Ethernet power on switch

December 26th, 2006

Dear internet,

After my laptop’s screen has died I’m looking for an ethernet power switch (one you plug into the ethernet port and uses wake-on-lan to turn on the computer). If you know where to buy one or you are capable of creating it please leave a comment.

Thanks.

UPDATE: It seems that wake-on-ring is much easier since you only need 5V between pin 5 (ground) and pin 9 (ring indicator) to wake the computer up. I got instructions from an expert (thanks!) and will now try to create a prototype.

Posted in blurps, general, technology, thoughts | 1 Comment »

There once was…

December 19th, 2006

A few years back there was this web agency that had a sister company that was into online advertising. At about the same time a lot of changes were happening in the advertising market and some innovations were needed. There was also a young web developer that was eager to create something impressive. Something cross-browser which wasn’t as easy then as it is today with YUI and others.

The developer took on a challenge of creating a new banner format that was already being used on some foreign sites. With a twist – the idea was to make it work on more than just the most popular browser. It was possible but some advance testing and expert “guessing” needed to be done. The challenge proved to be difficult but not unsolvable.

Since the script were to be used on advertising sites that already had their own JavaScript the functions needed to be ‘namespaced’ in order to avoid clashes. The developer wasn’t going to create an object but instead prefixed all his functions with an acronym. The acronym was chosen as an experiment – its meaning was hidden to see if others would just adopt it.

Every now and then I still get a floating banner to implement to a site. Not my primary focus anymore but still. And I always get a smile on my face when I see that the closing function is called “praHide” – “pra” is the acronym and it stands for “Parsek Rich Ad”. The code has changed since the first implementation and different agencies have different JavaScript functions. The name stayed the same though. I guess it became a sort of a standard. As has the 500×500 which we started using back in the day…

Posted in general, javascript, technology, thoughts | 2 Comments »

Dying out

December 13th, 2006

Today my laptop decided that it had enough of being carried around and working nicely as it should. The screen now displays a limited number of pixels so it seems the most fragile part of the computer – the only movable part – went sour. When the same happened to my last mobile phone I decided not to buy clamshell phones ever again. Unfortunately with laptops I have no such option.

Hopefully the hardware experts can extend the life of my loyal friend for a few months since this is not really the best time to buy a new one. Until then I’ll only be using the external monitor.

Fortunatelly I’ve been thinking ahead.

Posted in general, technology, thoughts | 1 Comment »

Designing for web on A4 paper

December 13th, 2006

Today’s talk about design was easily one of the most interesting talks we’ve had on Spletne urice ever. Žiga really thought about the problem and formed the whole talk as a big metaphor to explain his point. Even with all he said I’m still left with a bunch of thoughts floating around my mind that popped up during the talk. In the end we actually ended up realizing that developers and designers actually have a common ancestor and that we’re just on different branches of historic development.

What we consider to be design is not only the shape, the colors, the fonts. This means we might fall into a philosophic debate about what design really is and who designers actually are. And I’m not going there now. What I know is that as you divide the work between people in a team you can’t just have one designer – everybody has to be a part designer. The sooner we all get to acknowledge this the better. And we need to expect it too.

Posted in events, spletne urice, thoughts | No Comments »

The panel

December 11th, 2006

My first panel – about authentication – went surprisingly well. Surprisingly because as many have told me before the panel (but after the announcement) the panelists were a bit “exotic”.

The panel consisted of a technical part and a non-technical part. The second part being there to point out that authentication is not really (just) a technical problem. The number of visitors was quite big – supporting both camps on stage. Starting off with a bit of personal thoughts about authentication and its meaning to the panelists we touched a few issues that could as well have gotten their own talks. The questions went well but in retrospect left me a bit disappointed.

I expected the non-technical part of the audience to address more questions to the technical part. What I didn’t expect was that the technical part of the audience would address no questions to the non-technical part. In a way I understand this but what I hoped for was a bit more sense that this is a trust issue that has very little to do with technology and a lot with the way we perceive security and the exchange of information.

Thanks to everybody who came to the panel, I hope you learned something new. If you didn’t I hope it was at least interesting to see what other people think about the issue. Thanks to the panelists for being great, for coming and for sharing their views and expertise.

As the moderator I learned a few things I might point out in a post somewhere in the future.

Posted in events, spletne urice, technology | No Comments »

Authentication panel

December 5th, 2006

Tomorrow I’m hosting a panel about authentication at our local web-related talks. To make thing a bit more interesting I invited more than just coders and security experts – we have a designer and a usability expert on the podium. I think the whole talk will be enlightening to everyone, since hardly anyone knows all the areas covered by our panelists.

I’ll introduce the panelists here in more detail:
Ozren Škondrič is a friend who dedicated a big part of his life to designing web interfaces. He uses a bunch of web based services and applications and is probably the person who filled the most registration forms amongst all the people I know.
Duška Mervar is probably the most famous around here for a great booklet about writing for the web which a lot of people don’t respect enough. As an expert for the user perspective I’m sure she’ll show us a new meaning to serving customers based on their personal preferences.
Tomaž Cerar works at the same company I do – Parsek. He is a coauthor of the infamous CP2 platform – a Java based CMS system we use and also the lead developer of many e-commerce sites we created.
Marko Perme works on e-banking and e-insurance and other e-solutions for one of the biggest Slovenian IT companies – Hermes Softlab. They created and support a few of the biggest and the most used e-service platforms in the country.

The moment is right for us to reflect on what the internet knows about us and to think about what we want from it. The panelists will help us understand what the trends in this area are and shed some light on the matter that is becoming one of the most important problems of the current wave of web services and applications.

Posted in events, services, spletne urice, technology | 1 Comment »

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