This is just something to post in the meantime that should have been posted forever ago. I’ve been so damn busy lately but I am transitioning to stop taking on work and studying more/maintenance on my blog etc. Stay tuned for a new look on the blog too!
Click to view large version!
The motorola droid in all its glory!
Droid is here, and along with it comes new possibilities, experiences, and most importantly new apps!!! After getting the motorola droid and playing around with it for a month now here are my favorite apps! These are essential!
Well the apps where based on the following criteria:
You knew this one was coming. I use this program every single day… multiple times a day. It is extremely light, fast, and free!!!
This is where things get awesome with the droid. I purchased a top of the line GPS 2 years ago for $350, it is now obsolete with the droid. Not only that but the GPS app on the droid has 10x the features!!
Shop savvy in my opinion is half flare, and half functionality! What does it do? You can take a picture of a barcode and it will display the lowest prices in the area and online!! so cool!!!
Google goggles takes the shop savvy concept a little further. You can take a pic of anything and goggles will scan it, and then display listings, options, or ratings. It is new so I have found it works great with logos but not everything. It does plenty more though check it out here!
When you first get droid you will be torn between using the browser, or using apps to access certain websites. This is one of those times, and the app wins in this case. Twidroid is a light, no bs twitter app that is amazing – go get it!
I put “lite” up because these do cost money, however the lite versions are free. I have to say that the snes emulator is a little better then the genesis emulator but still they are both great! They even allow you to search for roms within the program! wow!
Well if you are a last.fm fan, or pandora fan grab one of these. Both are amazing – However if you don’t have a last.fm account grab the pandora app as the last.fm app relies heavily on your music taste from your pre-existing account.
This is an amazing app. Its easy to use, very robust, and free! Its exactly what you think it is lol.
For the diehard sports fan there is sportstap. Following your favorite team was never so easy!
you may think the droid can do anything.. but it really can’t. Try changing your ringtone, notification noises, etc and it will become immediately apparent. However, this program basically allows you to regain full control over your phones “noises” lol.
From the W3C
Lots of people still use IE6, despite the fact that it came out in 2001!! That’s a whopping 9 years! Bottomline, ie6 users are not going anywhere, you must accommodate them!
Typical Internet explorer 6 user
Wow, where to begin. O I know lol, I hate Internet explorer 6. I found that a lot of my time developing websites was wasted testing the internet explorer series 7 and below to make sure there are no problems (along with a thousand conditionals for iftltIE) through various inefficient methods. Well finally there is a decent solution… enter IETester!
Pictured: Scirodesign tabbed in ie 5.5, 6, 7, and 8!
It allows you to test a website in all major versions of IE. Not only that but it has diagnostic tools within it to assist you with debugging and analysis. Simple problem, simple and elegant solution. Thanks DebugBar
Tweenlite/Max is easily my favorite AS3/AS2 Tween Engine. Here’s a quick code snippet that most people do not know about!! If you enjoy using timers in AS3 check out the “delayedCall()” function in TweenMax/Lite. The key argument here is scalability, after a while using 1 line of code (delayedCall) becomes a lot more convenient then the more involved timer class.
package {
import flash.utils.Timer;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
import flash.display.Sprite;
public class TimerExample extends Sprite {
public function TimerExample() {
var myTimer:Timer = new Timer(1000, 2);
myTimer.addEventListener("timer", timerHandler);
myTimer.start();
}
public function timerHandler(event:TimerEvent):void {
trace("timerHandler: " + event);
}
}
}
VS.
Std. Tweenlite/Max delayedCall (v.11)
package {
import com.greensock.*;
import flash.display.Sprite;
public class DelayedCallExample extends Sprite {
public function DelayedCallExample() {
TweenLite.delayedCall(0.5, myDelayedCall, [1,true]);
}
public function myDelayedCall(argument1:Number,Boolean):void {
trace("that was easy!");
}
}
}
myD
Here is something I stumbled upon the other day. It is a flash chart that shows the current relationship of SERPS between all major search engines. It even has a date feature that allows you to go back about 9 years!!! Very valuable information(and cool)!
seo relationships
This is something I have constantly wrestled with to find a clear cut answer. Its funny because back in the day I can remember that I had to literally go into my C:\program files and change the name of some .dll, or .exe in order to cancel flash from loading. Adobe/Macromedia were pretty firm on the issue that they don’t want you “disabling” their plugin lol. Then there was an onslaught of plugins for FF, IE, etc that could also do it but none of them worked well. Finally FF was sensable about it and included an easy “disable flash” option which makes things so simple. The problem is that noone seems to know about it lol. So with that said, here’s how to do it!!
This is what my Site looks like with flash enabled. Pretty nice huh?
Now lets get rid rid of flash to see what my site looks like on a user’s mobile phone, older computer, or a computer at a business/school/etc that blocks flash all together!
To start head to the top of Firefox and find the “tools” menu. From there find “Add-ons” (as shown above) and click it!
After you clicked “Add-ons” from the “tools” toolbar you will get this dialog box that pops up. It should pop-up, and be on “extensions.” however we want to go elsewhere, so proceed to the next step!
As you can see above “highlighted in red” simply click the “plugins” tab and then proceed to the next step! (we are almost done!)
After you clicked the “plugins” button you will be presented with a lot of different items (more or less depending on what you personally installed). Regardless, the list is in alphabetical order so scroll down to “S” and find “Shockwave Flash” which is “circled in red” above!
Finally just click “Disable” to temporarily turn off flash. When you are ready to turn it back on, just press “Enable” and you’ll be able to view any flash content like youtube videos, flash sites, and most importantly facebook’s farmville again lol.
Here is my site with flash turned off. I personally use swfObject 2.0 (I’ll blog about swfObject soon, and why its so good) which presents the alternate content to my users. If they don’t have flash, then they have two options. Either update flash to the current version, or enter my low bandwidth site which doesn’t really require flash for any crucial information!
I started using sticky notes with color codes for task management, and after my first week I have to say its awesome! I think I overdid it though lol, but I feel my overall efficiency is so much better!
A week of stickies lol
stickies in action on my desk
I constantly have this problem where I have to resize my browser window to check my sites/designs/etc on multi monitors. Normally I use my nvidia control panel, or just the plain windows display control panel. The problem though is that my monitors are not normal 4:3, I have a 16:9,and a 1:1. Whenever I use the graphic card based resize my monitors freak out and stretch, flicker, and give warnings etc.
This awesome browser window resizer plugin for FF. Its so simple and has a variety of sizes:
640×480
800×600
1024×768
1280×800
1280×1024
1600×1200
Advanced Wars
DK!
outrun!
Probably one of the greatest things about design is when someone comes up with a good idea do revive old, cool games. What about a Mario Kart race going on in highway somewhere, or maybe Donkey Kong throwing stuff at Mario and Luigi from a real skyscraper?
