Shift + Tab (Move backward thru tabs) - Mac users, use Cntrl not Command
Auto complete
I use this one a lot. Instead of typing “www.” in the address bar before an address, just type something like “apple” in the address bar and press Cntrl + Enter. It will automatically add the “www.” and the “.com” to the address.
i want this car… in 2010
I saw the Chevy volt at the LA Auto show last year. What drew me to it was that it was electric AND it looked sporty. But then I started actually reading up on it and it just gets better and better.
“It is primarily an electrically driven vehicle and it has an electric traction motor and it has a large lithium battery pack down the center of the vehicle. So just by simply plugging your car in a standard 110 volt outlet, you can drive 40 miles on pure electricity. No gas at all.”
It does have a small gas engine, but unlike the hybrids out in the market now, the gas engine recharges the battery rather than being used to drive the car.
The idea behind this car is that the average person drives less than 40 miles a day. So the average person would be using this car on electricity rather than being reliant on gasoline (foreign oil!). Going to gas stations so frequently would be a thing of the past, just park your car in the garage and plug it in! Only going on long trips would you need to go to gas stations.
Did I mention it’s pretty??
What spurred all this electric car talk? I recently saw this documentary on TV, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” and thought it was very well done! I learned a lot more about gas alternative vehicles and even the issues with hydrogen vehicles that I’d never even thought of.
Excellent open source code editor for Mac OS X
I found a most excellent code editor for Mac OS X and it’s open source - Smultron! So it’s free - but donations are welcome and it’s very well supported. I’ve used notepad++ for Windows which is great, but never found a good Mac alternative, until now.
Smultron has the basic features like color coding, but for sooo many different syntax definitions than even notepad++ supports. It has many many features I don’t even use, because I’m mostly using it for actionscript, javascript, and tweaking php template files from wordpress. It validates XHTML which is nice, but Dreamweaver already does this as well. Has a nice comment/uncomment command, I use that one a lot. It has a nice highlight current line option, so if the text is wrapping, you can see it highlighting the line below it. The auto complete function is kind of crazy… it never gives me what I’m actually looking for.. so I don’t use it use it much. Instead of having it on by default, you can press option+escape and it will give u the auto complete list. Auto-close tag is another nice feature.
Running Windows with jagged crappy looking fonts?
Windows has a nice feature for font smoothing.. that I was just reminded of while testing webpages in XP via Parallels on my mac. It makes viewing web pages a much more visually pleasing experience.
Example? (this will give u a 220×50 sneak peak at my redesign!)
Before:
After:
To turn on font smoothing, Right click on the desktop, choose “properties” (it’s similar in Vista something like “personalize” instead of “properties”). Go to the “appearance” tab and click the “effects” button.
OSX tip!
I accidentally found that if you apple click an item on the dock, the Finder will open the folder containing that dock item.
Neato!
I can’t wait to upgrade to Leopard… soon… soon…
now playing: Bing Crosby - White Christmas
Great Comparison
* Web 1.0 was about reading, Web 2.0 is about writing
* Web 1.0 was about companies, Web 2.0 is about communities
* Web 1.0 was about client-server, Web 2.0 is about peer to peer
* Web 1.0 was about HTML, Web 2.0 is about XML
* Web 1.0 was about home pages, Web 2.0 is about blogs
* Web 1.0 was about portals, Web 2.0 is about RSS
* Web 1.0 was about taxonomy, Web 2.0 is about tags
* Web 1.0 was about wires, Web 2.0 is about wireless
* Web 1.0 was about owning, Web 2.0 is about sharing
* Web 1.0 was about IPOs, Web 2.0 is about trade sales
* Web 1.0 was about Netscape, Web 2.0 is about Google
* Web 1.0 was about web forms, Web 2.0 is about web applications
* Web 1.0 was about screen scraping, Web 2.0 is about APIs
* Web 1.0 was about dialup, Web 2.0 is about broadband
* Web 1.0 was about hardware costs, Web 2.0 is about bandwidth costs
now playing: Rilo Kiley - The Money Maker
