The problem I came across however was I could not do an ajax request to send the link to the Read It Later server because cross-domain browser restrictions.

I could use an iframe to send the request, but again because of cross-domain issues, I would not be able to retrieve a response from inside of it.  After the request was sent, there were 3 possible outcomes: Success, the user needs to login, or there was a problem saving.

The method that eventually dawned on me is rather hackish, but it works none-the-less.  It provides a way to send a request to any domain and get a basic response.

The solution: Images are not subject to cross domain restrictions.  So load an ‘image’ with a get string that hits a script on the server and then returns an different sized image per possible outcome.

If that makes absolutely no sense, let me try to illustrate with an example that provides a response with two options: success/failure.

Starting the Request: (Javascript: Client Side)

Handling the Request (Server Side):

The image is now loading this script:

<?php

/* ... do your request processing here ... */

// Based on the result of the script, we either return a
// 1px wide image (in the case of success) or
// 2px wide image (in the case of failure)
// you'll need to create these images yourself

if ($success) {
        $file = file_get_contents( '1x1.gif' );
} else {
        $file = file_get_contents( '2x1.gif' );
}

// output the image
$length = strlen($file);
header('Last-Modified: '.date('r'));
header('Accept-Ranges: bytes');
header('Content-Length: '.$length);
header('Content-Type: image/gif');
print($file);

?>

Handling the Response: (Javascript: Client Side)

Back on the javascript side of things, we have our ajaxTimer checking to see if the image is loaded. Once the image loads, we’ll check the width.

function isImageLoaded() {
     if (ajaxImg.complete) {

         var w = ajaxImg.width;
         if (w == 1) {
              alert('Success!');
         } else if (w == 2) {
             alert('Failed!');
         }

         // Hide the image (even though you probably won't see it
        ajaxImg.style.display = 'none';

        // Stop the timer
        clearInterval(ajaxTimer);

     }
}

Simple Works Best

As you can see, this works well if you only have a few possible outcomes of the transaction or if you do not need to return a literal response like generated markup.

IE Woes

Surprisingly, this DOES work in IE6 and IE7, however there is a little bit of extra work. The url of the request you load into the src of the image has to have .gif in it. For example: ’script.php’ won’t work, but ’script.gif’ will. So to make this work you’ll need to add an Htaccess rewrite rule to redirect the script.gif to your script.php file.

90 Second Demo Video

Overview

LiftSift is a light-weight tool made to discover a user’s perfect skiing destination based lift-ticket price, vertical, distance, and a number of other options.

How It Came to Be

While trying to plan a ski trip with some friends I realized that there was no simple way to get an overall view of all the resorts in the US and what their prices were.  This meant that I’d have to first know of a resort, then Google it and look through their website.  Or at least pick a region, then drill down by state -> resort -> price.  Either way, both approaches were very slow.

I wanted it the other way around.  I wanted to be able to see what places had the best prices and I wanted to be able to filter out the small hills (<1000ft).  On top of that, I did not want to have to be limited to only the resorts I had heard of.

So instead, I spent a Sunday afternoon putting together the site and hand entering data and LiftSift was born.

Narrow It Down

LiftSift is dead simple, so there is not much more to explain!  Open it up and move some sliders around.  It’s easy to sift through the list.

Say you want to find a ski resort with at least 2000 ft of vertical, within a day’s driving distance for under $70 a day?  No problem.

Drag the price slider to show $0 -> $70, the vertical slider to 2000 ft+ and the distance slider to 0 miles -> 800 miles.  The list will automatically update to show you your options.

Contribute

Data is fully editable by any user.  Feel free to submit a new location or edit an existing one.

Read It Later is a great tool for saving things to read later, but now it’s great for helping you actually READ those pages too!  By sorting your list by PostRank (from AideRss), you can quickly find what’s worth a read and start with your best content first.

Google Reader Integration

If you use Google Reader to manage your RSS feeds, you’ll now find the familiar Read It Later checkmark right next to the Google Reader star.  You can now save directly to your reading list from Google Reader!

Customize Read It Later

Now you can take full advantage of all the features of Read It Later without the UI bloat.  Almost all of Read It Later’s components can be hidden and/or customized to your liking.  You can use all of the provided elements or even run Read It Later from a single 10×10 icon in the location bar.

New Appearance Options:

• Choose between two list views (Normal and Condensed)
• Open Read It Later in the sidebar
• Select how many items to show per page
• Use a scrollable list instead of a paged reading list
• Enable/Disable Read It Later context menus and additional toolbar buttons

Updated Online Access

Read It Later isn’t just for Firefox anymore.  You can manage your list online at readitlaterlist.com and use the provided bookmarklets to maintain Read It Later’s core functionality regardless of the browser you have.  So if you have Firefox at home, Internet Explorer at work and an Iphone in between, you won’t have any problem keeping your list up to date.

Privacy Controls

It’s your data.  It’s that simple.  You can now delete individual items from Read It Later’s online storage or even wipe your entire account.  And of course if you don’t want any of your list saved online you can still disable the online access and Read It Later will only save locally.

Additionally, you may now password protect your RSS feed to ensure privacy while still taking advantage of the online features.

Improved Existing Features

Syncing

A new syncing system has been implemented to provide stability and ensure your list stays up to date no matter how many computers you have.  Updated sync options and setup gives you easier control over your sync setup.

Offline Mode

You can now have Read It Later automatically save an offline copy of every page you add to your list.  And the new Offline Cache Manager will allow you to control/view what has been saved.

Additional Updates

• Firefox 3.1b compatibility
• Full Ubuntu support
• Option to control how ‘click-to-save’ checkmarks appear
• Option to hide the plaintext password inside the sync settings
• Ability to select a Read It Later folder in the Bookmarks Toolbar
• Improved foriegn characters support
• Read It Later button can be ctrl/shift/middle clicked with the same behavior standard Firefox links
• Option to close the current tab when saving a page

I ‘released’ Read It Later a few days later on the 6th.  I say ‘released’ because all I did was send it to a few friends and put an entry for it on my website, which was getting about 6 hits a day.

I had never expected Read It Later to reach even 1/4 of what it has.  It was created to help me keep track of articles that I wanted to read but couldn’t while I was at work.  However, during fall of last year, Lifehacker, MakeUseOf, and DownloadSquad picked up on the add-on.

Since then Read It Later’s user base as been growing strong.

But during this past year, I’ve learned one very important thing about application development: listen to your users.  Luckily, my users talk a LOT.  I mean there are over 700 comments on the Read It Later project page.  There are so many it’s almost unmanageable (working on a new solution for this, look out in Sept).  You guys have provided some amazing feedback and suggestions and without it, Read It Later would be nothing.

The first version of Read It Later was two (obscenely large) buttons with limited functionality and control.  Over the past year I worked hard with users to make it better.  Because of all of the user feedback and suggestions, I was able to release Read It Later for Firefox 3, which was a huge improvement from the original version.   I’m honored today that Mozilla Labs has awarded Read It Later as a Best Updated Add-on in the Extend Firefox 3 Competition.

So this is thanks to all of you who have emailed me, left comments, submitted translations, answered questions, beta tested, and worked with me one on one resolving bugs.  Read It Later couldn’t have done it without you!

Make a Suggestion!

As you can see (by the users listed below who made each implemented suggestion), I take user suggestions very seriously.

If you have an idea on how to improve Read It Later (big or small), please let me know!

The Big Ones:

Online Access - Manage your list online, in any browser or mobile device.  In Safari, Internet Explorer, or an iPhone.  Click the ‘Access Anywhere’ link at the top of your reading list for more.

Search - The tag dropdown has been replaced with a search-as-you-type field.  It will search through the titles, urls, and tags of the items in your Reading List.
Suggested By: Zeke, Praveen

Auto-Syncing - For those of you who forgot to sync your reading list before heading home after work, now you won’t have to.  If you are using sync, Read It Later will automatically sync your list in the background after starting up and every few hours afterwards.
Suggested By: bds, James, Rob, How to Geek

More Options to Customize Read It Later:

Improved Options screen - The options dialog got a revamp and brings better organization to your preferences.

Unread Items Counter - View the number of items in your reading list.
Suggested By: the non hacker, rayphua

Auto Mark as Read - You can now set Read It Later to mark pages as read after opening them.
Suggested By: Wayne, the non hacker, Sergio Santos

Auto Tags - Set custom tags to be added to every page you save.
Suggested By: Raydancer, Ken

Click to Save Button - An optional button can be added to your status bar to activate Click to Save Mode without a keyboard shortcut.
Suggested By: Wayne, Todd

Custom Keyboard Shortcuts - You can now customize your keyboard shortcuts to any combo you like, not just ALT.
Suggested By: Mike Harris

The Small Stuff:

Read Offline Improvements - When you are offline, items that have not been saved for offline viewing will appear dimmed out.
Suggested By: Praveen

Empty Titles - Pages without titles will be replaced with their url.
Suggested By: Dan Gale Rosen

More Languages - With help of the translation team (made up entirely of Read It Later users), Read It Later is continuing to be localized in more and more languages.  Want to help?

Where to Get This Version (0.9810)

Get Read It Later!

What’s Next?

Read It Later will officially be striped of it’s Beta suffix after one more big set of updates.  I’m very excited for what I’ve got planned in the coming update, it will take Read It Later full circle.

Read It Later has been completely revamped and hosts a whole new bundle of features including built-in RSS feeds, syncing, offline reading, tagging, multi-language support and more.

You can read all about the new features and get a fresh copy on Read It Later’s project page.

Here is the original demo updated to show the new improvements.

As some of you may or may not know, one of The Planet’s datacenters had a transformer explode, knocking out power to thousands of servers and websites.

The Idea Shower’s servers were among the lucky bunch.

I’ve moved the site onto a temporary server but some sites may be slow and may not be fully function until tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

Out of respect for his family, I will not be mentioning his real name here because I don’t want this post to appear in the search results for his name. For the sake of the article I’m referring to him by the name ‘Tim’.

During the resulting media coverage I noticed a trend that caught my attention.

The day after his death, the opening sentence of an article from the Rocky Mountain News read:

“Aspen native and snowboarder [Tim} liked spinners, bonks and card tricks, according to one of his sponsors’ Web sites.”

That website was ours. And that line ’spinners, bonks, and card tricks’ was taken off of his profile page, which was the first page you’d find after Googling his name.

But here’s the thing. There was a lot more to Tim than ’spinners and bonks’. He was a well respected rider and someone who had accomplished great things in his short life. But you would not know this from the article.

It struck me that journalists are turning more and more to the web and social networks to dig up information about people for their stories. It’s obvious that the author simply Google’d Tim’s name and took out the first bit of information he could find, no matter how trivial.

If you recall the Elliot Spitzer scandal, you may remember the same thing happened in that instance as well. When the identity of Spitzer’s lady friend was discovered, media organizations were quoting her Myspace page and printing photos straight out of her profile.

Now, is that really fair? Or more importantly, is that really journalism? It seems that more journalists, in the effort to be the first to the press, are skipping the interviews of friends and families and turning more to finding out what they can on the web.

The reason I ask if it’s fair: How many of you would like to have your legacy defined by what’s in your Facebook profile?

Take a look at the image on the right. It’s an excerpt from my Facebook profile. Like most of my friends profiles, it’s not exactly on the serious side.

I would hate to think that if I passed away tomorrow that the world would know me by:

“Minneapolis resident and programmer, Nate Weiner liked Rickrolling himself…”

And Tim’s profile on the High Society website? It wasn’t serious. It didn’t mention the things that really defined him. None of the items that were listed there did his legacy any justice.

But why should it? Should we be worried that if we put up a joke that others will take that as our character definition? Or should we expect journalists to be more conscious of the type of content they are sourcing from?

If this is going to be the way it is, should we avoid joking around and keep our content strict?

I would certainly hope not, but it begs the question, if people were to write about you today and used to the web to research you, what would they find? And more importantly, would you want others to read it?

Story Titles

The first update was the biggest request: To resolve page titles, rather than just showing urls in the popular lists.  If you peek at the homepage and New Item Finder you’ll see this now in action.

Stories That Come to You

Second, you can now have items that reach ‘popular’ status sent to you via Twitter.  Just follow @Intwition and whenever a new story crops up, it’ll show up in your public timeline.
Also note you can also subscribe to the RSS for popular items.

Better Spam Filtering

With anything of this nature, spam happens.  I’ve been tuning the algorithm to remove this from appearing on the home page and I’ve been having some good success.  There is still one big part I need to add to it, but you should not see much spam on the front page for now.

As always, your suggestions are greatly appreciated!