Revolution Web Design Blog - Just plain cool

10 things Google has taught us...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:40:00 -0600

While this article "10 things google has taught Us" originally appeared on cnn.com today, I thought it was a great read, and I didn't want to forget where I could read it, and show it to others. The 5th thing that Google has taught us really struck home for me :) (i wonder why)


5.) Treat engineers as kings

For most Valley companies, engineers are the equivalent of the television writer, the movie director, the book author. They are the creators. The 20% time Google grants its engineers gives them a sense that they are liberated to take risks, to follow their passions.

Innovation, as Bill Campbell told The McKinsey Quarterly, comes when "the crazy guys have stature, where engineers really are important.... empowered engineers are the single most important thing that you can have in a company."

It is no accident that Page and Brin and Schmidt spend so many hours each week in meetings with engineers. For most traditional media companies, the engineer is less central.

However, as digital is now part of the mainstream, and as older media companies struggle to master its challenges, they would do well to heed the advice Google's David Eun offers: Don't do what these companies traditionally do and stick "the geeks in a corner." Instead, CEO's should have at their elbow "a top Chief Technical Officer."

The rest of the article is filled with 9 other great tips and things to think about and it was well put together by Ken Auletta. Hop on over to cnn.com to view this interesting and thought provoking article. Hopefully I can help permeate some of these things into the culture of Navtrak, although I have to admit... we really happen to be quite like the points described here, we are very lucky! And one more, the last point in fact is also good to ponder:


10.) "Life is long but time is short."

The words belong to Eric Schmidt, who explained: "Life is long in the sense that we have long memories. Time is short in that you have to move very quickly. But to me the most important thing to know is that life has a way of working things out. We forget so quickly what the problem was three or four years ago. So my personal view of life is that every problem is an opportunity."

This is a reason to think and act boldly, as Google has, to take risks, and not to be anchored down by "long memories."

iPhone and Flash - It's about to become reality!

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:23:00 -0600

That's right folks... just announced at Adobe Max 2009 - With the advent of Flash CS5 flash developers around the world will be able to make games and other applications for the iPhone using flash! it's about time, and you can go here to read more about this amazing new feature! This is NOT flash in the safari browser inside the iPhone this is native iPhone application support. One great step towards a more Flash Filled Future on my iPhone! By far the best comment of the day on this comes from Ryan Stewart - Adobe's Flash Platform Evangelist

"When Apple is ready to bring the full Web browsing experience to iPhone users, we'll be ready to bring Flash Player to Safari."

"Please turn camera off then on again" - Panasonic Lumix Error message

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:06:00 -0600

Sometime this weekend, we lost ability to take pictures with our Panasonic DMC-FS5 that is slightly over 2 years old. We kept getting an error message that stated "Please turn camera off then on again" Even though I rarely like to follow the directions, I did. And guess what, to no avail. So, I scoured the web for information about this problem, and the best advice anyone had for the fix, was to send it in for repair. Sure. A camera that cost about $400 when we bought it, was used and abused for 2 years, I don't think so. Yes, it has definitely taken some nice pictures for us, but I'm not going to spend the time to deal with that crap... So, what did I do to fix it?? So, I decided to resort to the ages old method of fixing something... I simply banged it on my desk one sharp time, and BAM, the lens retracted and the camera is now fixed. I have no idea why it's working now, it simply is. And with that, I am happy, and I can cross at least one thing off of my to-do list for today! nice.

iPhone - Internet Tethering - Live!

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:11:00 -0600

so, how cool is this... im posting this blog entry using my iphone os 3.0 and internet tethering. that's right. although we thought it was not allowed... it is! http://help.benm.at/help.php go to that site above, and follow the instructions (really easy actually, just download the settings, follow the on-screen instructions and BAM!) so, anyway, hopefully this is useful for ya, and shame on AT&T for thinking we wouldn't figure this out at some point in time! apparently there is some MMS hack that is part of what is coming, but as of yet, i cannot even figure out how to even see the word "mms" in my iphone anywhere yet!?!?

Adobe Browser Lab - limited preview open

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:09:00 -0600

From Adobe's website:

BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. BrowserLab is a powerful solution for cross-browser compatibility testing, featuring multiple viewing and comparison tools, as well as customizable preferences. Since BrowserLab is an online service, it can be accessed from virtually any computer connected to the web. Also, Adobe Dreamweaver® CS4 software users have access to additional functionality such as testing local and active content.

Great little testing tool, that took a lot of work I'm sure! View the Browser Lab Website (FYI: i was able to login with my Adobe credentials that I use for forums, Alpha stuff, etc) Some gripes... there is no choice for Chrome, which I realize is new-ish, but come on guys :) Also, no choice for Mobile Browsers? I guess these things will be coming soon enough!

Bing me? You want to do what?

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:49:00 -0600

So, I did what probably a lot of my Geek Friends around the web did this morning and that was an attempt at "bing-ing" myself... the results of my search for "tony weeg" are at the end of this link: http://www.bing.com/search?q=tony+weeg&go=&form=QBLH and with that, I want to look at the results... as of the time of posting this article, i notice a few things... (first and foremost, google has 36,700 articles about me today, and bing has only 23,900) 1. there appears to be a reliance on "Social Networking" sites for top billing 2. the first link, LinkedIn, is the only social networking site that I am part of that I do not use at all, and that got 1st place :( 3. the results are mostly like google's search results, not much difference there, however if someone were searching for me on google, they'd find better more relevant information, as they would find my domain TonyWeeg.com and i got bored after page 4 looking for my domain on Bing.com 4. the mouseover-right gutter "info" tab that shows up is cool, doesnt really make me NOT want to click on the link, so, I guess it does its job, but not a necessity when im searching, im going to click on it anyway, regardless of that 5. i guess ill bookmark it and see if it helps me at all, but i have to say, as entrenched as i am in using google's tools, it would be weird to LEAVE gmail, and go search for something else in another window, for what? the same results? eh... probably not. 6. search history is cool on bing, but not a game changer, google search has had this a long time. 7. the obligatory image search for "Boobs" that most of us do to test new search engines (you do too, right??) came up with a REALLY neat way of showing an image search... a seamingly ENDLESS grid of images... and when i say endless, i mean, i kept scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling and they never seemed to stop... EVER! brilliant idea #1 so far... good job bing peeps. (so far this is the coolest feature) and at 1.6 million results, thats a LOT of boobies they are droppin on the screen in a VERY ajax fashion. 8. they (microsoft bing developers) took a major note from the search preferences page of google's - and anyone familiar with turning off "Safe Search" will recognize this page... minus a few

's and some colored cells, its basically the same page! so, all in all, it looks to be a well thought out application, but im going to have to say, why? why now? why try to take on google at this game that they have mastered? i just dont get it guys and gals. it would have been a great time to innovate something else, not search. leave that to the search pro's, google!

Visualizing tweets

Wed, 06 May 2009 06:49:00 -0600

im a big data visualization person, and although this is quite simple, the concept is pretty darn cool and something you could sit and stare at for some time... you basically go to this site: http://www.visibletweets.com and enter any keyword you'd like to see, at which point, a little birdie goes out and grabs relevant tweets for you and you just sit back and watch... pretty nifty! any other cool ones you know of, lemme know!

Create a Wordle of your tweets, a Twordle!

Tue, 05 May 2009 20:16:00 -0600

i thought it might be neat to see what words i most use when tweeting in my favorite twitter application, Wordle to see if i could generate a beautiful word cloud. first i went to my twitter page, and made sure that all of my tweets from all the way back to the first day i signed on "April 17th, 2008" and simply copy and pasted them into my favorite text editor, adobe dreamweaver cs3, and from there removed some words i didnt care to see in there "twittelator, twhirl, am, pm, etc" Anyway, here is my Wordle very cool to see... go try it with yours!

New GMail interface for iPhone and Android powered phones!

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:49:00 -0600

So today, the almighty Google, has released a new version of Gmail for the iPhone, and I must say, my first impression is WOW. it incorporates Gmail, Calendar, Docs and most every other app that they offer through the desktop browser experience. I still want an AppStore app that is specific for the iPhone, but for now, this is going to have to work. Some things that i have found so far: 1. I can't seem to add attachments to messages
2. It's in a browser, which isn't a deal killer, but an app would rock
3. Discard is present, to remove a message without asking me if I'm sure :)
4. Stars work, but not multiple stars like what I have setup in my regular Gmail.
5. Threads and conversation view are here, and work just as expected
6. Archive, Delete and More functions are present
7. Expand/Collapse all are present
8. Colored labels are present!
9. When creating a new message and adding email addresses to the To: field, auto-suggest works! Inside a label

Composing a new message

Viewing my folders

Conversation view

More, Archive and delete

strep throat

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:18:00 -0600

down for the count the past couple of days with strep + fever and you know the rest... back in action soon. in the meantime, utilizing coldfusion, and my iphone, and some secret sauce type stuff, im building a way to remotely start my car as well as remotely unlock my car. no keys needed. yeah. no keys. just my iphone, my mobilemanager and a backend app in coldfusion. w00t.

Augmented Reality... the dawn of Web 4.0

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:03:00 -0600

kids, grab your diapers and hold on... this has to be one of the coolest web technologies i have personally ever seen. the video speaks volumes so ill just leave it at that, and id recommend checking it out as soon as possible, so that whenever anyone is talking about it, you know what they are talking about. Visit GE's Augmented Reality website here.

it's a snow day on delmarva!

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 06:52:00 -0600

that's right. we've got anywhere from 4-10" inches a little farther north than me. here is a panorama i just took of our house and the surrounding weather today. lots of snow!! i love it!! Can you find the sun trying to peek out??

5 CSS3 Techniques For Major Browsers - using jQuery???

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:09:00 -0600

yah, great post, from a site that i found while reading some tweets this morning. thanks ray camden for the point in the direction, this is a cool little explanation of 5 different things you can do with jQuery that used to be cumbersome, if not down right impossible with plain old css. anyhow, check this post out... cool info.

Coldfusion server that NEVER goes down... is that possible?

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:08:00 -0600

Well, I think so. and I'll tell ya why.
But first, did you know that there were choices in the Coldfusion 8 Server Monitoring portion of the administrator to setup alerts?

Did you know that there were alerts that you could setup to let you know that your server was going into an "Unresponsive" state... and that while it was going to alert you, it would also start the task of killing hung threads all the while preventing new requests from bogging the server down once it gets back on it's feet?

Did you know that you could also watch the memory that is being used by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and if it gets to be too large you can have it do all of the above, plus spurn some garbage collection to boot?!

But that's not it, it gets better :)

You can also, detect that your server is "running slow" ie, too many requests taking too long, and do the all of the above, OOooh and I forgot you can email yourself too, heck you could even setup an sms gateway and send sms messages out to alert you, your team, even maybe the president on his blackberry :)

Anyway, i'd get into more of this here, but Charlie Arehart did a great job of explaining not only this but the entire "ColdFusion 8 server monitoring" series on Adobe.com's Developer Connection in the ColdFusion Developer Center.

Definitely check it out, I hadn't heard of this until tonight and that was a result of needing just the things this amazing feature offers! And with the aforementioned, I believe it would be possible to have a server that never goes down... right?

We just saw our FIRST boxing match last week, Fernando Guerrero local hero wins!!!

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:46:00 -0600

LIVE ON SHOWTIME, in LITTLE OLE Salisbury... it was such a 1920's atmosphere... This was our very first boxing match, and Fernando Guerrero's first one in front of his home crowd. The kid is a GREAT story... and we had such a blast.. This was obviously photoshopped but its quite cool for him to be the only dash of color in this sepia 1920's looking image. Salisbury had NEVER come out to support boxing like this, and the place was electric! What a great night. Friday October 5th, 2008 at the Wicomico Youth and Civic Center more about fernando here... and a great write up about the fight we saw here...

some cool pics of the fight here on Salisbury News
some more cool pics of the fight here... and that GREAT write up... here...