I keep meaning to do a list of cool things I have found recently. I always said when I bought my Mac that I would document my experience… I have managed to blog about certain things, but not always the ones I wanted to.
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My Favourite Mac Apps – So Far
03.03.2010Welcome to FlipStorm v2.0
01.03.2010It’s been 12 months since we started business. And it’s been a tough year. But things are looking up as we move apace into 2010! So what does the future hold for FlipStorm?
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Don’t Use Easyspace!
12.01.2010A friend recommended me to Easyspace (a web hosting company based in Glasgow, Scotland – part of the iomart group). Their prices looked good, they were UK based, and I could handle almost everything online…
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Goals for 2010
06.01.2010So it’s a fine new year. I have set myself some ambitious challenges for 2010. Let’s compare notes and help each other out…
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Dawn Ascends! Ready Your Swords!
21.12.2009I absolutely love coding in PHP. Sometimes I get distracted by the glitz and glamour of some of the more popular languages (and their associated frameworks) – and I agree, they have their place. But PHP is in a class of its own.
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The Joy of FirePHP: A Crash-Course
03.12.2009Last month I proposed an article for NetTuts. And today it got published. Please have a look. Even tweet about it! Go on…
Wouldn’t It Be Great If All APIs Followed RESTful Principles?
02.12.2009APIs and connecting web applications together is going to be the next challenge of the evolution of the web. The next decade should see easier-to-implement, yet more secure methods for connecting the various web applications that we use.
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Impromptu Tweetup
26.11.2009UPDATE: We’re opening it up to a greater audience. So even if you’re not tech/web related, feel free to come along anyway.
Yesterday whilst I was in the office (also known as The Vortex), I was reading my Twitter stream — as I so often do — and I came across this tweet from @bostinbloke.
As the office is not far away from where he was, I invited him over for a cup of tea.
To my surprise, just moments later, I got a tweet from @hollie_matthews — another Oldbury native.
To cut a long story short, this started a day-long conversation which resulted in our founding a new #tweetup and our first get-together is next Thursday.
Here’s the full run-down:
9.45am Thursday 3rd December 2009 @ Network Si
3 Demuth Way
Oldbury
West Midlands
B69 4LT
Entrance is free, but we only have about 25 spaces so leave a comment or tweet me and I’ll let you know if you can come along.
As this is the first meetup, we’ll be starting with tea and hopefully biscuits 
and just see what everyone wants to do. Nothing too formal, just a bit of networking with a heavy focus on tech and web.
Let’s see how it evolves! 
Sponsored by FlipStorm and Network Si
I Learned Something Yesterday
24.11.2009I met three ace guys yesterday: Sean Leigh, Jeremy Harding and Alan Mann. They are all techy/web entrepreneurs and are making big bucks out of big ideas. They know some crazy people in the domaining field.
It turns out that there a lot of wealthy people doing domaining. I found out yesterday that there are some people out there that own thousands of domains with no websites attached to them! Craziness! They obviously have a lot of money.
The reason I met these great guys though is because they found me and this brings me to a little tip: Get your name out there!
It turns out they found me through a service I signed up for and hardly use, Elance. The data from Elance was probably shared on a network of other services, which they stumbled across. My profile on this service is sketchy at best. But it was enough of a lead for them to do more digging.
Because I’m an active participant on a number of blogs, forums, Twitter etc. they managed to fill in the gaps pretty quick.
So if you want to be found, get active in your community! A word of warning though: Be prepared for a grilling (i.e. bring something amazing along).
Exciting Stuff
21.11.2009I’m hugely excited by certain trends that are appearing lately. Ultimately it all comes down to how successful the goal of moving everything onto “the cloud” is becoming.
It all started a few years ago when the big software companies realised the potential of the web to take over the desktop. They put into place strategies which are now starting to see some fulfilment.
I’ve hidden the rest of this post away for a change. Go find it
Microsoft started putting a lot of emphasis on developing the .Net framework. Mozilla, Apple and Google worked hard on improving web browsers, developing and fostering earth-shattering web apps. But then came some major changes.
First: Google Chrome OS. I haven’t had chance to get this up and running yet so I’m not too sure how successful it will be. Only time will tell. The biggest concern I have is lack of support for third-party peripherals. I’m sure Google will rectify this soon enough.
Undoubtedly it will start people thinking. Microsoft and Apple have put a lot of effort into improving performance in their respective OSs, but neither has drastically deviated from the beaten path like Google.
Then there’s Go, SPDY, Wave… the list goes on. Google is really driving forward with cloud computing.
Second is HTML5. Some of the brilliant recommendations for this brand new version of everyone’s favourite markup language are going to make the next iteration of web apps even more compelling. And with most modern web browsers conforming to some sort of standards and processing Javascript at a decent speed, we could see widespread adoption of these advances very soon.
So what does all of this mean? Well personally I believe that for many consumers who have no real need for high-spec machines running expensive software, an operating system that is inexpensive, fast, lean, and gets them online very quickly will be a real pull.
For people who need more advanced apps… we’re not going to see the end of Windows, Linux or Mac OS anytime soon. But with some major desktop tools steadily moving to the web, it looks as though a web developer’s job could soon be completely online.
As offline functionality starts to make an appearance in more and more web apps, I believe we’re going to see certain apps including this as a feature in premium subscription levels.
Something else I’m intrigued by at the moment is the advent of single sign-on. Sadly I don’t believe that it will ever catch on everywhere, but it may be enough to make the remaining latecomers ship up or ship out.
What’s really interesting is how some people are using OAuth. It’s meant as an API authentication system, but Elliott Kember and a few others are making the ingenious use of it. Some of his apps and ideas use the Twitter OAuth system to log users in.
So I don’t have to create an account for his latest app, Chatrbox, I simply sign in over on Twitter.
This is an interesting approach and fuels the debate over whether OAuth and OpenID can get along or whether OAuth will simply kick OpenID’s butt.
Whatever happens, it all adds up to a brighter web-based future, don’t you think?
