The latest and greatest version of jQuery, version 1.4, was released on January 14, the birthday of jQuery’s original launch. Bugfixes and improvements abound! The jQuery team has put together a site devoted to the new version, called the 14 days of jQuery, covering the major version changes as well as infrastructure updates coinciding with [...]
Read More ajax, handy functions, jquery, open source, programming, software development, standards, usabilityEveryone at this point knows the story of Michael Vick (quick summary if you don’t: he beat dogs, then got his high-paying job back after getting out of prison). Now the Philadelphia Eagles have given this guy a damn award. I could sit here and articulate this guy’s rise-fall-rise-again story as a sign of the [...]
Read More optimization, software development, usability, user interfacesI recently made the decision to store times on Fwd:Vault systems in Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT. I decided to do this because I have time-sensitive events happening along several dimensions. Email coming into the system has several timestamps associated with it: the user’s initial delivery, relay from their mail server, and receipt by the [...]
Read More coding theory, fwdvault, software development, standards, tech support, Twitter, usabilityThe Future of Web Apps conference is so right up my alley it’s almost stupid that I couldn’t attend. Web development with a focus on business: customer service, driving traffic, marketing, sales… It’s essentially the event for geeks who want to go from the basement to the corner office. Fortunately, Ryan Carson and the team [...]
Read More business support, content sharing, customer service, entrepreneur, expo, marketing, software development, usabilityI was recently quoted in an article over at IT World, discussing underused developer tools (e.g. security testers). My quote is on page 2: http://www.itworld.com/development/74088/developer-tools-you-dont-use-and-why-you-dont-use-them Also FYI I am on vacation the rest of this week; return to our regular schedule next Monday.
Read More entrepreneur, fwdvault, get inspired, media, software development, usabilityThe guys from big G never cease to amaze me. I was deleting an old coupon message from Pro Flowers today and accidentally hit the “Report Spam” button instead of “Delete”, and was greeting with this: I thought unsubscribing from legitimate mailing lists was already pretty easy, but Google decided that one step was still [...]
Read More customer service, usability, user interfacesI recently discovered an issue with the mailing list signup on the Fwd:Vault placeholder site. [Aside: It was perfect when I set it up, I swear there are gremlins in my code sometimes. If you tried to sign up and were unable to, I apologize, try it one more time.] After fixing the issue, I [...]
Read More crappy coding, usabilityThis is the kind of “usability fail” that drives me nuts, especially from a company of Google’s caliber. When you add a new site to Google Analytics, they present you with the Javascript code block you need during the setup process. But what if you need to look up that code block again? What if [...]
Read More crappy coding, usability, user interfacesI was recently discussing Fwd:Vault with a typical end user, specifically how our service is completely oriented towards people who simply cannot or will not bother with anything technical. She whole-heartedly agreed, and expressed her mindset as follows: Just make it work. Don’t frustrate me. Don’t break on me. I think those three sentences are [...]
Read More fwdvault, usabilitySince announcing my work on Fwd:Vault, a few friends have come forward expressing interest in being angel investors. From what I’ve read, most entrepreneurs have to seek such people out, so I’ll take it as a compliment that these friends either (a) really like me, or (b) really trust my technical and prowess. I’m leaning [...]
Read More crappy coding, fwdvault, software development, usability