Techn(ical|ology)

Most posts will probably end up in this category one way or another, because I tend to write a lot about technology and tech-related topics. I work online and really enjoy gadgets and gizmos, so a lot of what I get involved in revolves around those subjects. Anything from regular expressions to iPods to The Magic Bullet is fair game.

Idea: Subscribe to vCard/hCard via LDAP gateway

I was talking to Blake the other day about Plaxo, and about how the need it tried to fill (keeping everyone’s contact details up to date) was a valid one, but that it really didn’t live up to that goal. That got me thinking about how a big hole in the distribution of contact details was that you couldn’t “subscribe” to a vCard (contact details) in the same way that you can to an iCal (event/calendar details). Let’s fix that.

I’m imagining an online service (perhaps even just a WordPress plugin?) where you can set up URLs that point to either vCards that are online, or web pages that contain hCards. The system would then periodically (daily?) parse those URLs and load the details into a local cache/database.

The contents of the local cache would be exposed via an LDAP directory, allowing you to connect products such as the Apple Address Book to that directory. Those details would automatically be up-to-date, based on the last time their source URLs were parsed.

This would effectively eliminiate part of the need for services like Plaxo, and would give each person control over their contact information. Ideally the requests could be authenticated so that people sharing their contact details could control their distribution. With DiSo on the way, this would be hot.

Adding Blog Headlines to a WordPress Page/Theme

You may have noticed that I recently added a list of “Recent Headlines” to some of the pages that describe my Projects on this site. This is handled dynamically through WordPress, so that if I ever post a new blog entry relating to one of those projects, it automatically appears on the appropriate project page.

Here’s how it works…

Twitter Search Bookmarklet

Throughout the day, I’m likely to search Twitter a number of times. Being the lazy person that I am, I got sick of opening a new tab, typing search.twitter.com, hitting enter, waiting for the page, then typing my term and waiting for results. I already have a couple of other bookmarklets that I use all the time (one for loading up a Google Map, one for jumping to a PHP function name in the online reference), so I figured I’d knock up something to search Twitter. I’m using Firefox on a Mac, YMMV.

  1. Bookmark any page (seriously, any page).
  2. Put that bookmark into your Bookmarks Toolbar.
  3. Right click it and select Properties
  4. Change the Name to something like “Search Twitter”
  5. Change the Location to this (copy and paste it): 
    javascript:var%20d=document,w=window,e=w.getSelection,k=d.getSelection,x=d.selection,s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0));if(!s.length){s=prompt('Search%20Twitter:','');}if(s){document.location.href='http://search.twitter.com/search?q='+escape(s);}else{void(0);}
  6. Save Changes

That’s it. Now click that link in your Bookmark Toolbar and it’ll prompt you for a search string. Enter anything and hit OK. If you happen to have some text on the page selected, it’ll automatically search for that text. Voila – Twitter Search.

FeedGrowler update: Custom icons

I’ve just updated the code for FeedGrowler so that it supports custom icons for each feed that you are monitoring. All you need to do is include the full path to an icon/image file as the second argument when you call feedgrowler.php (or in your crontab).

Custom icons for a WordPress feed, and a Twitter search.

Custom icons for a WordPress feed, and a Twitter search.

This version also supports Atom feeds (in addition to previous RSS 2.0 support).

Check out the latest FeedGrowler.

Alternative Uses for WordPress

WordPress, the most widely used blogging platform in the world, is built in a relatively content-agnostic way that means it’s suitable for all sorts of things, all it takes is a little bit of creativity and some theme/plugin hacking. I’ve decided to compile a list of alternative/slightly different uses for WordPress that I either see around the place, or that I come up with myself.

I’m not going to go into great detail on how to actually implement all of these ideas, I’m just putting them out there.

Read on for some different applications for WordPress

Balsamiq Mockups: Wireframes Made Easy (and Fun!)

I used to use OmniGraffle Pro for all of my diagramming needs, including for wireframes. When I needed to do some wireframing for a client, I decided it was about time I found some better stencils (pre-built shapes) for OmniGraffle so that I could get these things done more easily and consistently. That turned into a wild goose chase, which ended with OmniGraffle no longer loading properly and an approaching deadline to have my diagrams done. But then I found Balsamiq Mockups, and all was well. (more…)

Nokia E71 NAM Real World Usage Review

Now that I’ve been using the Nokia E71 NAM for a few weeks, I wanted to post a follow-up review covering some of the more “day-to-day reality” aspects of the phone. I’m going to bullet-point my observations/comments for brevity’s sake, and as with my initial review, any comparisons made here are as compared to my Nokia E61:
(more…)

An Open Letter to IE6 for 2009

Dear Internet Explorer 6,

How are you feeling? How was your New Years? Probably a bit lonely I expect, what with people deserting you left and right for your ritzy sibling, IE7, or some of the even more attractive kids on the block like Firefox, Safari and Opera. I know we’ve spent a lot of time together, you and I, but it’s time that I told you something that’s been on my mind for a while.

I don’t think we should see each other any more.

(more…)