Element Design » General

Will Desktops be Irrelevant in 3 years?

chad — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:58:53 +0000

At a recent conference, European Director of Google’s online sales John Herlihy stated that in 3 years time, desktops will become irrelevant. The statement is not as farfetched as it sounds, in Japan that is already the case, where the only uses for desktops are in actual work environments, the vast majority of all other internet browsing is done on mobile devices.

With more data being moved to cloud services such as Amazon S3, the need for large hard drives for storage is becoming obsolete as well, being replaced by the convenience of accessing your data from anywhere on any device. Ever lose critical data or pictures from a hard drive failure? Cloud Services are built to prevent that from ever happening.

Concerned about the small screen size of your mobile device and the cramped keyboard? Try out the up-and-coming personal projectors along with the Sixth Sense Interface. Turn whatever surface/wall/table into your own 50″ monitor then control it by moving your hands and fingers in the air. It’s only a matter of time before mobile devices come with those features standard.

So will Desktops be irrelevant in 3 years? I’d say at least 5. It’s crucial to have those personal projectors and the Sixth Sense Interface perfected before that will ever happen. As soon as that does, I will happily replace my Desktop/Laptop with a single device that fits in my pocket.

Note: At this point in time I consider laptops to be the same as desktops, as majority of people who own laptops keep them in the same location, or never leave the house with them.

Android Phones predicted to outsell iPhones by year’s end

chad — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:51:09 +0000

In the planning stages for your next killer-iPhone app?

You might want to rethink the platform.

There are currently 60,000 Android phones being pushed out every day, says Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt. That comes out to over 21 million phones a year, a number that may help Android overtake the iPhone by the end of the year. While the numbers currently favor the iPhone, planning for the future will in all cases point to developing for Android.

TED Talk on the upcoming Bing Maps

chad — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:58:11 +0000

This TED Talk demonstrates the new Bing Map features that are far more advanced than any competitor. The most notable feature is the ability to stream live video that overlays the default Bing Map’s street views. This is amazing considering you could be browsing around cities and stores while at the same time seeing a live broadcast. This form of augmented reality completely revolutionizes the idea behind web cams, product launches, festivals, news reports, advertising, etc.

I didn’t catch a release date, however I will be posting updates as they come along.

Public Google Apps Calendar showing “busy”

chad — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:00:51 +0000

If you are trying to publicly display a calendar created through a Google Apps account, but all events are displaying as “busy”, follow these steps to allow the public to see all event details.

1) Login as an Administrator to your Google Apps account. (http://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com)

2) At the dashboard, click “Calendar”.

3) Under “Sharing options”, change the “Outside this domain” setting to either of the “Share all informations”.

4) It will take an hour or two for the changes to take effect. When they do, you will now be able to change the “Sharing” settings on your calendar to allow the public to see the event details.

Twitter’s Most Common Passwords

chad — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:00:48 +0000

While locking down their security, Twitter posted a list of the 370 most used passwords by their users. I highly recommend looking at the list and changing your default password (for any email client, application, computer, etc) if it’s on there.

1. 111111
2. 11111111
3. 112233
4. 121212
5. 123123
6. 123456
7. 1234567
8. 12345678
9. 131313
10. 232323
11. 654321
12. 666666
13. 696969
14. 777777
15. 7777777
16. 8675309
17. 987654
18. aaaaaa
19. abc123
20. abc123
21. abcdef
22. abgrtyu
23. access
24. access14
25. action
26. albert
27. alexis
28. amanda
29. amateur
30. andrea
31. andrew
32. angela
33. angels
34. animal
35. anthony
36. apollo
37. apples
38. arsenal
39. arthur
40. asdfgh
41. asdfgh
42. ashley
43. august
44. austin
45. badboy
46. bailey
47. banana
48. barney
49. baseball
50. batman
51. beaver
52. beavis
53. bigdaddy
54. bigdog
55. birdie
56. bitches
57. biteme
58. blazer
59. blonde
60. blondes
61. bond007
62. bonnie
63. booboo
64. booger
65. boomer
66. boston
67. brandon
68. brandy
69. braves
70. brazil
71. bronco
72. broncos
73. bulldog
74. buster
75. butter
76. butthead
77. calvin
78. camaro
79. cameron
80. canada
81. captain
82. carlos
83. carter
84. casper
85. charles
86. charlie
87. cheese
88. chelsea
89. chester
90. chicago
91. chicken
92. cocacola
93. coffee
94. college
95. compaq
96. computer
97. cookie
98. cooper
99. corvette
100. cowboy
101. cowboys
102. crystal
103. dakota
104. dallas
105. daniel
106. danielle
107. debbie
108. dennis
109. diablo
110. diamond
111. doctor
112. doggie
113. dolphin
114. dolphins
115. donald
116. dragon
117. dreams
118. driver
119. eagle1
120. eagles
121. edward
122. einstein
123. erotic
124. extreme
125. falcon
126. fender
127. ferrari
128. firebird
129. fishing
130. florida
131. flower
132. flyers
133. football
134. forever
135. freddy
136. freedom
137. gandalf
138. gateway
139. gators
140. gemini
141. george
142. giants
143. ginger
144. golden
145. golfer
146. gordon
147. gregory
148. guitar
149. gunner
150. hammer
151. hannah
152. hardcore
153. harley
154. heather
155. helpme
156. hockey
157. hooters
158. horney
159. hotdog
160. hunter
161. hunting
162. iceman
163. iloveyou
164. internet
165. iwantu
166. jackie
167. jackson
168. jaguar
169. jasmine
170. jasper
171. jennifer
172. jeremy
173. jessica
174. johnny
175. johnson
176. jordan
177. joseph
178. joshua
179. junior
180. justin
181. killer
182. knight
183. ladies
184. lakers
185. lauren
186. leather
187. legend
188. letmein
189. little
190. london
191. lovers
192. maddog
193. madison
194. maggie
195. magnum
196. marine
197. marlboro
198. martin
199. marvin
200. master
201. matrix
202. matthew
203. maverick
204. maxwell
205. melissa
206. member
207. mercedes
208. merlin
209. michael
210. michelle
211. mickey
212. midnight
213. miller
214. mistress
215. monica
216. monkey
217. monkey
218. monster
219. morgan
220. mother
221. mountain
222. muffin
223. murphy
224. mustang
225. naked
226. nascar
227. nathan
228. naughty
229. ncc1701
230. newyork
231. nicholas
232. nicole
233. nipple
234. nipples
235. oliver
236. orange
237. packers
238. panther
239. panties
240. parker
241. password
242. password
243. password1
244. password12
245. password123
246. patrick
247. peaches
248. peanut
249. pepper
250. phantom
251. phoenix
252. player
253. please
254. pookie
255. porsche
256. prince
257. princess
258. private
259. purple
260. pussies
261. qazwsx
262. qwerty
263. qwertyui
264. rabbit
265. rachel
266. racing
267. raiders
268. rainbow
269. ranger
270. rangers
271. rebecca
272. redskins
273. redsox
274. redwings
275. richard
276. robert
277. rocket
278. rosebud
279. runner
280. rush2112
281. russia
282. samantha
283. sammy
284. samson
285. sandra
286. saturn
287. scooby
288. scooter
289. scorpio
290. scorpion
291. secret
292. sexsex
293. shadow
294. shannon
295. shaved
296. sierra
297. silver
298. skippy
299. slayer
300. smokey
301. snoopy
302. soccer
303. sophie
304. spanky
305. sparky
306. spider
307. squirt
308. srinivas
309. startrek
310. starwars
311. steelers
312. steven
313. sticky
314. stupid
315. success
316. summer
317. sunshine
318. superman
319. surfer
320. swimming
321. sydney
322. taylor
323. tennis
324. teresa
325. tester
326. testing
327. theman
328. thomas
329. thunder
330. thx1138
331. tiffany
332. tigers
333. tigger
334. tomcat
335. topgun
336. toyota
337. travis
338. trouble
339. trustno1
340. tucker
341. turtle
342. twitter
343. united
344. vagina
345. victor
346. victoria
347. viking
348. voodoo
349. voyager
350. walter
351. warrior
352. welcome
353. whatever
354. william
355. willie
356. wilson
357. winner
358. winston
359. winter
360. wizard
361. xavier
362. xxxxxx
363. xxxxxxxx
364. yamaha
365. yankee
366. yankees
367. yellow
368. zxcvbn
369. zxcvbnm
370. zzzzzz

Thanks TechCrunch for the list.

CKEditor ReplaceAll Config

chad — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:12:03 +0000

To place configuration values into the ReplaceAll command for CKEditor, use the following format:

CKEDITOR.replaceAll(function( textarea, config ){
   config.toolbar_Full =
      [
        ['Source','-','Save','NewPage','Preview','-','Templates'],
        ['Cut','Copy','Paste','PasteText','PasteFromWord','-','Print', 'SpellChecker', 'Scayt'],
        ['Undo','Redo','-','Find','Replace','-','SelectAll','RemoveFormat'],
        ['Form', 'Checkbox', 'Radio', 'TextField', 'Textarea', 'Select', 'Button', 'ImageButton', 'HiddenField'],
        '/',
        ['Bold','Italic','Underline','Strike','-','Subscript','Superscript'],
        ['NumberedList','BulletedList','-','Outdent','Indent','Blockquote'],
        ['JustifyLeft','JustifyCenter','JustifyRight','JustifyBlock'],
        ['Link','Unlink','Anchor'],
        ['Image','Flash','Table','HorizontalRule','Smiley','SpecialChar','PageBreak'],
        '/',
        ['Styles','Format','Font','FontSize'],
        ['TextColor','BGColor'],
        ['Maximize', 'ShowBlocks','-','About']
     ];
});

For more configuration options, visit CKEditor’s Developer Documentation.

Notepad++ 5.6 Released

chad — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:28:26 +0000

The newest version of Notepad++ has been released. Changes include:

Notepad++ v5.6 new features and fixed bugs (from v5.5.1) :

   1. Add languages encoding - Chinese traditional (BIG5), Chinese Simplified (GB2312), Japanese (Shift JIS), Korean (EUC), Thai (TIS-620), Hebrew (iso-8859-8), Hebrew (1255), Central European (1250), Cyrillic (1251), Cyrillic (KOI8-U), Cyrillic (KOI8-R), Cyrillic (Mac), Western European(1252), Greek (1253), Turkish(1254), Arabic (1256), Baltic (1257), Vietnamese (1258), ISO8859-1 to ISO8859-16 and a lot of more.
   2. Add auto-detection of HTML and XML files encodings.
   3. Add COBOL, D, Gui4Cli, PowerShell and R language support.
   4. Add Marker Jumper feature (Jump down/up : Ctrl+Num/Ctrl+Shift+Num).
   5. Add indent guide line highlighting for html/xml tags.
   6. Add system tray context menu and new command argument "-systemtray".
   7. Fix Unicode to ANSI encoding bug.
   8. Fix last recent file list menu items localization encoding bug.
   9. Fix last recent file number goes to zero issue.
  10. Add new command argument "--help".
  11. Fix Calltip hint bug and add a new capacity in it.
  12. Add the ability to add the second keyword group for user in both LISP and Scheme languages.
  13. Fix the wrap symbol display problem.
  14. Add SQL ESC symbol '\'.
  15. Fix column editor insert number bug in virtual space mode.
  16. Fix status bar displaying "-2 char" issue for a empty document.
  17. Fix installation of NppShell64 failed issue in installer.

Included plugins (Unicode):

   1. TextFX v0.26
   2. NppExec v0.3.2
   3. Spell Checker v1.3.3
   4. MIME Tools v1.6
   5. NppExport v0.2.8
   6. NppNetNote v0.1
   7. Compare Plugin 1.5.5
   8. Plugin Manager 0.9.3.0

Included plugins (ANSI):

   1. TextFX v0.25
   2. NppExec v0.3.2
   3. Spell Checker v1.3.3
   4. MIME Tools v1.6
   5. NppExport v0.2.8
   6. Light Explorer v1.5
   7. NppNetNote v0.1
   8. Compare Plugin 1.5.5
   9. Plugin Manager 0.9.3.0

Download now

Michigan State University Ranks Top 3 in Web Accessibilty

chad — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:38:50 +0000

This is a huge honor as I was part of the committee responsible for drafting and implementing the latest Web Accessibility Standards for MSU, and was the lead developer for the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities website.

Read the article here

JIAD Case Study – Scalability & Speed

chad — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:33:53 +0000

“The Journal of Interactive Advertising (JIAD) is a refereed online publication designed to promote our understanding of interactive advertising, marketing, and communication in a networked world.”

The original site was extremely difficult to maintain. Changing one word on the navigation meant changing that same word on well over 100 files. The only way to edit articles was to find the HTML file and make changes directly to it, requiring someone with knowledge of HTML and access to a FTP client. The editorial board, which is a collection of many of the authors, had to also be manually edited. Each of the 70+ members had their own HTML file associated to them, which again, a design change to one meant going through each file and making the same change again.

The goals of the redesign was to:

Increase site scalability
Increase server speed and stability
Create an easy way to edit articles
Design a better in-site search engine
Promote search engine rankings
Attractive, minimalistic design

Easily Edit Articles

The first task of the redesign was to increase the efficiency of editing articles and board members. To do this, the site was converted into a fully database-driven website.

A small custom content management system was developed to allow easy page changes to the site. Since JIAD was now database driven, a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor was put into place. Anybody who has experience with Microsoft Word can easily make changes. While you make changes to the text, the editor converts everything to HTML code in the background.

Editing an Article

Scalability

Another benefit of a database driven website is the decrease of the amount of files to run the site. For displaying articles, JIAD went from over 100 files to just one. This one file can handle hundreds of thousands of articles, and making a change to this file will instantly change all articles.

Each article in the database is also assigned to a specific “Issue”. By doing this, all of the article lists and issue pages are automatically generated. Making a change to an article title or authors automatically updates it’s associated issue page.

Increasing Speed

With over 400 unique visitors a day, it was important to ensure that the site would never slow down. To accomplish this, JIAD was first moved to Element Design’s business class servers. Furthering the speed increase, a caching system was developed for the website.

The caching system that was developed combined both a database-driven site with the speed you get from a file driven website. Before the caching system, when a user visited an article page it then had to access the database and retrieve all necessary information. Once the system was in place, the user now accesses an HTML file that had been automatically generated from the database. The speed benefits come from the fact that not a single user accesses the database when viewing the article, compared to in the past when 100% did.

Search Engine

The previous site search engine was lacking in bringing up relevant search results. Another problem with the original was that the search engine was extremely slow, and slowed down the rest of the site when it was being used. Another issue with it was that the search results were displayed in a ugly, white page that was not part of the JIAD design and look.

A solution to the search problem was to use Google Custom Search. With it, I was able to implement a Google search engine without ever having the user leave the site. Even though it is using Google’s algorithms, functionality, and speed, it was customized to only bring up results within the JIAD site.

The entire site was correctly indexed in Google’s servers due to its standards compliant and accessible code. The logical site structure and clean URLs (the URLs lack question marks and complicated code) also assisted in this, which resulted in JIAD ranking even higher in the search engine results.

Since the site redesign, JIAD now has an impressive Google Page Rank of 6, and searching for “JIAD” or “Journal of Interactive Advertising” now displays a list of site links within the results.

Top 10 User Experience Myths

chad — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:48:03 +0000

While redesigning the user interface for a web application I’m developing, I ran into a great article that talked about the Top 10 UX Myths. It points out a lot of common mistakes developers should avoid making.