Tag: web

tech

Dot Net Nuke

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My friend Sam told me about DotNetNuke, a fully customizable and scalable open source web platform that I deem cool enough to share. It is exactly what I was looking for as I have been trying to figure out how to help my friend Steven take his Democratic Lawyer Council org to the proverbial next level. For my goals, its much better than doing something simple in Ruby.
At first, the idea of building 51 commonly themed web sites – one for each state plus one for the national chapter – each with their own special characteristics was a daunting proposition. After watching the 20 min video on what DotNetNuke can do, I’m really ready to fully geek out and try and change our country for the better. Sam and I are planning to use this platform to tackle a completely separate business idea. Man, it just keeps getting easier to do all the cool tech stuff I want and as I don’t love to code that much anymore, this platform makes me really excited. Check it out for yourself.

ramblings

JetBlue Easter Egg

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An easter egg has been discovered on JetBlue’s web site. If you go to their route map page, select a route, hold down the “control” and type the letters p-b-j you get a “Family Guy” clip where Brian is doing the “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” dance. There is a debate going on in my office about whether or not it’s supposed to be there or if some JetBlue programmer slipped it in there as his own private joke. I for one don’t know and don’t care. I just think its cool.
4/28 UPDATE: The easter egg is gone – I guess it wasn’t supposed to be there after all. This is why you need to read WGTCTIP2 every day!

tech

Amazon's Very Own "Turk"

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It is really hard to keep up with Web 2.0. Amazon for instance has been rolling out tons of web services and lots of smart people are figuring out ways to use them. I would love to think of something super cool that will allow me to create a company that Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft or AOL is forced to buy due to its amazing coolness. I am definitely trying though so far, no eureka moments.
One service that I found especially cool is called Amazon Mechanical Turk. It provides a web services API for computers to integrate “artificial, artificial intelligence” directly into their processing by making requests of humans.” Basically, people complete simple tasks that people do better than computers and get paid for their effort. For instance, to help the rollout of the A9 local search engine, you might identify stores in photos, something humans are great at but computers kind of suck at. The name was taken after Wolfgang von Kempelen’s mechanical chess-playing automaton. Too bad the pay is literally pennies right now. I’ll be keeping tabs on it to see how it evolves…

tech

Check Out Squidoo

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Squidoo is a new company I heard about from Seth Godin in his lecture to Google about the future of marketing. Mr. Godin’s views about marketing dovetail with mine and if you have the time, I suggest you watch the video or read one of his books. At the end, he mentioned this new company he’s involved with so I went, signed up, claimed a page (they call them “lens”) and after reading the FAQ section, which said “a lens is one person’s (lensmaster’s) view on a topic he cares about. More specifically, a lens is a single web page filled with information and links that point to other web pages, to continually updated RSS feeds, or to relevant advertising. It’s a place to start, not finish,” I still didn’t totally get what the heck they were doing and what they were after. I did however sign up to receive daily emails and now I get it. I also love it.
A Squidoo Lens allows you to pull together information from tons of different places about a single topic you are interested in. For instance, this lens on Space Elevators is absolutely fanscinating. This lens on how to build huge cardboard castles is pretty cool too – too bad I don’t have the space in my apartment! I named my lens “Sevensquared” because I didn’t get it at first and now that I do, other than putting in info about the “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” legend, I don’t know what to do with it. This might be a blessing in disguise though as I really do need to jump start this graphic novel project.

tech

Yahoo! Mail Beta & Why I'm a Huge Geek

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When I got home from grad school last night, I logged into my Yahoo! account to read my email and saw an offer to demo the new version of Yahoo! mail that is in beta testing right now. I have been waiting for Yahoo! to catch up to Google in the mail department for a long time. Google Mail is so much better than Yahoo Mail but who wants to change their address? Google Maps & Yahoo! Maps were rolled out around the same time and they both use XML & SOAP really well to deliver a super slick interface to the user. I happily said yes and when I saw that Yahoo! has turned (and continues to improve) its clunky mail offering into a dynamic MS Outlook-like version (not sure if its AJAX or simply a great use of Flash), I started punching the air and saying “Yes! Yes! This is what I’ve been waiting for! DHTML baby! Yes!!” I then once again realized I am a tremendously large geek.
Seriously though, the new Yahoo! Mail rocks and not only that, by moving the ad that free users see from a horizontal “leaderboard” one running across the top to a vertical “skyscrapper” running along the side, they have craftily made me more likely to spend the $20 a year for Mail Plus because now I lose pixel width which makes it more difficult to read my ads. So sneaky. So smart. I love it!

movies

I Get It Now

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Okay, so I’m a little dense sometimes and didn’t exactly understand why NBC lawyers were making YouTube take down those awesome SNL video clips. I just thought they were being idiots and making potential fans angry which was the simple answer if you didn’t want to really think about it and instead just wanted to make fun of those corporate honchos who just don’t get it. Now NBC.com has a video section where you can watch those clips. Over time, NBC is hoping to create a thriving site with community features like message boards, blogs and video sharing–similar to MySpace, but around the NBC brand.
Via The Pulse

tech

Comments are Shut Down Until Further Notice

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The spam barrage continues. I hope that by taking down the comments feature for a few days, the spambots will leave my little blog alone and I’ll be able to add comments back to my site. In the mean time, I am experimenting with a couple of different comment verification systems. I know that I’ve received less than 200 comments since my blog has been up but its not the amount, its the idea that someone can publicly respond to what I wrote. Now, I’ve had to change this because of fucking spammers. I hope every last comment spammer dies a gruesome death.

tech

Under Spam Attack

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My site is currently under a crazy comment spam attack. I have received over 1000 spam comments in the last 24 hours and if this continues, I am going to have to disable the comment feature which would fucking blow. All comment spammers should die a horrible death. As a short haired blond crazy woman named Susan Powter once said, “Stop the insanity!”