Archive for May, 2008

Railscasts Does It Again : Site Wide Announcements

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

A note to all rails developers, new and old.  If you’re not following Ryan Bates’ Railcasts, you should be.

I follow a variey of rails blogs and lean on a number of resources quite regularly, but the Railscasts are consistently the most useful.  There are now over 100 railscast, each one a roughly 5 minute screencast outlining the solution to some problem.

A recent cast showed how to create a site wide announcement that each user could mark as read individually.  This is a great, non-intrusive way to communicate notices with users.

The screencast details how to do it.  I was able to implement this on a site in a very short period of time.  I made some modifications which make it work better within my site.  I do have one suggestion to improve it overall.  To track whether a message had been read/should be shown Ryan uses the session.  Sessions expire in the near future, and if using a db store, should be wiped daily.  If your users don’t visit daily, you will want to create a message that hangs around for a week or 2.  In this case, a session variable won’t work.  Instead, you can store the info in a cookie and set a delayed expire time on it.  (By default, cookies expire with the session in rails).

Before reading how to store this info in a cookie you should watch the screencast.  Once you’ve implemented everything like Ryan’s demo, there are just 3 small changes to use cookies and hence have a longer memory.

1. In your controller, set the cookie:


def hide_announcement
  cookies[:announcement_hide_time] ={ :value => Time.now.to_s , :expires => 2.weeks.from_now }
end

2. In your helper method, read the value from the cookie.


def current_announcements
  @announcements ||= Announcement.current_announcements(cookies[:announcement_hide_time])
end

3. In the announcement controller you need to parse the time since it is stored as a string in the cookie


def self.current_announcements(hide_time)
  with_scope :find => { :conditions => "starts_at <= now() AND ends_at >= now()" } do
    if hide_time
      time = Time.parse(hide_time)
      find(:all, :conditions => ["updated_at >= ?", time])
    else
      find(:all)
    end
  end
end
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TechNation.com.au Has Launched

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

TechNation, an exciting new blog focused on Australia tech startups, launched this week to coincide with CeBit.  From the first post:

TechNation Australia is a technology news, review and analysis site with a focus on startups and Internet companies in Australia.

It was born out of Open Coffee, a Sydney based bi-weekly meetup of entrepreneurs.  I think the blog is a great idea and hope that it will develop into a useful resource for Aussie entreprenuers.  By continuing to provide great content it can help the startup community flourish and let startups down under gain exposure into other markets.  A commonly perceived challenge among startups in Australia seems to be the geographic isolation.  This does not need to be the case, especially as the world continues to flatten.  If you are part of, or know of startup that you would like to see featured please contact TechNation (see their contact page).  If you are interested in startup news – please subscribe to the feed.

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Decisions, Decisions…

Monday, May 19th, 2008

Hmm, which flight should I choose?

flight decision

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Why So Many Blog Posts?

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

I’ve been posting a lot of blog entries recently. There are 2 reasons for the increase in frequency. First, it gives me something to do if I’m commuting to the city. Second, and more importantly, it lets me experiment with a variety of things.

My recent posts have been mostly non-technical. I find writing detailed tech posts takes longer.  Instead, as I said, I’m experimenting.  So, what am I experimenting with?

Publicizing.
My new blog posts have been shared via twitter (sorry for any tweet spam), facebook, technorati, readburner, digg, stumbleupon, reddit, rssmeme, and mybloglog. I think the results will be relative to the size of the community I have for each, and since I just signed up recently for most of them I’m not expecting much.  So far reddit is providing the most traffic.

Typo-optimizing.
I’m experimenting with SEO and typos. In a recent post I intentionally misspelled ‘FirendConnect’ twice because I noticed that the google search results for that misspelled term were empty.  I managed to get the #1 spot for that term by doing so.

Diggability
My last post was purely to see how many diggs I could get. There are 2 very common themes among popular digg articles recently: Lists & Anti-Clinton. I figured by writing an anti-Clinton list I might get dugg. I think, however, that you probably need a group of friendly diggers to help get you over an initial threshold.  I only got 5 diggs (nowhere close enough to get dugg).

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3 More Reasons Not To Vote For Clinton

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

As the battle for the democratic nomination continues in the US, here are 3 more reasons not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

1. She’s Losing
2. She’s Out Of Money
3. She Can’t Spell

Sound harsh, trivial, or silly? Let me explain. Each of these reasons are the result of very real and very significant leadership flaws exhibited by Mrs. Clinton.

1. She’s Losing

Senator Clinton is, undoubtedly, an accomplished woman; even if her experience is questioned. She was the clear favorite near the end of 2007. In fact, she held a 23% lead over Obama in the polls. By all accounts the nomination was hers to lose – and lose it she did. If her leadership throughout her campaign has seen her turn from a dominate favorite into an also-ran, just imagine what her leadership for America would do.

2. She’s Out Of Money

The Clinton campaign recently announced it is $20M in debt. The campaign to date has raised $194M, so she has overspent by more than 10.3%. This clearly demonstrates her willingness to be fiscally irresponsible in order to pursue her goals. To demonstrate what this would look like on a national scale, the 2007 tax receipts were $2.568 Trillion and the deficit was $162 Billion; this was only a 6.3% overspend. Let me stress this point: if Clinton ran America like she ran her campaign, the country’s deficit would be significantly higher than it is under the current Bush administration. America can ill-afford more fiscal disasters.

3. She Can’t Spell

Good leaders surround themselves with intelligent and capable people. This recent open letter, from Clinton to Obama, contained several mistakes including the ‘creative’ words “untaken” and “publically“. I can’t fault her for making some typos – I make them all the time. With such an important letter though, one or more of her staff should have checked it. So did Clinton not have her staff read it, or did they just miss the obvious mistakes? I’m not sure which is worse but neither is what you want from a president.

A candidate’s positions on the issues and their leadership abilities are both important to consider. I truly commend Hillary Clinton; She has done well to get to where she is today. She is not, however, a leader that can be trusted as President. A president should be able to win a battle, especially when they start in the lead. A president should be responsible. A president should surround themselves with capable staff. Clinton has demonstrated through her campaign that she does not have these 3 leadership traits.

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First Thoughts On Google FriendConnect

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

Google announced FirendConnect today. From what I’ve read, it looks like it’s a set of social ‘gadgets’ that people can embed into their websites to help bring social networking to sites that were once, well, unsocial.

If you like demo videos (and don’t we all) or you like odd guacamole references, check out this video post overview from google:




I’ve signed up for the preview release. I have not got a response yet (I’m sure they are getting lots of requests). I’m excited to see how I might be able to add it to MomentVille. The first 2 things that really interest me are

  1. Sharing Photos
  2. The Activity Stream for people posting on the site.

I do see 1 immediate problem though. From the demo it appears that a lot of the gadgets are javascript based. A lot of sites won’t allow users to embed javascript for security reasons. I image it won’t be long before someone makes flash social based gadgets for FriendConnect.

The launch of this comes very close to MySpace’s DataAvailability launch and Facebook’s Connect announcement. It appears, in many ways, that all 3 of these efforts are attempts to push one’s ‘network’ beyond the existing website into the web as a whole.

To date I like Google’s FirendConnect approach the best since it doesn’t seem to be tied to any one particular identity, where as MySpace & Facebook seem to be aiming for the top spot as master identity manager.

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My Blog Theme Packaged As A WordPress Theme

Monday, May 12th, 2008

I’ve made my blog theme into a wordpress theme that others can now use. It’s packaged as a zip file which you can download here. If you aren’t familiar with wordpress themes, here is how you install a wordpress theme

The downloadable theme has 3 color variations. You’ll need to know the basics of CSS in order to change the color. Just edit the styles.css file to uncomment the color section you want.

If you want to add your own background, here is a great article on simple web design from scratch (which is where I got the idea for my theme)

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3 Tips When Looking For a Lawyer

Friday, May 9th, 2008

I’ve talked to a significant number of lawyers today and there are 3 things that I’ve learned about how to pick a lawyer. I have yet to measure how useful these 3 tips are since I haven’t actually used the services of any of the lawyers, but my decision will be made on these factors.

1. Pick a lawyer that speaks succinctly. A number of the candidates I spoke to would drag on their sentences well after they made there point. When paying by the (6 minute) chuck of time – brevity is golden.

2. Ask about experience in a specific area that you will need. There are a lot of general lawyers. I’m looking for a lawyer that knows about startups. If they don’t have small tech company experience I’m less interested.

3. Try to get a referral (okay – this one is an obvious one.)

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HTC Touch Diamond: Lessons on what not to do with a UI

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

There are obviously a lot of iPhone clones out there. Some are better than others..

HTC just announced the ‘Touch Diamond’. The specs look good. 3G, GPS, big internal storage, nice bright screen. By all accounts it should be comparable to the upcoming 2nd gen iPhone. I was just looking at their demo and think that they spent too much time worrying about transition effects and not enough time worrying about usability.

The two most notable problems are this.

1. No consistency in the UI: The contacts have a roladex feel, the music is some sort of stack, and the photos, well, I’m not really sure what that is. Some sort of hanging chain type of interface… ?!

2. Poor use of space: The 2 worst offenders are mail and photos. The mail appears to be organized in an envelop and displayed with a 3d perspective where the right side of the message is further away form the screen. This is downright horrible design. Test that should have prime focus should not have perspective that makes it harder to read. IT should also not be covered by an image which obstructs the view. The photos also show on an angle, and in only a small part of the screen. If I’m looking at a photo, I want to see it!. The ‘chain’ format that it’s in doesn’t allow you see to what’s next or last (which is the only reason not to have a full screen photo anyway.)

Now, this isn’t a hands-on review. This is purely from looking at their flash demo. but, the 20seconds I spent looking at the flash demo made it clear that I wouldn’t be giving this device any more attention.

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CNN’s Statistician Might Have A Bit Of An Obama Bias

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

I find the US election process interesting. It’s convoluted and archaic, but insanely important to the world as a whole.

I was just looking at the results of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries today and noticed a very interesting result on CNN. I think their statistician may be a little bit biased toward Obama. I’m not sure what’s more interesting; that Obama is projected to win despite have less votes, or that he is projected to win despite 0% of votes being reported.

CNN Obama Results

Okay, in reality, the projection is probably based on exit polling, whereas the numbers are based on actual counted votes. It was still funny to see though….

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