Deconstructing the Web

Microsoft Street Slide

2010-07-29T17:35:19Z

A better way navigate interactive street level map imagery…

Link: Microsoft Research: Street Slide
PDF: Published Paper

Twitter commits Murder to GitHub (Code Deployment Using Bittorrent)

2010-07-27T20:43:36Z

Murder is a method of using Bittorrent to distribute files to a large amount of servers within a production environment. This allows for scaleable and fast deploys in environments of hundreds to tens of thousands of servers where centralized distribution systems wouldnt otherwise function. A “Murder” is normally used to refer to a flock of crows, which in this case applies to a bunch of servers doing something.

Article: Murder: Fast datacenter code deploys using BitTorrent

Code: http://github.com/lg/murder

An Entertaining Behind-the-Scenes Look at Modern Casual Game Artists

2010-07-02T07:19:32Z

Left to right: Daniel McNeely, Joey Betz, web developer Larry Root,
John Cooney and intern Danny Yaroslavski

The developers here make perfect, self-contained little game experiences that are addicting for a few minutes, but not all-consuming. For now.

A fun article by Megan Brescini of OC Weekly that exposes a few of the individual motivations within Armor Games.

Full Disclosure: It should be known that I am responsible for the upkeep of the “Submit Game” button referred to in this article.

Article: Little Games Are Big Business at Armor Games – OC Weekly by Megan Brescini

Tips For Creating Efficiently Rendering CSS

2010-06-10T16:37:22Z

In summary…

ID selectors are going to be the fastest while complicated qualified descendant selectors and such will be slower.

via Efficiently Rendering CSS | CSS-Tricks.

Smokescreen – A Flash Player Written in JavaScript

2010-06-01T19:37:11Z

Smokescreen is a new open-source project aimed at converting Flash to JavaScript/HTML5 to run where it previously couldn’t and better interoperate with webpages where it previously could.

Demo: Strong Bad Email

Home: Smokescreen

Google Introduces JavaScript Font API and Open Source Font Directory

2010-05-19T22:22:43Z

…Google wants to make it easier for developers to use a wider variety of fonts on the Web that go beyond the standard set of “web-safe” fonts that come pre-installed on most modern computers.

via Making Good Typography on the Web Easier: Google Introduces Font API and Directory.

NPR API Goes Read-Write

2010-05-18T03:50:48Z

Until today, the NPR API has been a one-way firehose of content, pushing hundreds of thousands of stories from NPR and the twelve NPR Music partner stations out to the world. Now the API is read-write, allowing authorized external parties to post stories to the NPR API.

via NPR API Goes Read-Write.

Non-Flash Users Get No Respect

2010-05-11T05:48:21Z

Why is it that users who do not use flash are subjected to the most disrespectful experiences. Here it is again, Disney and their Toy Story website essentially gives the middle finger to those who visit their web site without flash.

Top: with flash, Bottom: without flash

Its been over 13 years since Flash was introduce. To assume that users who visit a web site without flash have somehow forgotten to enable the plug-in is simply naive. Users who visit a site without flash have most likely done so purposefully. They have either chosen to disable flash or are not able to use flash because of some other limitation. Providing absolutely no useful experience to these vistors says a lot out your site, your brand and your respect for your users.

Frond-end Code Standards from Isobar (Molecular)

2010-05-08T19:13:05Z

A great contemporary and pragmatic approach to front-end web development standards…

This document outlines our de-facto code standards. The primary motivation is two- fold: 1 code consistency and 2 best practices. By maintaining consistency in coding styles and conventions, we can ease the burden of legacy code maintenance, and mitigate risk of breakage in the future. By adhering to best practices, we ensure optimized page loading, performance and maintainable code.

via Code Standards Isobar.

CloudApp 15 Second How To (Video)

2010-05-05T21:40:29Z

How to use CloudApp for the Mac in under 15 seconds.

Link: Checkout CloudApp

Need desktop access over the Web? Try some Guacamole

2010-05-05T19:56:11Z

Guacamole is a HTML5 and JavaScript Ajax VNC viewer, which makes use of a VNC-to-XML proxy server written in Java.

via Need desktop access over the Web? Try some Guacamole – desktop linux, Guacamole, html 5, Java – Techworld.

Internet Explorer Falls Below 60% Market Share

2010-05-03T20:14:15Z

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer dropped to a historic market share low in April, according to Net Applications. The company estimated IE’s market share at 59.95% in April, which is about the range that was reached by Internet Explorer 4 more than 11 years ago in early 1999. The big winner was once again Google’s Chrome browser, which maintained a double-digit growth rate and is now more than 2 points ahead of Apple’s Safari browser, which it surpassed four months ago.

via Internet Explorer Falls Below 60% Market Share | ConceivablyTech.

See What Facebook Publicly Publishes About You

2010-04-28T19:38:56Z

This is a fun: http://zesty.ca/facebook/

See What Facebook Publicly Publishes About You – Facebook – Lifehacker.

Use OS X’s Trash Within The Terminal

2010-04-22T16:29:16Z

The following link explains how to update your terminal shell on OS X to create a new “trash” script. This will send files to the same trash can that you will find on you desktop.

Use OS X’s trash in a Finder-like way from Terminal – Mac OS X Hints.

New to Cassandra? Check out “WTF is a SuperColumn”

2010-04-21T18:05:14Z

This post by Arin Sarkissian was very helpful in getting me up to speed on the data structure used in Cassandra. You can checkout his post, download the pdf or view the scribd doc below…

WTF is a Super Column

A wireframe kit for Google Drawings and 5 reasons it beats Omnigraffle and Visio

2010-04-19T22:15:37Z

If your a Google apps fan (like me) you may find this pretty cool…

Check out the shared folder on Google

A wireframe kit for Google Drawings and 5 reasons it beats Omnigraffle and Visio – Morten Just.

Experiences with nginx and instance sizes

2010-04-19T21:46:33Z

This was clearly a signal that m1.small was not performing well at that load for our application. We decided to switch to c1.mediums. We knew that c1.mediums have 5 EC2 compute units where as the m1.smalls have 1 EC2 compute unit. But we wanted to see how far m1.smalls can take us. The switch totally worked! Cpu bursts stopped. Autoscaling stopped kicking in. We can see the cpu going from 10% to 50% smoothly from non peak to peak hours. This is what we wanted!

via Web serving in the cloud – our experiences with nginx and instance sizes.

A Great Perspective On Why Apple Is Fighting to Keep Flash Off Its iPhone OS

2010-04-18T15:28:16Z

Who, in his right mind, expects Steve Jobs to let Adobe (and other) cross-platform application development tools control his (I mean the iPhone OS) future? Cross-platform tools dangle the old “write once, run everywhere” promise. But, by being cross-platform, they don’t use, they erase “uncommon” features. To Apple, this is anathema as it wants apps developers to use, to promote its differentiation. It’s that simple. Losing differentiation is death by low margins. It’s that simple. It’s business. Apple is right to keep control of its platform’s future.

via The Adobe – Apple Flame War | Monday Note.

Bit.ly to Twitter: So Long, and Thanks for All the Links

2010-04-17T15:34:35Z

We thank Twitter, everyone there, for the kick start it gave bit.ly. And we certainly hope we helped Twitter during a difficult scaling period.

via Bit.ly to Twitter: So Long, and Thanks for All the Links.

Google Cloud Print service aims for unified, universal web printing method

2010-04-17T04:47:16Z

Essentially, when you want to print you'll be sending your request over to a Googlestation up in the clouds, which in turn will translate those instructions and forward them along to the nearest paper tarnisher. We say nearest, presuming that's what you'd want, but the big deal here is that you'll be able to use any device to print on any printer anywhere in the internet-connected world.

via Google Cloud Print service aims for unified, universal web printing method — Engadget.

Vimium – the hacker’s browser

2010-04-16T21:12:23Z

Vimium is a Google Chrome extension which provides keyboard shortcuts for navigation and control in the spirit of the Vim editor.

via Vimium – the hacker’s browser.

Hello world!

2010-04-16T05:34:16Z

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Safari Gets More Web Inspector Updates

2010-04-16T04:19:58Z

A number of exciting new features have been added to the Web Inspector since our last update. This time, we’ve got three new panels to present: a Timeline, Audits and Dedicated Console.

via Surfin’ Safari – Blog Archive » More Web Inspector Updates.

Google to Open-source VP8 for HTML5 Video

2010-04-14T20:03:12Z

The company [Google] is scheduled to officially announce the release at its Google I/O developers conference next month, a source with knowledge of the announcement said. And with that release, Mozilla — maker of the Firefox browser — and Google Chrome are expected to also announce support for HTML5 video playback using the new open codec.

via Google to Open-source VP8 for HTML5 Video.

EFF Posts Apple’s “Top Secret” iPhone Developer License Agreement

2010-03-09T23:19:52Z

So today we're posting the “iPhone Developer Program License Agreement”—the contract that every developer who writes software for the iTunes App Store must “sign.” Though more than 100,000 app developers have clicked “I agree,” public copies of the agreement are scarce, perhaps thanks to the prohibition on making any “public statements regarding this Agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties without Apple's express prior written approval.” But when we saw the NASA App for iPhone, we used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ask NASA for a copy, so that the general public could see what rules conrolled the technology they could use with their phones. NASA responded with the Rev. 3-17-09 version of the agreement

http://www.eff.org/files/20100302_iphone_dev_agr.pdf

via All Your Apps Are Belong to Apple: The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement | Electronic Frontier Foundation.