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Top Tweets for September 15

Chris Black — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:54:41 +0000

64bit Flash Player in beta, free Android UI PSD, HTML5 in Illustrator and more! Thought I’d share some of these resources from Twitter with the rest of the world.

@adobeflash: Flash Player 64-bit preview now available on Labs! http://bit.ly/33QVDY

@gskinner: Just posted the 2nd article in my series on Creating Great Developers. This one focuses on hiring. http://is.gd/fc2Os

@Influxis: ALERT! New Influxis 2-to-many video chat app dev’d by @JerryChabolla called FACES! http://labs.influxis.com/?p=1206

@weberdesignlabs: 35 Free Fonts for Elegant Corporate Designs – http://ow.ly/2ENFC – 15 Best Social Icons Sets – http://ow.ly/2ENCb

@360Flex: sweet! RT @jonmacdonald: Android designers can also find an Android GUI PSD here: http://bit.ly/c02lpi

@seb_ly: as ever, intelligent report from @guardiantech re the html5 canvas game biolab http://bit.ly/drPT7T

@FITC: HTML5 in Adobe Illustrator?! Why yes, now there is! http://ow.ly/2EJyW

Enjoy!

Cut the Drama. Flash is Here to Stay.

Chris Black — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:00:27 +0000

I really wish that Steve Jobs would quit misinforming the public. It amazes me that Apple and Adobe’s childish feud is even news worthy. I’ve had a number of people tell me that I should start looking for a new profession because HTML5 is the future and Flash is dead (link). All of them iPhone users and each of them were just tech savvy enough not to know what the hell they were talking about. Here is ten minutes worth of research to show Steve Jobs’ opinion on the matter is a bit more like a leap of blind faith.

What does this graph tell us?
Well, even through a recession, ActionScript job growth has held strong. Objective C on the other hand looks very unstable.

And this one?
Nobody seems to be able to make up their mind about how much to pay Objective C programmers. Is it worth more than HTML or not? Would you work in a development language that had the potential for a 50% pay cut if you lost your job?

http://www.hiten.net/wilberwind/wordpress/?p=826

How about this chart?
I would like someone to point out the web development language that died. Anyone? Oh wait… none of them have ever died! When somebody comes out with something better, the competition does the same. Not to mention that it took AJAX nearly ten years to catch on. As much as some people hate PHP, it is still around. As much as some people hate Microsoft, .NET is still kicking. As much as Steve Jobs hates Adobe, Flash is here to stay.

Do I hate HTML5 and think it will fail? No. I hope it succeeds. The reason I code ActionScript is because it is widely supported and cutting edge. HTML4 wasn’t enough for me. When HTML5 has a 3D engine, physics support, frameworks, blogs of examples, full browser support, and a great IDE, I’ll strongly consider it. Until then, please don’t tell me I should look for a new profession.

*Update 02/02/2010 @ 7am in response to a comment below*

Analysis:
Perl seems to be holding strong. I wish the data went back further, was there ever a significant decline? They still have a pretty big market for jobs with a steady incline. Coldfusion jobs have not gone up but have also not really gone down over the past 5 years. That’s pretty good job security for ‘dead’ languages.

Looks like Silverlight has seen nothing but positive growth over the past few years. Was it two years ago Microsoft and .NET developers where predicting the death of Flash due to Silverlight? Looks like there is enough market for both. If the web wants interactive maybe there is room for Flash, HTML5, and Silverlight to all grow over the next 5 years. Based on the data at hand, that would be my prediction.

Live Blogging TC Code Camp VI

Chris Black — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:49:12 +0000

This is my first time attending the Twin Cities Code Camp and first impressions have been great! Here are the presentations I’ve attended so far today:

Increasing your Productivity with Visual Studio by Jeff Klawiter
I haven’t developed in Visual Studio for a number of years but this talk was still very engaging. Seeing all of the tips and tricks in Visual Studio has inspired me to do some research on customizations available for Flex Builder 3. The specific key commands may be platform specific but the concepts defiantly apply across development tools. Jeff’s blog: http://www.jeffklawiter.com/

DemoFEST: SQL 2008, AJAX and the Virtual Earth SDK by Mike Benkovich
Very nice demo about integrating Microsoft Live maps into a browser and applying geographical data from a database to the map. This looks like something that can be integrated into AIR using the HTMLLoader. It was very interesting to see data visualization from within SQL Server 2008. More information about Mike and his work: http://www.benkotips.com/

Building Better Applications with UX Principles by Corey Miller
Everyone can benefit from effective UX Principles. This presentation was about bridging the gap between designers, developers and users. I believe that user experience is very important in the success of both webpages and desktop applications. One of the main problems we have had is getting clients to ‘buy in’ to spending the time and money up front on UX. Corey has blog posts about UX here: http://www.coreysportfolio.com/?tag=/ux

This code camp has been pretty Microsoft heavy but the principals in these presentations definitely apply across platforms. With the wide variety of topics, great people, and free admission you really can’t go wrong attending #TCCC. I would recommend this code camp to any developers in the Twin Cities area.

More information can be found here:
http://www.twincitiescodecamp.com/

Live Blogging Overnight Website Challenge

Chris Black — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:19:13 +0000

Time is of the essence so this will be a quick post.

Summary:
Twelve teams of web professionals donating 24 hours of their time to build complete web solutions for non-profit organizations: Overnight Website Challenge.

Our Team:
The Mighty Polymorphin Power Rangers: Extra Awesome – link

Our Non-Profit:
The non-profit assigned to our team is YEA Corps. YEA Corps mission is to empower young people with financial literacy, as well as positive environmental and healthy practices through service learning / social networking skills to sustain a healthy prosperous life.

YEA Corps does not currently have a web page so we are starting from scratch with a team of eight developers and two designers. After an hour of reviewing requirements with the client we decided to go with WordPress for our implementation. We will be integrating various WordPress Plugins, Flash Components, Google Apps, Analytics, Mailing Lists, Social Networking, and Donations on the site.

Tools:
We are using sticky notes for the site map, marker boards for requirements, and activeColab for project management. Current milestones are set for 6:00PM, 12:00AM, and 6:00AM. Stay tuned for our final product!

Visit the YEA Corps website here.

Display TwitPic Images in Flex & AIR

Chris Black — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:50:37 +0000

Problem:
The TwitPic API does not currently support outgoing requests and the image source from amazon aws contains an AWS AccessKeyId, expiration time stamp, and signature. This would normally require a regular expression to rip the source JPG path out of the HTML. Ripping the source out of the HTML is a bit of a pain and is not a long term solution. It is possible to use the following shortened url to gain access to the full image path using the TwitPic image id.

Solution:
Use this url to gain access to the full http://twitpic.com/show/full/s0z4.jpg and thumbnail http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/s0z4.jpg images (replace the s0z4 with your image id). Notice that this shortened path returns the longer url that would normally have to be ripped out of the HTML to gain access to the image.

PLAIN TEXT

HTML:

id="rssParse"
url="php/twitpic.php"
result="processResult(event)"
resultFormat="e4x" />

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

$twitter_feed = 'http://twitpic.com/photos/chrisjblack/feed.rss';
$rawfeed = @file_get_contents($twitter_feed);
print $rawfeed;
?>

PLAIN TEXT

Actionscript:

import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
import mx.rpc.events.ResultEvent;
[Bindable]
private var _rssResults:ArrayCollection;
// Define and use atom namespace.
private namespace atom = "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom";
use namespace atom;
private function processResult(event:ResultEvent):void
{
var xmlList:XMLList = event.result.channel.item as XMLList;
for each(var item:XML in xmlList){
// Formatt the date
var myDate:String = item.pubDate;
myDate = myDate.slice(0,22);
// Pull the image id out of the link url
var imageId:String = item.link;
imageId = imageId.replace("http://twitpic.com/", "");
// Push the results into our data array
_rssResults.addItem({title: item.title, date: myDate, id: imageId});
}
}
private function init():void
{
_rssResults = new ArrayCollection();
rssParse.send();
}

PLAIN TEXT

HTML:

width="900" height="500" horizontalAlign="center">
Label styleName="subTitleText" text="Twitter Feed:" fontWeight="bold" fontSize="16"/>
height="450" width="800" verticalScrollPolicy="auto" horizontalScrollPolicy="off" horizontalAlign="center">
id="twitter" dataProvider="{_rssResults}">
Text textAlign="center" width="300" text="{twitter.currentItem.date}"/>
Text textAlign="center" width="300" text="{twitter.currentItem.title}"/>
"http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/{twitter.currentItem.id}.jpg" />
"http://twitpic.com/show/full/{twitter.currentItem.id}.jpg" />
</mx:Repeater>
</mx:VBox>
</mx:VBox>

This allows for Adobe AIR applications to post to (Post to TwitPic from Adobe AIR) and retrieve images from TwitPic.

View Sample / Source Files

Links:
TwitPic Previewer

10 Steps to Improve Your Online Presence

Chris Black — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:16:01 +0000

I've read a number of blog posts about 10 things not to do or 6 reasons why you should do something and I'm finally giving in to the idea of an ordered list as a blog post. One of the pitfalls of the ordered list approach is that everyone is different. The only way everyone could possible benefit from all 10 steps is if they are so vague that they read like a horoscope. We all know that 'design patterns have a time and place.' They cause problems when not used correctly. I swear it still hits everyone's top whatever list. Does something that vague really help anyone? I feel like I'm reading today's horoscope whenever I see that.

Enough ranting for one day. Back to the topic at hand. Ten things you can do to improve your online presence. Before you read any further write down the type of business your in. What do you do? Who is your target market? Will an online presence even help you? These are things you need to figure out on your own or pay someone to figure out for you. This list will not help you until you know the basics. And there is not a pre-prescribed method for determining the basics.

1. Obviously, Get a Web Page
Or is it that obvious? Why do most people fail at this simple step? Think about this: You have a company with 15 employees who all sit at a desk. Would you buy an office building that can hold 1,000? Not unless you know something I don't. Simply put, start simple. Build a static page, make it look professional and grow your web page with the company over time (for example PSDTemple). Facebook didn't start with apps, photos, and videos. They started simple and restricted the user base. Don't assume it's a one time cost. The more you try to do at once the higher likelihood that it will fail. Grow your web page with your business. As always there is a friendly web development company near you.

2. Get a Twitter Account
It's easy, it's free and will improve your SEO tremendously if used correctly. Post company updates, links to press releases, or even just random tidbits. Link your twitter page to your web page. Take advantage of Twitters strong online presence to help out your company.

3. Get a Facebook Account, Right? Wrong!
Next logical step is to move to the next social networking site? NO, at least in most cases. Facebook is for people. Unless your a Freelancer it really doesn't benefit to have a Facebook page (if you are a freelancer or working for yourself than get a Facebook account, now!). Maybe a Facebook app though? (for example Sacrifice Your Friends). Maybe your company needs a Facebook fan page? Look at your target market list. What would they want? What would they use?

4. Start a Blog
A regularly updated blog will improve traffic to your site, you can be pretty much sure of that. Again, who is your target market? What would they be interested in hearing? Check out Sierra Bravo's blog for a great example of marketing towards your customers: Nerdery Blog. Most blog services are FREE. I personally recommend WordPress. Using WordPress, your blog could even be your website. Save some time and money but still get professional results.

5. Track Analytic Data for Your Site
How will you ever know if any of these steps are working? Google Analytics, it's free and easy to use. Find out what keywords your getting, and which ones your not. Determine how many people are visiting your site from Twitter or viewing your blog. Don't just stop at Google Analytics. Most hosting companies provide AWStats or WebLog as well. I find that AWStats is better for tracking unique hits / bots and Google Analytics is better for keywords / data presentation.

6. Help People
If your company makes web pages, join a web forum and answer peoples questions. Create an account on Yahoo answers and help people with problems. Join Linkedin and participate in the discussion groups. Nothing says online presence like helping someone else in need. Just make sure to put a link to your webpage, twitter account, or blog at the bottom. It helps you and will let them find out more about your company and services. If you helped them solve a simple problem for free who do you think they will call when they need a complex problem solved?

7. Contribute to Open Source Projects
This one is more IT related and I must admit I have not participated in any open source projects to date. I do, however, see the value in them and plan to contribute in the future.

8. Buy Some Ad-Words
Notice that most of the items I've listed so far have been FREE. It's amazing how few people realize that online presence has very little to do with money. This one is not free but very useful. Buy up some keywords in Google Ads. You will probably never see the light of day on a search result for 'pet food' unless you pay for the advertisement. Facebook advertisements are a great way to target specific people based on their profile information.

9. Time
Only time will build your online presence. All of these items will help expedite the process but as with everything in life, there is no guarantee. You may be in the business of making money but I assure you that time will be on your side if you truly attempt to help the internet community. If you are nice to the internet it will be nice back to you.

10. Don't Assume Design Patterns will Always Make Your Life Easier
You can't have a top 10 list without this one Please just read this wikipedia article.

I would love to hear any other suggestions on improving online presence. Here is your chance to help out others and start promoting your online presence today! How cheesy did that just sound? I feel like I'm selling a book. This is what I get for creating an ordered list blog post...

A few companies highlighted in this post:

Twitter
Sierra Bravo
Facebook
PSDTemple
Burger King
Google
WordPress