I signed up to try out the pre-release candidate of Windows Vista. For the most part I my primary OS is Mac OS X. I only use Windows XP to test my web work out on different browsers on that platform. I enjoy participating in beta test whether it be a web application or a desktop application. I like to see what other programmers are developing and sometimes it even sparks ideas in my own work. After using Vista for a few days now, I still think Mac OS X will continue to be my platform of choice, but I am pretty impressed with the improvements of Vista over XP. Overall I don’t think one platform will ever completely replace the other even though Windows dominates the OS market. I think there can be multiple OS platforms that give people a choice. Read the rest of this entry »

On modern life is rubbish there was a small post on a Web 2.0 Color Palette. I usually use my typical colors but this is a small list of colors for those of us that are more program oriented as opposed to design. I never really know what colors work well together. Read the rest of this entry »

Silicon.com has a Web 2.0 cheat sheet for those interested in learning the basic concept of Web 2.0. Many people have heard of it and it’s hard to pinpoint an exact definition for the term. It is a broad generalization of a number of things. Read the rest of this entry »

Blogging Pro had an article last week regarding optimizing CSS files in order to achieve a faster page load. I know a lot of the time removing whitespace can kill a lot of the file size. Of course it makes it difficult to edit later but for production use there are several programs out there to reduce whitespace for you making a smaller file size. Read the rest of this entry »

PHP Hacks has a tutorial using the PEAR SOAP module of PHP to pull data for use on your site. There are many other ways of doing similar things a lot of which deal with RSS feeds since they have become so popular, but this tutorial does a pretty good job of explaining how to use SOAP with Google’s web services. Read the rest of this entry »

Out of all the projects I’ve worked on both individual and group, the last and final step seems to be documentation. A lot of times it gets overlooked. When the deadlines approach the product manager wants to get a working product. What a lot of people don’t realize is software documentation takes a substantial amount of time to write. It is very important to keep track of the software. Marketing individuals won’t actually see changes in the product in the time it takes to write documentation and that seems to make it less important in the overall product. Read the rest of this entry »

Techcrunch has a post regarding the new beta version of Blogger.com. It looks like it’s upgrades some JavaScript with Google style making it easier for people to blog on their platform. I personally use my own blogging software or setup blogs for people on Wordpress or Typepad, but I know a lot of people that just want a basic blog and Blogger is a good choice for them. Read the rest of this entry »

I came across Time.com’s 50 Coolest Websites on digg.com yesterday. I don’t know if this is a recent article or not because it doesn’t have a date associated with it, but it is for 2006 so it can’t be too old. They have some really cool sites on there a lot of which are Web 2.0 style. I only scanned through a few beyond the normal sites I visit on a daily basis. Going through all 50 can be pretty time consuming, but I’m sure when I get the time I’ll end up bookmarking all of them. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone has their usual website that they visit on a regular basis. For me I’m really interested in technology so I like to visit sites related to that topic such as Engadget and Gizmodo. I recently started reading Uncrate as well. The three sites really have some interesting blog posts and it’s a good way to kill time. I mean I even have my own gadget blog called lightenment. Today I came across the site CrunchGear. It is similar to the other sites but since I also visit TechCrunch on a pretty regular basis I figure I would give it a shot. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a post on Creative Mac that I feel like I come across these situations everyday and if people knew these steps I think projects would be a lot smoother and work a lot better both for me and the client. It is collected from designers and developers of what they feel a client should know before starting a project. Read the rest of this entry »