Archive for the ‘Developing’ Category
« Older Entries |Rapportive extension for Safari
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
During my “Google Chrome” phase, I learned to love some of its extensions. One of those is Rapportive. It’s a super simple CRM for Gmail, that replace the ads with the personal information about the sender based on their email address, pulling data from Twitter, Crunchbase, Linkedin and many other sources.
Since Safari 5 came out I decided to go back using Apple’s browser, but I immediately missed some of my favorite extensions, so I decided to try to port them to the unsupported platform. The first one I tried was Rapportive. I actually almost did nothing thanks to a library for porting Chrome extensions to Safari published by Michael Gundlach (author of AdBlock).
Of course this extension is unofficial and unsupported, and I’m sure the Rapportive guys are already working on a better extension for Safari (even though on the site they said the next browser up is IE). If you can’t wait for them and you want to use their great product on Safari 5, here is my version:
Update
The guys at Rapportive just released the official Safari version of their awesome plugin. To get it, just visit http://rapportive.com with Safari and click install.
Tags: CRM, Safari, Safari Extensions
Posted in Developing | View Comments
Gity, a Git client for OS X
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
Since we started working on Get Apps Done, I had to deal with Git. I never used Git before that, but Heroku, a great platform for hosting Ruby on Rails projects, forced me to. Using Git isn’t too complex, but when you start getting errors or merging problems, then a nice interface would be very helpful. The first client I tried was Git GUI, not really an eye candy but it was getting the job done, but still it didn’t offered me a nice and clear interface for Git. GitX, another Mac OS X Git client, was definitely a great UI improvement, but it was somehow incomplete for what I needed. Finally I recently discovered Gity, in my opinion, a very well done Mac OS X client. The interface is very Apple-ish, and it makes easier to solve problem even for a designer like me. While it had a $18 price tag until recently, now Gity is free and open source, and you can download it from Mac Endeavor’s site.
Tags: Applications, Git, Review, Tools
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One laptop, two guys, six days of SXSW
Friday, March 19th, 2010
No, this is not the title of a geek gay porn movie. “One laptop, two guys, six days of SXSW” is the best way to condense an awesome experience I had at SXSW. Everything started at the Fort Lauderdale International airport, when, because of a delay, a generous friend decided to buy the first round of beers to kick start the conference in the best of ways. We all know that SXSW means a lot of bar hopping and parties, and this is when the idea sparked: why don’t we build an application to keep track of who owes you drinks?
Lately I’ve been trying to learn Ruby on Rails, so I thought this could be the perfect project to flex my new Rails skill set, so I asked Emmanuel (@jewgonewild) to assist me. We decided that it would be cool to build the entire application on the flight from Fort Lauderdale to Austin so that we could use it during the conference. To be honest, Emmanuel did a little more than assist me. Ok, aside from the design, he built the whole thing. I just set up the basic structure and created a couple of controllers under his vigilance. So far so good, right? There was one small problem: I was the only one with a laptop we could work on. We ended up building the basic functions on the plane but the work continued throughout the conference. And while we had a working alpha version to use between us friends since day 3, the actual version was completed literally on the flight back to Fort Lauderdale (on St. Patrick’s day, how appropriate). It was a great experience, mostly because it shows once again how to build cool stuff (at least cool in my opinion). There really is no need for huge budgets and months of planning. You just need to execute.
So what did we come up with? I’m proud to present to the whole world Tab It Up Alpha (it took us two dinners and nine people to decide on the name). The concept of the application is actually really simple. The user just needs to login using their Twitter credentials (we use oauth to do so), and the app is ready to go. Simply add the twitter handles of the people you are buying drinks for and what type (for now we have “beer,” “wine” and “drink”) and tab it up. On the user page you’ll be able to see your recent activity.
What this really is going to evolve to is a way to find relationships and interesting data through drinks you buy and those that are bought for you. Soon enough we’ll display things like your best friend (who bought you the most drinks) and the people you should avoid (freeloaders). We are planning to add a few more nifty features, and we’ll introduce them in the upcoming weeks.
For now, I hope you will try and enjoy Tab It Up. Please let us know what you think about it.
Tags: Hacking, Ruby on Rails, SXSW, Web Applications
Posted in Developing, Social | View Comments
How to modify the Facebook Share button
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
The first thing I thought when I found out about the new Facebook Share button was: “Cool! I’m going to add it to my blog right away.”
The first thing I thought after I installed it was: “Why couldn’t they make the button height 15px like most of the other sharing buttons around???”
Yes, I was pretty annoyed by having buttons at the top of my blog posts with different heights, so I decided to try to modify the css of the button myself. Here’s the result:
.FBConnectButton {
height: 15px;
float: left;
background-position-y: -251px;
background-position-x: -1px;
border-bottom: 1px solid #1a356e;
}
.FBConnectButton_Text {
font-size: 8px ;
height: 9px;
}
.fb_share_count_inner {
height: 9px;
position: relative;
}
.fb_share_count .fb_share_count_right {
float: left;
}
Just copy and paste these few lines of code into your CSS file and your Facebook Share button should be the same size of your compact Tweetmeme button.
I may do more modifications in the future to improve the look of this reduced version, but for now this is usable enough for my blog.
Tags: CSS, Facebook, Facebook Connect, How to
Posted in Design, Developing | View Comments
CSS 3: What is the fuss about
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
Last night I gave a very basic presentation at the Design Miami Meetup about some of the new features offered by CSS 3. Here is the slide show:
If you want to learn more, you should look at these links:
And of course the most boring one
Tags: CSS 3, Meetup, Resources
Posted in Design, Developing | View Comments
What can we learn from Tweetie 2?
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
Last Friday, Atebits launched the new version of their popular iPhone Twitter client, Tweetie 2, which in just one day dominated the Top Paid and Top Grossing charts in the App Store. What can we learn from this?
Keep your interface clean and simple.
Tweetie 2′s interface is really clean and simple, almost as if Apple themself may have had a hand in designing it. Everything is easy to access and erroneous clicks are pretty rare.
Offer what users need, not everything.
For sure, Tweetie 2 doesn’t offer as many options as other clients. Twittelator, just to name one, offers a full array of integrations and functions, but this may only serve to confuse a new user.
Keep it open.
On the other hand, Tweetie 2 gives you the option of using whatever service you want for posting pictures and shortening URLs, which is great! Now I can use my own URL shortener, and I’m not forced to use Twittelator in order to use, in my opinion, the best picture service around: Pikchur. Actually, if you want to use Pikchur as well, here’s the API ending point you need to insert in Tweetie: http://api.pikchur.com/tweetie
Create good products and people will throw money at you.
Tweetie was a great product, but Tweetie 2 is even better. And when you create such great products, people won’t mind spending $3 for your application. Of course, that doesn’t come without work. You still need great PR, and you have to ensure that your product gets in front of the right eyes (like that of a Mashable or Techcrunch writer). I must say that this doesn’t happen too often; there are several great applications buried in the App Store, but the best ones hardly stay buried forever.
Tags: iPhone application, Tweetie, Twitter
Posted in Apple, Developing, Marketing | View Comments
WordPress cheat sheet
Monday, September 28th, 2009
A while ago I thought about writing a simple cheat sheet for WordPress, mainly because I find myself looking for the same template tags over and over again.
Few days ago I stumbled on a couple of very well done WordPress cheat sheets that I’d like to share with you:
Liquidicity WordPress Help Sheet
Ekin Ertaç WordPress Cheat Sheet
Tags: Cheat Sheet, Resources, Template, Theme, Wordpress
Posted in Developing | View Comments
How to secure your WordPress blog
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
A couple of days ago, I decided to add a small javascript in the footer of my blog and by accident I found out that there was a hidden div with hundreds of links. Obviously someone hacked into my blog, and added those links to increase their Page Rank at my expense.
After few minutes of panic and desperation, I decided it was time to start securing my blog (something I’ve honestly been overlooking for a long time). Luckily, there are a lot of cool plugins that can help with this, and I’d like to share them with you.
First of all, it’s important to have periodical backups of both your files and your WordPress database. To accomplish this, you can use the very creatively named plugin called WordPress Backup. It performs regular backups of your uploads (images included), current theme, and plugin directories. Backup files are available for download and can also be e-mailed to a specified address.
To backup my WordPress database I’m using WP DBManager, this plugin not only lets you backup, but it also allows you to optimize, repair, restore and delete your database, and manage your tables. This plugin, like the one previously mentioned, automatically schedules database backups and optimizations.
Now it’s time to check your blog for security vulnerabilities and take corrective actions. A very comprehensive tool is a plugin called WP Security Scan.
Here’s few things I learned from this experience:
- Always update your blog to the latest version as soon as possible. If the WordPress folks found out about an exploit, be sure hackers did too.
- When you setup your database, change the prefix of your wordpress tables to something different than the default “wp_”
- Make sure your WordPress version is hidden (some plugins, like Secure WordPress), can do this for you.
- Check that your database errors are turned off (WP Security Scan will check that for you). If not, ask your hosting company to turn them off for you.
- Get rid of the Admin user. Just create a new one with admin privileges and use that to delete the Admin user.
- In the wp-config.php file of your blog there are three KEY phrases that can be changed. You won’t have to remember the phrases later, so make them long and complicated.
- Make sure you have granted the right permissions to your WordPress folders (WP Security Scan will check that for you as well).
- If you’ve already been attacked, make sure you check for any suspicious files or scripts (in my case, there was a file called wp-atom2.php) that can be used as a backdoor, and change your passwords.
There are a lot more steps that could be taken, like protecting your admin area via .htaccess or using plugins like Login Lockdown to limit the number of login attempts by a particular IP adress.
Is your blog secure? Is there anything in particular that you have done to protect it from hackers?
Tags: Plugins, Security, Wordpress
Posted in Developing | View Comments
What we learned from Tr.im’s (almost) surrender
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
There are several things that I never did like about the URL shortener business.
First of all, you never know how long these services will last. Tr.im’s surrender may lead to the If Tr.im kept their decision to shut down their service, we could have lost millions of links, unless some other company were to buy them out. You could try to use only extremely successful services like Bit.ly, but it will defeat its own purpose in the long run: Bit.ly is already using 5 characters after their URL, not making it that short anymore. If you go with less used services you might have shorter urls but you could end up using a service that, in few months, may be out of business.
On top of that, you are really wasting a lot of “link juice,” vital for ranking better on search engines. Even when you are linking to your own site, if you use these services, you are linking to them. And they can do whatever they want with that link. They can even decide to place your whole site into a frame, adding ugly ads at the top, or their own “toolbar,” like Digg did, without asking your permission; and there won’t be anything you can do about it.
The best solution to all these problems is to have your own shortener. You don’t need to be an expert developer to do it, you don’t even have to be a developer at all. There are several open source scripts and plugins to accomplish URL shortening. Here’s a short list of services I found:
- YOURLS – It’s probably my favorite and the one that will, very soon, power my own URL shortener. It supports custom keywords URLs, it has basic stats and an API. It also has its own WordPress plugin, which can automatically shorten your posts and links.
- Shorty – This URL shortener had a nice-looking admin interface, where you can edit and delete your URLs. It offers simple stats as well.
- PHPurl – Super simple PHP & MySQL script, it offers the option of choosing a custom keyword.
- phurl – If you are thinking of offering your shortener to the public, this script features CAPTCHA and re-CAPTCHA, just in case you fear bots.
- TightURL – This script offers some public protection as well. It checks submitted and accepted URLs against spam databases to prevent abuse by the Bad People of the Internet.
Tags: Resources, Twitter, URL shortener
Posted in Developing | View Comments
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