Don't Forget the Premium Plan
A post on 37signals reminds web application creators to not forget to not only charge what a service is worth, but to offer a premium service for more money. It is amazing, according to the article, the number of people that are generally willing to fork out the dough for a service that is worth it.
technorati tags: 37signals
IE and Standards: A Fair View
Will People PLEASE Stop Writing About Rocketboom?
I am tired of hearing about Rocketboom. Rocketboom is a terrible video blog. It's host, Amanda, is annoying. It is not well produced. It says nothing about nothing. It's a waste of bandwidth -- and yet everyone seems to want to hold it up as the best example of video blogging. WHY?! Personally, as a person that wants to see more people catch on to video blogs, it's an embarrasment. But it seems like every time that I open NetNewsWire, turn on my TiVo or even listen to the radio (Amanda was on NPR yesterday), Rocketboom is there.
As a bit of personal protest, I will not provide links or tags to it here. If you are one of those people that likes to stare at a wreck when you see one, you can find rocketboom easy enough. I will provide links to some vlogs that I enjoy that are very good IMHO.
Halo 3 Trailer
Only one more game-related post this morning -- promise. I just discovered what a sucker I am. I was so with the previously referenced article that the game play is what matters and that these console makers, while exploring the current limits of gaming graphics, are not creating great games. Down with beautifully rendered 3D worlds! Up with fun!
...Until I saw the trailer that Bungie showed at E3 for Halo 3. Droooooooooooolllllll...
Nintendo Wii to be around $250...
WeBreakStuff » What we can learn from gaming consoles
WeBreakStuff takes a look at the way that the console makers demonstrated their wares, praising Nintendo for focusing on the game instead of improved graphics. The article takes lessons from this and briefly applies them to site building.
Too Cheap?
Kutaragi on PlayStation3: it’s too cheap
At $600, Sony Computer Entertainment cheif Ken Kutaragi has said that the PlayStation 3 is too cheap. Perhaps, in the effort to put together a console that would be technically superior to anything else available, they have priced themselves out of the game. It is only $100 more than an XBox 360, but by time the PS3 comes out in November, Microsoft may drop the price of the 360 as console makers do after a box has been out for a year. Is the PS3 $200 better than the XBox 360?
technorati tags: playstation, xbox, ps3, xbox360
Dreamweaver Developer Center
The Dreamweaver Developer Center is a resourcet that I tell people about a lot, but always forget to continue checking myself. This morning I found there some great articles and tutorials on form styling with CSS, formating XML with XSL, and using a framework called SPRY to add interactive AJAX elements to web pages. I wish that there was an obvious news feed so that I could subscribe to this page…
Eric Meyer Interview
Eric Meyer is a giant in the CSS world and this is a great interview with him about how he got into CSS and the business of web development.
Customize Firefox
Firefox 1.5 CCK (Client Customization Kit)
technorati tags: firefox
Big Games
O’Reilly Radar > Come Out and Play: As a former camp staffer, this sounds like a blast!
Flex on a Mac
As long as I’ve been posting Flex info Here’s information about installing the Flex SDKs on a mac.
No More Pop In Schools
This is a couple of days old but the major soda makers have agreed to replace the fully-loaded pop that they sell in schools nation-wide with water, juice and sport drinks.
technorati tags: soda
Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater
Adobe has released an update for Dreamweaver 8. The 8.0.2 updater is available for macintosh and windows and improves code generated by Dreamweaver for server behaviors and for active content such as Flash.
technorati tags: adobe, dreamweaver
Flex 2 Beta 3
Beta 3 of Adobe’s Flex version 2 is available on the Adobe Labs site. Flex is a development environment that allows rich internet applications to be built via XML or Adobe’s FlexBuilder application to be delivered via Flash. Steep learning curve, but incredible results.
technorati tags: flex
Shave Yourself
You have got to see Norelco’s new web site advertising their new BodyGroom shaver. It’s hilarious (and made with Adobe Flash!).
CSS3 Columns
I can't wait for the column specification in CSS3 to become a standard in browsers. In the meantime, Firefox 1.5+ (and of course Flock), support parts of the column spec through their own stylesheet selectors.
How to build a form that is not annoying
Pete Freitag is in the middle of a series of posts he calls “How to build a form that isn’t annoying”. There isn’t a lot of useful information here, but good things to think about. Steve Krug said “Don’t Make Me Think." Pete here, seems to be saying, “Don’t make me work.” There are a lot of things that we do with forms (pull down menus for example) that could be much easier for a person to fill out if it were presented in a different way.
Mac FTP: A Guided Tour
Let your computer type it for you
If you have words, phrases or code that you find yourself typing over and over, you should take a look at Textpander. I downloaded it this morning and I think that it’s going to be very useful. You can feed it long amounts of text (great for chunks of HTML code) and assign abbreviations to them. For example, I assigned the basic code of a HTML page to “<html” and the opening and closing of a P tag to “<p”. Now I can write a simple HTML page from scratch in seconds using any application on my mac (not just the cocoa ones).
Log Files
For the “I’m sure I’ll need to know this sometime” file: Here’s a post about log file management in JRun.
Lifelong Teachers
Will Richardson discusses the difference between teaching kids to be ‘lifelong learners’ and ‘lifelong teachers’. Included is a video podcast from an elementary classroom teaching others how to do podcasting.
Preview of Flex Beta 3
Torrent-Like Abilities in OS X Leopard?
Rumor sites are reporting that Leopard (MacOS 10.5) may have peer-to-peer sharing abilities in the OS that would allow the system to share with other computers system and application updates. This would be a opt-in feature that would be rewarded by Apple with free songs or other incentives. Benefits would include faster downloads, less bandwidth for Apple and the ability to more easily update computers in an institutional setting without soaking the incoming bandwidth. Sounds great to me.
ABC.com: Full Episode Streaming
ABC’s new streaming service is amazing. Through their use of Flash they have created a site that is both compatible with many platforms and browsers as well as beautiful. Not a lot of shows there right now, but probably the ones that most want to see: Desperate Housewives, Lost, Alias and Commander in Chief. I hope that this is successful enough to encourage the other networks to follow.