web development

A collection of 46 posts

web development

Extremely tiny Wordpress improvement idea

At Slack, we had an internal channel designed for posting small good ideas from employees as well as any we spotted on twitter from Slack users. Software engineers at the company would hang out in the channel and start a discussion thread on the viability of implementing any of them

me me me

SEO spammers wearing a printout of my face as their mask

Over the past year, I've cut way back on my plethora of wacky domains used on long-lost web projects. I've let loads of domains go and only updated the few I still use or need. As a result, most projects have been lost to the ether

history

(Untitled)

20 Years Ago Today One day in the Spring of 1995, just a few months before I finished my undergrad degree a friend in the student computer lab leaned over my machine and said “check this out.” He double-clicked the NCSA Mosaic icon on the desktop and showed me the

google

Thoughts surrounding Google Reader's demise

First off, I'm sad to see Google Reader is closing up soon (why so soon when other Google apps came with 12-18 months of notice?). I know some people that developed and worked on the product and to this day I use it several times a day to

web development

"Why would anyone send me this?" — Aunt Fannie

I just had that thing happen with an online store, where if you once bought a gift item for someone, and had it shipped to them, all subsequent orders you place for yourself (even years later) end up being sent to your old giftee, instead of yourself. This has happened

ideas

Build this: Visual TiVo for my computer

I spend hours everyday on my main desktop computer, and I come across bugs in my own code and others' code often. Today as I was trying to help a friend move a blog off wordpress.com, I swear I saw a status screen change an important value when

advertising

The unfortunate mainstreaming of internet douchebaggery

Today someone spammed MetaFilter on behalf of Conde Nast publications, and it pissed me off way more than the average occasional spammy self-promoter on MeFi. We have a strict rule at MeFi (since there's no editorial vetting upfront) that you can't post about your own stuff,

bug reports

This is broken too: Threadless shopping cart logins

Threadless is my favorite place to buy t-shirts, period (this includes any offline stores). I've bought dozens and dozens of them and I even subscribed to the shirt of the month club for a year, but every time I make the mistake of throwing a few shirts in

foofery

Eleven

After upgrading my first mac (powerbook) to another powerbook, then to an iMac and finally to a Mac Pro, I realized five years of using the Migration Assistant had finally run its course. Various basic parts (mostly Keychain Access) of Leopard stopped functioning properly and since everything ran great on

advertising

Ads good! No ads better!

If you've followed this site for a few years, you probably saw my old essays introducing Google's Adsense to the blogging public and that time I said ads in RSS were a no-no. Today I wrote an extensive update on the same subject over on my

conferences

WebVisions 2007

WebVisions starts tomorrow and I've enjoyed the last four of them, so I'll be around tomorrow and Friday. I figure I'll just go to any talk involving Lane Becker and that's half my schedule booked.

blogging

My new site: fortuitous

When I came back from Austin, I mentioned that I wanted to do a new site focused on business type advice. After a month or so of the idea gelling in my head, I wrote down about 30 ideas for essays I'd like to write, I banged out

bug reports

Bug report: Two things that suck about Gmail

Gmail is the best web app there is, period. It's also my sole interface to email. It's close to perfect, but a couple things keep me from calling it as such. I get a ton of spam, in the low thousands per day, and gmail is

mac

Parallels updates

I first heard about the new Parallels beta here on Dan's vox account. It's really incredible. It includes a couple cool new features, one being "Coherence" which lets you run windows intermingled with your mac. See how I have a windows taskbar below my

web development

Future of Web Apps

In a few weeks I'll be in SF for the Future of Web Apps conference. Every conference I've been to has had its share of shortcomings, and often my friends talk about someday doing our own conferences so I'm happy to see developers like

web development

For the love of bartering

I've been building sites for ten years now, but these days I'm lucky enough that I don't have to take on client projects to pay the bills. Back when I did, I always had a love-hate relationship with my clients and the work. I

web development

When friends and contacts are neither.

I noticed something weird in how I use Flickr today and wondered if maybe there is a disconnect between social software systems and utility in web applications. I know flickr has continually moved away from the social software label, but their application still has firm roots in such a system.

web development

Thoughts on etech

I just got back from etech, exhausted a bit more than usual considering I didn't partake in any sort of debauchery. Everything is still fresh in my mind, so I better jot my thoughts down before they escape me. The Good My favorite talks from the event were

web development

Measuremap goes to Google

(the signing, originally uploaded by MaggieMason) I'm happy to see Google did indeed buy Adaptive Path's Measuremap. I joked about the rumor earlier, but it's actually a great time to acquire an app. I've been using Measuremap since last summer and I

web development

MyBigRiver

I tried out MyBigRiver (via Ev) and it's pretty cool, though I was a little surprised it couldn't find any of my books. Check out the inline video to see what it did find though: Awesome.

web development

Testing JSON

Last ten from delicious, via the JSON api (thanks to Jason) function showImage(img) { return (function() {img.style.display = 'inline'}); } var ul = document.createElement('ul'); for (var i = 0, post; post = Delicious.posts[i]; i++) { var li = document.createElement('li'); var a = document.createElement(

web development

How to add comments links to your MT RSS Template

One thing I liked when I first started using Wordpress was that the RSS feeds had a comments entry, and in readers like Bloglines, it would render a nice "Comments" hotlink below each post. The downside was that (at least with the version of WP 1.5 I

web development

Talk about bumcakes, my girl's got 'em

Derek's post about robust footers at the ends of pages highlights a brilliant change he recently made during a site redesign. As peterme noted last year, Flickr was one of the first sites to use this seemingly forgotten space for useful things (in flickr's case, a

web development

New store CSS updates

Today I launched a new store and donation page for Creative Commons and while we're always looking to bolster our public support of the non-profit (and the t-shirts are really cool), I mention it here to show what's possible with CSS. When I did a mockup

web development

Work for Creative Commons, work with me

I'm happy to announce that we're looking for a designer at Creative Commons to handle print projects and assist me in web projects. My ideal match would be a San Francisco-based someone with a nicely designed xhtml/css blog and portfolio that has done annual reports,