Teevio LLC

Everywhere I look people have been raving about Wall-E. Deeming the movie as one of the greatest Pixar movies made. People I would never have expected to like a Pixar movie was saying that it was amazing. I saw it, and I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I’d be.

You see, I have three kids, I’ve watched (willingly and unwillingly) every Pixar movie out there. I can’t even count how many times I’ve watched each of them. I think Cars alone could be in the upwards of 15 times. I’m not saying Wall-E was a horrible movie, I just don’t think it was the pinnacle of Pixar’s movie making career.

Do I think Wall-E was a great movie? Yes. I was very impressed by the story line that used almost zero dialogue. I thought the animation was amazing and detailed. The plot itself was clever, but not super clever. The ‘robot love’ was moving. But it wasn’t as good as the hype.

A List Apart has just published an excellent Javascript article called “Getting Out of Binding Situations in JavaScript,” which I highly recommend to any Javascript programmer.

If you like love colours you should check out I Heart Colour.

I Heart Colour was a little side project that I created, just for the fun of it. It had been broken for a while but I finally fixed it.

While I’m not a colour expert, I hope you will find the website fun and inspiring.

Well, I experienced some amazing generosity the other day. I’ve had my eye on the domain outforarun.com and thought I’d find out if the owner would be willing to sell it to me. I fully expected to be gouged for all I’m worth, especially since it compliments Out For A Ride. Thankfully, I wasn’t gouged and better yet I was given the domain.

In an effort of returning the favor I’m offering up some domains I own for free. Yes, they aren’t the most amazing domains, but maybe you will find them useful. I had some plans for them, but have been trying to cut down on the randomness of what I do. So here is the list:

• colorflavor.net/org
• colourflavor.com/net/org
• guigoodness.com/org/net
• pointbend.com/org/net
• stringedwithlove.com/org/net
• virbtown.com/org/net
• youcss.com/org/net

If you are interested in any, or all, of these domains please contact me.

The Enkoder is simply amazing, and Dan Benjamin has finally re-released it for OS X. Downloading as I write.

I should also mention that the application icon is a work of pure genius.

Today I experienced one of those moments in my programming life where I was very relieved, but also extremely annoyed. I was relieved since I figured out a ‘Bug’ that was only occurring in Firefox for Windows (of all places). Annoyed, because it was probably the stupidest thing I ever did experience, which I spent a long, long time trying to figure out.

Over here at Virb we’re developing some cool new stuff for the imminent launch of Virb v2. This particular thing that I’m working on involves Flash, Javascript and ExternalInterface. What was baffling me was that Firefox for Windows was not recognizing any ExternalInterface calls, while every other browser did.

To make a long story very short, I had the Object and Embed tags with a height and width of 0px. Apparently, 0 height and width is like telling Firefox for Windows that the Object and Embed tags do not exist. I will now be changing it to 1px by 1px.

I wouldn’t consider myself obsessed with the whole ‘Going Green’ movement, but I’m really starting to appreciate a lot of what it is about. I thought I’d give a quick list of some of the things that I’ve been doing. Initially they all seemed pretty painful, and some things on the list I couldn’t avoid, but now that I’m in the swing of things, they really aren’t so bad.

• Single Car – This was inevitable. Moving to Boston really made it impossible to afford two cars. The city of Somerville charges an outrageous car excise tax and my insurance doubled from what I was paying before in Albany, New York.
• Bicycle Commuting – I’ve always enjoyed bicycling and since I went from two cars to one I thought I might as well start bicycling to work. This is probably the best choice I’ve made, considering gas prices are continuing to go through the roof. On average I save about $15 a week and stay in shape. If you check out the ‘badge’ on the right you can see a running total of how much pollution I’ve prevented by riding my bicycle.
• Clothe Diapers – The thought of switching to clothe diapers really scared me. I have three kids, two of which are still in diapers. This meant that I would not only have to change poopy diapers, but they would have to be washed as well. My wife was insistent that we do it, so I took the plunge. Overall, the experience has been pretty positive. Clothe diapers these days are very sophisticated and make the whole process rather bearable. I also have to keep reminding myself of all the diapers that I’m not putting into landfills.
• Energy Star Washer – Our clothes washer broke the other day. I’m going to attribute it to how much laundry we do (or possibly because we bought the cheapest one money could buy). Either way, we were in the market for a new washer. I couldn’t stand how much water is wasted with traditional washers, so we bought an Energy Star compliant washer. These washers use about 60% less water and electricity, meaning I’m saving about 13 gallons of water per load.

While I don’t own ColourMod anymore, it does make me proud that it made its way to Tumblr. I am kind of shocked that it still is hanging around even after 2 years of zero development by the new owners. But I must have done a pretty good job when I first coded it (even though the code makes me cry).

Currently, we use ColourMod on Virb, but that will all be changing with the launch of Virb v2. I’ve built a brand new, faster, sexier, colour picker that leaves a much smaller footprint. No, I will not share, but if you want a different alternative to ColourMod, I highly recommend COLOURlovers free dhtml colour picker.

Rockerboo, Virb’s own brilliant programming, just tipped me off to an amazing way to cache images and javascript client-side from these guys (http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#IMP-SERVER). All you need is mod_expires and mod_headers turned on, an .htaccess file in the root of your website and the following piece of code in the .htaccess file:

### activate mod_expires
ExpiresActive On

### Expire 1 month from when they're accessed
ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
ExpiresByType image/png A2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000
ExpiresByType text/css A2592000
ExpiresByType text/javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType text/js A2592000

I should note that this is smart and knows when you’ve uploaded a new version of a file and will not use the previously cached version.

While you won’t notice a difference the first time you hit the website you will notice a significant difference once you start clicking around. I’ve implemented this here on Teevio.com and on Outforaride.com. Load times on Out For A Ride dropped from about 5-6 seconds on graphically intense pages to about 1 second. Even Teevio.com which doesn’t have a very fast server became very snappy. I’d highly suggest any web-developer to implement this very simple caching method.

I’ve always lamented the fact that churches have a tough time using media/technology/design effectively. There are definitely many people who are trying to raise the bar, but it has been a slow, slow process. A good internet friend of mine tipped me off to this Church Media Conference called Echo. It seems promising. Here’s a blurb about the conference:

While this conference might not appeal to everyone who reads this blog, I’m sure some of you might find this to be a helpful resource. Definitely check it out! I shouldn’t forget to mention that you could win MacBook if you sign up before May 25.

Well, I feel it is time to unleash Out For A Ride to the masses, so what better way than to submit it to Mashable. I thought I’d also take their advice seriously:

If you haven’t heard of Mashable by now you should probably check it out. Mashable focuses on up-to-the-minute news about the latest consumer-facing websites. In normal people’s language, they tell you all the newest and coolest information relating to the internet.

I had a CD with some money in it that had a very decent interest rate. Unfortunately, the term ended. I considered reinvesting back into a CD but when I checked, CD interest rates had tanked. I asked my financial advisor what I should do with the money. My only stipulations were that I could have relatively easy access to the money and that I would have a decent interest rate. He recommended Ing Direct, the orange savings account.

I know this sounds like Ing Direct payed me to say this, but they didn’t. I am getting 3% interest on my savings account through them. I can transfer money in, and out, with no costs whatsoever. It is tied to my ‘real’ bank account so I can deposit money at my physical bank, and then transfer the money into my Ing Direct account. The only downside I’ve found is that it takes 2-3 days for the money to transfer in or out.

Typical savings accounts will give you around .3%. If you use an Ing Direct savings account you are making 10 times more interest. It’s hard to argue with that.

Could Fi have said this any better?

Out For A Ride Beta has officially launched as of Friday last week. I’m very pleased with how it turned out and can’t wait to keep developing this website. Head on over and Create An Account!

After much last minute testing and tweaks, the redesigned Jack Cards was launched last night (although there are still a few minor tweaks to be made). Check it out at JackCards.com. I doubt that anyone who is reading this watches the Rachel Ray show, but if you do, Jack Cards is being featured on the Rachel Ray show today at 10:00am ET.

Things are starting to roll over at Out For A Ride. After I migrate the database and get the new server switched over, Beta testing will be ready for the masses.

If you are a bicycler, or know a bicycler, who hasn’t signed up for Out For A Ride yet, you’d better head on over and signup for an account.

Why you ask? Because current users will get first dibs on Beta testing the new version. I will be ‘shutting’ down Out For A Ride within the next couple weeks, as I will be porting the current database to the new version. Once I have ported the database any users who are already signed up will be emailed the specifics on Beta testing the new version (which you will seriously want to be a part of).

I had a question posed to me the other day. It happened to be one of my most dreaded, but most inevitable questions as a web developer. The question was, “How does this look in IE?” But to take it a step further (and worse) they followed up by asking, “What about IE 5?”

While everyone is concerned about IE 6 and 7 I haven’t really thought about IE 5 (or anything before 6) that much. I had wrote it off as a dead browser. I quickly came up with a few responses about why IE 5 was obsolete, etc. But, to someone who owns a website and cares very much about all their customers, my ‘excuses’ didn’t cut it.

I decided to come up with a couple of tests that would help a client decide if developing for IE versions less than 6 was necessary. Hopefully, these test will help you in the client world.

The Traffic Test

For websites that are getting redesigned and have some kind of traffic analytics, it is best to see how many people with versions less than IE 6 are actually using your site. This will give you a good feel for whether it is worth the effort. It turned out for the situation I mentioned above that the percentage was about .06%. In terms of traffic this is a negligible amount, you can stand to lose those users. But let’s say that the percentage was 2% of the user base? That’s starting to become a significant portion of your users.

The Demographic Test

Taking into account for the percentages of users, you should also think about the demographics of users who might use the website. I’m not going to specify an age range, but there is point where the computer user starts to become less savvy, and less aware about how to upgrade to newer browser versions.

The Verdict

I’d say if you have a pretty significant user base of IE 5/5.5 users, and your demographics tend to be in the older range, it might be worth developing for IE 5/5.5. Of course, you have to think about time and money constraints. In my case above, there wasn’t much of a user base, but the demographics could dig into the older generation. My solution was to get everything running in IE 6 and 7 and if there was time burn, try and make the lesser versions as usable as possible.

At the Web Innovators Group meetings, 6 minutes is all you have to present your idea, that is, if you are the “Main Dish”. If you are a “Side Dish”, you have less than that.

I had the privilege of attending the Web Innovators Group meeting and boy was it a mix of emotions. Jack Cards was one of the “Main Dishes” and were unveiling their new website design, a design that I had done for them.

I was extremely excited, since all of my hard work was finally coming together. I was also insanely nervous as my design would be seen/critiqued by hundreds of top-notch internet professionals. Thankfully, the design was well received.

Unfortunately, if you want to see some good screenshots of the new design, you’ll have to wait till Jack Cards re-launches (within the next couple weeks). Also, if you are a Rachel Ray fan and watch her talk show you can tune in on April 18 to see what she thinks about Jack Cards.

It has been a long, long, long time since I’ve done anything with Teevio.com. I suppose it was about time that something changed around here.

I’ve been spending most of my time slaving away on Virb 2.0 with the Virb Team. In fact, we just opened up Virb 2.0 Beta signups and are looking at launching the brand new version rather soon.

When I have a spare moment, I’ve been working on Out For A Ride. The site has been a long work in progress, but the end is soon to come. You can check out some sneak peeks of the new version on Flickr, stay up-to-date on Twitter, or sign up on the current version.