Brightkite is a location-based social network.  I’ve been using Twitter for quite a while and read a few things about location based social networking.  The problem was I wasn’t too interested in SMS based implementations that a lot of these services use to tell the service where you are.  Sure you could use a laptop and “check-in” but you aren’t always around a laptop or even a computer.  I just don’t really care for the SMS based implementations because I’m not really sure what’s going on.  I send something and hope it gets there and I might get a notification.  I don’t have unlimited SMS messaging and it can get annoying if you have a lot of friends and notifications.

What got me interested in Brightkite was their iPhone application.  I looked at Loopt and even created an account, but never really used it.  It wasn’t quite enough for me to use instead of Twitter.  I’ve been using Ping.fm to update my social networks and Brightkite was one of the supported services.

I signed up for the beta testing and sent invites to a few friends.  I downloaded the iPhone application and setup a few placemarks in the system.  Brightkite uses the iPhones location service to find location and for the most part is pretty accurate.  At times I’ll search for the exact place I’m at and check in.  I then use Ping.fm to update at that location.  Brightkite also lets you post photos directly from the iPhone interface.  If you don’t have an iPhone you can send an email to the service with the photo from your phone, but again it’s not elegant to me.  It’s not as easy to use so when I’m on the go I’ll probably not use it.

The iPhone interface is really nice.  For the most part everything on the site is accessible through the iPhone app.  It’s nice to see that some services will give the same user experience in the mobile interface as their full blown website.

I think once the service leaves beta, if it can catch on with more users it will become a pretty nice service.  It will be cool to look at locations and see what people are currently doing there and also what’s happened.  I also see this as one example of the transition to a usable mobile platform.  Mobile applications will evolve and become easier to use.  They will offer a full service as opposed to partial service like a lot of platforms are now.  Some of the blame is because mobile platforms have traditionally been limited and some just because companies don’t allocate enough resources to this type of development.  I think the iPhone and Android will help alleviate some of the roadblocks with their SDKs.

So far I’m pretty happy with the service.  I would still like more friends to use it so I can get a more complete experience, but I’ll just have to wait and see if that happens or not.

Over the weekend, I transisitioned this website from ModxCMS to Zend Framework.  While one is a CMS and the other is just a framework and this site being pretty simple, either technology could get the job done.  Since I launched the site, ModxCMS was running the main pages and WordPress was used for the blog.  For the most recent client work I’ve been using Zend Framework.  Most of the implementations for the clients were pretty customized systems and I felt Zend Framework would give more flexibility in those systems.

It got me thinking and that same flexibility could be used on the company website.  At this point the site wasn’t really using the majority of the features ModxCMS had to offer and for that matter it’s not using much of the Zend Framework as it is now.  What I was more interested in was the MVC code structure and the ability to transition this site much more in the future.  That may or may not happen depending on the amount of time I can dedicate, but I figure being more familiar with Zend Framework over ModxCMS would allow me to implement faster.  I thought about writing blog software on Zend Framework.  I’ve written blog software in the past, but with the latest version of WordPress I’m pretty happy with it.

I was pushing Zend Framework for a lot of clients and rarely suggesting ModxCMS.  Don’t get me wrong both platforms are great products, but I found myself using Zend Framework more and more.  I feel like I should use the technologies that I provide my clients.

Since the site is very simple, it was easy to transition.  I’m sure if the site was much more complex and more time consuming I would have thought twice about the transition.  Overall it was very quick and relatively painless.  I’m pretty happy with the process and I think the site is running pretty well.  As always if there are any comments or suggestions feel free to leave them.

Ever since I’ve started creating XHTML/CSS for the most part have always started with a Photoshop PSD and chopped it accordingly to create a valid layout.  I initially purchased two full version copies to cover the licensing of my own machines which has a pretty large initial fee.  Over the years I have purchased lower priced upgrades in order to keep up to date and compatible with my latest Mac OS X machines/operating system.

For the most part, Photoshop continues to be the industry standard as far as graphic/web design goes and PSDs are usually what is delivered to be from a graphic designer.  Sure there have been times where I might get an Illustrator or a Quark file, but that’s usually not the norm.  It does a great job for what I need to do which is mostly resizing, measuring, and pulling pieces out of layers.  I could have a graphic designer send me the cut up images from ImageReady, but that doesn’t always give me the best results.  I’m much more comfortable having the designer send me the PSD and do my own cutting and optimizing for what I feel best fits the code/layout for the web.

I’ve always tried to look for alternatives that are better suited for my needs.  This lead me from Dreamweaver to SubEthaEdit to Coda which I use exclusively for development.  I was never really happy with Dreamweaver, but got the job done.  I am much happier with what Coda has to offer and it feels like it’s built for Mac OS X.  Also it’s cheaper at $99 vs. $399 ($199 upgrade).  When smaller companies develop the software it seems like there’s quite a bit more free updates before a full upgrade which also tends to keep price down.  Price is a small factor, but if a program is much better than I would consider paying more for it.

This is one of the reasons I’ve stuck with Photoshop for so long.  I followed the same progression with the graphics tools as I had with the development tools.  When Pixelmator first came out, it just didn’t have enough of the features that I needed for web development.  It probably had a good amount of graphic tools to help graphic designers, but wasn’t enough for my daily tasks.  The software has been out for a little while now and they are soon to release their 1.3 version which I’m currently using in beta mode.

They’ve done a much better job as far as adding features to get me to switch.  For the most part I am able to the work and it seems to run quite a bit faster than Photoshop.  Some things still make it a little difficult for me to use.  For example if you zoom and image it’s hard to tell what percentage you are actually at.  In Photoshop it shows a percentage at the bottom of the window.  Also if the image is larger than the screen, it doesn’t really do a great job of fitting it around the tools, it just puts the tools on top of the image.  I almost always have to resize the image to fit an open spot inside the tools.  When I’m cutting the PSDs I like to use the Marquee tool to cut my images for the web and sometimes like to crop there.  There’s a crop tool in Pixelmator, but at times it’s a little difficult to position.  It does however let you edit the crop area before actually cropping.  I would also like to see a live preview so I could compress the images as small as possible without losing too much quality.  Right now it’s more of a guessing game.

I’ve been using Pixelmator for about two weeks now for normal tasks.  I haven’t really had to do really complex PSDs.  I mostly just have basic layouts or image resizing for different sites.  I think I’ll have to use it for a little while longer and see if I run to any trouble with it.  For right now using Pixelmator and keeping CS3 on the back burner will keep me from upgrading to CS4 next month.  What’s more important to me right now is if I can be more productive.  Right now I think I’m just as productive, and if this keeps up at a lower cost.

I’ve been using .mac for over a year now and it was fairly smooth. Recently the service switched to MobileMe and things just weren’t so reliable. I only use MobileMe for calendar syncing. The other features they offer I’ve found better solutions that fit my needs.

For web hosting I use Media Temple. For the purpose of my company I need a more professional solution. Since I have quite a few emails on different domains I use Google Apps to handle that. It also offers calendar syncing now but I’m just not happy with the implementation so far. For file syncing I use Dropbox. It’s not as much storage but for document syncing the web interface is excellent and sync across machines is almost instantaneous. On top of that I can share folders with clients.

That pretty much leaves contact and calendar syncing to MobileMe. I haven’t had any issues with contact syncing. The problem is with the calendars. I have 1 PC and 3 Macs as well as MobileMe’s web interface and an iPhone.

Since it switched to MobileMe I’ve had some problems. I get missing and duplicate events, invalid alarms, and just problems syncing.

I’ve tried resetting data and backing up and restoring each calendar implementation. On the PC I don’t have Outlook and MobileMe doesn’t support Vista’s built in calendar. I figure I can just use the web app if I can getthe right data in there. It also keeps telling me my trial has expired even though I have a subscription that doesn’t expire for 11 more months.

It’s a good thing I keep backups both in house and off site as well as online and offline. I haven’t lost data because of this, but have been late for a few appointments.

I don’t know if it’s me or an issue with MobileMe. I am hoping that if it is an Apple issue that they implement a fix in a timely manner. If it’s just me which it could be if anyone has any suggestions it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

A new search engine, Cuil, was launched recently and it claims to index 3 times as many pages as Google and 11 times as many pages as Microsoft.  There has been a lot of buzz around the blogs with the new search engine.  It got me thinking, what’s it going to take in order to beat someone like Google.  Google has become the household name and I think the majority of people still use it as a search engine.

I figured I would give Cuil and shot and see what all the buzz was about.  I have some mixed feelings about it.  In some of the searches I performed, the actual search results were okay.  I think I am happier with the results that both Google and Yahoo show.  Also I noticed in some posts they have thumbnail images.  Some of the images have nothing to do with the article and I’m just wondering where they even came from.  They don’t even appear in the article body at all.  For example, I searched for “apple” and I expected results from Apple Computer and those showed up.  One result was for the Apple Cinema display, but it had a thumbnail of the iPod Touch.

The two and three column layouts are kind of cool, but a little unusual.  I think it takes some time to get used to, but I don’t find that it helps or hurts the ability to search.

I like that they have tab recommendations and also category recommendations.  The other search engines have this as well, but I think it is layed out well and sometimes I find that it’s not prominent enough on other sites.  I think Ask does the best job of making the feature easy to use, but Cuil does a good job as well.

Overall I think I could use this search engine, but I think I am much happier with Google results.  I’ve found that I’ve built up a comprehensive del.icio.us bookmark list and find that I can find most new information through those channels.  Usually when I looks for businesses or restaurants I use Google maps as opposed to a search engine like I had in the past.  So as of right now I’ll just stick to what I’m already doing.

Apple released the iTunes App Store last week for the iPhone and iPod Touch and I’ve spent some of the weekend using a variety of applications.  For the most part all of the applications run better than their web application counterparts which is expected.  Some of the applications are lacking features, but I’m sure as time progresses those features will be added and they will become complete miniturized versions of their desktop web based applications.

For a few months now I’ve been contemplating jumping into iPhone applications.  I don’t have any Mac OS X desktop experience.  I do have experience in several programming languages both computer and web based.  I’m thinking that this platform would be something worth looking into.  With all the lines in front of the Apple Stores each product launch, I see this platform being just as popular as the iPod.

I did apply for the program and was initially rejected.  I recieved a letter from Apple recently stating I can now join the program.  I’m sure all the other developers that applied were notified as well.  I think it’s going to take a lot of research, development, and testing and hopefully I have the time to take on the challenge.

I see it much more fulfilling to create native applications over the web applications for this platform.  Sure you are limited to the specific platform of Mac OS X for the iPhone, but I think that platform will grow much larger than other manufacturers we see today.

If I start dedicating more time and the company moves more into this sort of development, I’ll be sure to post.  Until then back to web development.

I’ve really gotten into Twitter lately and I’ve been able to incorporate it into my daily life as well as integrated into many of my blogs and websites.  I think it’s a great idea and a great service, but in terms of reliability not so great.  I’m hoping that their new investments will really help out the service because I think it brings a great deal of value to my sites as well as sites of others.

Recently since Twitter has been down, it’s slowed a lot of my websites down.  The connection needs to timeout and this can make a website seem extremely slow.  I suppose I could cache results more often, but that defeats the whole idea of Twitter where you want to know what’s going on right now.

I’ve read articles saying that the platform wasn’t really developed with scalability in mind and that they are looking to develop the system using a different architecture.

I think a lot of people don’t take this into consideration.  When I develop websites for clients many people don’t take that into consideration.  Sure if you are a small business with little website traffic or you have a small blog with a few writers it probably doesn’t make a difference.  If you are trying to build the next best social network however you need to consider it now or pay the consequences later.  You could always neglect it now, but look to change that in the future.  You would need to make sure that you do take care of it before you get as big as something like Twitter.

Now it’s a huge task for them since they have a ton of users using it all the time and they are looking to build reliability into a system thats already developed and running.  I hope they have the time and money to fix those issues because it really is a great service.  It would be a shame if I had to remove it from my sites completely.

So today is the big Firefox 3 release and starting at 10AM PST they are trying to go for a Guiness Book of World Records title as the most downloaded piece of software in one day.  If you want to be part of the action head over to the download site.

Noupe had a recent post some websites you shouldn’t have missed in May 2008.  It’s a list of 54 things to review covering a range of design, coding, to just some good resources to bookmark and keep for future reference.  I’m going to go through and give my top 10 from the list.

1. Pastel color menu with dynamic submenu using CSS – While I haven’t necessarily made pastel color menus, I have used this technique many times to create menus and submenus using list elements.  It keeps the code pretty clean and of course you need to have the small piece of JavaScript to support browsers like IE6.  One thing to be aware of is if you have a large elaborate menu scheme, this creates a lot of HTML in the header of your page.  If you are supporting JavaScript it might be a good idea to AJAX the appropriate data when the user takes action.
2. Yahoo! Design Pattern Library – I’ve been posting a lot about Yahoo.  I’ve just been really happy with the work they’ve produced over the last year.  This is a very good reference piece if you are wondering how something should be implemented or if you have a client that insists on one thing, you can show them that it’s been tested and proven to be best this way.
3. Which CSS Grid Framework Should You Use for Web Design? – I’ve been using a few of the Grids frameworks listed in this article, mostly the YUI Grids CSS for my work.  For the most part it gets the majority of what I want to do done faster and I feel like I’m a step ahead when I’m creating a site.  Good clean CSS is what we strive to create and these libraries make it easier for us to do that.
4. Applying Divine Proportion To Your Web Designs – While I don’t do too much design work personally, there are times when I do and I think that’s one area in my work that I can learn more and improve.  It’s always been pretty difficult for me to design things.  I guess I just don’t have enough creativity.  This article describes the rule of thirds when designing and this fits in well if you are using a Grids library.  You can work together with your front end developers and designers to create great looking layouts and save some time in the process.
5. Free 278 Page PDF eBook- The Photoshop Anthology – I haven’t read the entire book yet, but it looks like a good read.  There’s only a limited amount of time left if you want to sign up and download.
6. Find Similar Users on del.icio.us – I’ve really gotten into del.icio.us lately and I think it’s kind of cool to see who has similar interests as you.  I’m not one of those social network stalkers though.
7. 45+ Free Premium WordPress Themes with Magazine or Grid Layouts – There are some great looking designs in this collection.  Just glancing over them has given me some inspiration on some future projects.
8. 36 Cool Business Cards You Should’ve Seen – I’ve been looking for some new business cards since I formed the LLC.  I’ll have to take some more time to come up with something cool.
9. 30 Websites to follow if you’re into Web Development – I saw this posted in Digg the other day.  I saved it to my bookmarks.  It’s a great resource for web development.
10. SEO Guide for Designers – While I don’t like to take on too many SEO projects anymore, this is a good resource for best practices.  I don’t like taking the projects on because there are no guarantees in that market and if someone says they can guarantee something they probably aren’t doing it white hat style.

So that’s my top 10 from Noupe’s post.  If you have any questions for me or any comments about the resource, let me know.

The official Webby Awards were announced.  For those of those not familiar, it’s like the Oscars for web development.  There’s some big names and some small names in there as well.  Some of the companies I worked for this year have been honored by the organization.

If you want to see some excellent websites or are looking to build something new and are looking for inspiration, this is a good place to start.  Why not review the best of the best?

http://www.webbyawards.com/