Category: Technology

CSS and CMS

Designing a site now that has to push the envelope of how CSS must be able to tweak the layout, much like CSS Zen Garden but for an ecommerce application. We’re also using a content management system, so the interplay of CSS and CMS becomes interesting. I think I can simplify the CMS templates so they only have to reflect business logic, and all the differences in presentation are done in the CSS. Still, it changes how I think about content types. Normally I’d only think about how granular the content types need to be to work in every template. Now I’m also thinking about what I want to appear in separate DIVs too. Not sure if that will end up being more granular or not. Dave Shea posts related thoughts about the relationship between markup and CSS flexibility.

Besides all the usual advantages of CSS, it should be an easier implementation as CSS development is easier than CMS template development. I think.

Published
Categorized as Markup

Audio Blogging

Audblog is an audio blogging service, allowing you to record an audio post from any phone which gets converted to an audio file on your server. I had the reverse idea a while ago, an RSS aggregator that would convert your favorite feeds into an MP3 file for listening away from the computer (oh LazyWeb…). Also, Audblog’s Audblog-to-email would be interesting to use with email enabled phones too, basically giving you inbox-style voice mail without all that crazy complicated VoiP software in between. Right now AT&T sends me an email when I get a voicemail message at home, but what I really want is the damn message!

Bill hates audio for thinking, which I agree with. But Bill and I are here in New York, car free. Much of the developed world spends an hour or more in a car or on public transportation each day listening to something, why not their favorite authors’ daily writing?

Published
Categorized as Blogs

AAC: music to my ears

If you’re using iTunes/iPod/QuickTime 6 you can start burning music in AAC format, the audio spec for MPEG-4. The encoding is better than MPEG-3 resulting in smaller file sizes (at the same bit rate) and higher quality sound. Mp3s couldn’t match CDs for sound quality because they relied on earlier, imperfect perceptual coding algorithms; AAC comes much closer.

You can make this change in iTunes preferences. Upping the bit rate also helps, I’ve got mine set on 192 bps. 128 is more common and uses less space, but 192 sounds better. You can always down sample it later if you run out of space, but you can’t up sample without re-burning the track.

You can tell Apple is behind this migration because they’re selling songs in their store in AAC format, and iTunes even has ‘convert to AAC’ menu choice, making the process easy. I’ve been holding off on the mass burning of my CDs due to mp3’s limitations, but now I’m ready.

Published
Categorized as Audio

From Palm to Hiptop

So I took advantage of the $49 Hiptop special and finally migrated from my ancient Palm. When reading all the complaints of the browser rendering I grouchily asked, ‘Who really wants to browse the web on a screen that big anyway?‘ but actually, now that I have one, I do. Having access to the Web almost anywhere is awesome.

photo of me from hiptop

I find I have better control over my data too since the phone is always with me, whereas the Palm was always two steps behind, in my bag somewhere.

And now that I can see through the eyes of the mobile user I found it necessary to create a mobile version of NBS.

Subsequently I have a Palm III with RhinoPak case and GoType keyboard for sale for any reasonable offer ($30?)

Published
Categorized as Hiptop

Ellison Speaks

Gotta love a CEO who isn’t afraid to argue technical architecture in public…

…The suggestion that “a single integrated software architecture may be perfect for [firms as centralised as] Oracle”, but not for companies that are more operationally devolved is quite wrong. The point of running applications designed and built around a single shared database is to provide a single place where managers can easily find and access accurate up-to-date information about the state of their business. The one-database approach puts the information in one place; it does not dictate decisions or the degree of autonomy given to managers in local markets…

Lanier Interview

Coding from Scratch: A Conversation with Virtual Reality Pioneer Jaron Lanier

…if you make a small change to a program, it can result in an enormous change in what the program does. If nature worked that way, the universe would crash all the time. Certainly there wouldn’t be any evolution or life. There’s something about the way complexity builds up in nature so that if you have a small change, it results in sufficiently small results; it’s possible to have incremental evolution…But in software, there’s a chaotic relationship between the source code…and the observed effects of programs…

What advice do you have for developers just starting out?

There’s a lot I would say. If you’re interested in user interfaces, there’s a wonderful opportunity these days to push what a user interface can be. If a user interface gives a user some degree of power, try to figure out if you can give the user more power, while still keeping it inspiring and easy to use. Can you do it? For instance, could you design a search engine that would encourage people to do more complex searches than they can do on a service like Google today, but still do them easily? I haven’t seen a really good visual interface, for instance, for setting up searches on Google. Could you do that? Could you suddenly make masses of people do much more specific and effective searches than they currently are doing just by making a better user interface?

Pushing Weblogs

Sometimes pushing, via email, still wins over pulling via websites. There’s a handful of sites I want to monitor but lack the time or attention to surf, even as an RSS feed. Lately I’ve been using iMorph’s Infominder service. They basically check a site for changes and send you an update. Nice touches are thrown in, like a digest mode and the ability to check RSS feeds. The first ten feeds are free.

Published
Categorized as Email

Just Keep Trying

I’m confident we can solve all the hard technology problems we currently face. I’ve recently heard words like “never” and “too hard” rolling off tongues a bit too readily and it’s just not the kind of optimism I expect in this industry. Of categorization software I’ve heard, ‘we’ll never be able to automatically sense the author of a document,‘ or of topic maps ‘they’re too hard for the average person‘ and these just don’t jive with our track record. We’ve split the atom, we’ve put astronauts on the moon, and we’ve replaced unhealthy hearts in the living with healthy hearts from the dead, I think we can teach a computer to figure out how to detect the author of a document the same way we do. Sure it’s hard, but so is machine language or programming computers by flipping hardware switches, but we don’t even think about these things anymore; we don’t have to.

Technology advances and, amazingly, becomes less expensive. We figure out new ways to use it. We adapt to it and it to us as a matter of habit. If there’s a reason we don’t want to use it, fine, then we won’t. But if we want to, we’ll find a way to make it workable. Being too hard isn’t a reason to dismiss it.

Invent! Refine! Design!

Real-Time Design

While trying to surf the Staples website with Mozilla:

The web browser you are using is incompatible. We are sorry for the inconvenience. Our site currently supports only Internet Explorer version 4.0 and 5.0. This is due to the advanced features used in the real-time designer.

Well heck, if I had a real-time designer with advanced features I wouldn’t give a hoot about Mozilla either.

Published
Categorized as Markup

Chimera UI Development

Chimera 0.4 is a browser for MacOS X built on top of Mozilla…

The cross-platform UI will be replaced with native Cocoa widgetry (such as customizable toolbars and a drawer for the sidebar). The plan is to produce only a browser (no other apps!), and to keep the UI as simple and as clean as possible.

I’ve always thought open source development doesn’t lend itself to quality UI design. But in this case they can draw from 1) years of web browser conventions, and 2) the MacOS X human interface guidelines. I’m looking forward to the results.