UI Fundamentals for Programmers by Ryan Singer. This presentation was really helpful to me when I started re-developing ChapterBoard last year, moving away from my prototype built with Drupal in favor of the PHP MVC framework KohanaPHP. I highly recommend it to anyone else who is working with an MVC framework. Even if you have a lot of experience with your framework, Ryan’s approach to developing an application UI is very helpful.
The presentation is curtesy of Chicago Ruby and 37 Signals’ Ryan Singer
I recently moved to Downtown Seattle and because everything is so easy to walk/bus to we gave back her Civic to her parents. Today I needed to go out of the city (Kirkland to be exact) to meet someone and so I decided to give Zipcar a try.
Wow, is all I have to say. You reserve a car for a set period of time, you flash your Zipcard on the dashboard and the doors unlock. Oh and if you don’t like carrying your Zipcard in your wallet, you can use your iPhone to unlock/lock the car. Seriously, your iPhone can UNLOCK the car you reserve.
At $9.50/hour its not exactly cost effective for every day use. However, it makes a saves a whole lot of cents when you consider the alternative of car payments, insurance, gas and $175 a month just for parking.
I found a great set of video presentations from last years Startup Day in Seattle and wanted to share them with everyone. Enjoy!
On Tuesday night I had the opportunity to attend TechFlash’s Bootstrapping vs. VC Town Hall Discussion. I had a great time at the event and meet a number of other entrepreneurs. This has been my third meetup type event since moving up here in May and I’m really enjoying the scene in Seattle so far. Next up is finding time to get to a Seattle Startups Open Coffee event.
Just picked up a few books to help me get started with iPhone development. Very excited to get started after waiting all this time.
Today Apple announced a new version of Safari. Above is a screenshot of one of Safari 5’s new features called “Reader”, taken from my fraternity and sorority blog website ChapterTalk. I’m really impressed by its ability to automatically recognize when you are reading article type content and I can’t wait to start using it.
Github has added a new way to browse its massive amount of repositories. You can now view the most watched and forked repositories based on the programming langauge. Great feature, and a great way to find interesting new open source projects.
View popular php repositories on GitHub
As someone looking to raise an angel round in the next 12 months, I can definitely appreciate this piece. It really illustrates how much of an impact raising money has on the way a business is built around a product or service. After realizing that, its much easier to understand why its important to determine the type/size of business you want to build prior to seeking investment capital, and even more importantly, another founder.
On my way home from picking up dinner items at the Pike Place Market I stumbled upon the Maximus Minimus bbq pig. Too bad I had already eaten lunch. I’ll be following their facebook page so I can give it a try for lunch next time they are in downtown.
AT&T’s data plan announcement yesterday is some pretty big news. I don’t agree with having to pay an additional fee to tether my laptop in order to use bandwidth I’d already paid for. I guess that means I just won’t be upgrading my plan, and instead save the $15 a month since my normal usage (as shown above) is under the 200mb limit.
DataPlus. Provides 200 megabytes (MB) of data – for example, enough to send/receive 1,000 emails (no attachments), plus send/receive 150 emails with attachments, plus view 400 Web pages, plus post 50 photos on social media sites, plus watch 20 minutes of streaming video – for just $15 per month.** This plan, which can save customers up to 50 percent off their wireless data charges, is designed for people who primarily like to surf the web, send email and use social networking apps. If customers exceed 200 MB in a monthly billing cycle, they will receive an additional 200 MB of data usage for $15 for use in the cycle. Currently, 65 percent of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 200 MB of data per month on average.
DataPro. Provides 2 gigabytes (GB) of data – for example, enough to send/receive 10,000 emails (no attachments), plus send/receive 1,500 emails with attachments, plus view 4,000 Web pages, plus post 500 photos to social media sites, plus watch 200 minutes of streaming video – for $25 per month.** Should a customer exceed 2 GB during a billing cycle, they will receive an additional 1 GB of data for $10 for use in the cycle. Currently, 98 percent of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 2 GB of data a month on average.
Tethering. Smartphone customers – including iPhone customers – who choose the DataPro plan have the option to add tethering for an additional $20 per month. Tethering lets customers use their smartphones as a modem to provide a broadband connection for laptop computers, netbooks or other computing devices. Tethering for iPhones will be available when Apple releases iPhone OS 4 this summer.
About Me
I'm Blake Lucchesi and I'm an active member of the growing Drupal community and I love open source software.I am the founder and lead developer of ChapterBoard, a web app for fraternities and sororities.
I am also a partner and lead developer at This By Them, a design and development company.
I recently moved from the Los Angeles/OC area to Downtown Seattle (2010) and I'm really enjoying the people and scenery. When I'm not behind the keyboard I enjoy cycling, cooking, meeting new people and finding great restaurants.
