Latest Posts
Browser Article
I like browsers, and I liked this article: After 5 Years on Web, Firefox Preps for Next Round . I am excited for what the future holds.
Arras Slideshow Setup
UPDATE: My friend emailed me yesterday and told me he found the instructions, right on the dashboard of the template settings. I had actually seen these when I was looking around the template, but it was talking about ‘thumbnails,’ so I thought I didn’t care. i guess I should have paid more attention.
A friend of mine was building out a WordPress site using the Arras Theme and he was having a hard time getting the image rotator on the home page to work. He asked me if I had any ideas, and after looking around, and coming up totally empty, I told him I would come back to it later. Eventually, he found the solution on Google. Here is what he found: http://i43.tinypic.com/4ida3n.jpg, on this site, http://wordpress.org/support/topic/286802 .
- Click on the upload image icon and upload your image, with recommended dimensions of at least 700×300.
- Once the image has uploaded, click on File URL and copy the URL that is generated in the Link URL field.
- In a post that is in one of the featured categories, create a custom field called ‘thumb’ and paste the URL in there. It is the excerpt from this post, and this thumb image, that are pulled into the opening image rotator. Make sure your post is in the featured category, as defined in the arras options.
- If you did everything right, it should work.
I am not sure how we were supposed to figure that out on our own. Thanks, scarpi21.
Interview with Jeremy Allaire
COMPUTERWORLD has published an interview with Jeremy Allaire, one of the co-creators of ColdFusion. I think it is worth the read.
Embedding Google Wave
One cool thing you can do with Google Wave is embed it in a page. I am not quite sure where this will come into practical use, but it is pretty cool. I have embedded a test Wave into a page on my site to see where it goes.
DM Trails on Google Maps
What I love about Google web apps is that they are constantly improving, without taking a step backwards. With some apps (facebook) I feel like they are two steps forward, one step back, but Google gradually integrates new features enhancing the user experience. Not only that, but the features don't require a learning curve. They are usually automatic, optional, or intuitive.
Aside from Gmail and Google Calendar, the app that I use the most is Google Maps. We moved to Des Moines almost a year ago and I have used Google Maps a lot as I try to figure out my way around town. I have also use Gmaps Pedometer, which utilizes the Google Maps API, to plot out my runs. Today I was pleasantly surprised to see that Google Maps has added many of the Des Moines bike trails, making my life even easier.
Google Wave
I got my Google Wave account yesterday. I am not yet sure what I am going to do with it, but I think it shows some promise. The first thing I am wishing for is integration with Gmail. There aren't many people using Wave yet, so it will be cool when I can interact with them.
The Vile Plutocrat
I really like this design. It looks really cool, and the principles are very simple.
Google Chrome
I was out with some friends last night and we were discussing web browsers. All three of us use Google Chrome as our main browser. It wasn’t too long ago that I was the only one using it and they were still on FireFox. The browser market is a tough one to get into, but I think Chrome can do it – not only because it is a great browser, but also because it has Google behind it. My wife and I were watching a show on hulu a few nights back and all of the commercials we saw were for chrome.
Bring on the OS.
Duke Energy Power Outage Map
Yesterday I was interested in a power outage in Cincinnati and I remembered that Duke Energy puts out maps displaying power outages. I Googled ‘Duke Energy Power Outage Map’ and the first result was the Cincinnati area map. I thought this was interesting since Duke is a big company based out of North Carolina (I believe). I thought about it a little and thought that there were a couple of potential reasons why Google thinks this page is important:
- The map would have received a whole lot of traffic last year when the power was out in Cincinnati for almost a week.
- A lot of people in Cincinnati would know the map exists because they spent so much time looking at it during the power outage.
I am not sure what the answer is, but it might provide some slight insight into Google’s page ranking system, and I just think that it is interesting.
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