Archive for the 'Web2.0' Category
Webmonkey Returns
A roommate in college maintained a popular Radiohead fan site, “Lift.” It boasted more traffic than most sites hosted at the University of Kentucky, our school, back in 1997. I was inspired and wanted to display stuff on a computer screen too! But how? Jon showed me around Netscape Composer and Webmonkey answered the other questions: How does a web form work? Should I use HTML frames? How do I create an animated gif? What’s the difference between Java and JavaScript. Most importantly, How do I make a career out of making web sites?!
Webmonkey was an essential resource at the time and offered newbies and seasoned veterans tips, tricks, and reference tools. Webmonkey authors were also outspoken, opinionated, and helped shape the emerging digital and web culture. Eventually the site lost relevance and disappeared… until April 2008. Webmonkey 2.0 has launched.
Show Me, Don’t Tell Me
Web Services has been researching screen recording software for demos, presentations, and training videos. We recently purchased a product called Camtasia Studio (with education discount). Ultimately, the goal is to add voice narration, text annotations, and integrate the videos with a training app such as Moodle.
Any difficulties viewing the video above? Please let me know. Thanks!
Custom Webclip Icons for iPhone
Remember the first time you saw a little web site icon pop up in your browser’s address bar? It was like, “Cool! How did they do that?” Fast forward to 2008 and with the most recent software update for the iPhone, users can save bookmark icons (webclips) to their phone’s desktop. Fortunately, it takes even less time than creating a “favicon.ico” image and you never have to worry about it strange disappearances (IE 6). It’s as simple as creating a 57×57 .png and uploading to your server’s root. Name the file apple-touch-icon.png. Don’t forget to add the rounded border and glassy effect necessary for Apple aesthetic goodness.
Flash? We don’t need no stinkin’ Flash…
John Resig, creator of the JavaScript library jQuery, today released a new library: Processing.js. A port of the Processing visualization language to JavaScript, one application of this library is to provide an alternate to Flash for animation and interactive graphics content. Among the drawbacks are browser support (the library is specifically targeted to the latest beta versions of Firefox and Opera) and the inefficient nature of JS engines (which are not designed to process this type of data), but it’s pretty cool, anyway. Be sure to view your CPU’s performance as evidence of the latter when viewing any of the numerous demos available on Resig’s blog.
Photoshop Express
Adobe launched the Web-based Photoshop Express on Thursday, March 27. Available for free with 2 gigabytes of storage space, the online image editor is targeted towards consumers that want a simple way to touch up, share, organize and store photos without the cost attached to Photoshop or Photoshop LE.
The application, which needs Flash Player 9 to run, pushes the limits of browser-based applications and will likely ratchet up the competition on the dozens of free and online photo-editing products available now. Check out the full review at webware.com and screenshots of the app at CNET News.com.
The Interview
The most discussed event of SXSW Interactive 2008 was probably the now infamous interview with Business Week’s Sarah Lacy and Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. This was an interview that started with excited geeks dancing in the aisles (seriously) and ended with an audience revolt. I can’t think of another SXSW discussion, panel, gathering, or event that captured so many themes that are at the heart of the changes in media, PR, social networks, tech, Web 2.0, and so on.
Julio Fernandez (with permission)
So what happened? Jeff Jarvis, Brian Solis, and the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss do a great job of breaking it down. Take your pick and you’ll have a pretty good understanding of how the interview unfolded.
Takin’ it to the streets
If you’re not wasting enough time reading Facebook boozemail messages or sending good karma, Google Maps now features “street view” for the Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh area. Simply search for a location and then click “Street view” link. Featured below: Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen on 1305 E. Franklin. Ummm… I can almost smell the chicken biscuits now…
W3C Publishes First Public Working Draft of HTML 5
The W3C announced today that after nine months, the HTML Working Group has published the first working draft of HTML 5: A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML. “HTML is of course a very important standard,” said Tim Berners-Lee, author of the first version of HTML and W3C Director. “I am glad to see that the community of developers, including browser vendors, is working together to create the best possible path for the Web…”
