geekAbyte

Firefox meets Myaiesec.net!

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:42:00 +0000

Last two weeks saw me visiting Benin (Edo state), For an AIESEC conference: (AIESEC National Training Seminar), where i was opportune to be part of the conference facilitating team. Trust me, as a Mozilla Firefox campus representative, i found a way of making sure i evangelized Firefox during the course of the conference. Apart from spotting my cool firefox T-shirt, talking to delegates about the cool features of Firefox, i was also able to address the delegates (albeit short it was) on the general features of Firefox and how, using Persona plug-in, a branding campaign for Myaiesec.net could be carried out...

Find below the slides for the presentation

And for the Persona i designed around myaiesec.net, do pick it up here. If you hap. to be an aiesecer and you are reading this, make sure you get your myaiesec.net persona!

Getting Twitter!

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:04:00 +0000

In Recent times, Twitter has been enjoying massive adoption.It has moved from a service that appeals to only geeks; the early adopters to one that celebrities now flock to. People are signing up in multitudes. Between Feb 2008 and Feb 2009, twitter grew by 1,382%. Presently its user base exceeds 10 million.

But despite this huge adoption of twitter, a whole lot of people still don’t get it. A lot of people don’t see the utility in the service and they wonder why the Buzz. And this is why we have a lot of people signing up on twitter only to abandon the site after a sparing interaction with it. There are quite a lot of dormant accounts on twitter; according to Neilson Online More than 60% of Twitter users stop using the site one month after signing up for the service. Even amongst my circle of influence, I see this trend. I know an ample amount of people who get on twitter, wonder what the big deal is, leave a couple of tweets and then just abandon the site for the next couple of months.

The issue is that Twitter is so d*mn easy to sign up for but far much harder to figure out what to do on it and how to get benefits from it. It is in the figuring out “the benefits” which is seemingly not that apparent, that a lot of people miss it. I will quickly outline why I think this is so.

It Starts from having the right expectations!
Getting twitter starts from knowing what twitter is not. Twitter is not a social networking utility. A lot of people brand Twitter as a social networking site, but that is not the case. And this is where the problem starts. We have people moving to twitter with the expectation of getting the social networking experience sites like facebook,hi5 or MySpace provides but only to be disoriented when all they see is a “what are you doing” sign, with a slew of twitter lingo: hash tags, @ replies and shortened urls.

An analyst once described twitter as “a broadcast medium rather than a [medium for] intimate conversation with friends”.

I know folks who wouldn’t have taken interest in Twitter if not for the fact that access to Facebook has been blocked during office hours. So they move on to twitter expecting the same user experience they get from Facebook...

But Twitter is not a Social Networking Utility!

Then who do you follow on Twitter.
The quality of utility you derive on twitter is directly related to the quality of tweets of your twitter following. A lot of people have express sentiments similar to this:

“I don’t care that someone is going to take a shower, eat a sandwich, or go workout. That doesn’t make a difference in my life. Twitter is just a time waster”

Well, what are you doing following folks who only tweets about eating amala for breakfast? And what happened to following “stock quotes, project status, thought leaders, breaking news etc”

For example, my interest tilts more in the direction of technology, so if you check out my followings on twitter, you will see it is made up of people who largely tweet around technology. This is where I get to discover new tools, read interesting articles and generally stay on top of what is going on where technology is concerned. As previously describe: Twitter is more of a Broadcasting medium, so if I want to enjoy it, I tune my receiver to channels that broadcast contents that interests me. That is, I follow folks whose tweets, I find useful.

So you want more utility from twitter? Cut off the noise, find folks who tweet on issues that interest you and start following them.

How do you Access Twitter
I would say this factor is the most important factor in determining the level of usefulness one derives from twitter. It might sound kinda strange, but pointing your browser to http://www.twitter.com is not the best way to consume twitter. (But sadly, this is the first way starters get to interact with the site) But when a little thought is put into it, then it becomes obvious that using the web is not the optimal way of accessing Twitter. To enjoy twitter, I would, instead, advise the usage of third party applications.

The thing is this; the very nature of a service would dictate the way it is best consumed. Twitter by its very nature which is centered on tweets, calls for a non intrusive user notification paradigm.

Compare the ease between having to go to www.twitter.com every now and then in other to see your tweets, to having a third party application do the checking for you.

So I’ll say, sign up on twitter and then go find one of these third party applications. Since I am a die-hard fan of Firefox, I have found TwitterFox as my Twitter client of choice. It is a Firefox extension that brings my tweets to me via Firefox as I surf the web, meaning I can go ahead with being busy on the web, doing other things and on having new tweets, I get to see it via a pop up; very non intrusive.

And whenever I have a thought I want to tweet, doing so is as easy as clicking on the Twitterfox icon to start tweeting away...

You can also find other interesting ideas on how to utilize twitter, here, here and here, but it all starts with having the right expectation of twitter, follow people with quality tweets, and start using TwitterFox.(or any other third party client for twitter) ;)

Your Codes Shall Live After you...

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:22:00 +0000

Prior to now, I have never worked in an environment where I had to inherit a code base to work with (well except those times I have had to peek under the hood of some open source codes I needed to tweak) It is either I write the needed codes myself or I do.

But recently that I just got a job where I get paid to play around with computers, the internet and write codes, sooner or later I know I am going to be confronted with that situation; To build on codes whose original authors have long left the company and are nowhere to be found. It is not as if am that concerned about this happening, guess am more preoccupied with the thought of the quality of codes I will be giving up for inheritance when I finally take my leave from the company.

Am presently working on a project where I am building, more or less, from scratch and with every line of code I write, that thought keeps hunting me.

Guess the saying: the good ~~evil~~ deed men do shall leave after them, is also true for you as a developer. Your codes too shall leave after you. And I don’t think I would want to leave behind an arcane legacy :) so to prevent this from happening I went ahead and got myself a book on how to write quality and manageable codes. A pretty nice book on software development I’ll say.

But then again when it comes to coding style, it’s worth stressing that its sorta like Religion where you can’t claim that a particular method is the way: the most efficient. But the trick is to come up with a style based on some fundamental guidelines and adhere to it. It’s about maintaining consistency. Whichever style you decide to adopt the key is to stick to it and maintain it across board.

So guess am doing my bit in ensuring the quality of codes out there, I can only ask of you the same. Do find the following online articles on the topic helpful, like I did. They are PHP centric ;)

An article from devshed, tim kadlec on the 5s, and Reinhold Weber's tips

Sell Benefits Not Features…

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:15:00 +0000

The aim of any marketing efforts is to elicit an action and in most cases it’s to make potential customers make a buying decision. If people don’t take that action of buying then we can conclude that all our marketing hasn’t achieve its objectives.

When dealing with high tech products or services, similar goal is expected: make someone pay for your software or get someone to subscribe to use your web app. As a marketer, this involves coming up with ways to ensure that the marketing decision made by your potential customers favor your product or services.

Its all about coaxing or convincing and in high tech marketing it is not uncommon to see marketers listing features their software comes loaded with in other to coax customers to make a buying decision that will favors their offerings.

But going in the direction of features listing might not be quite a productive strategy, especially for services like software. Ideally the logic behind feature touting goes somewhat like this: “List the features, let the customers know all the cool features they will be buying so that they will know the benefits they will enjoy and how our software will help solve their problems”.

Well it so happens that things don’t normally play out that way. Customers might not necessary see the benefits, straightway from your litany of features. And this is why playing it strong on the feature listing side might not be that effective. Instead of feature touting, I will advocate Benefit touting .

In stead of strictly feature listing, enumerate the benefits offered by your software in explicit language.

Not that listing features is wrong in itself, but we have to keep in mind that our aim is to elicit an action: persuade potential customers to make a decision to buy, and this is easier done when your customers can grasp the relevance of your solution to their peculiar challenges.

The problem with feature listing is that it is not an effective means in communicating the benefits of your offering to customers.

Truth is, if you have features, you should have benefits but you have to take into consideration that half of the time, majority of your customer might not be that techie savvy, so they might not, at once connect the dots of your features to get the benefits. This is why it pays to sell to them by explicitly stating your benefits. This will make buying much easier.

One need to take into cognizance that decision making is powered by emotions, so it will make more sense Listing benefits not features since it will be a faster way to make customers easily identify what they will gain from your software, how it will make their work (or life) easier, thereby generating the necessary emotions that will propel them to sign that cheque.

Doing this makes buying easier like I said earlier on. Have you ever wondered why most people resist selling but enjoy buying? Why is this so? Its simple, buying becomes enjoyable when backed with the knowledge that the Good or Services being purchased is really the solution to a problem. List the benefits and people will find it easy to connect your solution to their problems, list the features, well….

So what is the lesson being learnt here?

“It is a better marketing strategy to design your marketing campaign around benefits listing than feature listing.”

Republished from 60mwtgeeks

100 Best Web Developers from Nigeria

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:57:00 +0000

In response to Loy’s list of 10 best Nigerian developers (the original post has since been modified), a list which I feel is inappropriate because it included names of people who are in no way involved in web development (or other form of software development for that matter)…I hereby provide my own list of developers (desktop,mobile,web…) and web designers who I feel know their onions enough to be referred to as part of Nigeria’s Best Developers…

And I feel this is necessary because as a comment to Loy’s post aptly put it:

“Do your research before you post. I mean: the whole world is viewing your website. You could actually be limiting opportunities for REAL WEB DEVELOPERS by showcasing mediocre as Top Nigerian Web Developers...”

Am even more concerned about the inclusion of people who might not have written a single line of code in their lives!!!

Apparently, a lot of other people shared my opinion as is reflected in the ensuing comments to the post, with a lot of readers pointing out the erroneous nature of the list. Guess this fusillade of comments was what moved Loy to later put forward a clarification via a comment in which he said:

“there’ll be a real online competition that would be sponsored by companies who are interested.
That’s when we would have an online voting/ranking system built to sift the first 100 web developers that the community thinks are the best. Then, we’ll have them accessed by a panel of judges and eventually rewarded for their skills and contributions.”

That's more like it. But in the interim here is my own list of 10 Nigerian ~~Best~~ Developers who i feel will easily make the best 100 list. This is arranged in no particular order...

1.Dipo Fasoro
2.Ope Obembe
3.Temi Kolawole
4.Dipo Odumosu
5.Segun Okin
6.Tim Akinbo
7.Babatunde Adeyemi
8.Ayodeji Aladejebi
9.Toki Abodunrin
10.Seun Osewa

90% of the names listed here are, if not friends, acquaintances and hopefully in the nearest future I should have each of them over on this blog, for a chat.

Wrapping my head around logo designs

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:34:00 +0000

Still Graphics was my first love. Before I discovered the web, it was the singular thing that ignited my love for computers. That ability of being able to create such stunning and visual appealing designs was just too much temptation for my creative head. I couldn’t resist; and I had to succumb to its lure.

But in as much as I enjoyed creating still graphic designs, there was one part of it I usually find myself skipping over. And this is Logo Designing. The reason is not farfetched; its creation process is a tad engagingly than any other graphic designing process.

Logo’s are highly conceptual and the fact that you have to be able to understand the branding message intended by the logo and be able to compress this and express it conceptually into a design that won’t occupy more than a tiny portion of your screen makes it quite a task for me…

…Well until recently where I find myself spitting forth logo designs like the mint would spew out Naira notes…

Seems my brain morphed...

In the past couple of weeks I have come up with such a number of logo designs that it amazes me. Below are some samples of ideas I came up with for the AIESEC NIGERIA campaigns:

Guess I have finally wrapped my head around logo designing…cool :)

Do more, Click less

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:48:00 +0000

Good user interface design is not all about the fanciful Photoshop effects and graphical eye candies; it is about designing systems that enable users to easily achieve their aim of interacting with your application.

The true functionality of an application is tied to its user interface. If you like, you could pack a trailer load of functions into your app, but it comes down to naught if your user interface makes it so difficult that your users can’t find them, or makes it problematic using them.

And this is why User interface design is such a big deal and why it [should] occupy the front seat while planning out an application. There are a whole lot of considerations that go into the making of a good user interfaces but in this post, I’ll just talk about one: number of user’s mouse clicks.

As a rule of thumb, a good and well designed user interface should have as minimal clicks as possible leading to the consumption of functions in the application. Meaning that, you should always strive to cut down on the number of clicks a user makes in other to get things done in your application.

In application usage, one of the units for measuring user’s action is the number of clicks, and the more clicks a user has to go through the higher the probability that there would be a reduction in the usability of the application.

Throwing hurdles of mouse clicks at users was never a good idea.

For example an application that takes users 3 mouse clicks to sign up on is far more efficient and usable than a latter that requires 5 mouse clicks. The mantra should be “do more with fewer clicks”

Looking at the Wordpress 2.7.1 release, one would find that amongst the changes that have been made to the user interface is the reduction in the number of clicks needed to publish a post from signing in.

In version 2.5, in other to publish a new blog post, you have this:

Making a total of 3 mouse clicks

While in the version 2.7.1, to get your post published, you have this:

Capish!

Reducing the number of clicks down to two...Exactly what a good user interface strives to do.

As previously stated, a good user interface design should make interaction with the application as easy and smooth as possible, so when designing, do keep in mind that reducing the number of mouse clicks will go a long way in increasing the usability of your application.

How To Manually Download and Install FireFox Extensions.

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:21:00 +0000

Never had the course to get Firefox extensions manually installed until yesterday when I had to get a PC that wasn’t connected to the internet up and running with my fave Firefox extensions. On a normal day the Add to Firefox button does the job:

But since this particular desktop pc wasn’t hooked up to the net, I needed a way to get the extension files off the net and then manually Add [it] on to Firefox. So how do you go about doing this? How do you manually download and install Firefox add ons?
Simple.

Browse to the Firefox add on pages, instead of left clicking on the Add Firefox button, right click on it and click on save link…

file extension should be ".xpi"
Once the file is saved, to do a manual install of the extension, Start Firefox and drag the downloaded file unto it. Capish! You will then be prompted to continue or cancel the installation. That’s all.

Another alternative to getting the extension files off the net is to browse to the Firefox add on pages using a browser other than Firefox.

This will automatically turn the add to Firefox button you normally get into a download button. You can thus easily download the extension files.

Web Marketing; Two rules not to break

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:27:00 +0000

Ever since the web evolved into a trusted platform wherein commercial activities can take place, there has been that need to get involved in marketing activities; activities that seek to persuade users to take particular actions that are in line with the sites objectives; be it signing up for a service, adding a product to the cart, or filling out a survey form etc.

But to embark on these marketing activities on the web, and be successful at it, an understanding of the web as a platform is required. Not only this, a good understanding of how users interact with the platform is also vital. A lack of an understanding of users behavioral pattern as they interact with the web and what they expect will always lead to methods that cause more damage than good. Examples of such methods, which come readily to mind, include spams and pop-ups, which, most time, end up annoying users instead of persuading them.

A couple of weeks back, while out, trying to find an appropriate provider for a service I thought I will need for a project, I experienced, firsthand the effect of a marketing (or persuasive) strategy that got the whole web thingy wrapped. They were persuasive strategies that were futile because instead of trying to convince me, they did quite the opposite, sending me off, quick, to reload my Google page, with a little annoyance to go with it.

There were 2 fundamental principles that these initiatives got all wrong that were responsible in making their marketing strategy abortive, or more appropriately, less effective. The two principles which I consider basic due to the fact that it hinges on the unique nature of the web include:

Principle 1: Do not Horde information on your site.
It is so annoying to land on a site only to find out that the detailed information you need to make your purchasing decision is nowhere to be found on the site. But will only be made available to you after you have sent a mail to the contact us email address provided on the site. That sucks! This defeats the very essence of the having a website. A website should be as exhaustive as possible.

The web is majorly a pull medium and users are used to this. users are oriented towards playing an active part in retrieving information they need. And as such, a website designed to horde information; that adds to the hurdles users need to cross in other to get information needed is automatically broken.

So while looking for this service, I found out two website that offer what I was looking for, but the sites lacked the critical information I needed to make a purchasing decision. All they had was just marketing tirade on how their services is the best I can ever find. But the information I need; like cost details, details of the API, and implementation information were nowhere to be found unless I send an email to their sales department.

Principle 2: Don’t be quick at getting too personal.
Avoid initiating gestures of personal contact too early in the persuasive chain. Or better still do not be the one to initiate personal contact, let the user do that. Just make yourself available to receive such gestures if the user does make them.

So to continue with my story, as if making their website not exhaustive was not enough, after sending emails, requesting for more details to the two sites I found, one replied that for me to get the information I needed I should meet him on Skype or yahoo messenger at a set time.

Horrible!!!

I don’t know you from Adam and you expect I would just want to chat? When you could have easily put all the information I need for my finding on your site!

At that instant I immediately removed that particular provider from the list of potential providers I will be considering. There were just too many things needed to be done before I get the information I want. And for crying out loud, inviting me to a chat was just an inappropriate gesture. That was just too early and uncalled for.

Not saying instant messaging is not a viable tool for marketing, but the approach was wrong. Like I said, let your users be the one to make such gestures, just be there whenever they do. It’s a different thing entirely if the site was as exhaustive as possible and then a link to initiate a chat is provided for me if I needed clarification.

On the other hand there was a third provider I found out along with the previous two. Apart from talking about their services on their site, this third provider went ahead to enumerate the different options I have when implementing their services, detailing the respective cost implications, and the technical details of their API. A trial access to the API was even provided. And I got all the information I needed to make a decision there and there on the site. This was a company that understood how to play on the web. And if I had gone ahead with the project, it was most certain that I would have done business with this third provider.

True, the web has come a long way, and to do successful marketing on the web, there is need for that nature which this evolved platform has taken on be understood; including the ways its users interact with it.
This, I hope to enumerate more on, in upcoming posts.

Phase One Completed...

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:06:00 +0000

’Am presently working on the development of the online hangout for AIESECers in IFE, and before I went away attending conference in Jos last week, I was able to complete the first phase of the development process; which is coming up with the design theme for the portal:

This was done using fireworks which happens to be my favorite graphics application when it comes to interface design for the web. The next stage will find me making the design into HTML. Will also be working on developing the other functional part to the site

At the moment, am yet to make certain implementation decisions, for instance to handle Authentication, am yet to settle on which of the Identity providers I will be using, but from the way it appears guess I will be going with RPX, sine it seems to be a nice potpourri for almost most of the popular id providers out there.

The majority of the portal features are still yet to be defined, hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, all these would be sorted out.

For the Blog, I decided against reinventing the wheel, so I will be going with Wordpress, but instead of going scouting for a suitable theme, or hacking one, I would be creating my own template. Apparently, designing Wordpress themes from scratch isn’t that big a deal as long you have a good grasp of basic HTML and CSS.

Hopefully before the next months run out, I will be done and AIESECers in IFE will be able to take all their sugar cubes, ofofo box and roll calls online :)

Stackoverflow...You would love it too

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:48:00 +0000

I first got wind of stackoverflow sometime last year, over at Jeff Attwood’s blog; I knew it was a project he is involved in but I never bothered checking it out…until a couple of weeks back…and I think I have been won over.

So what is stackoverflow?

On his blog jeff Attwood described stockoverflow as a mix of Expert exchange slash Wikipedia slash reddit, where he said:

[stackoverflow] is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of goodprogramming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.

I guess what won me over was the interface. There is this responsiveness about it. Well thought out, it feels as if your next move is already anticipated. It is clean, uncluttered and intuitive. Nice work.

So stackoverflow is now officially part of my numerous online destinations. Do check it out thyself.

Y i love Mozilla Firefox

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:10:00 +0000

‘Am a die hard fan of Mozilla Firefox. And for good reasons. It has a well thought out user interface, its fast, does well in supporting web standards and it is secured. But what really makes it a killer APP for me (and ‘am sure for a whole lot of others) is its extensible nature that is achieved via plug-ins. This has transformed Mozilla Firefox from yet another browser for surfing the web into a development tool for me as a developer.

If you do a lot of interface design and development, like I do, you will find, in Mozilla Firefox add-ons, a varied number of plug-ins that will prove useful to you in your everyday work. My all time favorites are listed below:

Color-zilla

Color zilla is cool. This add-on allows you access to both the RGB and hexadecimal color representation on web pages. See a particular hue on a page you like and you wish to use in your design? Just hover its color picker on the color and you have access to the color code representation. Adding the plug-in will append this to the bottom of your browser:

Now before colorzilla, the processes of getting a color I will like to use from another webpage normally involves snapping the screen shots, moving it to fireworks where I can then use firework’s color picker tool!

Find Colorzilla here

Web developer

This is a life saver! Any day anytime. It is a mini suit of different tools that offers a whole lot of functionality. You will find tools that help in getting information about a page structure to tools that help you work with CSS, Forms, Images, cookies and validation; it’s great.

Find web developer tool here

Firebug

This is the king when it comes to JavaScript debugging. No contest!
Find firebug here.

Other useful plug-ins include:GreaseMonkey, Yslow by Yahoo!, CSS validator and FirePHP.

Discover more useful Add-ons at Firefox offical spot for add-ons

It is needless to say that none of these functionality that makes Mozilla Firefox such a useful software for me is found in the bare Firefox install. They are all plug-in powered. And this is the power of an extensible platform. It is a fact that an extensible platform, open up to the community, always makes good for a winning strategy.Google knows this, and I guess that’s the reason why their next step for chrome is to enable people to build plug-in for it, as hinted at in this article.

I Need Facebook Analytics...

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:56:00 +0000

If you’ve a web site, then definitely you should be interested in having certain metrics measured that will tell you how well your website is faring. You would be interested in knowing the navigation patterns your visitor display on your site, where there are coming from, what they do on your site, what software they use, how they leave your site, their click patterns etc. You have a varied number of such indices that helps in measuring the level of success a site is having. You get to know your sites strong points, where it is broken and what to do to fix it. Well, it could be very possible for you to have your website and careless about collecting these data, if you are unserious about the role your website is playing towards achieving its sets goals, then you are right on course, definitely that is the road to take. But if otherwise, web analytics should be an important strategy for you.

So now I have got this Facebook account, and am finding myself wanting to bring this web analytics way of life on board. I want to measure cause and effects. Just as you might be interested in knowing which pages on your site holds your readers attention the most, am also interested in knowing which of my actions on facebook gets noticed the most. So am in need of a facebook analytics...Maybe I am taking this analytics thingy a little bit too far…or maybe not.

I want to know, which will lead to a higher rate of click through in the long run; hyperlink in my status messages or hyperlink in my notes. Ok, I write a note about a service I am pushing; can I quantify the number of people that gets to read the notes? Or maybe I should even stop posting items, since nobody in reality gets to click on them and instead, move my links to my status messages where they apparently enjoy a larger rate of click through.

Or is there a period of the day that enjoys increase congregation on Facebook? Lunch hour? Maybe it’s a better strategy to leave notes on Friday; lot of people gets to play on Facebook over the weekend?

Maybe if I've got a facebook analytics, i would be able to tell...

What if I have a company, and I send a message to a lot of my friends and acquaintances on facebook, since it’s a thread, every recipient Included in the address gets to be notified when someone else replies to the initial mail, I want to know, are people finding this annoying? This idea of getting notified about a mail thread that they weren’t even interested in, in the first place, is it bad branding for my company?

I want to know, how effective is mentioning people in my facebook notes; does it make for an increase in readership? What about this thing of tagging people in pictures they don’t even appear in? How many people even snoop around my profile? If I know, maybe I should spend more time customizing the things I leave on my profile pages instead of wasting my energy in creating a public page for myself. And ha! There are those groups you join!

Well, ever since I started viewing facebook as more than just a time waster, but as a platform for networking and personal branding, the project manager in me, has ever since then, wanted to find ways of quantifying actions on facebook, to measure level of success and to use these data thus collected in coming up with strategies and ways to customize my actions for an increase impact.

But it seems at the moment, since there is no facebook analytics anywhere in sight, I have only my intuition to rely on for guidance.

Its Been a Looooong While

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:49:00 +0000

It's the return of the Wild Style fashionist
Smashin hits make it hard to adapt to this
Put pizazz and jazz in this and cash in this
Mastered this flash this and make em clap to this...[Rakim Guess Who's Back]

Dare To Change The World...

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:35:00 +0000

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in a square hole, the ones who see things differently. They are not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as crazy ones, we see genius, because the people, who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who’ll do it.

Apple computer advertising, 9/27/97

Gmail still BETA?

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:59:00 +0000

Was in school over the weekend and I was surfing the net in elect library. Logged on to my gmail account and then it struck me; gmail is still a BETA service, despite all these years…I looked over to timba and popped the “why” question at him…he gave me the look that says: “does it look as if I have a desk at googleplex?”

As far as am concerned, gmail is far from being a beta service and the beta tag should be stripped away from it. It’s a stable enough application. And if any further work is to be done on it, it should be under the guise of new features being added not refactoring of a BETA service, but once again, I don’t work in Google so wouldn’t know whatz up.

And still talking about BETA services, I recently started the BETA testing of ednutey5 and if things work out like I envisage, I should be deploying to full fledge production in the next, say, 3 to 4 years…

So far eduntey5 has been a pretty, nice and sexy service. I haven’t encountered any major bug and guess what may be required of me is just proper integration so as to ensure compatibility with other services I’m presently running...

So far it has been fun.

Yeah, the web isn't the desktop

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:40:00 +0000

I have an entry in 60minuteswiththegeeks where I argued that trying to morph the web into a desktop might be a step in the wrong direction pointing out that such gestures fail to see the web as a unique platform…

This is not to say that I’m against the concept of Software as a Service (SaaS), definitely not! Saas is the future and it is the way to go.

I argued that wining on the web will involve a good understanding of the unique characteristic of the web and then building services that takes advantage of these characteristics. In that light the obvious ubiquity of the web is itself a chief characteristic of the web and so a model that allows for distributed or remote data processing is positively a strategy that will fit on the web.

My point was that taking advantage of the ubiquitousness of the web shouldn’t be the same thing as copying and pasting the desktop onto the web.

Quoting FORTUNE magazine, the technology section of July 23, 2007:

“The best SaaS offerings, however don’t just use the web but leverage its unique capabilities. They aren’t simple traditional, disk based software fitted with an online interface”

That is exactly the point I’m trying to make. Creating a parody of the desktop on the web is definitely off beam. Like someone aptly put it: “replication is not the same thing as innovation”

Lesson Learnt...

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:32:00 +0000

I got a scare at work recently...

I was working on a form that is suppose to jumpstart a service we will be deploying sometimes this year. And due to time constraint ( exams were fast approaching and my time table was looking like evil) and sheer carelessness on my part, I didn't put in place the necessary security measures and I apparently left the system susceptible...
Then I got a call from my OGA who says that there has been a security breach; that the database has been compromised...sqlinjection attack he said.

OUCH!!!

It was then I understood the value and importance of taking adequate security measures, I mean in like 5minutes I could have safeguarded the application and prevented this supposedly mayhem...right there I added "prevention is better than cure" as part of my guiding tenet when building applications...

So I got down to work, did some poking around to see the extent of the damage. At the end of the day, it wasn't what my OGA thought...but still, the lesson stuck.

When it comes to securing web application Jason Gilmore aptly put it when he said:

"Any Web server can be thought of as a castle under constant attack by a sea of barbarians. And, as the history of both conventional and information warfare shows, often the attackers' victory isn't entirely dependent upon their degree of skill or cunning, but rather on an oversight by the defenders."

You see, the interesting thing is that in most scenarios, the steps even needed to safeguard your applications are far from being complex. They are simple tasks that are so simple we sometimes forget how important they are.

So the lesson I learned from the scare? 'Never ever move from development to deploying again without first putting all the necessary security checks'.

40 Days Already?

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:45:00 +0000

...cause I've been in the lab wit a pen and a pad tryin to get this d*mn label off?--Dr Dre

Can't believe i have been away for 40 days!

Blame me?I have actually been busy with school and pushing 60minuteswiththegeeks alongside. And the online spot for 60minuteswiththegeeks is not doing bad; the blog has enjoyed over 300 page views within its 30 days of existence...not bad if you ask me. And still cooking up strategies to make the blog more popular.

So that is why i have been kinda silent over here, but school will be going on break soon and sure, will have more time on my hands then to share my thoughts here...not planning on forsaking geekabyte!

Pictures From The Last Gig

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:46:00 +0000

We had our first exclusive get together this last Saturday and here are some of the pictures:

Photobucket Album

View All Pictures

Filling You In On Events

From the pictures you know we already had the first exclusive meeting of 60minuteswiththegeeks. It featured Dipo Odumosu who did a presentation on 3D art, using WINGS 3d and Blender. It was an introductory expose where dipo took the audience through the process of modeling a mug.
I also gave a very concise CorelDraw tip and rant a little bit about APTANA an IDE for web application development.
The next rendezvous will be on the 20th of October and it will feature Muyiwa Oyedemi who will talk on developing mobile applications. Visit 60minuteswiththegeeks to get latest updates.

Now What Happened on The 15th September?

We were busted by security personnels who disrupted the program claiming that we lack the appropriate permission to use the venue (BOOB) for the show. On the contrary, we had an official permit given by the Dean of faculty of science, but you know, everybody has a right to express their illogicality, and the security guys did on that day.
I won't go into details but due to the pointless obstinacy we didn't have that edition of 60minuteswiththegeeks

What About The 22nd of September?

Sure we had no disruption this time around which is evident from my previous post.

Tolu who gave a talk on that day has a post on his blog about the event. You can read it here

It has been fun and really its going to get much more exciting. Really looking forward to the next show on the 20nd

Phew!!! Straight from 60minuteswiththegeeks

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 12:51:00 +0000

Straight from the venue, i quickly found an hotspot, hooked up my laptop to the internet and here am i; blogging about 60minuteswiththegeeks, a seminar i blogged about in a previous post...

It was really fun, and sure, you will be getting the full gist over here and also on 60minuteswiththegeeks.com But permit me, i have to run now but when i get back, I'll make the pictures plus the slides available.

I'll also give you the full lowdown of what happened on the 15th September...

Hey tolu man! Your presentation was da bomb!

i'll be back.

60minuteswiththegeeks

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:49:00 +0000

They are all students of O.A.U…
They can all be described as whiz-kids…
And they have one thing in common…
Their love and adeptness with computers…
Put them in front of a PC and they can make the earthquake…
Now imagine what will happen when you have all of them together under the same roof…
... ... ...

And there goes excerpts from the multimedia presentation I had for 60minuteswiththegeeks just yesterday in school…

Now you may ask: “what is this all about, what is 60minuteswiththegeeks?”

Well it is the forum I hinted about that I was working on in one of my previous post and it is about to commence…which explains the outdoor multimedia presentation in school yesterday and the other publicity materials being circulated…

So let me explain what this is all about.

I have always nurtured the idea of having a tech talk; a gathering of computer enthusiasts: web-developers, programmers, graphic artists and everything else in between coming together on a regular basis to interact, form relationships and learn from each other. I have played with this thought for a while, but now, after some series of events I just have to make things happen…

60minuteswiththegeeks is exactly such a gathering; a forum of developers; a gathering of computer enthusiasts which is going to be a fortnight event in o.a.u. Where guys meet in SpringHills (new buka) to have like say 3 hours together.

Folks like timba, ipod, tanimomo, tolu olugboji, Eddy popoola, bellers, soloz and some other great guys will be regular attendees.

But one thing though, due to the nature of the whole gig, it won’t be for the general public. You must first of all be a fellow before you can be in attendance. And one of the reasons is that I want to, as much as possible, create a close knit of techies and one way to achieve that is to limit the people that enlist.

Another factor is the capacity of the auditorium. To have a great time together, we can’t afford to have a crowd.

So attendance will be open only to the members.

To kick start the whole gig, and to get folks enlisted, there will be a kind of public sensitization, where we intimate the students of O.A.U. on what 60minuteswiththegeeks is all about and at the same time sign-up folks whose interest has been piqued.

This public sensitization will be coming up this month. Saturday 15th and Saturday 22nd. The venue is BOOB lecture theater and it’s going to be free of charge.

On the 15th, ipod and I is slated to talk. While 22nd will have tolu olugboji giving a talk titled:Technology in Incubation: You’ve got to Love Creating!

After these events, details and other modalities will then be made available to the members.

There you have it. Now i have to go. Have so many things i need to put in place but I'll make sure i give a blow by blow report as events unfold...

So if you are in O.A.U. i am looking forward to having you on the 15th and 22nd.

Creating Modal Dialog With Javascript

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:31:00 +0000

I got inspired to write this post after reading Tyler Hall's post on modal dialog over at sitening

Nowadays when a web application does not necessary have to be a case of stuffing data through the browser and shipped to the server for processing, where the clients itself becomes a more active participant in the over all application, designing the web UI sometimes calls for methodologies that erstwhile wasn’t heard of in the browser’s domain.

One of such UI design methods is the modal dialog.

Modal dialog are not new. They have been around in the UI design of desktop application for donkey years.

You most likely interacts regularly with modal dialog in your everyday use of your computer.

A modal dialog, in a desktop application is a box or message that forces you to dismiss it by interacting with its options before you can continue using any other part of the program.

Here is a screen shot of a modal dialog:

Modal dialog is one of such design elements that is finding its foray into web applications, and thanks to JavaScript, it is easily implemented in the browser.
It is also simple.

The principle behind it is this: have a DIV that initially won’t be visible; that will contain the options to be presented via the modal dialog. Then have a javascript written that will make it visible when it is required. Once it is visible, any content beneath it will be “unclickable” by the user.

The code that will implement this can be divided into three parts: The HTML, the CSS and the JAVASCRIPT

THE HTML

The button (or whatever you choose to attach the modal dialog activation unto) that will fire the javascript when clicked:

<input type='button' value='show modal dialog' onclick='overlay()' />

Then the overlay DIV which initially will be invisible:

<div id="overlay">

       <div>

             <p>You are at liberty on what to use the  dialog for.</p>

            <form method=" " action=" ">

            <input type='file'/>

            <input type='submit'/>

            </form>

            Click here to [<a href='#'  onclick='overlay()'>close</a>]

       </div>

  </div>

THE CSS

#overlay {

       visibility: hidden;

       position: absolute;

       left: 0px;

       top: 0px;

       width:100%;

       height:100%;

       text-align:center;

       z-index: 1000;

       background-color:#eee;

       opacity: 0.8;

       filter:alpha(opacity=80);

      -moz-opacity: 0.8;

  }

  

  #overlay div {

       width:300px;

       margin: 100px auto;

       background-color: #fff;

       border:1px solid #000;

       padding:15px;

       text-align:center;

}

The first style takes care of the full screen overlay: notice the opacity styles while the second style is applied to the modal dialog.

The margin style:
margin:100px auto;
Ensures the dialog is 100px from the top and it is centralized.

THE JAVASCRIPT

function overlay()
 {
xyz = document.getElementById("overlay");
xyz.style.visibility = (xyz.style.visibility == "visible") ? "hidden" : "visible";
}

Put everything together and you have your modal dialog. As you can see, the whole stuff is incredibly simple.

Here is a screen shot before the activation of the modal dialog:

And this, after the button was clicked:

Facebook's code Leakage...

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 08:36:00 +0000

“None is safe. Repent of thine evil. The gates of heaven will be hacked next, and the blueprint to creation posted on the web.”

Isn’t that cute?

I got that from one of the comments on techchruch’s post on facebook's source code leakage.

From all indications it appears that facebook is not under any serious security threat. And the reason why we have this entire hubbub over the code spill is simply because its facebook (that’s what happens when you are that big).

Apparently the cause of the leakage isn’t due to flaws in FB’s code or it being hacked, like I was initially made to believe, but it was due to lapses on the part of their sysadmin. It was simply human error.

According to Brandee Barker of facebook :

… Some of Facebook’s source code was exposed to a small number of users due to a bug on a single server that was misconfigured and then fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way…

So you might want to say that there is nothing to fear right?

Sure there was no leakage of any sensitive user centric data; nonetheless this little incidence will have put a scare in quite a number of people causing them to ask the question of security; how safe are all these social networks? How safe is it to give out accurate information about oneself on social networks? How vulnerable to identity theft does one become by getting too deep into socializing via social networks?

There have being incidence of people meeting with malicious experiences via contacts with social networks. Statistic even shows that online identity theft is one the increase, according to this article, that is.

So should we eschew social networks in its entirety? I think not! There are a whole lot of benefits that can be derived from them. I guess we just need to be a little more cautious of our interaction on social networks and the amount of information about ourselves we divulge.

As a developer, I guess one should pay more attention to security issues (one aspect that is often overlooked or relegated to an after thought), and making sure applications passes through adequate development-stage testing before implementation on the production server.

Sure this might just be a trivial slip (which I think it is) but it was a costly slip.

But come to think of it, a couple of days back I wasn’t able to sign in into my new [beta] yahoo mail, I kept being served pieces of codes instead…and the same thing too happened just yesterday. I’m I the only one to have experienced this? And why don’t we have people hollering over that like they are doing facebook?

Where have you been?

noreply@blogger.com (dade) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:54:00 +0000

Where have you been?
Hmm...Been here and there. Caught up with activities that made sure I was cut off blogging and the internet in general.

It first started with exams in school. After about 2weeks of trauma; I mean, 2 weeks of jerking for exams, I was left with nights full of nightmares in which the integral sign kept changing into snakes which then engage me in terrifying chase throughout the night…

Then I had to leave school and get to Ibadan after exams since brother mikolo a.k.a Michael Faborode decided to have all students vacate the school premises for the mid-semester break as if we are all boarders in a boarding school. Any way, I had no choice but to leave for Ibadan since I couldn’t get a place to lodge off campus.

Got to Ibadan, Only to have the internet connection at home expired 3 days after my arrival. My aunt who normally foots the bill is not around which left me with no one to subscribe for the next couple of months. Going to cyber cafes isn’t an option. I hate going to those centers!

So I decided to find other means of getting me busy. I got myself caught up in the preparation for a forum I will be starting in school next semester (more on this will be coming soon). Also began work on some jobs I got. I also read Isaac Asimov’s I-robot, Sydney Sheldon’s ‘the other side of mid-night’ amongst many other books; some which I didn’t finish.

I also decided to use the time to catch my trips. One thing my mind have been telling me, recurrently is that my social life is atrophying (as if I had one before), that I should try as much as possible to enjoy the moments while it lasts since I have only one shot at being young.

Well, one way my mind thinks that can be accomplished is for me to spend less time with my laptop, and more time with other Homo sapiens like myself. So I decided to heed the wise prodding of my mind.

So I decided to have a time out at the zoo with one of my girl friends who came to say hi to me from ife

Here are some of the pictures I took…

Genga: The 102 years old tortoise

Haruna's wife

Isn't that Pumbaa?...o no! its just an ordinary warthog

Just Horses.

...and our dear dumb ostrich

The lions where having lunch when we came around so i couldn't get pictures of them in their "glory".

Still talking about socializing, I also used the time to hook up with another old pal of mine from way back in secondary school. Hmm…she was glad to see me again after how many years now? And I observed that time has actually been good to her; she has grown to be an attractive lady (if you know what I mean).

So Now I’m back in school, now I’m blogging again. Although resumption isn’t till 26th of this month, I had to come back to see my professor and also to help ipod out with a project he is working on.

So I guess I can say like S Carter does: “I’m back”