Archive for June, 2007

Bulletproof Web Architecture

Monday, June 25th, 2007

Why are there no books about Bulletproof Web Architecture? Do you think that it would be enough if the architects read Bulletproof Web Design?

Local web-apps

Monday, June 25th, 2007

Today a fellow web developer released a local web development job board called Unordered List. It was fun to be included in the testing while it was still in development. I made a bunch of comments and a lot of them got incorporated in the current release. It’s still a bit too monochromatic for my taste but still. I guess the development will not stop as at least a few new functionalities will be needed when the database grows beyond the front page – search and filters.

I’ve created a Yahoo pipe to get all the jobs in a JSON feed. I’ll be adding filters to the pipe as soon as company and the location of the job are available in the feed. This will make it easier to add a list of available jobs on blogs and other pages.

If you check Unordered List you’ll also see that I’m looking for an assistant. I’ll talk more about this in the next few days, I’ll just say that I’m after web enthusiasts who don’t yet know much and want to learn everything.

On a similar note, a local social bookmarking tool obviously launched recently. I have to say I noticed it through a Toboads ad network ad on my blog. I had to dig through the history to find it again but here it is – Zlitt. I have no idea who the author is though. The domain was bought through WhoisGuard and the app itself hosted on Dreamhost. A good way to hide your identity but probably not the best idea when you’re creating a local web-app. Who knows, maybe they’re going global…

In the mean time I put together a small one-page web-app to check your Lotto winnings – simply tell it what the winning combination was, the bonus number(s) and your combinations. It will show you what numbers you got right, but to know if you won anything you need to also tell it what winning means. I have it set up to the Lottery of Slovenia Loto, but you can change it easily. It’s not pretty, because I used the interface of my previous one-pagers – The pingerator and MonsterID.

I’m hoping for a lot of other web-apps from my fellow local web developers in the next months. Such that build on available APIs or are so specific to the local environment / community that they have a significant advantage over what others are doing. The local web-app landscape has been growing and maybe we’re in need of a page that will list all these web-apps in a way that is better than a simple search engine output. There’s an idea for another Web 2.0 page…

Impressed by Apple

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

Safari for Windows is already in 3.0.1. No, they didn’t fix this flaw, they fixed the other one. Nonetheless, I’m impressed…

After another look at my blog I figured they changed another thing – Google AdSense ads now show up.

Update #1: I’m writing this in Safari for Vista 3.0.2 – for the third time. I cannot shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with submitting the textarea in WordPress. In any case – strongs are now bold and even AdSense appears sometimes. All these issues make me wonder if things appear the same on Safari/Mac and Safari/Win which was a big point in releasing a Windows version…

Update #2: I’m posting the first update in Firefox – exactly as written in Safari. I posted it twice without it appearing on the page. The third time I copied it and found out that it only copies the code until

Innovation and lemmings

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

A quote from David Bodanis via Mark Hurst: “Now the trick: tell your innovator to try the reverse of what everyone else is doing.”

It’s been a pretty good rule for me recently – when I see at least 3 people talking about creating the same killer web app I know it’s too late. Then I try to think reversed. Upside down.

MIR space station revived!

Friday, June 15th, 2007

Just kidding – a local news show “24ur zvečer” (“24 hours in the evening”) reported that there is a problem with the MIR space station. I think they wanted to say the ISS. I wonder whether it was a joke that no one got and went through all the filters or was it really a mistake…

More about the problem here.

Update: They’re repeating it today. They changed it a bit though – it’s “the international space station MIR” now…

“Nebotičnik” sold

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

At one time the tallest building in Europe was finally sold – after 4 attempts. To a Slovenian from Australia. Another Slovenia-Australia related news in one week – the winner of the first Slovenian Big Brother was also a Slovenian from Australia.

The price was very low. But when you take into account that it’s the topmost 4 floors in a building that cannot be significantly changed due to the fact that it’s protected as a historically important building it makes sense. It also makes sense that the new owner will change it into a luxury restaurant – that way he can lower the number of people in the place to a minimum – a number that can safely leave if anything goes wrong.

The only thing I wonder is whether they will get enough guests to at least cover the costs – Global is empty during the day and only works as a night club…