Month: March 2007

Clean & Hackable URLs

Post ImageA week ago, Roland Tanglao reiterated his love for clean URLs. Or perhaps more accurately, his hatred of dirty (?) URLs. Here’s what he wrote:

URLs with question marks, ampersands, etc should be banished to the Web 1.0 h*ll where they belong. I’ve been preaching the clean URL gospel for years but if I see one more WordPress blog with “?p” or one more Drupal site with “?q”, I’ll scream 🙂 Seriously if your webhost or your tech gal/guy can’t figure out how to use clean URLs, find somebody else. It’s 2007!

I couldn’t agree more. Here’s an example of what he means:

Dirty: http://example.com/articles.html?articleid=123&tag=rss
Clean: http://example.com/articles/123/rss

Clearly I prefer the second one, and I’m guessing you do too. I’m going to go one step further though, and say that not only should URLs be clean, they should be hackable! What does that mean? Let me give you an example:

http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com/episodes/FF7962/license
http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com/episodes/FF7962
http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com/episodes
http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com

The first link is for the licensing information of an episode. All you’ve got to do is “hack” off the end and you get the episode itself. One more hack and you get all the episodes. And finally, you’re left with the entire podcast. It’s pretty logical right? And it would be trivial to replace the episode ID with another one, or /episodes with /tags, etc. That’s what I mean by hackable – they are easily modified to get you where you want to go.

Here’s another example:

http://mastermaq.podcastspot.com/episodes/archive/2007/02/24

That will show you all episodes for February 24th, 2007. The URL is readable, and immediately you understand what it is doing. What if you want a different day? Replace 24 with something else. Just the month? Hack off the 24. You get the idea.

Clearly I am drinking the clean & hackable URLs koolaid, and as a result Podcast Spot has nothing but clean, hackable URLs. If you’re working on a web project, consider doing the same – your users will thank you for it.

10 Reasons To Love Opera (the browser)

Post ImageI love Opera, I really do. It’s an awesome web browser, and it’s a shame that it doesn’t have more market share (most stats put it around 1% or less). I could go on for days about the many different reasons that Opera rocks, but here are my favorite ten (in no particular order, based on the latest version, 9.1):

Paste and go (Screenshot)
This one really shows the attention to detail that the Opera team has. How many times have you copied a URL to the clipboard, only to go paste it in the address bar of your browser? Then you have to click go or press enter. With this handy feature, Opera saves you that second step. As the name suggests, you can paste and go all in one step!

Instant back and forward
I don’t think this is listed as an official feature, but it should be! In IE or Firefox, clicking back will usually take a few seconds for the previous page to reload – not so in Opera. As soon as you press back (or forward) the previous (or next) page is instantly there. Firefox is pretty good at this too, but Opera is quite simply superior.

Highlighted Text Context Menu (Screenshot)
As soon as you highlight some text in Opera, a context menu appears with a bunch of useful commands at the ready. Again, it saves that extra step of right clicking after you have highlighted text. It might sound inconsequential, but it makes a huge difference.

Top 10 Sites (Screenshot)
Everyone has a set of websites they regularly visit. Opera is smart enough to keep track of these sites, and gives the ten most visited sites a special and easy-to-access menu. It’s kind of like automatic favorites. Very handy.

Notes
After experiencing this feature, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it. Ever keep notepad open while browsing so you can copy things you might need later? No need to do so with Opera! Highlight any text and you can then turn it into a note, or you can manually create a note with whatever text you want. Notes are associated with a website too, so you can quickly see your notes for a given page. Incredibly useful feature.

Better Tabbed Browsing
All modern browsers have tabbed browsing, but none of them do it as well as Opera does. For one thing, tabs are ordered (say you have three tabs, A, B, C. Click on A, then click on C, then close C. Opera goes back to A, the other browsers go to B). Again with the attention to detail, right click on any link and you have two options: open in a new tab (which brings it to the front) or open in a new background tab (which does not). Awesome.

Search Keywords & Create Search (Screenshot)
IE and Firefox handle search engines pretty well (with the search box I mean), but it’s pretty much up to the site developer to help the browsers recognize the search engine. Not so in Opera. Right click in any search box and choose “Create search…” and automagically you have a new entry in your search engines. You can also associate keywords with engines. So for dictionary.com, you might associate “d”. Then you can type “d word” in the address bar, and Opera will take you there.

Mouse Gestures
Of all my favorite features, this one takes the most getting used to. Essentially mouse gestures allow you to navigate or modify the window using only the mouse. Just another small feature that can save you a bunch of time.

Trash Can
Have you ever closed a tab, only to realize a few moments later that you still need it? In other browsers you have to try to get back to the page again. In Opera, just click on the Trash Can, and choose the tab you closed. So damn handy.

Site Preferences
This feature gives you the ability to modify preferences only for a given site. Want to turn off javascript just for one site? Opera lets you do it. Not a feature you’ll use daily, but it can definitely come in handy.

Like I said, I could go on! If you like what you see, you should definitely try Opera. It’s completely free, and there are no advertisements inside (much older versions had a banner). And if you’re afraid your favorite sites won’t load correctly, don’t worry. It’s increasingly rare to find a site that doesn’t work correctly in Opera. And actually, Opera is the only Acid2-compliant browser for Windows!

In fact, I have just one problem with Opera – my del.icio.us page loads incredibly slowly. I have no idea why, but I’d like to get it fixed. If you have any ideas, let me know!

UPDATE: It appears Opera simply doesn’t like my huge list of tags. I changed my del.icio.us preferences to display as a cloud, and only tags with at least 5 items, and now it loads very quickly!

Read: Opera

Notes for 3/18/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

Oilers lose ten straight

Post ImageJust got back from the Oilers game. The Blues were in town tonight, complete with a bunch of ex-Oilers like Dvorak and Brewer (both of whom got points tonight). The Oil came into the game having lost their last nine games, and I was hoping my presence would stop the streak from going to ten. It didn’t.

You can read a game recap here. Dickson scored the tickets from a friend, and they were excellent – section 136, row 3. I don’t think I have ever sat that close before. We were right near the attacking zone blue line. It’s quite different seeing someone get crunched on the boards when you’re that close, let me tell you!

We also had club access, which is basically a mini-concourse downstairs. The club access is really nice because the bathrooms and bars are far less busy than those on the main concourse. We didn’t see any food vendors though, so maybe you still have to go back upstairs for that.

Anyway, we lost in overtime (I was hoping to see a shootout). That makes ten straight, just one away from matching the franchise record. The only positives now are seeing the young guys get some experience (and goals).

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Wi-Fi Heartbeat

Post ImageOh man I totally need to get me one of these! BoingBoing posted yesterday about a DIY project that can give you a “sixth sense for wireless networks.” Here’s the project description:

This project is for a small electronic unit that allows the user to sense the presence and relative signal strength of wireless hotspots. It can be worn as a pendant or carried in a pocket. It is “always on” and communicates the presence and signal strength of an in-range hotspot by way of sequences of pulses – like a heartbeat you can feel. The stronger and faster the “heartbeat”, the stronger the wireless signal detected.

Just imagine walking around a city’s downtown with this thing on…it would never stop pulsing! Very cool idea though.

Read: BoingBoing

Video Stuff: Vlog Blind Date, Mesh 07 Contest, Soar & Wow

Post ImageHere are a few interesting video-related posts I have come across in the last day or so:

Vlog Blind Date
This is a really funny and well done video featuring Justine Ezarik. She goes on a blind date with…it’s a surprise! You have to watch to find out. The video was made to promote JumpCut from the looks of things (and with their help, evidently).

The mesh Video Contest
Want to go to mesh for free? Have a talent for creating great video? Then this contest is for you! All you’ve got to do is submit a video that captures the essence of Web 2.0 – “whatever that means to you.” If you win, you get flown to Toronto for free, with the hotel and conference tickets all taken care of. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

Comparing “Soar” and “Wow”
In this post, Long Zheng takes a look at two commercials: one for Windows XP, and one for Windows Vista. It’s quite amazing how different they are. While both are good, I think the Windows XP one is better.

My love-hate relationship with Twitter

Post ImageI have a love-hate relationship with Twitter going on. Actually, in a lot of ways, it’s quite similar to my love-hate relationship with Outlook 2007. They’re both extremely useful, yet both horribly slow. Let me explain.

Twitter is great for quick status messages, or jotting down thoughts that don’t deserve an entire blog post. I love that Twitter allows me to use it however I want to. For example, I went to get my free coffee from Starbucks earlier, and wanted to Twitter it. Except I couldn’t. The first problem is that for some reason, Twitter seems to ignore my cell phone. Then it will magically start working, only to stop again a couple days later. Worse still, the Twitter website is inaccessible far too often. Like right now, I can’t get the site to load. It totally sucks, I hate it.

The question of whether Twitter would be useful during an earthquake makes me laugh – it can’t be useful if it’s not up! And thus far, it seems to have a hard time accepting my random coffee-related messages, let alone important messages sent during a disaster.

I would use Twitter so much more if it actually worked as expected.

A simple tip to make Outlook 2007 faster

Post ImageI use Outlook all the time, so the many problems I have found with the newest version drive me nuts. Especially the speed issue. As a result, I have spent far too much time looking for a solution. I think I finally found one though as Tris explains:

One of the big problems folks have been having with Office 2007 is Outlook. Frankly, it can be a serious dog. Sluggish, serious performance lags. All the things you don’t want in your “latest and greatest” e-mail client.

Looks like, thanks to Mack D. Male, there is a solution…I did this last night and I think it’s working.

I appreciate the nod Tris, but I’m just the messenger. Full thanks should go to Monty and Dell. Who’s Monty? Beats me. But he posted the message on the Microsoft discussion groups with the solution he got from Dell. Instructions are in the post, and in Tris’ post too, but basically the tip is to turn off all the addins in Outlook. You need to be running Outlook as an Administrator when you do this, and you should also restart Outlook after you turn them off.

I have tried this tip on two machines – one where Outlook is a POP3 client, and one where Outlook connects to Exchange. The biggest difference appears on the first one, but both seem faster when selecting messages, changing views, etc. Downloading mail doesn’t appear much faster yet. The only addin I left checked is the Windows Search Indexing.

Microsoft still needs to fix Outlook, but hopefully this tip will help you in the meantime. Let me know if it works for you!

Read: Pimp Your Work

Election 2008 at Yahoo! News

Post ImageAs you probably know, I have been recording a weekly podcast covering the latest Hillary Clinton related headlines. I like doing it, because it gives me a chance to keep up on the news myself. I have found that gathering the stories takes a bit of effort though, so I was excited to see this from Yahoo:

At Yahoo! News, we’ve pulled together an über-site to help you engage in the 2008 campaign. In addition to the latest news videos, headlines, and political commentary, you’ll find dedicated pages for each candidate.

Beautiful – it’s almost exactly what I have been looking for! Here’s the page dedicated to Hillary Clinton. I’ll definitely be making use of this site on the weekend. Yahoo says they are going be adding even more stuff too, so it’ll only get better.

Read: Yodel Anecdotal

Starbucks Records featuring Sir Paul?

Post ImageThe New York Post seems to think that Starbucks is gearing up to launch a record label, called Starbucks Records. Creative, isn’t it? Of course a record label needs musicians, and to that end, Starbucks is going after none other than Sir Paul McCartney himself (via 901am):

Starbucks Records is expected sign, record and produce its own artists rather than licensing songs from other labels.

That’s where Sir Paul comes in. The wrinkly rocker not only fits with the Starbucks demographic, but also is a free agent not signed to any label, sources said.

The reason Starbucks thinks they can do this is their targeted, efficient distribution channel. I mean they have stores on just about every corner in major cities, and they attract a very specific clientele.

If it’s just putting CDs on racks in their stores though, Starbucks is missing a big opportunity. The Post article mentions a good idea:

There have been talks about putting kiosks in its shops so that customers can shop for music and create their own compilations while waiting for their $5 cup of joe.

That would be awesome! There should also be a DRM-free digital component to the project.

To say they are creating a “record label” sounds fairly antiquated to me. Starbucks should use this opportunity to redefine the term “record label.”

Read: New York Post