.::. nitorix web log .::.

Embracing Ruby on Rails

2006-09-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

I have spent that last few months playing around with Rails. It is an amazing web development framework that I believe will allow me to develop the kinds of web applications I have been getting requests for lately.

I really like the agile development practices Rails embraces, and the freedom from the mundane that it affords.

Stay tuned for the first web application from nitorix built on Rails.

del.icio.us hacks

2006-04-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

There are lots of good del.icio.us hacks here. My favorites are bookmarklets. Below are two that I have tweaked a bit for speed and flexibility.

Post with current selection as description:
post to del.icio.us

Post with 'read_later' and 'toread' tags:
read later

del.icio.us A-to-Z by Platforms : All 150+ hacks categorized : eConsultant

Have your Flash and SEO it too

2006-03-31T16:19:00.000-08:00

"Search engine optimization is one of the most popular subjects when nerds sit around and talk about Flash. “Does Google index your swf files?” seems to be the most popular question, usually garnering plenty of ‘yes‘ and ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ answers. The real answer to this question, once and for all, is this:"

deconcept > A modern approach to Flash SEO

This is a great article on Flash and Search Engine Optimization. It really opened my eyes to the feasibility of using flash for a content rich site.

del.icio.us and jeteye

2006-02-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

I am constantly finding new web sites that relate to a topic I am interested in or researching. I used to just create bookmarks for everything and try to categorize with folders. This proved to be a real pain, and I ended up losing too many good sites in my bookmark list because I just could remember the site name.

I have found two solutions: del.icio.us and jeteye

del.icio.us is great for adding tags and a little note to a site very quick. This process barely interrupts your browsing experience. Here's the process I prefer:

Add quick access buttons to your browser of choice.
When you find a site you want to remember click on the "post to del.icio.us" button.

This will send you temporarily to you del.icio.us account. Add your own tags or select tags that others used for this site. You can also at a note if you want to remind yourself of why you tagged this site.

Click Save and del.icio.us will save this tagged site to your account and immediately return you to the original site.

jeteye does a bit more but is much more intrusive. In jeteye you can create a jetpak for any topic and then add a description, related URLs, images, notes, and other jetpaks. This is really great for more extensive web research, but isn't as quick. jeteye does provide a Firefox extension that adds a large sidebar to the browser. The nice thing is that you can just drag items into the sidebar and they are automatically added to you current jetpak.

For now I still prefer the del.icio.us solution, but I'm continuing to experiment with both.

Rovion - Bring your web site to life!

2006-02-14T20:06:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wished you could just talk to you customers and let them know why your product or company is so special. Well, now you can. Right on the web. Yeah, it's video....but way cooler.

How do you Get your 'Lomo' Effect?

2006-02-08T07:26:00.000-08:00

Flickr: faux lomo

There is a Gorup on Flickr dedicated to the Lomo Effect. BUT, there are rules.

Rule #1 - You can't use a Lomo Camera. It has to be all digital manipulation.

It is great to see that the nitorix scripts are listed as a favorite.

Google Zeitgeist '05

2005-12-20T15:47:00.000-08:00

The Google Zeitgeist is a great summary of 2005.

Flock Launches

2005-10-20T22:11:00.000-07:00

Firefox-based Social Browser Flock Launches: "daria42 writes 'The much-hyped Flock, a new browser based on Mozilla Firefox and integrating features like RSS feeds, blogging tools, the del.icio.us social bookmarking and Flickr photo sharing services has just launched a public developer preview to the world. Flock is being driven by a team of developers being led by Bart Decrem, a well-known open source developer who co-founded the ill-fated Eazel project back in 1999 and has been involved with both the Mozilla and GNOME foundations. On his blog this week he says Flock won't be forking the Firefox codebase.'"

I bit and tried Flock out. Very interesting. The 1.0 version which looks like it is based on the Firefox 1.5b is very stable as a browser. The other new features (blogging, flickr integration, rss, etc.) are pretty far along but a bit buggy. Flock has serious potential and the 1.0 version just might pull me over from Firefox (oh wait it is Firefox...perfect!). I really like the integrated blogging and del.icio.us support.

iPod Video

2005-10-12T22:43:00.000-07:00

Apple - iPod Video

Who wants one? Me. Me. Me.

Google Reader

2005-10-10T17:54:00.000-07:00

There is a bit of buzz going around about the Google Reader.

I have been using it for the last few days and over all am pretty happy with the features. Mostly I like that I can subscribe to different blogs and news feeds and then forget where they are. With Reader I don't have to clutter up my browser with bookmarks or "live bookmarks" to they sites I want to look at every day or so to keep up on what's what. It does the work for me an presents me with a reading list. I can browse at my leisure and star thinks I care to take a closer look at later. It will also remove from view everything I have looked at so I don't have to read thinks twice, unless more than one site is talking about "things".

Give it a try. (it is still in beta so be warned.)

Here are a few of the sites I have subscribed to:
Apple Hot News
CNN.com
Engadget
NPR Topics: News
Slashdot
Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger
tech.memeorandum

The SMS Bible

2005-10-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

The SMS Bible: 4 God so luvd da world >: "No we’re not kidding. A member of the Bible Society in Australia has translated all 32,173 verses in just “four weeks” (!) into SMS-style text."

Photoshop & Automator

2005-10-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

Batch processing and workflow is always a hot topic in digital photography. Yesterday a friend over at opensourcephoto.net asked how to batch process a bunch of images to assign a color profile. He mentioned that Actions and the Batch... command in Photoshop just didn't cut it. I said he would have to use the scripting interface, which he is full capable of, but it isn't easy to whip something together in ten minutes and get the job done. And if you have no programming knowledge this solution is not a solution at all.

Late last night I stumbled across the solution for all digital photographers. Well, most. You have to have OS X 10.4 "Tiger".

With Automator and the Photoshop Automator Actions created by Ben Long at Complete Digital Photography creating the automated workflow is done in literally 2 minutes.

Preparation:

Download the Photoshop Automator Actions
Copy the Photoshop Automator Actions to the main Photoshop directory

Creating the Assign Profile Workflow:

Open Automator (holding down Option gets Automator to discover your new Actions)
Select the Photoshop CS/CS2 Actions in the Library pane
Drag the Open action from the Actions pane to the Workflow pane on the right
Drag the Assign Color Profile action and drop it below the Open action (you will see them connect)
Select the Custom profile radio button and your desired profile.
Check Save and Close if you want the file automatically saved and closed. (Note: if you leave this unchecked all images will remain open in Photoshop)
Last Choose File -> Save As Plug-in... and save the Workflow as a Finder plug-in.

Running Your Workflow

Select the images you want to process in the Finder
Right click on your selected image and choose Automator -> Your Workflow
Automator does its job and you take a nap.

Google Addiction: A Date To Remember

2005-09-29T17:20:00.000-07:00

Google Addiction: A Date To Remember: "Google is developing a Calendar service that will likely be known to everyone as 'GCalendar'. There has been speculation in the past about such a service, but now there is evidence that Google has been thinking about it since 2004."

I have been waiting for a Google calendar ever since GMail came out. A calendar with well implemented alerts (to my mobile phone as text messages) is all I'm waiting for to finally get rid of my Yahoo account once and for all. Come on Google.....

Images: MIT's $100 laptop | CNET News.com

2005-09-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

MIT's $100 laptop | CNET News.com

Wow! I want one.

The only lame thing is the hand crank. Couldn't they have figured out a way to power this thing with a mouse on a wheel. So much cooler!

Using GMail as a Notepad

2005-09-27T23:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I just need a place for saving stuff (links, snippets, documents, etc.) but I also want to be able to find it later. This is where GMail with its 2.5GB of space and powerful search come in. (I got this from Jim's Tips)

Three Steps:

Create a new Contact with name set to "Notes" and email set to "username+Notes@gmail.com"
Create a new "Notes" label.
Create a new Filter to automatically apply the "Notes" label to all emails addressed to "username+Notes@gmail.com". Also check the Archive It option so the note doesn't arrive in you inbox. (You know you sent it.)

The filter summary should look something like this:

Matches: to:(username+Notes@gmail.com)

Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label "Notes"

If you want to write a note from in GMail click "Compose Mail", type "Notes" in the To field and GMail will auto-complete to the correct address (hit Tab to auto-complete), hit Tab again and type a Subject, then hit Tab again and write your note and hit Send.

That's it. You now have a fully searchable notepad that goes with you anywhere.

Thanks Google.

Google SMS - Has it saved you?

2005-09-20T23:37:00.000-07:00

Google SMS is by far one of the most useful new additions to the Google suite of products. And of course is is free!

"Google SMS (Short Message Service) enables you to send queries as text messages over your mobile phone or device and easily get precise answers to your questions. No links. No web pages. Just text — and the information you're looking for." - google.com

To use Google SMS follow these simple instructions:

Enter your query as a text message.
Send the message to the US shortcode 46645 (GOOGL on most phones).
Receive a text message (or messages) with your results, usually within a minute. Results may be labeled as "1/3", "2/3", etc.
To get Google SMS help info sent directly to your phone, send the word 'help' as a text message to 46645.

My favorite features are driving directions and movie information. Thanks to Google I will never be lost again or have to wonder where and at what time a movie is playing. Life is just getting to easy.

Sample queries:

santa barbara ca to LAX
from 93101 to san diego ca
to 1100 state st santa barbara ca from ventura ca
broken flowers 93101
wedding crashers santa barbara ca

Try Google SMS online demo.

Photo Blogs

2005-09-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

Here are two of my favorite photo blogs to check out whenever I remember.

Photo-A-Day

Charbeck Photography.

These guys are constantly amazing me with their creative eye and unique composition.

showitFAST.com has Launched

2005-09-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

showitFAST.com has launched to bring you the latest on the Showit Suite of products.

Check back for tutorials and demos. Also check out opensourcephoto.net for tip & tricks on Showit.

Showit Effects

2005-09-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

Nitorix partners with davidjay.com to bring the Professional Wedding Photographer a suite of products to automate their digital workflow from creating a vivid slideshow at the reception to post processing and upload to Pictage.

Check out Showit Effects and Showit Web at ShowitFast.com.

Google Blog Search

2005-09-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

Google now lets you "Find blogs on your favorite topics" with Google Blog Search.

Try these searches...

nitorix
showit
davidjay

Mozilla Thunderbird

2004-11-14T21:41:00.000-08:00

Just got the new Thunderbird. It is awesome as usual.

It has two new features that I am stoked about:
1) RSS reader built in.
2) Full-text searching of emails. (I requested this about 4 versions ago.)

- I guess you get what you want when you tell them that
Outlook Express has full text searching. Can't let Microsoft beat you.

If you aren't using Thunderbird or FireFox you should be. If not because they are light, fast, fully featured, and have great extensions; then because they are mostly security hole free and not targeted by every hacker out there.

Since we're on the subject...

2004-11-06T01:00:00.000-08:00

Here are some more links to help you build your micro-ISV.

http://www.microisv.com/
http://www.ericsink.com/
http://joelonsoftware.com/

There is always something good to read.

Product Pricing Primer

2004-11-05T16:21:00.000-08:00

Reminder to myself to read this. Maybe you should to.

Product Pricing Primer

Steve Pavlina's Blog

2004-11-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

Check out this blog for all you starting Micro-ISV's (Independent Software Vendor). He has some great thoughts.

Steve Pavlina's Blog - The Strangest Secret

The beginning...

2004-05-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

This is the first post.