Archive for 'Products'

May200922

brandon.corbin

0

URLSummary php Class

I needed a way to extract additional content and details about any given website that a User might add to PickyList. So I sat down and wrote what is now dubbed URLSummary that takes a URL and outputs an XML document.

Feel free to Download URLSummary Now.

This class is written in PHP 5, and I cannot confirm or deny that it will work with any other version. Feel free to do anything you want with it - all I ask is that you consider leaving a comment letting me know if it was beneficial for you and your product.

Usage of URLSummary.php

<?
	require('URLSummary.php');
	// Get a URL paramater $url = $_GET['url'];
	$url = 'http://icorbin.com/resume';

	// Create the URLSummary Class
	$urlsummary  = new URLSummary();
	$urlsummaryxml =  $urlsummary->get($url,"xml");
	// Output the Results to the browser as XML
	header("Content-Type:application/xml");
	echo $urlsummaryxml->asXML();
?>


A few notes
Currently URLSummary currently does not Cache any of the calls.

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May200907

brandon.corbin

0

The coolest desk fan I have ever seen.

Unlike most Desktop fans, the Fargo by Fanimation keeps all that important paperwork on your desk (opposed to blowing it all over the place) - and it looks damn sexy doing it. Fanimation, the creator of this fan, applied simplistic brilliance to this 1920 inspired design that produces air flow out of the side of the fan and not the bottom, keeping all your paper stuff free to relax. While it might not be for everyone, this fan and many other Fanimation fans offer the type of designs that you build an entire room around, a home decorators dream.

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Apr200921

brandon.corbin

0

8 Reasons not to use Internet Explorer 6

Are you using Internet Explorer 6?

Would you walk naked through Central Park at night with a $1000 tapped to your body? Well that’s exactly what your doing using IE 6. Please take a moment and see what your missing.

  1. You most likely have an infected computer that is spamming the rest of us.
  2. Your literally not seeing entire chunks of website content - because of a bug in IE 6.
  3. You’re slowing the progress of the internet - IE 6 causes developers to continually slow down so everything works right on IE 6.
  4. You get nasty computer viruses, trojan horse or malware by simply visiting an infected website.
  5. You wait 2 or 3 times as long for web pages to load than the rest of us.
  6. You DON’T HAVE TABS! (Multiple browsers in a single window).
  7. You think browser crashing/freezing is normal.
  8. You think a browser should slow your computer to a crawl.

Then go and download Google Chrome. (Firefox or worse case Internet Explorer 8)

Need more reasons?
http://whyiesucks.blogspot.com/
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6121_102-0.html?threadID=7613

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Apr200920

brandon.corbin

0

Learning Twitter Shorthand (for my facebook homies)

My entire family is on Facebook - literally all of them. I, however, rarely login or use the all mighty FB, instead I prefer the more simplistic - yet flexible -Twitter to provide my social fix.

But I still like to keep my family and friends updated, so I setup Twitter to automatically push my status updates to Facebook.  And more times than not, my posts (and few 100,000 others) are filled with Twitter Shorthand - user created short cuts - due to the 140 characters post limitation. And unless you use twitter, you will have no idea what the hell it all means when you are bombarded with @’s and RT’s and #this or #that or #followfriday.

Twitter Shorthand Decipher Key:

@somename = a Twitter user
You can refer to another user in your updates by putting an @ in front of their username “@brandoncorbin”.

RT @username = Retweet.
If you repost another users message, you give them proper attribution by including  RT: @username .

#this or #that. = hash tags
A hash tag lets you define a  specific keyword(s) to associate with you status, this makes it easy to find during searches.

#followfriday @username1 @username2 …
On Friday twitter people like to promote one another. This is called Follow Friday. #followfriday @iskip is short hand for “if you trust me, then you should follow iskip”

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Apr200904

brandon.corbin

0

SEO is bullshit. Search engine optimization is not.

I tweeted a comment stating that SEO was bullshit - and I fully admit that it deserved a better job explaining it (hey 140 characters is kind of limiting).

When I say SEO is bullshit - I mean SEO not the act of search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is just as real and important as having a website that is accessible by all users.

But the sheer number of SEO experts that can not code even basic HTML, is only climbing. These wanna-be-geeks give the entire industry a bad rap. So my beef is not with web shops that build killer usable websites that also are SEO friendly. Or even someone who pushes the limits on what is considered “in the safe seo zone” - I love with you guys. It’s the assholes that read 4 articles online and start throwing words around like HTTP Header, link baiting, keyword density, 301 and 302 - without really knowing what any of them actually mean.

Google changes their search algorithm as many as 300 times a year, so trying to “play the system” is a never-ending mouse chasing the cat game.  At some point if you push to far, the cats going to turn around and eat your ass. Just as my junior highschool shop teach used to say “You can not beat an electron” - I say “You can not beat a Google bot”.

Here are my 6 free tips on making a website that the Google bot can easily consume.

1. THE TITLE TAG IS KING.
The first 5 words in your TITLE TAG  are the most important part of your web page. If you want to dominate say “denver sailing lessons“, then make your title “Denver sailing lessons - Rocky Mountain Sailing”. This simple Tip that I gave my friend Toby, delivered his site to number 3 (or 4) on Google in less than a month.  Also remember that Google does not like the same page title on different pages, so try to make each of your page titles unique.

2. Use the H1 - H6  tags properly.
The H1 tag tells the bots “this is the headline of this page - so it’s important”.
The H2 tag tells the bots “this is a headline less important than the H1″ - but still important - you have all the way up to h4.

3. Meta tags are good - but not crucial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_tag

3. Don’t overload your content.
The more you game the system by putting in a bunch of text, it not only will lower your overall rank, it will piss off your users.

4. Use the right keywords.
The right keywords in your content, and specifically in your links, makes the Google bot happy. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal There are some amazing tools out there that let you find the best keywords for your type of site.

5. Try to use a Sitemap.xml
A sitemap is.. well a map of your site. They help the bot find additional pages it might have missed. Luckily there are tools out there that help you generate a this XML file - http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/. This step is kind of a pain-in-the-ass, and personally I do not do until I have nothing left to do with a product.

6. Signup for Google Webmaster Tools
This free google app gives you information on how the Google bot handles your website. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

7. Bots read rank content from the TOP down.
The most important content needs to be at the top, the least at the bottom.

That’s it folks - can we please now stop over  complicating it, and move on to  CONVERTING the users that we already have!

For some additional tips - check out Google’s own words on Seach Engine Optimization http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

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Mar200924

brandon.corbin

0

Super simple Ruby on Rails cloud hosting using AptanaCloud

Founder Paul Colton walks us through the basics of creating Ruby on Rails projects with Aptana RadRails, and then deploying those projects to Aptana Cloud.

via Aptana TV.

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Mar200924

brandon.corbin

0

How-To sync files between multiple computers. Meet DropBox, my newest favorite #free #application - Pickylist Indianapolis Market Place

I have been using DropBox for a month now, and it has become one of those indespensible applications that I use every day on every machine - and I feel that it is my karmic duty to tell Indianapolis about this amazing product. It’s like an online thumb drive that’s connected to every single computer you use - at the same time.

via How-To sync files between multiple computers. Meet DropBox, my newest favorite #free #application - Pickylist Indianapolis Market Place.

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Mar200901

brandon.corbin

2

The Double Slit Experiment in plain English. Quantum craziness.

I tried to explain the double slit experiment to my dad, aunt and nephew today. However, I completely butchered it - making it virtually impossible to visualize. So I offer up this great little video that helps illustrates the infamous experiment in common terms.

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Feb200927

brandon.corbin

0

3 Minutes of me rambling about the newest features of Pickylist v0.8 - due out a few weeks ago - doh. - Pickylist Indianapolis Market Place

Sure I wanted to have the next version of PickyList released a few weeks ago, however - like usual my timeline was a tad bit aggressive.

I hope to release the next version in the next few weeks, until then here is a 3 minute off-the-cuff video of the newest and “coolest” features.

via 3 Minutes of me rambling about the newest features of Pickylist v0.8 - due out a few weeks ago - doh. - Pickylist Indianapolis Market Place.

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Jan200905

brandon.corbin

0

Aptana Cloud just knocked my socks off.

Over the last 5 days, I have been re-coding PickyList - a new database and a new user experience. Since I was already on a terror, I decided to check out some “Cloud Hosting Services” - right now we are paying a decent chunk per month at GoDaddy, with no quick way to scale.

I started playing with RightScale and Amazons EC2 - and while it was cool to see it work - the amount of  time and brainpower required to do everything was simply to much.  And then I found Aptana Cloud - (the clouds opened and rays of sunshine danced over my head)

Aptana Cloud is an absolutely amazing product/service. Their free 21 day trial, and the ability to test your application without even entering a credit card was an breath of fresh air. Setup is super fast, and it only took me about 20 minutes to get the entire PickyList product up and running.

Aptana offers a few different pricing models ranging from $30 to $200 a month - depending on the Ram and Disk space. You also get a default Staging and Live enviornment, a beautiful and simple dashboard, SSH, SFTP, FTP, Mysql, SVN and ROOT access.

Check out this video on how it works.

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Dec200819

brandon.corbin

0

Free Logo Design Inspiration

Need a little Logo inspiration? Check out LogoInstant.com - a slew of free high-er quality logos that including source files, fonts etc.

LogoInstant.com | Download Free Web 2.0 Logo Designs.

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Dec200811

brandon.corbin

5

LinkedIn Profile API - Unofficial and 100% Open Source

Presenting the open source PHP LinkedIn Public Profile API, released under the GNU

How does it work?
This PHP Class (requires php5) imports a users LinkedIn public profile (by supplying their public profile username) and turns the results in to a simple XML document.

You can see my example at http://brandonshead.com/work/linkedinProfile/profile.php

How do you use it?
First you have to download the linkedin open source API here.
Inside you will find 3 files.
1. linkedin.php - the actual PHP Class (requires PHP5)
2. profile.php - an example of how to use the Class.
3. livingresume.xsl - the default XSL that is attached to the Users XML Profile.

Usage:

<?
include_once('linkedin.php');
$LIProfile=new linkedinprofile(’brandoncorbin’);
// OUTPUT THE RESULTS
header(”Content-Type:application/xml”);
echo $LIProfile->getProfileXML()->asXML();
?>

Questions? Leave them in the Comments and I will reply ASAP.

Disclaimer: I offer absolutely no guarantees that this will work on your system. As a matter of fact, it’s possible that this script could ask you to play “global thermal nuclear war” - if it does, please answer no. We all know what about happened last time.

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Dec200809

brandon.corbin

0

Turn your Wii Remote in to a Digital Whiteboard [Video]

Johnny Lee shows his killer Wii Remote hacks. He converts the $40 Wii Remote in to a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a 3-D viewer you wear on your head.


Here is Johnny’s Wii Remote Hack Site where you can learn how to do this, and download his software.

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Dec200809

brandon.corbin

6

Roll your own Wordpress Tiny URL and Capitalize on your Domain’s Brand.

I am tired of TinyURL getting all of the domain “brand share” from my Blogs tweets. So I wanted to come up with my own solution to create short urls using my blogs domain: BrandonsHead.com.

Yes, my domain is longer than “TinyUrl”, and I assume that yours is too - however, those 5 or so extra characters are well worth the brand awareness (especially if you are cross posting to other social media outlets). And thanks to Mod Rewrite and Wordpress, pulling this off is relatively simple.

By adding a rewrite rule to Wordpress‘ .htaccess file (in the root of your Wordpress installation) - you add 1 line of code, and poof you can have a Short URL like http://brandonshead.com/go446

Here is the code that I added to my .htaccess to achieve this:

RewriteRule ^go(.*)? /index.php?p=$1 [R=301,L]

This code is simply saying, any time a user goes to http://mydomain/go123 take the 123 and treat it like a blog post ID, then the rest of Wordpress’ rewrite rules will take over.

Here is what my Wordpress’ .htaccess file looks like:


# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
#Short URL Processing
RewriteRule ^go(.*)? /index.php?p=$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress

Also, we want to make it easy for us and our users to copy and paste this new short url. So I went in and added the following code to my Single.php file (that is part of the theme you are using).


<div class="shorturl">
<label>Short URL</label>
<input type="text" value="http://YOURDOMAIN.com/go<? the_ID(); ?>" onclick="this.select()" />
</div>

Disclaimer: This might or might not make your Wordpress installation completely blowup, this is only for the brave of heart. I repeat: This might make your Wordpress installation come alive and eat your entire city - so please proceed with caution.