» 2008 » December Web Stuff and Whatnot

Good ‘ol Zynga: February 2nd, 2012

I read a great excerpt, published on the Atlantic, from a new design publication coming soon, called Distance, which is currently being funded on Kickstarter. I jumped in and funded enough for the digital versions of the upcoming year after reading. Here’s one gem of a quote: I’ll reiterate this in plainer language, just in [...]
The Elements of Content Strategy: March 18th, 2011

The Elements of Content Strategy, by Erin Kissane, the 3rd book from A Book Apart This is another excellent book from A Book Apart. I’m not a content strategist, but dealing with content is obviously a big part of any web designer’s job and it’s something I’d like to get better at. I think this [...]
HTML5 for Web Designers: February 8th, 2011

HTML5 for Web Designers, by Jeremy Keith This book is a great, brief intro to some changes coming in HTML5 and what we should be aware of during the transition. One thing I’m a big fan of is the new, short doctype: <!DOCTYPE html> Unlike XHTML, anything goes for HTML5 syntax—you don’t need to be [...]
Writing Again: January 10th, 2011

I’m shocked to see I haven’t written anything here since August, 2009. Well, maybe ‘shocked’ is too strong a word. Anyway, I plan to do more writing this year and this is probably a good place to start. I need to come up with a new design and make some other changes too. Expect design [...]
Converticon!: August 13th, 2009

Converticon! Converticon is a simple icon utility. It can import ICO, PNG, GIF, and JPEG formats and export to high-quality PNG or ICO files. There is no software to download and it’s 100% free. Looks good to me, did a couple of sample tests. Need to try this on some project work and see what [...]
Google Makes Privacy Easy: August 13th, 2009

We can laugh about this now. Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village
Predictably Irrational, The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions: July 16th, 2009

I recently read Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely. This book is well written, and easy to read. If you think you’re a rational person, read this book as soon as possible. It will help you understand how we are wired and/or conditioned to be [...]
48 Days to the Work You Love: July 16th, 2009

I just finished reading 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller. I found this book to be generally helpful and easy to read, but it doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking or terribly enlightening either. 48 Days to the Work You Love will likely help you find inspiration, motivation, and just may spark a [...]
Comprehensive Link Building Guide: March 29th, 2009

I found this in-depth, comprehensive link building guide recently. It doesn’t promote spam, hacks, or black-hat techniques. Simply, hard work, planning, and research. If you are interested in SEO and driving traffic to your websites I highly recommend reading this guide. Below are a few highlights from the guide: When performing link building research, specifically [...]
A Wrinkle in Time: March 24th, 2009

I just finished reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. This is another classic that I never got around to reading when I was a kid. This may sound strange, but that’s not the reason I chose to read it now. I actually read it because it’s one of the books from Lost. My [...]
The Pixar Touch – The Making of a Company: January 11th, 2009

I just finished reading The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company , by David A. Price. This was an interesting book, starting with the history of Pixar (I had no idea Pixar was started about 30 years ago) and finishing with Pixar’s current state of success, shortly after the merger with Disney and just [...]
Alice in Wonderland: January 6th, 2009

I’m working on crossing off more classics from my reading list and I just finished reading Alice in Wonderland for the first time. Frankly, I didn’t care for it all that much. It was rather confusing, odd, and abstract. I’m sure it was more unique or innovative when it was written, but I just couldn’t [...]
Common Sense Economics: December 30th, 2008

I just finished reading Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity. This book is an introduction to the key fundamentals of Economics, as well as a bit of Personal Finance. It’s a relatively small book too, one you can easily read in a day. This is a great book to read [...]
My Reading List: December 29th, 2008

I’m not sure why, but I’ve had the desire for many years now to keep a list of all the books I read. I have failed to do this for a long time now, but I’m going to give it another try. I think this website will provide a good way to do it. I [...]
Designs I Love: November 19th, 2008

Too often when I’m browsing the Internet I come across a beautifully designed site, stop and think to myself how awesome it looks, maybe tag it on Delicious under some tag that I can never remember, and then promptly forget all about it. Well, I’ll probably continue to do exactly that, but I thought it [...]
Blogging is Over, Pull the Plug: November 11th, 2008

Wired Magazine says blogs are dead. I think many of the original aspects of blogs have died, but blogging in its most basic forum will continue. After all, a blog is just another medium for communicating a message. I do agree that blog comments and blog communities are dying. As pointed out in the article, [...]
Witnessing History: November 5th, 2008

November 4th, 2008 was a historic day for America. Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. The historic part, of course, is that Mr. Obama is an African American. Roughly 40 years ago, this country was divided by racial segregation and it took the National Voting Rights Act of 1965 to [...]
Confessions of a Street Addict Book Review: January 14th, 2007

Confessions of a Street Addict, by James J. Cramer: This is not a how-to investing book, but more along the lines of an autobiography, pertaining mostly to Jim Cramerâ€™s investment career. The story begins with his childhood fascination with stocks and their quotes in the newspaper. Cramer then tries his hand at journalism and law [...]
Financial Peace Book Review: January 7th, 2007

Financial Peace, by Dave Ramsey: I read this book for the second time recently, and I once again find myself excited and focused on cutting expenses, paying off debt, and taking control of my financial life. This book is absolutely a must-read if you find yourself living beyond your means. Dave does an excellent job [...]
Great Read- an Interview at Microsoft: December 23rd, 2005

This has been around for a while, and I am probably not adding much in the way of new and exciting content by posting this, but I do know that many people who read this page probably would not have come across this article on their own. It offers great insight and specific details of [...]
Classic ‘Why Didn’t I Think of That?’: November 8th, 2005

This must be one of the best ideas I have heard in a long time. A college student in the UK had an idea to find a way to pay for school. The idea- create a block of one million pixels on his web site and sell each pixel for $1 to advertisers. Simple idea. [...]
Review of Web Standards Solutions- The Markup and Style Handbook: November 8th, 2005

This is the perfect book for someone getting started with CSS and standards-compliant markup. You should be familiar with the basics of CSS and XHTML to get the most out of it. This book, written by Dan Cederholm, offers very practical, how-to instructions for building standards-compliant web sites that separate content from presentation. Ready to [...]
Review of The Zen of CSS Design: November 8th, 2005

This is an excellent book to have on hand for inspiration. Just as keeping a link to the CSS Zen Garden is important for design inspiration and CSS methodology. You may wonder why you would need to buy this book when you can access the CSS Zen Garden online at any time; if so, I [...]
About: November 6th, 2005

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Review of Bulletproof Web Design: November 2nd, 2005

If you want to build a standards-compliant, flexible web site, buy this book. It’s not necessarily for someone just getting started with CSS- you will probably be a bit lost without the basics down first, but once you have built at least one CSS based web site, you will learn a lot from this book. [...]
Best Tucson Golf Courses: October 21st, 2005

Tucson Golf Review recently launched a list of the Best Tucson Golf Courses. This list is unique because it is the only list of the best courses in town based on ratings from the golfing public in Tucson. Anyone can visit Tucson Golf Review and rate any course in town. Very cool feature! Time for [...]
What is Web 2.0?: October 13th, 2005

Don’t ask me! I could offer some incomplete definitions, but if you really want to know, just read this article from Tim O’Reilly (the O’Reilly book guy). For the average user, Web 2.0 means getting better and richer applications from the Internet. Applications like Google Maps and Gmail are quick examples. Web 2.0 isn’t here [...]
Passages of Tucson: October 9th, 2005

The Passages of Tucson is a planned retail and residential complex in Southeast Tucson/Vail, AZ. One of the developers is credited with making the Mall of America happen in Minnesota. The plans are too grand to list in detail here, but some of the highlights include a water park, lots of retail, homes, apartments, health [...]
Small Business on the Web: October 7th, 2005

According to a recent survey from Interland, more small businesses are building web sites and conducting business online. 78% say that their business is healthier today because they have a web site. 76% say their web site generates leads for their business. 53% say they have a web site primarily to establish business credibility. 60% [...]
Battling Procrastination: September 12th, 2005

If you’re looking for a little help with a project that has been looming over your head or just a nice bit of advice for dealing with common tasks that require great amounts of motivation to begin, read this article about dealing with procrastination from 43 Folders: http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/kick_procrastin_1.html
The Best Search Engine?: August 9th, 2005

Yahoo has now doubled Google’s index of of online documents and images. After a major upgrade, Yahoo now claims to have over 20 billion online objects indexed in its search engine. Google currently has just over 11 billion objects indexed- about 8 billion Web pages and about 2 billion images. Looks like this rivalry is [...]
‘China’s Google’ Hits It Big On the NASDAQ: August 5th, 2005

The Chineese search engine company, called Baidu (www.baidu.com, ticker symbol: BIDU) more than quadrupled in its IPO today. The shares traded from a low of $27 and topped $151 at one point during trading. BIDU closed the day at $122.54. While this success is rather exciting, it is most likely attributable to a small share [...]
SpyBlast Pop-Up Ad Software Busted: August 4th, 2005

From a news story published by Media Buyer Planner, Advertising.com finally suffered a bit for its sneaky SpyBlast software. The SpyBlast program was promoted as a spyware stopper, yet it secretly installed pop-up ad generating software behind the scenese on a user’s computer. Certainly not surprising to hear of such treachery from the likes of [...]
Baby Boomers Spend More Money Online: August 2nd, 2005

As reported by Internet Retailer, a new study from Jupiter Research outlines the spending habits of that all-important group of consumers- Baby Boomers. Apparently, Baby Boomers are likely to spend more money online than the average online consumer, even in the same income ranges. In general, Jupiter Research believes that 76% of Baby Boomers have [...]
Feeling Sorry for Microsoft: July 28th, 2005

Bill Gates may be the richest man in the world, but I find myself feeling a bit sorry for him lately. Sounds a bit strange I know, but let me explain. When I saw that Microsoft recently launched the new ‘MSN Virtual Earth‘ service it became clear to me that they have been so badly [...]
Google on the Moon!: July 22nd, 2005

A nice addition to Google Maps is the new Google Moon satellite imagery. Not quite as fancy as it could be, but the markers for lunar landings are nice to have, and most likely better detailed imagery will come with time. Be sure to zoom in for a close look.
Longhorn will be ‘Windows Vista’: July 22nd, 2005

I suppose its day is coming closer as Microsoft has now chosen a ‘real’ name for the previously code-named Longhorn operating system. I also suppose that Vista is a more memorable name than ‘XP’. We can take a look at Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary for the definition of vista to learn more- 1. a distant view [...]
Silkscreen Font: July 15th, 2005

A must have in the font category- (why not, it’s free and it looks great) is the Silkscreen Font Family by Jason Kottke- kottke.org. Available for Mac, Windows, and even Linux.
Cheap Icons: July 15th, 2005

Much like fonts, you can never have too many icons. Here’s an incredible deal on a small set of icons that I purchased yesterday. The set is called SoHo and it’s made by Firewheel Design. It’s a small set- only 10 icons, but you get five different colors, and the price is only $5. Yes, [...]
Online Games: July 14th, 2005

Looking for some good online games? Avoiding the junk out there is difficult. This site, jay is, offers an extensive collection of recommended games that can be found online, as well as an informative blog.
Google Maps Transparancies: July 12th, 2005

Another incredible use of the recently released Google Maps API. Google Maps Transparencies uses a combination of the ‘map’ and ‘satellite’ views to give you an even more useful look at a city. I think it can really make finding your way around very easy. You can adjust the transparency too, so you can essentially [...]
Creative Commons License: July 12th, 2005

I recently added a Creative Commons License to the blogs I write on this site and on Adaptive Internet Solutions. Since this is a relatively new concept, I thought an explanation would be in order. Creative Commons was founded in 2001 with a single goal in mind: “to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright [...]
Google Toolbar for Firefox: July 11th, 2005

It’s finally here! The one advantage Internet Explorer held over FireFox (in my mind of course) was the availability of the Google Toolbar. I primarily use the Google Toolbar for a quick check of Google’s Page Rank. I had to open Internet Explorer to do a quick Page Rank check before, but not any more! [...]
Gmaps Pedometer: July 11th, 2005

For those of you not familiar, ‘Gmaps’ is a reference to the Google Maps service. As great as the Google Maps service is on its own, many people are more excited by the recent move by Google to make the Google Maps API available for use by anyone (almost anyone anyway). All you have to [...]
Free PDF Creation: July 7th, 2005

Adobe makes great software, but not everyone can justify the cost of their products, such as Adobe Acrobat, if all you need to do is output the occasional PDF file. There are a number of free and inexpensive PDF conversion programs available, all with varied costs and features of course. I have used one program [...]
Red Swinglines: June 12th, 2005

Interesting fact- Swingline did not make a red stapler (as featured in the movie Office Space) until demand grew after the movie’s popularity grew. Read more about Office Space at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space Apparently the red version of the Swingline was just a black model painted red. Kudos to Swingline for being in tune with the [...]
Tucson Golf Review: April 21st, 2005

Adaptive Internet Solutions (my company) has just launched a new site, Tucson Golf Review.com. I am personally developing this site, with the help of a business partner, Brian Wiley. Tucson Golf Review is going to be an excellent resource for golfers in Tucson, AZ. We will have info on every golf course in town, and [...]
Google Maps (Now With Pictures): April 13th, 2005

If you haven’t seen it yet, Google Maps is a very cool, and very useful application. You can search for any address and zero in on its exact location. It’s a very quick and easy way to get directions. However, you can now do even more. Just look for the “Satellite” link in the upper [...]
Helpful Swing Thoughts: March 28th, 2005

I played golf at Santa Rita Golf Club over the weekend, and I’m happy to say that I hit some of the best drives I’ve ever hit. Until last weekend, I had kept my driver out of the bag for the past several months, but after hitting some great shots with my 3-wood a few [...]
Phishing: What It Is and How To Prevent It: March 28th, 2005

For the sake of continuity, this is part six of the computer security series I have been writing. Phishing is the newest term in the computer security world that I will be discussing in this series. Over the past year or so, phishing has entered the common vernacular, and has also become a common problem. [...]
Recommended Anti-Virus Software: March 21st, 2005

Part five of the computer security series will cover some excellent anti-virus software packages. Now that I have described computer viruses in general, I will discuss some software options for removing and preventing viruses. I’ll look at both free and paid software alternatives. This is by no means intended to be a comprehensive list, but [...]
Get FireFox!: March 20th, 2005

You may notice a new link on the side of this page. It’s a graphic that links to the FireFox download page. I’ll tell you why I use FireFox, and why you should consider using it too. In case you don’t know, FireFox is a new, open-source browser that is quickly growing in popularity. I [...]
Gotta Love the Gekkards!: March 19th, 2005

So what the heck is a Gekkard? Gekkards are small lizard-like creatures drawn by artist, Joey Welsh. My wife and I first discovered the Gekkards at the 4th Avenue Street Fair (here in Tucson, Arizona) last year. Here is one of the prints we bought last year: Joey does these drawings with colored pencils, and [...]
Computer Viruses: What are they and how to prevent them: March 16th, 2005

This is part four of my computer security series (a series that will one day be put together as a comprehensive guide). So far we have talked about spyware and adware, but now we’ll delve into their more malicious cousins- computer viruses. A technical definition, from Wikipedia, defines a computer virus as, “a program that [...]
Business Lessons From the Coffee Shop: March 11th, 2005

When visiting one of my favorite local coffee shops recently, I encountered some shocking news- their preferred customer card program was going to be canceled! Imagine my sorrow as I looked at my current preferred customer card, still in need of about seven more cups of coffee to get one free. I could never complete [...]
Spyware: How to remove it: March 8th, 2005

Now that you have an idea of what spyware is, and how it gets on your computer, we can talk about how to get rid of it, and how to find it on your computer. I’ll talk about some tools that can be used to scan your system for the existence of spyware, and hopefully [...]
Spyware: What is it?: March 7th, 2005

In part two of my Security Series, I will explain what spyware is, and how it gets on your computer. I think those topics will make for a rather lengthy article on their own, so we’ll talk about removing spyware in the next installment. So what is spyware? According to Wikipedia, “spyware consists of computer [...]
How to Protect Your Computer: March 4th, 2005

Just a quick note to say that I am now starting a multi-part series on securing your computer. Over the past month or two I’ve spent many hours removing viruses, spyware, and adware from the computers of friends and family. Not to say that I mind helping, but it would be great if we could [...]
Google vs. Yahoo!: March 3rd, 2005

Wired magazine published a great article this month that offers a comparison of Google and Yahoo!. I guess I had forgotten that Google isn’t the only company founded by a couple of geeks from Stanford. I guess I had even forgotten about Yahoo! in general with all of the press Google receives these days. Well, [...]