Faceoff Show

Episode 84: AgileTask

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:00:18 +0000

This week we talk about our newest project: AgileTask!

News/Follow-Ups – 00:36

Geek Tools – 09:55

Ogio Mastermind Street Pack
- Ogio Street City Corp Messenger Bag
- Ogio Products

AgileTask – 13:15

Where did the idea come from?
Another todo app?
Things you learned
- Mark
  - Better understanding of REST
  - JSON
  - My first real team experience with other programmers
  - Lots of experience with AJAX style UI
- Jade
  - First project in rails start to finish
  - First independent product production
  - Project management
  - JUST RELEASE IT
  - Your team is critical
  - Best practices were hard to figure out
Things that worked well
- Having a day where were meet and just talk about each issue in the tracker
Tools we used
- Ruby
- Rails
- Git / Github
- Redmine
- Blueprint
- Jquery
- Skype
- OS Ticket

Episode 83: APIs

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:00:12 +0000

Application Programming Interfaces are an important part of applications.

News/Follow-Ups – 00:37

Kittahs

Geek Tools – 01:22

Thermos Nissan 2456P 18-Ounce Stainless-Steel Hydration Bottle via Ryan Heimbuch

Web Apps – 04:48

GitRef - Excellent Git reference (from Eric Wendelin)
JSONduit – Convert any website or feed into a JSON feed (from Rob Lund)

APIs – 09:14

Why API?
- Can be a companies greatest asset (Think twitter, facebook apps)
- Customers invest heavily
- Cost to stop can be great
Downsides
- A poorly designed API can lead to endless support calls
- Public APIs are forever – One chance to get it right
Characteristics of a good API
- Easy to learn
- Easy to use, even without documentation
- Hard to misuse
- Easy to use and maintain code that uses it
- Easy to extend
- appropriate to audience
- Good APIs let you get a lot done with few lines of code
Designing a good API
- Get requirements from actual use cases
- Start with a simple 1 page spec
- Bounce spec off as many people as possible
- If spec is short it will be easier to modify
- If you can use your own API
- It should do one thing and one thing well
- When in doubt leave it out
- Names should be self-explanatory
- Provide programmatic access to all data available in strings
Documentation
- Document religiously
- Should include
  - Syntax
  - Parameters
  - Details about the return values
  - Examples
  - Usage scenario
  - Related APIs

Episode 82: Web Frameworks

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:00:28 +0000

Follow up on web frameworks with pros and cons of using them.

News/Follow-Ups – 00:35

Rockin’ the Rivers

Geek Tools – 01:25

Highgear Adventurer Tool – Perfect tool for all your adventuring needs

Web Apps – 04:16

Quote Robot – Quick and easy way to make quotes for clients. (from Philip Downer)
Endeca Pattern Library – Professional user interface database

Web Frameworks – 16:02

Why use a framework at all?
- Pros
  - Build like an expert
  - Rapid development
  - MVC
- Cons
  - Overhead
  - Security
- Batteries included
  - MVC
  - Security
  - Database access and mapping
  - URL Mapping
  - Templating
  - Caching
  - Ajax
  - Automatic configuration
  - Web Services (API, REST)
PHP Frameworks
- CakePHP
- CodeIgniter
- Prado
- Symphony
- Zend
- Yii
How do you choose a framework
PHP non-framework frameworks
- Flourish
- wephp
Alternatives to a Framework
- CMS - Faceoff Episode 46
  - Drupal
  - Joomla
  - WordPress
Make your own?
- ORMs
  - Propel
  - Doctrine
  - CoughPHP
- Templating
  - Smarty
- Authentication
  - Pear::Auth

Episode 81: Web Security Overview Pt. 2

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:00:03 +0000

XSS, CSRF, user input sanitiation oh my!

News/Follow-Ups – 00:51

Google Wave is no longer

Geek Tools – 05:26

Peel and Stick Whiteboard

Web Apps – 07:10

Sipgate - http://sipgate.com/ – SIP phone service for your team

Web Security Overview – 15:29

Episode 80: Web Security Overview Pt. 1

Typical Attacks
- Client-side manipulation
  - HTTP is stateless so to conduct states tokens are usually sent to the client and echoed back to the server
  - Eg. Price of a product in a hidden form field
  - Bottom line, all validations should be made on the server side
SQL Injection
- Most common attack of 2010 according to Open Web Application Security Project
- Classic, (or 1=1) authentication attack
- Escaping
- Blacklist
- Whitelist
- Prepared statements
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
- Second most common vulnerability
- roughly 80% of all security vulnerabilities documented by Symantec as of 2007
- Client side?
  - Javascript
  - Java
  - Activex
  - Flash
  - VBScript
  - Or even HTML ( think iframe )
- What can you do about it?
  - Sanitize user input
  - Tie cookie session data to an specific IP address
  - Modern browsers, IE6 Firefox 2.0+, Safari 4, and Chrome have a cookie flag called HttpOnly which makes the cookie unavailable to client side scripts.
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- AKA Session Hijacking
- Forces a logged on victim’s browser to send a HTTP request to the server
- Most common way to prevent this
  - Requiring a secret, user-specific token in all form submissions and side-effect URLs prevents CSRF; the attacker’s site can’t put the right token in its submissions.
  - This is done in most modern web-frameworks
Password Security
Tools to test your site for vulnerabilities
- Nikto
- Skipfish (Google)
- Nessus

Episode 80: Web Security Overview Pt. 1

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 09:00:40 +0000

Knowing how to secure your webapps starts at a higher level, not just sanitizing your user inputs!

News/Follow-Ups – 00:35

It’s hot in this rhino

Geek Tools – 01:21

Logitech S220 2.1 Speakers

Web Apps – 04:25

Vendr – quickly add a shopping cart to your website
Zodah – keep track of your bills

Web Security Overview – 12:20

7 Key Security Concepts
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Confidentiality
- Data/Message Integrity
- Accountability
- Availability
- Non-Repudation
Security Breaks at weakest link
- Application
- Operating System
- Network Security
OS Security
- Especially for VPS
- OS almost always contain vulnerabilities
- Update often
- Turn unnecessary services off
- Use firewalls etc.
- Just know that if this isn’t secure you are in trouble

Episode 79: Load Testing

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:00:20 +0000

Learn how to properly load test your site to detect problems early.

News/Follow-Ups – 00:35

Kittens
Work Retreat

Geek Tools – 03:54

Rare Earth Refridgerator Pins – Super strong fridge magnets to hold heavy paper loads

Load Testing – 07:54

What is it?
- Put demand on the system and measure response
- When raised over normal usage patterns this is called stress testing
Why do it?
- Nobody likes a slow site
- Google has officially said it factors in page rank
- Other things you can find
  - Memory leaks
  - Incorrect server config settings
Layer Testing
- Application
  - Set up mocks and run your tests
- Database
  - Mysql Stress Test
Metrics
- Requests per second
- Queries per second
- Latency time in miliseconds
- Throughput in bytes per second
Load testing single pages vs load testing Login pages and user actions
Tools
- ab – Built in Apache Benchmark
- pylot
- Jmeter
- neoload
- Selenium
- curl-loader
- Google average spider response time on webmaster central

Webapps – 29:29

Loadimpact.com – Simple cloud based load testing
Browsermob – Cloud load testing with Selenium support

Episode 78: Web Deployment

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:00:55 +0000

Getting your application up and ready can be a pain, this week we talk about deployment strategies to ease that pain.

News/Follow-Ups – 02:25

LESS going JS via @manifestphil

Geek Tools – 09:26

Webapps – 12:46

GlowDart – Webpage news ticker
8 Bit Collective – Collection of 8-bit songs

Documentation – 17:48

Work live
FTPing
Dreamweaver
Rsync
SCM
One command deploy
- Homebrew
  - BASH script using SSH
- Capistrano
- Vlad the Deployer
- Fabric
- Phing
- Things to put in your deployment script
  - Code testing
  - Database migrations
  - Environment changes
  - DB Backup
  - Remove debug warnings and messages
  - Turn off error reporting

Episode 77: Documentation

Jade Robbins — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:00:53 +0000

Proper documentation of all kinds helps to make sure you don’t frustrate your users and spend less time doing support.

News/Follow-Ups – 00:35

Mark receives his Geek Tool
Internet woes

Geek Tools – 01:50

Webapps – 04:37

Boomerang – Include some javascript in your site and get back performance information.
Postmark – Web service for sending email from your application.

Documentation – 13:13

What to write?
- Tech docs range from high-level overviews, to step-by-step walk throughs, to auto-generated docs
- People learn differently
- Users may be at different skill levels
- Projects should have many different forms of documentation
Types of documentation
- Requirements
  - What the program should or does do
- Architecture and Design
  - Lays out the general design and reason for a specific functionality
- FAQ
- User centric
- Technical
- Automatically generated docs
- README
  - How to install or compile
  - Copyright info
  - Known bugs
  - Most common troubleshooting techniques
  - Changelog
  - Credits
User Documentation
- Tutorial
  - Be quick, a user should be able to accomplish something (even if small) in thirty minutes
  - The first tutorial should be fairly easy, you can always drill down or get into more difficult material later
- Topical Guides
  - Covers a conceptual area, e.g. Models, sessions, controllers. etc.
Technical Documentation
- Technical documentation is usually worthless, at best it is slightly better than browsing the source code
- There is no substitute for hand written and edited documentation, even for reference material or APIs.
- Tools
  - phpDocumenter
  - Rdoc & Yard
  - Doctest

Episode 76: Software for your Business

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:00:38 +0000

A look at the software needed to run a small business.

Geek Tool – 01:21

Webapps – 06:30

IsParade – See a parade of your twitter friends
Create My Chocolate – Make your own personal chocolate bar

Business Software – 12:26

CRM
- What they do?
- Phone messages
- Mass mailings
- Store customer info
- Address
- Phone number
- Customer type, Retail/lead etc.
- Notes
- Emails
- Order information
- Shipping information
- Schedule appointments with customers
- Post calendars for other employees to see
- Paid
  - Salesforce
- Free/Open Source
  - SugarCRM
  - Gist
Accounting
- Quickbooks
- Less Accounting – Ep 61
Support Request Trackers (ep 75)
Asset management
- Keep track of all the assets around the business
- Useful for planning hardware life cycle and aids in financial business decisions
Email Appointment Scheduling / Calendar
- Google Apps
- Outlook / Exchange
Email mass mailing
- Mailchimp
- Campaign Monitor
Snail mail mass mailing
- Ep 71 Mailfinch
Online Meetings
- GoToMyPC
- Logmein express – Ep 54
CMS
- Magento
- Interspire
Google Analytics
Social Media Management
- Cotweet

Episode 75: Support Request Systems

Mark Sanborn — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:00:38 +0000

Support request systems help you help your customers. This week we talk about things to think and about and recognize before implementing one.

Geek Tool – 01:35

Blue Microphone’s Icicle – Allows you to use high quality XLR microphones on your USB port.

Webapps – 03:52

LaunchList – http://launchlist.net/ – checklist for your website launch
Ninite – http://ninite.com/ – easy setup for a new Windows computer

Support Request Systems – 10:24

Why?
- Do monthly audits to find common problems that can be fixed to eliminate new requests
- Find common questions and build a knowledge base
- Quicker response with pre-made greeting and signature and even snippits of answers from common questions
- Keeps a history of support questions for each user
Issue trackers vs Support request trackers
- This is often debated
- It is our thought that if this is a production app/product a support technician should triage the help desk tickets and submit bugs to the issue tracker only if they are actual bugs
- Many issue tracker systems are bad support request trackers and vice versa
- Customers are typically bad at submitting detailed bug reports or feature requests
- Customers can inadvertently give out private information when submitting a bug report
- Many issue tracker systems require a user to be created, this can be problematic for both the user trying to get support and also email integration
How do you get people to fill them out?
Provide them outward facing links so they can view the progress and developer/support comments on their ticket.
Provide email alerts so they feel like they are part of the process and have instant information about their issue.
Make it as frictionless as possible.
- Make the form as easy as possible to fill out.
- Don’t make them login if you can
- Don’t make them sign up to anything
- Allow them to just email it in
Make sure every issue goes through a support request ticket system
- Don’t slip up and allow requests to go to another address
- If you are doing phone support and the customer asks a question you can’t answer right away have them send in a support request
When things go wrong
- Support trackers email each other
- Customer CCs support tracker with colleagues
Tools
- Request Tracker
- OSTicket
Wikipedia list of support trackers

Episode 74: Working as a Team

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:00:49 +0000

Our thoughts and experiences while working as a team.

Geek Tool – 00:00

OXO Good Grips POP Container
- 1 1/2 Quart
- 10 Piece Set

Webapps – 00:00

Zwibbler – HTML/Javascript drawing application
WhatFontIs – Helps you figure out what font is in an image

Working as a Team – 00:00

Getting the right tools in place
Get everyone up to speed on the tool (git, issue tracker)
Use an issue tracker or some sort of tool that lets people know what is going on even when they are not in active development
Pair program every once and awhile – Shoot for at least once a week
Have a way to assign a task so developers aren’t working on the same issue
Once a week go through each issue and update the status and talk about any outstanding issues
Designate someone with veto power – Fine line
Limits wasted work on features that aren’t agreed upon by entire group
Prevents arguments before they start
Think about technology dont use tools that only one person of the group likes/uses
Make small tasks/issues to do
What doesn’t work
Tools

Episode 73: Accepting Money Online

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:00:40 +0000

Learn how to accept money online

News and Follow-ups – 00:33

Faceoff RSS feed goof up

Geek Tool – 01:42

Microfiber Bags – Perfect for carrying and wiping

Webapps – 04:33

ChatRide – Webcam chat with a friend via the web

Randomize List – Quickly randomize a list of anything

Accepting Money Online – 07:43

Google Checkout
- Free to get started
- If you use adwords you get a button in search results
- One page checkout
- Awesome fraud protection
- ~2.9% + .30 cents per transaction
- Really easy to hook into Google Analytics
Paypal
- ~2.9% + .30 cents per transaction
Amazon Flexible Payments System
Payment Gateways and merchant accounts
- Customer check out on your site, no redirects
- Intermediary that is responsible for verifying the card and charging it
- Authorize.net
- Merchant account
- Paypal Payments Pro
Programming tools
- PHP – Google checkout
- Ruby – Activemerchant

Episode 72: Podcasting 411

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:00:53 +0000

An inside look at faceoff production with general podcasting tips.

News and Follow-ups – 00:35

https://www.invoice.ly/

Geek Tool – 02:33

Platy Soft Bottle

Webapps – 03:40

FontSquirrel @font-face generator – contvert fonts to make them work with @font-face

Podcasting – 09:10

Early stages
Finding content
Audio tests
Equipment
- Microphones – Jade uses an Alesis AM1 and Mark uses and Audio Technica 2020
- Mixer – The show is mixed on an Alesus MultiMix USB8
Software
- Google docs
- Skype
- Audacity
- WordPress
- Podcasting plugin
Saving the files
Post production
General tips
- Feedback loop
- Learn to just roll with the goof ups
- There is no perfect podcast
- No messups makes for easy post
- Leave some sort of marker for audio cuts to make post easier
- Open tabs up ahead of time
- Keep mic cords away from power cords/adatpers

Episode 71: Trending Technologies

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:00:34 +0000

Interesting trending technologies in techniques, tools, programming languages, and platforms.

News and Follow-ups – 00:35

Jade moves to a new apartment and has no internet
Droid has tethering

Geek Tool – 09:54

Zebra F-301 Fine Point

Webapps – 12:14

MailFinch – Send bulk snail mail from your computer - https://www.mailfinch.com/
gotAPI – Single api search for tons of documentation - http://www.gotapi.com/

Topic – 19:00

Trending Technologies
- Techniques
  - Continuous integration
  - Evolutionary DB
  - Polyglot Programming
  - Unit testing
- Tools
  - Visualization for business data
  - Distributed version control
  - NoSQL
  - MongoDb
  - Github
- Languages
  - Ruby
  - Functional languages
  - Javascript as a first class language
  - C#
- Platforms
  - IE 6 End of life
  - iPhone
  - Android
  - Cloud
- Thoughtworks Technology Radar April 2010

Episode 70: Know Your Joins

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 25 May 2010 09:00:02 +0000

How well do you know your database joins? This episode we talk about the different kinds to help make you a join master.

News and Follow-ups – 00:48

Mark’s tinfoil hack failed

Geek Tool – 03:28

Apple Magic Mouse

Webapps – 09:48

Penzu – Online private journal
Support Details – Online provider of simple support data

Topic – 18:25

What?

Combines records from two or more tables in a database

Why?

A general rule of thumb is that database joins are faster than doing separate select statements in code.

Types

Ansi Standard lists 4 types:
Inner
- Join tables based on a common column Eg. PK/FK
- Most common type of join
Outer
- Combine all rows of one table with only matching rows on the other table
Left
- Return all rows on the left table even if not in the right
Right
- Return all rows in the right table even if not in the left
Cross join
- Takes two tables and combines every row in table b with every row in table a.
- 1000 row table would produce 1 million rows
- Why make one then?
  - Suppose you want a grid of articles of clothing
  - select size, color from sizes cross join colors
MySQL University
A visual explanation of sql joins

Episode 69: CSS3

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 18 May 2010 09:00:07 +0000

Get the skinny on CSS3.

News and Follow-ups – 00:37

Summer is here, go get an Arnold Palmer
Major site redesigns

Geek Tool – 07:19

Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch

Webapps – 13:05

GTmetrix – Yslow and Google Page Speed in a webapp
Sorteie.me – Pick a winner for you contests using twitter

Topic – 21:51

Borders
- border-color
- border-image
- border-radius
- box-shadow
Backgrounds
- background-origin and background-clip
- background-size
- multiple backgrounds
Color
- HSL colors
- HSLA colors
- RGBA colors
Text effects
- text-shadow
- text-overflow
- word-wrap
User-interface
- box-sizing
- resize
- outline
Other modules
- media queries
- multi-column layout
- Web fonts
Selectors
What browsers support CSS3?
- Browser support table
- ie-css3.js

Episode 68: Intro to Caching

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 11 May 2010 09:00:15 +0000

Cache your pages to reduce latency and conserve bandwidth.

News and Follow-ups – 00:40

Mark sold his soul to Steve Jobs and got a Mac

Geek Tool – 07:41

KR Tools Autoloader Screwdriver – $24.63

Webapps – 09:58

PicGhost – Mass image editing via the web
iPadPeek – See what your sites will look like on an iPad

Topic – 14:42

Caching
- What is caching?
- Why?
  - Reduce latency
  - Reduce network traffic
- Headers
  - Last-Modified
  - Expires
  - Cache-Control
    - no-cache
    - no-store
    - no-transform.
    - must-revalidate
    - proxy-revalidate>
    - max-age<
    - cache-extension
    - public
  - Etags
    - Implemented differently across different servers
    - User requests a page and returns the etag, if the etag is the same server sends 304 Not Modified, if different sends 200
    - http://joshua.schachter.org/2006/11/apache-etags.html
- Don’t change files unnecessarily. For example, don’t re-upload your entire site when you only change a few files as you will have a falsely young last-modified tag.
- Strategies
  - Set far future expire headers
- Data caching
  - memcached – A big giant key/value memory store
- Caching while developing
  - A word of wisdom
- Tools
  - Great tool that checks all your headers – http://redbot.org/
  - yslow

Episode 67: HTML5 is Alive

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:13:52 +0000

HTML5 is the new cool specification on the block. Wondering what all the buzz is about? Tune in and find out.

News and Follow-ups – 00:42

Flash/HTML5 Adobe vs Apple

Geek Tool – 02:45

USB Rechargable LED Flashlight

Webapps – 04:17

Checkin Mania – See on a map where everyone is checking in
FakePosters – create fake motivational posters

Topic – 08:26

HTML5
What is it?
- The next iteration of the HTML markup language, started in 2004
- Spec - http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
- The doctype is super simple
- Markup
  - Forms
    - Dates and times
    - Email
    - URL
    - Search
    - PUT and DELETE methods
    - Placeholder text
- Links and area have a new attribute called ping
- Tabindex for every element
- Geolocation
- Markup removed
  - center
  - font
  - big
  - frame
  - frameset
  - noframes
- Apart from the markup there are new scripting APIs
  - Canvas element – 2D drawing (Demo)
  - Timed media playback
  - Offline storage database
  - Drag and drop
Sites using HTML5 now
- Youtube
- National Geographic
- Many sites targeting the ipad
Browsers supporting HTML5
- Not all features are supported
- Safari 3.1
- Chrome (webkit)
- Firefox 3.6
- IE 9 (is set to support it)
- Opera
- How can I tell if my browser supports it?
  - HTML5Test.com
Javascript used to detect html features available – Modernizr
Where do I go from here?

Episode 66: Moving Your Code

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 09:00:46 +0000

Learn to transfer files securely and effectively.

News and Follow-ups – 00:38

Mark steps on USB cable and just about ruins Faceoff
Titanpad – Etherpad resurrected

Geek Tool – 04:27

Hand Powered 3-LED Flashlight – Squeeze it to recharge so you can always have light
Coast Cutlery LL7575 Auto LED Light – Light that recharges in your car port

Webapps – 07:58

PDFcrowd – Create PDFs from HTML (URLs, Inputted html)
ManPacks – Subscribe to your manly essentials

Topic – 17:27

File Transfer
- FTP
  - The RFC was in 1971
  - No encryption, everything is in the clear and is vulnerable to sniffing
- FTPS
  - FTP over SSL
- SFTP
  - SSH extension for FTP. (not just a tunnel over ssh).
- SCP
  - RCP over SSH
- Rsync
  - Super efficient, often used for doing amazon S3 transfers when you are paying for bandwidth by the byte.
  - Only transfers the bytes that are missing
  - Duplicity - Supports rsync like efficiency on encrypted files
- WebDAV
- Clients
  - Filezilla
    - Supports FTP, FTPS, SFTP
  - WinSCP
    - Supports FTP, SCP, SFTP
- Workflow
  - Capistrano
    - Ruby
    - Can use any of the protocols above
  - Fabric
    - Python
    - Can use any of the protocols above
  - Version control
    - Git, HG, Subversion etc.

Episode 65: REST

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:00:45 +0000

What is with this REST stuff you keep hearing about?! We’ll give you the skinny.

News and Follow-ups – 00:33

Access to all the Google APIs

Geek Tool – 01:50

Caspresso H20 Plus Glass Water Kettle – Super fast boiling water

Webapps – 06:17

Google Local Business Center - Tell Google about your business and get insights into how people are searching for you.
Photo Friday Monitor Calibrator – Free and pretty effective way to calibrate your monitor.

Topic – 14:43

REST
What is REST?
- A Software Architecture created by Roy Fielding in 2000 Who happens to be one of the principal authors of HTTP 1.0 and HTTP 1.1
- What does it stand for?
  - Representational State Transfer
Sites using REST
- Twitter
- Amazon
- Ebay
- Facebook
- Yahoo, Flickr
- Youtube
SOAP/RPC Vs REST
- REST is an architectural guideline, SOAP is a protocol
- Biggest downside is that SOAP disregards many of HTTP’s existing capabilities such as authentication, caching, content type negotiation, etc.
- Everything in SOAP is handled in a HTTP POST.
REST Verbs
- GET – Give me information in specified format
  - Usually XML, JSON, or YAML; but can be any valid MIME type.
- PUT – Replace your information with mine
- POST – Add new information
- DELETE – Eliminate information
Statelessness
- Shouldn’t matter if the second request goes to a different server than the first
- Authentication is provided with each request
- The same url should return the same data regardless of cookies or session data
- Ability to replace one server with another
- Load balancing
Frameworks that support REST
- Django
- Ruby on Rails, Sinatra
- Zend Framework, CakePHP, CodeIgniter

Episode 64: Thinking Mobile

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:00:01 +0000

Should you focus on the mobile web? We give you some tips to help your mobile readers.

Geek Tool – 00:41

Webapps – 04:06

Can’t You See I’m Working - Flash games that look like work
Man Tested Recipes - Database of recipes tested by men

Topic – 08:55

Making your site Mobile Friendly
- W3 recommended best practices
- Limitations
  - Small screen size
  - No pointer
  - Lack of javascript and cookies
  - Flash and PDFs may not work
  - Bandwidth is limited
- .mobi, m.domain, domainmobile.com, or domain.com/mobile
- Tips
  - Give users a chance to switch to the normal site
  - Simplify the design
  - Optimize font sizes and line-heights for readability
  - Instantly mobilize your WordPress sites
- Find out what devices support which technologies
  - Deviceadlas
  - Database of useragents
- Testing sites in devices
  - Check your site for mobile friendlyness
  - Opera Mini

Episode 63: A Look at WordPress 3

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:00:25 +0000

Looking at some of the big features in WordPress 3.0

News and Follow-ups – 00:38

ClickHeat – Free and OpenSource heat map analytics
Dreamhost asks you what level you are when doing support
Netflix iPad app
SocialThing becomes AOL Lifestream

Geek Tool – 12:16

Oxo GoodGrips LiquiSeal Travel Mug – No spill coffee/beverage mug

Webapps – 15:20

Project Euler - Simple mathematical programming challenges.
PlanCruncher - One page summary of your business plan

Topic – 23:04

Merge with WordPress-MU
Custom Post Types
Built-In Navigation
Theme can support backgrounds
Moving towards more of a CMS and less of a blog

Episode 62: Technical Support

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 23:55:33 +0000

Support can be a pain in the neck, this week we give you some tips to ease the process.

News and Follow-ups – 02:18

Mail Bag – Brian Barthold – Learning Mercurial

Geek Tool – 05:30

Omron Pedometer – Measure how much you walk (or bounce).

Webapps – 09:10

Variably SFW - Is a URL safe for work? This app let’s you preview it so you can see if it’s suitable.
Online Driver’s License Search - Find any Driver’s license in the US.

Topic – 13:45

Online (Email/Webapp/IM)
- Check your Reply Time
  - Emailing too quickly can make it an IM
  - Waiting too long to email can create upset users
- Consider using a support tracker
- Keep a list of questions so you can scan through them and find commonly asked questions.
- Add common questions to the documentation
- Have documentation explaining how to ask a question/provide enough details to get an answer
- Give users a way to comment or leave feedback about the documentation they are currently viewing
- Try to think of ways of eliminating the problem from ever happening again as opposed to fixing the current problem at hand
Phone
- Single support or freelance consider using Google voice
- Screen sharing can be a godsend (LogMeIn Express)
- The keyboard wont work
  - “Instead,” Chen suggests, “say ‘Okay, sometimes the connection gets a little dusty and the connection gets weak. Could you unplug the connector, blow into it to get the dust out, then plug it back in?’
Tools
- Osticket – http://osticket.com

Episode 61: Steve Bristol From Less Everything

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:00:34 +0000

Faceoff interviews Steve Bristol from Less Everything.

Topic

Steve Bristol from Less Everything
- Intro
- History behind Less Everything
- How did you get started in development?
- Products vs Consulting
- The Less Everything Culture
- Advice for Webapp developers
- Rails 3
- Agile Methodology
- Less Conf
- Less Cruise

Episode 60: MountainWest RubyConf

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:00:15 +0000

Jade shares his experience at the MountainWest RubyConf.

Geek Tool – 01:11

Diversion Safes
- Engine Degreaser
- Hidden Wall Safe

Webapps – 05:42

RosettaCode – Same solutions done in every programming language
Neat Chat – Create a quick web based chat room quickly -

Topic – 11:40

Jade went to MountainWest RubyConf
- About RubyConf
- The Speakers
  - Giles Bowkett – Archaeopteryx: Lambdas In Detail
  - James Golick – Cooking with Chef – Your servers will thank you
  - Wayne E. Seguin – Managing ruby projects with rvm
  - Michael J. I. Jackson – Rack for web developers
  - Yehuda Katz – Writing Modular Ruby Code: Lessons Learned from Rails 3
  - Gregory Brown – I was wrong about Ruport
  - Loren Segal – Documentation and the Whole Nine YARDs
  - Yukihiro Matsumoto – Ruby 124C41+
  - Sarah Allen – Mobile Ruby
  - Kyle Banker – MongoDB Rules
  - Pat Maddox – A tale of two codebases
  - Lightening Talks

Episode 59: Revision Control in the Workplace

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:00:28 +0000

Tips for getting revision control adopted into the workplace.

News and Follow-ups – 01:19

Geek Tool – 07:37

Westinghouse LED Bulb

Webapps – 11:59

Post Parrot – Print out POST requests
- We forgot what POST/PUT was so if you want to know check out the HTTP Methods.
- Firefox HTTP Live Headers
Fav4 – Simple start page with 4 sites and NO LOGIN

Topic – 20:16

Mail Bag – Brian Barthold
Signs no version control system is in place
- index.html.bak, index.html.old02012007
- multiple copies of entire directories with dates appended to the folder name
- hesitation to making code changes
- Lost work when a coworker overwrites your changes
- Rules like, only one person can change the “site” submit all your changes to me.
Things you can do
- Learn git/hg yourself and use it on as many projects as you can
- Pick one employee to show the benefits of it and teach them how to use it
- Use a GUI version of hg/git
  - TortoiseHG
Get them excited
- Linus Torvalds google talk on Git
- Digg.com uses Git
- Facebook uses Git
- Mailchimp uses Hg
- Stackoverflow discussion on reasons NOT to use a version control system, “There are no good reasons not to use version control. Not one.“
Tutorials / Getting started
- Hg
- Git
  - Git on windows
  - Git Cheat Sheet by Zack Rusin
- SVN in Dreamweaver

Episode 58: Web Development Specifications

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:00:20 +0000

Proper specifications are an essential tool to project management, as well as giving accurate estimates.

Geek Tool – 00:34

The Original Ring Thing

Webapps – 02:41

Browsersize – Find out what people with smaller screen casn see
Aardvark – Ask it a question and it finds an expert

Topic – 10:02

Creating Specs
What?
- Document that describes the technical requirements including procedures of which describe when the requirements have been met.
- From the user’s perspective
- Screens, dialogs, and menus
Why?
- Failing to write a spec is the single biggest unnecessary risk you take in a software project — Joel Spolsky from Stack Overflow
- They provide a precise view of the problem, they force you to think about your program and actually design it
- Gets everyone on the same page before diving in and wasting time coding the wrong thing
- To get an accurate picture of how long (how much money) a project will take
- Help avoid duplications and inconsistencies
Common questions you can ask the client
- Total number of pages
- What kind of navigation bars or menus
- More than one page design?
- Number of custom graphics needed
- Number of graphics provided by the client
- How design-intensive a site do they want?
- What type of text content, provided in what form?
- Interactive forms? How many fields?
- Database-driven applications? (Detailed description of all functionality is needed)
- Administration areas?
- Domain registrations or changes?
- Hosting arrangements?
- How important is search engine positioning?
- Will any client training be necessary?
Every Spec should have
- Joel Spolsky’s Article on writing functional specifications
- A Disclaimer stating that it is a work in progress
- An author, only one
- Scenarios, fictionally stories of how a user will interact with the software
- Non-goals
- An overview
- Details, provide a sub section for each screen or feature
- Open issues i.e. We need to consult the marketing team and see how they want to word this email that gets sent out on user registration.
- Side notes
Tips
- Make them fun to read
- Write as simply as possible
- Review and re-read your spec several times
- Charge your client for a spec – Manifest Phil

Episode 57: Refactoring Code

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:00:24 +0000

Refactoring your code is essential in large topics. We talk about what refactoring is and things to look for when refactoring

News/Follow-ups – 00:36

Bitbucket upgrades space
HotGloo leaves beta, releases plans
Balsamiq is also great for wire framing – from Craig

Geek Tool – 06:40

Pocket Ref – Your pocket reference for everything
O’Reilly Pocket Reference Series

Webapps – 09:09

DummyImage – Dummy images to fill spaces
Visual representation of popular sorting algorithms

Topic – 15:56

Refactoring Code
- What?
  - Change source code without changing the external functions/behavior
- Why?
  - Improved readability
  - Reduced complexity
  - Improved maintainability
  - Improve extensibility
- Things you can do
  - Break large routines into smaller sub routines
  - Look for duplicated code and reduce it to used a shared function
  - Code smells (episode 21)
  - Find old commented out code and remove it, use SCM for storing old code you might want
  - Find methods with 7+ parameters – Usually means that a new class should be created
  - Replace variables with names like x and foo – Sometimes as developers we are too busy in our train of thought to think of descriptive variable names and make something up just for the time being. Find these and change them to more descriptive ones.
  - Look for comments that tell the what and not the why
  - A severe code stench emanates when the scroll bar appears – Reduce complex nested ifs and loops
  - Look for methods for gtgtwhich you cannot understand/explain in less than 25 seconds
- A group of unit tests are needed before refactoring
- Getting Started with Refactoring

Episode 56: Wireframing

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:00:26 +0000

Help clear your vision by using Wireframing.

Geek Tool

01:16 – Thera-Band Exercise Balls – SDS Anti-Burst Exercise Balls
- Isokinetics Blaster Air Pump

Webapps

04:58 - JumpChart - Collaborative site map and content preparation
05:26 - Hot Gloo – The Online Wireframe Application

Topic

07:37 – Wireframing
- What is it?
  - A basic visual representation in interface design focusing on physical information layout
- Why?
  - Allow for design variations while maintaining consistency
  - Develop global and secondary navigation areas
  - Ability to “try out” lots of layout choices without spending a tremendous amount of time developing the artwork for each one.
  - Provide areas for consistent utilities like search, notices
  - Frequently aid in exposing new features
  - Help flush out questions that nobody has thought about yet
  - Keeps a paper trail of design decisions
  - Getting clients to think about their site on a page level will help avoid changes later on.
  - If you skip this step clients will often focus on design rather than functionality and usability
  - Can be used again for creating your next design for that same site while keeping the physical layout consistent for your users
- How?
- Wire framing is most commonly done with paper
- Start with a sitemap, then create wire frames for each of the major pages
- Software
  - Visio
  - InDesign
  - Photoshop
  - OmniGraffle
  - Protoshare – Used by: Sony, BMG, SAP, 3M, Salesforce

Episode 55: Object-Relational Mapping

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:19:29 +0000

Tired of the same old database grind? Why not try an Object Relational Mapper.

News/Follow-ups

00:38 – Jade likes his tablet again, thanks to Windows 7

Geek Tool

04:25 – The perfect Valentines geek tool, Heart Warmer

Webapps

07:11 – Ketchup – Super simple meeting agenda creator
08:15 - MinuteBase – Collaborate on meeting notes

Topic

16:19 – Object-relational mapping
- What is it?
- Typical non-ORM work flow
Pros
- Less code, just manipulating the objects
- OOP you are working with objects already
- Data language is in your language, don’t need to learn new syntax
- Inheritance
- Distributed database security
- Benefit of the knowledge of everyone writing the ORM
- Database integration abstraction
- Switch database back-ends with little hassle (depending on ORM)
Cons
- Object-Relational Mapping is the Vietnam of Computer Science
- Poorly designed databases
- Because you are working strictly with the database, databases usually aren’t optimized
- Overhead
- ORMs have a lot overhead that can affect performance
Examples
- Ruby
  - ActiveRecord
  - Datamapper
- Python
  - Django
  - SQLAlchemy
- PHP
  - CakePHP
  - Doctrine

Episode 54: Code Review

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:00:08 +0000

Code review will decrease your bugs, but is it worth the cost?

Geek Tool

00:46 - Logitech Internet Chat Headset

Webapps

02:17 - LogMeIn Express – Free NAT traversing remote support tool
05:57 – FriendPaste - Past things to friends and comment on specific lines
- Submitted by Cedric Weatherly

Topic

09:06 – Code Review
Why?
- Memory Leaks
- Security vulnerabilities
- Usability (DSL)
Programmers tend to not like code review
- Give your own code out for review to encourage others to do the same
- Tempt the programmers ego by saying, “I dare you to find a fault in this code”
- Try to convince them that code review is not personal.
13:43 – Two main types
- Formal Code Review
  - Formal Inspections catch 60% of bugs – Hewlett Packard
  - Inspections improve programmer productivity by 20% and typically decrease overall project cost – Wiegers 2002
- Lightweight Code Review
  - Over the shoulder or “Walk-Throughs” – One developer explains his code to one of his peers, 20-40%
  - Email pass around – Automatic email when code is checked in
  - Pair Programming – Two developers working together on one computer, 40-60%
  - Tool-assisted Code review
    - Episode 21: Clean Code
18:26 – Pair Programming (Episode 5)
- Keys to success
  - Support pair programming with coding standards
  - Don’t let it turn in to watching
  - Don’t force pair programming of the easy stuff
  - Rotate pairs and work assignments regularly
  - Encourage pairs to match each other’s pace
  - Don’t force people who don’t get along to pair program
  - Avoid pairing people together that are new a pair programming

Episode 53: Evidence Based Web Development

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:00:24 +0000

Knowing what works on your website is critical. Here are some tools to help you find evidence of what works best.

Geek Tool

02:15 – Gorillapod - Flexible camera tripod

Webapps

04:47 – Posterous – Create a place for your “stuff” with only an email.
- Tip from Ryan Heimbuch
08:33 - FollowBase – Listing of companies that provide support via twitter

Topic

11:26 – Evidence Based Web Development
- Split (A/B) Testing
- Tools
  - Google Website Optimizer
  - PHP Script
  - Django plugin for split testing
- Tests to get you started
  - Headline
  - Sub-headline
  - Opening paragraph
  - Call to action
  - Submit buttons
  - Colors
  - Check similar sites in your industry and try similar elements
- Knowing when you are finished
  - If the result of page A was 20 conversions, and the result of page B was 30 conversions, then the difference between the two is 10.
  - The sum of the two results is 50
  - The square root of that sum is 7 (rounded down)
  - The difference (10) is greater than the square root of the sum (7), so the result is statistically significant.
- Companies that primarily use split testing
  - Amazon.com
  - Google
  - Intuit
  - Microsoft
  - Ebay
  - Yahoo
- Analysis of Amazons add to cart button over the years
- Top Google designer shows criticism of the amount of engineering Google puts into its designs

Episode 52: Web Tips for Small Businesses

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:00:22 +0000

As a small business it’s important not to shoot yourself in the foot when it comes to the web.

Geek Tool

01:54 - E-Myth – Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It

Webapps

04:06 - ShowMeWhatsWrong.com – Quick way to have family and friends show you what is wrong so you can help them fix it
08:43 - http://cacoo.com/ – Collaborative web-based diagram software
- Mindmeister – Online collaborative brain mapping
- OmniGraffle – Mac based diagram software

Topic

11:53 – Creating a web presence for small businesses
Do’s
- Do your homework
- Look at your peers
- User studies
  - Anyone can do Usability
- Hallway Testing
- Spend some money
  - Hire a freelancer - http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/
- Stick with useful content
  - Get rid of useless widgets
  - Stick with content that provides real value
What does your audience want?
- Just your hours?
- Content about your field (blog)
- If you don’t need it, don’t do it
Use your domain name in your email address
Don’ts
- Do not do your own web development
- Overuse Flash and other “flashy” technologies
- Don’t use email addresses like: bussiness@gmail.com
- Social Media
  - Facebook Fan page
  - Twitter
  - Youtube
  - Setup search queries through Twitter

Episode 51: CES Recap

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:00:18 +0000

Faceoff goes to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas!

Topic

00:41 – First Conference
- Badges
- Transportation
- People
- Different Rooms
- Keynotes
- Parties
07:43 – Trends
- 3D
- Thin Televisions
- Netbooks
- Small/All-In-Ones
17:36 – Booths
- Microsoft
  - Surface
  - 360
- Intel
  - Cube Display
  - Netbooks Galore
- MSI / ASUS
  - All-in-one form factor
- Motorola
  - Droid
  - Blur
- LG
- Powermat
- Nvidia / Boxee
- Eyefi
- Other Interesting Products
  - Underwater TV
  - Airdrone
  - USB flip power
  - Putty cleaner
  - Otter box
  - Tellysense
  - i2stream

Pictures of CES

Check out our pictures of CES.

Episode 50: A Year in Reflection

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:00:25 +0000

Faceoff is excited to celebrate our 50th episode! Thank you to all who listened and all who helped!

News/Follow-Ups

00:37 – CES and Faceoff’s 50th Episode

Geek Tool

02:09 – Code Complete – Complete guide to programming any language.

Webapps

04:03 – Our Favorite Webapps
- Mint
- Ping.fm
- Dropbox
- Latitude
- Twitter
- Github
- Bitbucket
- Google Docs

Topic

16:13 – Year in Review
- Red Bull Cola
- Super Mario Galaxy & Modern Warefare 2
- Ruby and Rails
- Git
- REST
- MVC
- TDD and Unit tests
- Distributed SCM
- Python, Perl, Ruby and OO PHP
31:28 – Resolutions
- Focus on existing projects
- Faceoff promotion

Special Thanks to:

Eric Wendelin
Rob Lund
David Walsh
Pol Lovett
HM2k
Tyhge Vallard
Dave De Vos from Antwerp Belgium
Vasily

Call to action!

Please call in or comment below your suggestions of things we need to cover at CES.

Episode 49: Best Practices Part 2

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:00:52 +0000

Getting a hunch, eating late, and more software development best practices.

News/Follow-Ups

00:37 – CES and Faceoff’s 50th Episode

Geek Tool

01:04 - P3 International Killawatt

Webapps

03:32 - Hunch – Answer questions and this app will give you it’s best “hunches” at an answer.
06:02 – Nocturnl – Find places to eat late at night!

Topic

Software Development Best Practices
- 09:55 - Unit testing
- 14:46 – Integration testing
- 16:34 – One step build process
- 19:08 – Bug tracking/database
- 21:54 – Fixing bugs before writing new code
- 22:36 – Development Schedule
- 24:49 – Program specification
- 27:08 – Hallway testing
  - Jakob Nielsen Study

Episode 48: Best Practices

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:00:13 +0000

Faceoff’s 50th episode is coming up fast, are you ready? We also talk fast coffee and best practices for web developers.

News/Follow-Ups

00:25 – CES and Faceoff’s 50th Episode
04:02 – Evernote released an Android App
07:39 – Etherpad bought by Google, opens it’s source code

Geek Tool

10:40 – Keurig B30 Mini Brewer
- Keurig K-Cup Reusable Coffee Filter

Webapps

14:22 – TweetCall – Call in your Tweets
- Donate your Voicemails to Google Voice
15:58 – Instant Jury – Let strangers settle your disputes

Topic

19:04 – Development Workflow and Best Practices (requested by mhendersonco)
- Version control
  - Subversion
  - Git
  - Mercurial
- Documentation
- Commenting code

Episode 47: CMS Showdown Part 2

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:00:13 +0000

Part two of our CMS showdown. After hashing through the popular CMSs, we now dive into the lesser-known (but equally useful) products.

Webapps

00:54 - Themeleon – Theme your twitter profile.
03:06 – Movieclips.com – Search for your favorite movie clips.

Topics

05:48 – The Alternative CMSs
- CushyCMS – Super simple CMS
- Concrete5 – Like cushy but local, in place editing
- typolight – Follows the wordpress model of pages and sub-pages
- Modx – Framework and CMS focused on Ajax
- ExpressionEngine – Nice CMS with option of paid support
- Magento - CMS Especially built for ecommerce sites
- Siteleaf – Someone please send us an invite!

Episode 46: CMS Showdown Part 1

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Managing content can be a daunting task, but luckily there are great content management systems out there to help you do it.

Webapps

01:04 – Freemypdf.com – Remove PDF printing and other restrictions
03:33 – List of Mnemonics

Topics

05:56 – CMSs
- The Big Three
  - WordPress
    - By far the most used CMS
      - 202 Million websites worldwide
      - Extremely large plugin database
    - Big Names
      - TechCrunch
      - Yahoo’s Corporate blog
      - Ebay’s Blog
      - Mozilla
      - CNN
      - Faceoff Show
  - Drupal
    - MVC based
    - Big Names
      - Whitehouse.gov
      - economist.com
      - Ubuntu.com
  - Joomla
    - MVC based
    - Big names
      - laweekly.com

Episode 45: Christmas List for Geeks

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:00:36 +0000

Looking for gifts for your fellow geek friends or ideas to implant in your spouse/parents heads, look no further.

News and Follow-Ups

01:22 – Another Time Tracker – http://colorhat.com/home

Webapps

05:17 – Load2all – Upload to a bunch of file sharing websites

Topics

07:46 – Christmas Geek Gifts

What do YOU want for Christmas? Leave us a comment or voice mail at: 31-WEB-2-TECH (319-322-8324)

Episode 44: Grid CSS Frameworks

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:00:58 +0000

A comparison of the three major grid based CSS frameworks.

News and Follow-Ups

01:14 – Thanks to all of our great listeners
- Tyhge Vallard
- Dave De Vos from Antwerp Belgium

Webapps

02:54 – Yast – Track your time.
05:23 – LocaFollow – Find Tweeters in your area.

Topics

CSS Frameworks
- 13:03 – Blueprint
- 19:33 – 960 Grid System
- 23:58 – YUI CSS

Episode 43: Optimize Those Images!

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:00:02 +0000

Vimperator, Memes, and a great guide to image optimization.

News and Follow-Ups

00:35 – Vimperator – make Firefox act like VIM

Webapps

08:08 – Know Your Meme – Discover information about internet Memes.
11:03 – Readability Bookmarklet – Make those annoying sites easier to read.

Topics

15:41- Image Optimization
- Tools
  - Imagemagick – http://www.imagemagick.org/
  - Pngcrush - http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush/
    - Discussed in Episode 15
  - Jpegtran
    - Discussed in Episode 15
  - Smush.it -http://smush.it
    - Discussed in Episode 10
  - Punypng - http://www.gracepointafterfive.com/punypng
  - RIOT (Radical Image Optimization Tool) – http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/
- Correct
  - Pick the right format type: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Fireworks/9.0/help.html?content=frw_optimize_export_oe_08.html
  - You can check the GIFs and see if they are using a palette size corresponding to the number of colors in the image. Using imagemagick it’s easy to check using
    identify -verbose image.gif
    When you see an image useing 4 colors and a 256 color “slots” in the palette, there is room for improvement.
  - Try converting gifs to PNGs. Often times PNGs are smaller.
    - anything a GIF can do, a palette PNG (PNG8) can do too (except for animations).
    - convert image.gif image.png
    - pngcrush image.png -rem alla -reduce -brute result.png
  - Optimize your Jpegs
    - jpegtran -copy none -optimize -perfect src.jpg dest.jpg
- CSS Sprites
  - Arranging the images in the sprite horizontally as opposed to vertically usually results in a smaller file size.
  - “Be mobile-friendly” and don’t leave big gaps between the images in a sprite. This doesn’t affect the file size as much but requires less memory for the user agent to decompress the image into a pixel map. 100×100 image is 10 thousand pixels, where 1000×1000 is 1 million pixels
  - Spriteme.org – Webapp to help you out with sprites
- Don’ts
  - Don’t scale images with HTML
    - ```
    img width="100" height="100" src="mycat.jpg" alt="My Cat"
```
- Don’t use gif/png for photographs
- Don’t use Jpeg for images with limited colors

Episode 42: Ridin’ the Wave

Faceoff Staff — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:52:47 +0000

Droids, video chat, and Google’s hottest new product.

News and Follow-Ups

00:34 – Droid Phones
06:34 – There is one big source code hosting provider missing:
- https://launchpad.net/
- It uses bazaar and had some great feature.
- You can find the tour on https://launchpa d.net/+tour/index

Webapps

10:21 – Tinychat – Web conference with up to 12 people for free
13:56 – Fill Any PDF – Upload and fill out any PDF online for free

Topics

19:47 – Google Wave – Mix between email, IM and forum chat

Episode 41: Source Code Hosting

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:00:48 +0000

There are tons of source code hosting sites out there but which one is right for you?

News and Follow-Ups

0:38 – Spreeder is like ZapReader – via Robert Lund

Webapps

4:42 – Muttr – Vent about things
8:00 – F My Life – Sad/Funny stories about people’s misfortune.

Topics

10:38 – SCM Host Comparison
- Github – http://github.com
  - Supports git only
  - Community messaging
  - One of the most popular distributed source control community websites
  - Forking and pull requests from the site
  - Gravatar style icons pulled by users email address
  - A revision controlled “pastebin” like system called gists
  - Bare bones issue submission
  - Big names include
    - Ruby on Rails
    - Scriptaculous
    - Lots of ruby projects
  - They have a free account for public but not a private repo
- Kenai – http://kenai.com/projects/help/pages/KenaiOverview
  - Netbeans integration
  - Support for git, mercurial, and svn
  - Has a build system for code that is compiled
  - Support for Google Analytics
  - Couldn’t find the option to have private projects
  - Mailing list support
  - Big names include
    - JRuby
    - Sun, OpenSolaris
    - Cheqlist
- bitbucket – http://bitbucket.org/
  - A very similar design and methodology to github
  - Similar plans and pricing to github
  - Mercurial only hosting
  - Unlimited public repos, 150mb 1 private repo for free
  - Gravatar icons based on email address
  - Message between different users
  - OpenID support, github does not.
  - Big names include
    - Django
    - MailChimp
    - Linden Lab
- codebasehq – http://codebasehq.com
  - 20mb free
  - Supports Git, Mercurial, and SVN
  - Private repos
  - Project manager oriented
  - Microblogging integration
  - Big names include
    - Uservoice
- Source Forge
  - The largest community of hosted projects
  - Supports cvs, svn, bzr, git, and mercurial
  - Open source, public only
  - Mailing list support
  - Forums
  - Supports OpenId
  - Big names include
    - phpmyadmin
    - filezilla
    - audacity
    - jedit
- Google Code
  - Supports svn and mercurial. Not Git
  - No private repos
  - Nice front project page with featured downloads
  - Clunky issue tracker
  - 1gb of source space and 2 gb of download space
  - Project members and permissions
  - Google Analytics integration
  - Big names incude
    - Android
    - Google Wave
    - Chrome
  - Home grown
  - Gitorious – http://gitorious.org/

Episode 40: Source Code Management Blowout!

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:00:48 +0000

This week’s Faceoff is the differences between Source Code Management (SCM) software.

Topics

Source Code Management
- 3:39 – Centralized
  - Subversion
- 11:05 – Distributed
  - Git
    - The new SCM
    - Digg uses git!
  - 18:35 – Mercurial
    - Easy to learn
    - Almost identical commands as git, very interchanged
    - Revision numbers as well as hash
    - .hgignore works the same as .gitignore
    - hg serve
    - localhost:8000
    - http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ConvertExtension

Episode 39: Make us a double!

Faceoff Staff — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:22:28 +0000

Usability testing and some Web Do’s and Don’ts!

Webapps

01:32 – Five Second Test - Create and take quick usability tests
04:44 – Concept Feedback - More in-depth reputation based design critiques

Topics

11:26 – Web Do’s and Don’ts
- Don’t do form resets
- Don’t use CSS expressions
- Don’t forget about caching
- Don’t use H1 for site title exclusively
- Don’t put blocks in in-line elements
- Do put the article title in the page tille
- Use a fieldset
- Do use diagnostic styling
- Make your urls friendly

Episode 38: E-Commerce Done Right

Mark Sanborn — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:00:18 +0000

New Twitter feature in the works, a way to find your cellphone, and some great e-commerce site tips.

News and Follow-Ups

00:22 – Twitter about to launch “Lists”

Webapps

07:12 – CeeVee – An easy to use online resume maker and display
12:00 – Where’s my cell phone – Ring your cellphone from the internet

Topics

13:55 – 15 common mistakes in e-commerce design and how to avoid them

Episode 37: Quick Website Tune-up

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:00:03 +0000

GIF making webapp, find out how many people are in space right now, and some great tips to incrementally improve your website.

Webapps

01:58 – GifSoup – Create animated GIFs from YouTube videos
04:36 – How Many People Are In Space Right Now? – Ever wonder how many people are in space right now?

Topics

07:09 – 101 Five-minute fixes to incrementally improve your website:)
- Copywriting
- Usability
- Search Engine Optimization
- Accessibility
- Design
- Legal

Episode 36: Usability

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:00:17 +0000

News from Mint, a tool for grid designs, and 10 awesome usability findings.

News and Follow-Ups

01:40 – Intuit buys Mint
05:29 – Compress with gzip backward compatible? mobile browser compatable?
- Check your device
08:20 – Google lets you tell them what url parameters to ignore
11:27 – Digsby sees the light!

Webapps

13:47 – ReCSS – Bookmarklet that refreshes just the css on a page. via qasim

16:37 – Gridinator -http://gridin ator.com – Create website grids easily, then download them as html/css or an image! via quasim

Topics

20:00 – 10 Useful usability findings
- Labels go above the form
- Users focus on faces
- Quality design = credibility
- Users scan content and scroll fast
- Blue is the best color for links
- White space improves comprehension
- User testing doesn’t need to be extensive
- Make your search boxes wide enough
- Informative product pages help you stand out
- Most users are blind to advertising

Episode 35: Over Buffer Flow Run

Faceoff Staff — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:00:23 +0000

Making sure you aren’t a bad programmer, and formal names for specific computer bugs.

News and Follow-Ups

01:08 – Podshifter – iPhone update 3.0 added podcast shifting speed.

Webapps

06:03 – Wishpot - Universal wishlist app
10:23 – TwitterSnooze – Snooze someone on twitter for a set period of time
13:34 – inumbr – Get a disposable phone number

Topics

16:37 – Signs that you’re a bad programmer
- Inability to reason about code
- Poor understanding of the language’s programming model
- Deficient research skills / Chronically poor knowledge of the platform’s features
- Inability to comprehend pointers
- Difficulty seeing through recursion
Signs you are a mediocre programmer
- Inability to think in sets
- Lack of critical thinking – Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
- Pinball Programming
- Unfamiliar with the principles of security
- Code is a mess
41:05 – Types of computer bugs – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual_software_bug#Bohrbug
- Heisenbug
- Bohrbug
- Mandelbug
- Schroendinbug
- Phase of the Moon bug
- Statistical bug