Well I am happy to say that I have gotten over all that.  I have gotten back into the swing of things and I have gotten a lot of things done in the past couple of weeks.

I am in the middle of a complete code rewrite for Podcasting Paradise.  I have come to appreciate the virtues of MVC frameworks and I decided that in order for that website to move forward, I needed to start over.  I pushed over a lot of the core changes to the code this weekend so that Google can process all of the different URLs (luckily I was able to implement a lot of 301’s and canonical URL’s so that it hopefully will not lose its page rank).  There is still a lot of work that needs to be done but now that I have a good base, I can implement the new features much faster than before.

Another thing I have started getting to know is Magento.  Professionally, my job has shifted to working with that platform and seeing what I can do with it.  Personally, I am fascinated with it and how much functionality Varien is giving away for free (and how much more they offer for around $10,000).  I am amazed by how different their code is than anything else I have dealt with before.  At this point I can say that I am familiar with using their code, however I am not quite comfortable with extending their code yet.  Within the next few weeks however, I am confident that I will be able to accomplish all of that.  One thing I am pretty sure about is that being familiar with Magento will probably be a very important part of my skill set and I am glad to be able to do that while I am being paid to do so.

One thing I was frustrated about with Magento was the apparent lack of documentation.  Having to dig through Google for what I thought would be basic answers was frustrating.  I also noticed that there was not one real good community that could support one another.  Magento Connect is alright, but I felt that it was not very accessible.  You could not search the website very well to figure out what you were doing.

So taking that knowledge with me I decided to create my own community.  The Magento Users Group.  There I will be hosting a phpBB forum as well as what I am calling the Magento Cookbook.  Like other tech cookbooks out there, it operates based on a very simple question and answer format.  Something I think will be incredibly helpful to other people.  Right now the only things inside of there are the questions I had and the answers I have found.

Then there are my other blogs, Learn jQuery Now and Learn PHP Now.  Both of which I am going to work on posting regularly again.  However, instead of 5 days a week, I will be be posting once a week.

On the less techie side of things, I am going to be going to Mexico in a couple of weeks.  I am very excited to get away from things for a week so I can really relax.  I always seem to do pretty well when I am forced to be away from my email for about a week at a time.  It’s actually pretty refreshing.

XP Mode needs to work flawlessly if Windows 7 is going to find wide spread success in the business world.

Original article found from:  http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219000227

However this is likely not true at all. Along with this service you get free text messaging. This is likely going to cut into the profit margins of AT&T since those will no longer have to charge insane fees for unlimited text messaging.

The FCC is looking into this to make sure that AT&T is not meddling in the affairs of Apple’s iPhone too much. This could be an unfair trade practice. In my opinion it is about time the FCC stepped in to examine the relationship between Apple and AT&T. These kinds of relationships hurt consumers since we are not permitted to have the phone we want on the network we want without breaking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Personally I’ll check it out but I’ll be keeping my GMail.

(Story found from http://paidcontent.org/article/419-myspace-mail-slated-to-launch-thursday/)

Persoanlly, I think it would be better to have a virtual machine running all the actual software your live hosting enviroment will have, but this is still a great way to get started without the compleixty of having to run an entire web server.

You can download the Microsoft Web Platform from: http://www.microsoft.com/web/

You can get the code and documentation on how to do this from: http://www.catchmyfame.com/2009/06/25/jquery-beforeafter-plugin/

With the overall internet using IE 6 below 10% you have to wonder if supporting it is really worth it. With the advancements in the web since IE 6, are you holding back 90% of your users to make sure all is the same for the other 10%? It probably is not worth it.

Frankly if you are using IE 6 willingly, you deserve to have a worse experience on the internet than the rest of us. You have gone out of your way to make you are not using a modern browser. Please upgrade. If you feel that you cannot upgrade due to a corporate policy, then install Firefox on a flash drive and run it that way. That way you at least know you are not contributing to one of the largest problems with the internet today.

Sources:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/youtube-will-be-next-to-kiss-ie6-support-goodbye/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/05/since-march-internet-explorer-lost-114-percent-share-to-firefox-safari-and-chrome/

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-US-monthly-200807-200907

You can download this code from http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/creating-a-keyboard-with-css-and-jquery/

To download or find out more about this cool plug-in head over to: http://blog.decaf.de/2009/07/iphone-like-password-fields-using-jquery/

So how does Android feel as a computer operating system? It feels like a very simple operating system that makes sense. There really appears to be nothing hidden from the user. You have your apps listing on the right in a pull out menu. You have multiple desktops that you can navigate away from. It is just a very simple environment.

This does not mean you can go run out and use this to replace Windows. You cannot install this (that I know of) on your computer and there really are no applications that are very useable. The input methods for the OS are pretty much the exact same on the cell phone so you find yourself doing the same finger gestures on the screen except with your mouse. So the interaction method needs some work.

All in all Live-Android feels a little more proof-of-concept rather than a replacement OS. Having said that I cannot wait to see what happens with Android on the desktop/set-top box/netbook. It has a lot of potential. Hopefully Google Chrome OS won’t destroy Android’s potential.