After hearing about Tungle almost a year ago, I found the concept pretty exciting. Organizing and coordinating is a pain, and there’s no silver bullet for it.
But that doesn’t stop people from trying. Tungle has gone into public beta, as of today.
http://www.tungle.com/ - Best of luck, lads!
Announcement: Amazon EC2 Release: Introducing Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and new public AMIs/Kernels
Elastic IP Addresses are static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing, and now make it easy to host web sites, web services and other online applications in Amazon EC2. Elastic IP addresses are associated with your AWS account, not with your instances, and can be programmatically mapped to any of your instances. This allows you to easily recover from instance and other failures while presenting your users with a static IP address.
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/ann.jspa?annID=295
This is really good news for servware app vendors - it is becoming easier and easier to design an entire infrastructure around Amazon services.
Short answer: Yes.
Recently, I had the displeasure of having to design wireframes for my application. Now, it was a very hard lesson for me to learn several years ago that I just wasn’t a designer, and the notion of even trying to dive into photoshop again made me somewhat sick to my stomach. So rather than getting into layers and gradients, I instead busted out my trusty code editor and mocked up the wireframes as how I envisioned the application being used, to the point where they were no longer wireframes at all, but a mashup of logic, aesthetics and mockups.
I kicked, screamed, dragged my feet, but eventually I did finished them. Dashboard, login, views, listings, I did it all. Actually, it was a much better exercise than I anticipated and something I’ll have to encourage other developers to do.
It’s a good exercise because it helped me think out some features I wanted to do. All of a sudden I’m staring at a blank page going “Well, that won’t work” and it’s incredibly important that I make it do so. If I hadn’t made a mockup, I would not have addressed that fact till I actually started development, or worse - built an architecture around a theory.
Some of these challenges with logic and engineering can easily be thought out. Others will creep up on you. So what if you’re not a designer. Don’t focus on the actual interface itself, focus on the presentation of the data. All the data flow diagrams and specification documents aren’t going to help if you can’t figure out how to present two objects with different metadata in the same table - which was, incidentally, my problem.
After you’ve designed a wireframe or - if you’re a little more bold - a mockup, hand it off to a designer; have them take it to the next level, get all mad scientist on it and give it some better colors than #FF0000 and #EEE. Now they have an even better idea of what kind of interface your user will need.
So in closing, don’t treat spec docs, data flow diagrams or mockups as the be all end all to your application. All of these should be used, complimenting one another; it’ll save you considerable headache in some scenarios where you scratch your head and go:
Uh, I didn’t think of that.
Inspired by: How do I write my UI specs?
A little while ago I signed up for a beta test of http://www.skemma.com/. Skemma is
A tool for defining, using and improving business processes.
Excited, I went through the activation process and got in. Standard interface, standard colors, and no improvement from every other Web 2.0 startup out there. In fact, I think it is worse.
Well. I have to say I haven’t used it for 5 minutes before I started looking for a Delete Account button (Which does not exist, that I’ve found). Harsh, but the truth.
Instant Deadpool for me. Sorry guys, there’s so much to work on. I respect Launch Early. I respect the concept of Beta. But this is atrocious.
Good luck in the future Skemma. I hope I can be proved wrong.
Recently I’ve had to deal with converting user uploaded video files to flv format. Up until today my initial experiments were unsuccessful.
First, I started with the project FFmpeg. In the beginning it looked promising but rapidly fell short. It wasn’t as platform agnostic as I would prefer (getting it to install my Wamp environment was a pain) and there were a couple outright show stoppers.
For instance, I wanted to grab the dimensions and length of a video file. Ordinarily this would be achievable by parsing the return value of a shell_exec, like so.
Unfortunately, it returns null. Huh. Fancy that.
Now, this isn’t to say that FFmpeg isn’t a fantastic library, and the existance of FFmpeg-php is a major bonus in my books, but the barrier to entry is huge on this one.
Next up was Carbon Coder. Let’s ignore for a moment that there’s a $5,000 price tag attached to it. CC had a free trial which I immediately wanted to try out.
Please note that the Carbon Coder Free Trial utilizes a USB security device that must be shipped in addition to the software (i.e., the Free Trial is not a download).
Well, that sucks.
Finally, I discovered the Flix Engine by On2. During Windows development I can use COM objects (easily accessible via PHP), and on Linux I can use PHP methods and objects I haven’t quite delved into yet.
A couple trials were immediately successful. I find myself overjoyed.
If you can swallow the price, I definitely recommend trying this out.
I am going to write a real entry soon, I promise.
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200708/microformats_book_review/
This is a great read; I’ve used Microformats in my applications and I think they are invaluable. The comments are especially useful in getting other people’s opinions.
http://ajaxian.com/archives/yui-compressor-the-latest-minification-tool
Compress those JS files! Have to try this out.
http://ajaxian.com/archives/builtwith-what-tech
Interesting. Seems a little devious to investigate what technologies are being used, but still interesting all the same.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/14/34-more-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/
I would never use one of these tools, but it’s a good resource to have.
Who Owns the Concept if No One Signs the Papers?
Really long link, sorry.
http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/08/13/rte-notes/
YUI looks great for simple rich text editing, haven’t tried it out yet since the YUI release. This gives me a good idea of what to expect.
http://ignitenight.blip.tv/file/199623/
http://gigaom.com/2007/08/06/vc-investments-hitting-new-highs/
http://www.instigatorblog.com/can-you-build-a-startup-ecosystem-outside-the-valley/2007/08/09/
http://www.tandementrepreneurs.com/
http://www.michiknows.com/2007/08/03/a-great-web-developer-is-a-great-application-developer/
http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2007/08/hiring_a_vp_of.html
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/eric_schmidt_defines_web_30.php
http://www.squidoo.com/starup_failures/
http://www.founderblog.com/2007/07/go-fast-but-dont-hurry.html
Floccinaucinihilipilification is the act or habit of estimating or describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by deprecation.
Some words we might use to describe the longest non-technical word in the English language:
Translation: Deadpool.
What contributes to a project/startup dying? Is there a single catastrophic moment when the founders realize that it’s going nowhere, some kind of breaking point? I wonder what the guys labeled as ‘Defunct’ in the list of companies by YCombinator would say. Something like:
You notice the trend here don’t you? Generally when it comes to failed startups, I hear those involved cite all sorts of different answers, all preceded by the same thing… Not enough.
Unfortunately, it generally tends to be true, not a simple matter of the founders’ incompetence. Oft-times you’ll hear critics examine a failure and proudlyloudly shriek the cause like they had insider information. Trouble with the internet; everyone is an expert.
One can have an Einstein equivalent idea and execute it perfectly, still to have it fail and come crashing down upon you (and your wallet… and your bank account. Credit Card. Marriage. Et cetera.).
You can’t force a user to enjoy your business application. They see a need for it, or they don’t. Likewise with Venture Capital. If a VC isn’t interested, that’s the cause of your lack of money, not the lack of VCs themselves.
That’s not a reason to give up so easily.
Let me say again:
That’s not a reason to give up so easily.
We all know the story. When the first dot com bubble exploded upon the markets, hundreds of thousands of companies were born. The internet was new and shiny and we all wanted a piece. But as with all new technologies, we first applied ourselves to solving existing problems. Those succeeded. Then some Venture Capitalists in their infinite wisdom, put unrealistic expectations on new applications that didn’t exactly make sense, solve any problems, were just… there. Those crashed. And burned. Millions were lost, lives were ruined. All around bad mojo.
There are lessons we can learn however. Some companies that went belly up a decade ago were reborn by others, adapted for ten years of change, and a success.
An idea can die, but it can also be reborn. Put a new spin on it. Re-evaluate reviews, criticisms and your gut feeling. Change direction. Change markets. Reinvent your idea from the ground up.
A chat application that went belly up could be the next Google Talk. Or an IM client in a Facebook app. Or used to provide a log for internal corporate discussions.
A couple of my comadres have been hard at work with their new venture called BetaBooth
BetaBooth is a place to collect, analyze, and debate public opinion around the world. Polls are created and answered by a community of citizens.
I highly encourage anyone even remotely interested in public opinion and debate to at least take a gander at one of the coolest Web 2.0 sites around.
I’ve been a fan of 9rules since I heard about its launch, several years ago. Since then, I’ve applied twice (and got rejected twice), joined their community (twice), and seen a flurry of activity in the blogosphere.
Recently, however, I’ve had some frustrations using their site.
I forgot my password…
Last year, I finally signed up to the 9rules community. I’m more of a lurker than anything else, so it took me a while to finally actually sign up. Some stuff went down, and I didn’t end up visiting for a while… Then I returned to 9rules and tried to sign in.
And again. And again.
Just how many passwords do I have? So I finally opted to submit a forgotten password request. But oh ho, what email address did I use? Is it potentially the retired ryanbrooks.net? Of course, it could be another email address I have. So I check my spam filters, wait a while… still nothing. You can see where this is going. See, typically when a system is developed with a forgotten password request, it sets your password to some randomly generated alpha-numeric key, and sends you an email. So what happens the email is no longer active, or for some reason you just don’t get the email at all?
Ideally, it should keep an audit trail of my password requests, and allow me to sign in with my old password (yaknow, in case I remember it) as well as the new one that I could potentially get in my email.
Oh, here’s a thought. Does this mean I can reset the email of Scrivs; any other member of the community? It wouldn’t take much to write a little script to scrape the usernames of 9rules and submit requests for each one. That could definitely throw a wrench in things.
So I decided to go to the top…
Looking around for a contact page, it is immediately viewable in the topmost navigation portion of the site, right next to the search. That’s handy. So I click it.
Want to talk to us? We want to hear from you, however it’s important to contact the right person for the right issue. To make it easy, we made a form for you! Pick the issue you want to contact us about from the drop down menu, fill out your email address and your message, then click submit. So easy…let’s do this…
Now, this is a personal pet peeve of mine. I. Hate. Contact. Forms. Don’t get me wrong, as a developer I can appreciate the need for them to direct inquiries - but as a paranoid web user, I prefer to send email from my client of choice; I like to have a record of the contact in my sent items. So I let out a melodramatic sigh and fill out the form, selecting “Technical issues with the site” from the drop down. I try to be specific about my problem and hit the submit button.
Nothing happens. What the hell! I just did all that for….
Oh, wait.
Thanks for using the contact form. Without you using it we would be left wondering if anyone actually uses this thing, but now we are certain that it is used because of you. You do not understand how special that makes us feel.
I must confess, I’m spoiled by Web 2.0. Where’s the immediately identifiable success message? Yellow fade technique? A different color? Strong font weight? No, this is what I see:
Okay, minor irritation. Ordinarily this wouldn’t concern me, but I just thought I lost my inquiry.
And now, we wait. And wait. An entire weekend passes. I didn’t receive a carbon copy of my message, no auto-response that says “Thank you, your message was received.” Nothing. Now, of course, once again it COULD be my mail server. Doubtful, but it is possible.
Finally, I opt to create a new account…
I’ve given up. I create a new account. Now, here’s the thing I like about 9rules.
The signup process is stupid easy. Pick a username (assuming that it wasn’t already taken. Great, now I need an underscore in my name; I hate underscores.), provide my email and voila.
Whoops! Either you left the username field blank or you’ve chosen a username that is already in use. Should have gotten here sooner! Try another one.
Thanks guys. Thanks a lot.
Except that this time, they have chosen to deviate from their established design pattern. I get redirected to the following page:
Maybe it’s just me, but this isn’t what I expect.
And I’m finally in!
A couple problems.
Straight from their FAQ:
Q: How do I remove friend(s)?
If the friend is in the Top 9, first click the X to remove them as a Top 9 friend. The friend now has a normal friend status. Click on the X to remove the friend from your friend’s list.
What, you mean this X?
Ooooh, no, it must be this one.
Both have the same action. It took me a little bit of time to decipher which did which from the URL, since Firefox is really shifty about choosing when to show me the Alt Text. (Hint: “title” attributes are handy on hyperlinks too!)
Obviously it’s hard to keep your copy up to date with a community that is evolving and growing as fast as 9rules, but come on guys, try just a little bit harder. Please? For me?
And finally, time to start digging for the feeds. This did kinda take me a while (cause yaknow, no search regarding “feeds” turned up anything in their static copy), but I found them! My last complaint about 9rules?
Nothing personal…
My own struggles with using the 9rules site are nothing but minor irritants. While it may sound as if I’m attacking the team, I am doing anything but.
This just reestablishes a well known point…
9rules has done a downright fantastic job as building a huge community for designers, developers and bloggers. But building and maintaining a community is hard and I hold nothing but respect for the 9rules team, as well as the die-hard users that make it what it is.
I look forward to being part of a community that is sure to grow for years to come!
Fanatic programmer, obsessive technophile, serial entrepreneur and Web 2.0 enthusiast. Zed23.com is the personal blog of Ryan Brooks, a Web Application Developer out of Calgary, Alberta.