Edit your pics in flickr

You can enable picnik editing in your flickr account to muss with your images online. w00t!

MacHeist II

On the heels of last year's great scavenger hunt, we have MacHeist II. The details are supposed to start flowing later this week, so get over there and get registered.

Mac Food

There is a deal going on with some great software developers right now over here. Some European software developers have banded together to offer their wares and the rub is the more you buy the more you save. It is a great deal for some excellent software.

Happy Thanksgiving

Took some time the other day to read to my older daughter's class, N.C. Wyeth's Pilgrims for the holiday. It is a great book that retells the story of the Pilgrims emigration to the new world through a wonderful narrative. The real prize here, however, is the use of N. C. Wyeth's painting. One of the greatest American illustrators, it is a nice book to share with your kids during this season; one to help them remember why we should be thankful in our lives, but also for the gorgeous illustrations from the master, N. C. Wyeth.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Grrrrrr

Well, I dove in and installed on my new MBP. There are some very cool features that I am looking foward to exploring, like Spaces, but there are also a few key apps that I have come to rely on that do not work…Daylite being the most important. The new features in Mail may be able to over come some of these shortcomings, but Daylite has so many great features, I am anxious for that upgrade as well.

On first glance there are some really slick features, but the sem-transparent men bar has got to go.

How connected are you?

cork'd
flickr
iconbuffet
jaiku
Last.fm
LinkedIn
Mashable
My Space
Skitch
Suprglu
Tumblr
Twitter
Virb
Vox

These are just off the top of my head. Leaving out elements like Orkut, MyBlogLog, Pownce, Wakoopa, ImThere, etc. my days are pretty well taken up with managing my online presence. Some of these sites pull feeds to keep them up to date, but others require more effort than the RSS spiders. I haven't even mentioned the user forums that I frequent either to keep up to-date on software development, latest tip and tricks with software and market research.

There are a multitude of other opportunities to connect online and some are more valuable than others. It all really comes down to your needs and expectations. When I review all of these sites, there are a few that standout more than others with my workflow: Twitter, Tumblr and flickr. These sites are indispensable in my day, while several others are important and the rest just generally used to keep in touch with market trends.

Mashable

Mashable has a list of resources for development you may find useful. After you get through the list, 250 in all, spend some time surfing around the site; I am sure you will find more useful info.

Restored

Well after quite a bit of time, I am back up again. Another hardware failure and a move from my trusty old host to mediatemple. More things in the works and off we go. :-)

iYes!

The Apple event, yesterday, brought a lot of great new goodies for your favorite Apple geeks. Since I cannot afford a new machine, however, I am focused on the new updates to the iApps; iWork and iLife 08. Both of these suites have been updated with new features, functions and in some instances new applications (Numbers).

One of the cooler features, well there are tons but, the web gallery from iPhoto is something else…especially for plogs. Set up the gallery and allow uploading by email and you can update your cool web 2.0 image gallery on the go. One problem I had was not being able to publish from iPhoto and some quick research provides an update to the brand new app, already. I am guessing, since there is so little info, but there was an oversight in the handling of upgraded images. Ultimately, a quick update and restart the app and I had a test gallery up and running.

These 2 suites are some of the best values you can find and I would recommend them to anyone.

* 756

Last night Barry Bonds hit his 756 home run. Congratulations to him and his pharmacist. It is remarkable that anyone can have such a record, not unlike my Met's and Tom Glavine's 300th win (no asterisks on that one). However, there is a giant asterisk associated with this achievement and Hank will always be the king to me.

book learnin'

Wanting to learn more about this I have been reading up at a great site; Ajaxian, as well as others. I have also been educating myself on some of the libraries that are popping up as well; mootools, GWT, YUI and more so that I can begin extending my programming skills with the most appropriate solution for my business and my clients' needs.

The first book I bought was Javascript and Ajax for the Web, by Peachpit Press. The Visual Quickstart series of books is a great library for any programmer to have on their shelf (I own about a half dozen of these) because they present the information in clearly defined steps with screenshots that corresponds the environment that the reader will most likely be working within. They were also the first, to my knowledge, that included Mac specific instructions for programmatic instruction.

The next book I picked up is O'Reilly's Head Rush Ajax. First off, the Head Rush series of books is a great way to learn some of these technologies. It provides simple explanations of complex concepts in a manner that is easy and approachable for any skill level.

The last book I picked up in my Ajax trifecta was Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax from Apress. This book, I grabbed for its reputation in the industry.

With these books, and many more I am sure, I am hoping to be able to not only develop more immersive sites, but also provide better custom solutions for my clients' needs. I will get more detailed reviews later, as well as tutorials based on this new knowledge.

Great idea, poorly executed

With the release of The Simpsons Movie just around the corner, there have been all kinds of promotions thrown at us over the past weeks. From rebranding 7-11s around the country to QuickEMarts to a couple of websites, their is no lack of market awareness. One of the problems with so much promotional material has been some of the lack of QA in the production pipeline.

The Simpsons Movie site is a great bit of entertainment, although there are far too many "Coming Soon" placeholders for my taste. A web site is constantly evolving and adding tags like that just showcase the lack of planning and foresight by the marketing execs involved with this production. I can accept that, however, because the items they have on the site are engaging and work. That cannot be said for one of the more recent additions to Springfield.

There is another Simpsons site that allows you to upload a photo and have it "Simpsonized". This site is a complete hit or miss; actually it's a miss. I have been trying to get something to work on the site since I discovered it over the weekend. Not once, in literally almost 50 attempts, has proved fruitful (those 50 attempts do not include the times the site did allow entry; either by error request or session control).

This would be an example of how not to do a movie tie-in. The site leaves the visitor with nothing but frustration and nothing of the "reason to believe" marketing folks so often use in their creative briefs. This launch date for the movie was established long ago, yet like so many ill-conceived promotions, they did not allow enough time to produce the products to the level that the market has come to expect from a global entertainment company.

For example compare the Simpsons movie site with Disney/Pixars Ratatouille. Hands down, the mouse or in this case the rat, delivers on the promise. Now, I don't want to say the Simpsons have jumped the shark, but I think the lack of attention to some of these major promotional materials does not bode well for the Simpsons (both the movie and the recent lackluster seasons).