Holy Grail of CSS Layouts

From Digg (again) comes a great article about a very simple way to do a 3 column layout with a header and footer -- the Holy Grail of layouts.

I have seen the future, and it's iTV...

I just realized something significant. It's one of those "tipping point" moments you get usually realized sometime far after they happen. I'm sitting here at my PC watching Star Trek New Voyages after having found several other fan-made Star Trek tv shows. Last night I was perusing fan-made movies using a game called The Movies from LionHead Studios.

A few days ago I was sent a link to a great short skit from SNL called Chronicles of Narnia Rap (and the West Coast Response). I realized tonight that instead of flipping channels on my TV, I'm finding great stuff to watch via the 'net - and in a way that's not simply too blurry or laggy to appreciate. And on top of that, if I had a bit of ambition and a decent camera/pc I could probably create something that a small audience out there might find funny and perhaps find worthy of downloading.

The tipping point? It's not about TV any more. Its not about passively watching video spoonfed to you via "channels". Instead its thousands of special interest short films, fanmade shows, and skits (or even full fledged movies). Instead of creating some mass-market high glitz tv show or movie, hundreds of small scale directors/production houses, etc. are creating the "new" tv. Not one that follows Nelson ratings but measures success in the hundreds of downloads. Imagine if you could find shows for any sort of obsure interest like "classic Star Trek" or What if they brought back Logan's Run, etc. etc. The other aspect is the Machinema meme that is growing fast. Imagine movies and tv series that change on a weekly basis based on user feedback, or what would the Oscars look like if a synthetic actor won "best actor"?

Anyway, it's just an observation that things have changed. I hardly watch tv any more, and even then it's Tivo. I wonder what's going to be the Tivo for iTV?

Tunecore - distribute your music to iTunes and Rhapsody w/o record labels!

Courtesy of Digg. From the site:

TuneCore is a music delivery and distribution service that gets music you created (even cover versions) up for sale on iTunes and Rhapsody without asking for your rights or taking any money from the sale or use of your music.

Canvarticles - amazing canvas particle generator

From beautifulpixel comes an amazing and simply visually stunning canvas particle demo generator. Not only can you tweak the settings to create some very cool effects, you can then save the url and share with other folks.

Dom Scripting: HIJAX

I've been pushing this idea for over 6 years now, and it looks like finally it's time may be finally coming. Imagine if you load a page, then click on a link. Instead of fetching a new page, it just replaces the part of the page that's "different" via AJAX. See also another older page which I helped inspire with this idea...

Z's not dead!

This is a great article about how to use z-index to good effect with your css layouts.

Amazing LED keyboard

If this is not a hoax, then it's gotta be one of the peripherals of the year. Imagine if you merged an LED screen with a configurable keyboard. Once you see it you wonder 1) why its not already out and 2) why you dont already have one.

popTart - new Firefox extension for Digg

With so much attention to Digg.com now it was only a matter of time before it began to spawn browser extensions. This one lets you stay at digg.com while still being able to visit the sites at the same time.

Companies and Products on TechCruch - Web 2.0 Who's Who

This is a great way to get the 60 second view of Web 2.0 related sites (as well as other web-based services) as viewed by TechCrunch. If you want a quick way to see what is "state of the web" this is a good place to start.

Firebug - a killer new Firefox Extension by Joe Hewitt

You know Joe Hewitt dont you? If not, think about what life might be like for web developers w/o such awesome things like the Dom Inspector or Canvas. Now he has another killer application called Firebug, which lets you debug Ajax applications. Plus he helps do away with "alert debugging" whoo!

jQuery: New Wave Javascript

JQuery takes an interesting tak in the world of javascript libraries. It introduces a shorthand syntax that allows for creating complicated effects quickly. Nice stuff!

Onion Skinned Drop Shadows (in CSS)

From livemarks comes a nice article about doing drop shadows in CSS.

Star Wars Transformers!

Too geek things that go geek together! Imagine combining star wars figures with transformers.... very cool!

Internet Book List - a database of book info and news

While amazon.com has the lion's share of users who love books writing reviews, buying books, etc. this site hopes to gain traction as the "IMDB" for books. You can find and review books here and perhaps find new books you might not have discovered before. It seems to be a great effort and I encourage book lovers to check it out.

The Society of Gaming - from 2old2play.com

This great article talks about the various types of gamer and challenges you to think about which category you find yourself in.

Octopus Engine - rounded corners done easy

This site spells out a technique for doing the iconical "rounded corners" on web pages. You'd think that with all the workarounds there would be a big effort to add versatile rounded corners in css via W3C. Perhaps someday in the future. But for now, give this a try.

Stardust@Home

Remember Seti@Home? Well this time around you'll need not only your machine but your brainpower to help find a proverbial needle in a football field sized (relatively) haystack. If you find a particle you get to name it.

Gamemaker RPG: Ark 22

Gamemaker is one of thos applications most near and dear to my heart. Its a powerful tool for creating games and is accessible to even very young kids for making games. Ark 22 is a full fledge RPG created using Gamemaker that will keep you coming back to finish it. This is a great example of the kinds of awesome games you can create using this awesome tool.

Exalead web search

This is an interesting "kitchen-sink" style approach to web search. For those of you who like your information from a fire hose, you may dig this. The web page thumbnail search is nifty.

Cross-Domain Scripting with JAHAH

From ajaxian.com comes news of this great library for doing cross-domain scripting and "includes" from one site to another. Very interesting!

Text-base dPong! Pong meets Zork

Imagine blending two genre's of games that heretofore have never met. Oh, say retro arcade games like Pong and text-adventures like Zork.This is exactly what Gregory Karber did with his Pong: The Text-Based Game. What's amazing about this game is that it's not just a rote set of pages - its actually a dynamic changing game of pong, only textual. Double points for hitting on two retro genre's at once! What's next? Pac Man meets Oregon Trail?

AFLAX now has persistent storage

AFLAX is a terribly cool project to expose the guts of Flash to everyday javascripters. I envision that someday Adobe/Macr will actually wake up and fold AFLAX like capability back into the core Flash product. But for now, check out the demos and make something cool!

Visio with the canvas tag

I know canvas is going to be big. I remember when I worked at Netscape talking up the idea of getting a canvas element going in mozilla - but it was too early then. But the time has come for things like this to take off.

Soapboxing aside, here's another great canvas demo - this time emulating a subset of visio / omnigraffle features.

KToon: Open Multimedia Toolkit

After poking around on Brian's site a bit - I found this. Brian describes it as follows:

an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) to develop Multimedia projects based in open standards as SMIL, KToonScript and the persistence format KTN.

Using HTML Tables (appropriately)

Here's a good article on how to use tables for their intended purpose: presenting tabular data.

Starting the redesign - the nightmare begins

Eventually there comes a time in a web developer's life that they meet with dread, loathing, and downright horror sometimes. What could it possibly be? The website redesign. Yes, that thing that lurks in the back of your mind. You know you'll have to do it sooner or later. You know you aught to do it. But with all the real life, and real work you have to do, it's just such a hard and important thing. I mean this is your site. It has to reflect you as well as just how awesome your skills are. Folks will probably see your site for approximate 15 seconds before flitting off to some other location. That is, unless you find that special "something" that earns you either a bookmark, a del.icio.us add, or daresay even a rss subscription.

So, with all that in mind, I begin my quest for a new site design. I pray I make it out alive. :)

New Year's resolution - daily posts.

I've resolved to make this a year when I post at least something every day. Something new, something cool. Hopefully worth stopping by for.

For today we have a nifty ajax application called ajchat - a js based chat service. Give it a go and see for your self.

Ajax Perf - comparing atlas and prototype class idioms.

This is an interesting article talking about the differences between the Atas (all functions in one object) and Prototype (create an object, then place all the methods in a prototype of that object) idiom.

Vitaly Friedman: 25 Sites you shouldnt have missed in 2005

Ah, am I just an echo chamber for other people's sites? Well, yes for alot of the time, but I do try to keep the original content ratio fairly high. However today this seems like a great site to check out if you are looking for some website design inspiration.

Happy New Year! and CanvasQuest Update

I'm sitting here listening to the boom of the fireworks outside as folks celebrate a brand new year! Happy New Year!

Also, I thought I'd do some more coding on my little rpg. I've added the ability to link rooms - even across domains - and the ability to save your character's health and amt. of gold. I'm almost there when it comes to having a "real" game!