Rants can vary from really ranty to just plain In My Opinion (IMO) type posts, while ephemera and news cover topics of the moment. These two belong together, because the ephemera will usually come with MO...
I came across the article from Nicholas Carr's post Should the Net forget? This is an interesting consequence that seems to be getting pushed on SEO, rather then perhaps looking at it from the aspect of accountable reporting, no? Nicholas states that: With search engine optimization - or... Read more »
Dear Company-from-another-country-that-was-happy-to-take-my-money -but-too-shortsighted-to-have-an-international-support-number, While I think it's great that you have a toll free support number for your country, I think it pretty much sucks that you don't have one for international users of your... Read more »
The marketer in me sits back and marvels at the buildup that 37s have gotten so good at. The programmer geek in me would love to see the DB schema behind the application and to see some of the source code :-). It's amazing watching these guys build a business around building tools that help them to... Read more »
Techmeme has the links. This reminds me of people who were saying that Google was trying to become a portal. I think this latest trend of articles - and the portal thing - are cases of over analysis. Look at the home page. Read the news. Google is doing what it does best and gaining market... Read more »
I've recently been looking around for a new feed aggregator since dropping Opera, and while it is still in it's early stages, Feedmarker could be the answer. While it does share a lot in common with del.icio.us and Bloglines, the beauty of it is that it is all right there in one place. Putting... Read more »
When the word made it over to Slashdot about the article, lets just say there was an uproar. Huh, it seems that this xmlHTTPRequest object has been around a while and that people have been using remote scripting for some time. Good for them. Can't... keep... quiet... While I was going to bite my lip... Read more »
No, not a "we're not dead" post, a !WOW! post. Via Webmasterworld, Google Suggest Beta; talk about live search, great stuff from Google. Type in your search and it will autocomplete the terms for you and show you the number of results!... Read more »
Is it just me, or is 380+ comments some sort of record? Dan Cederholm is giving away three copies of his new book, Web Standards Solutions, by randomly drawing numbers from a hat. To get a number, you had to link to your favorite article or weblog entry regarding web standards.The Great Book Giveaway... Read more »
This post over at D. Keith Robertsons "Asterisk" crystallized a few things for me yesterday. I've been a little frustrated at times when we go up for a contract against other groups who don't build their sites according to the standards. I know, "whine whine", but please, bear with me. What... Read more »
Maybe this has been mentioned before, or it's just me, but am I the only one who finds the term tabular data kind of funny? Who ever says (in official Mr. Science voice), "Lets go out and collect some tabular data today!"? Sounds kinda nitpicky I know, but I keep coming across it and it seems to... Read more »
Sitepoint's web devlopment books have helped me out on many occasions both for finding a quick solution to a problem but also to level out my knowlegde in weaker areas (JavaScript, I'm looking at you!). I am recommending the following titles from my bookshelf:
I started freelancing by diving in head first and getting on with it. Many years and a lot of experience later I was still able to take away some gems from this book, and there are plenty I wish I had thought of beforehand. If you are new to freelancing and have a lot of questions (or maybe don't know what questions to ask!) do yourself a favor and at least check out the sample chapters.
The author line-up for this book says it all. 7 excellent developers show you how to get your JavaScript coding up to speed with 7 chapters of great theory, code and examples. Metaprogramming with JavaScript (chapter 5 from Dan Webb) really helped me iron out some things I was missing about JavaScript. That said each chapter really helped me to develop my JavaScript skills beyond simple Ajax calls and html insertion with libs like JQuery.
Like the other books listed here, this provides a great reference for the PHP developer looking to have the right answers from the right people at their fingertips. I tend to pull this off the shelf when I need to delve into new territory and usually find a workable solution to keep development moving. This only needs to happen once and you recoup the price of the book in time saved from having to develop the solution or find the right pattern for getting the job done..