sugarenia.com

OK, now, if someone came right up to you and asked you…

“if you were lost (pun intended) on a deserted island, which three presentations would you take with you, in the form of a nicely put together .pdf file?”

…what would you reply?

I’d say, without a doubt:

1. Grids are Good by Khoi Vinh, the one that started it all.
2. Interface Design Juggling by Dan Cederholm, the one that’s fun and mixes all the cool stuff together.
3. (a recent favourite) Details Make the Difference by Dan Rubin, because it analyzes properly why your design sucks and theirs doesn’t.

Release Candidate: Steve Smith’s GBC07 presentation. Hey Steve! *waves*

khoi vinh, dan cederholm, dan rubin

19-year old Chris Vincent from down there Brisbane, Australia put together a really interesting programming tool aka cheat sheet aka PHPBench.com, by comparing the different approaches we usually adopt while coding in PHP.

Apart from the extremely useful results showcased there, the whole page is a piece of simplicity sex, with to-the-point typography and clear colour cues for everything.

Since I don’t consider myself a fluent PHP programmer, imagine my shock when I saw that the while(list => each) loop is *so* much faster than my beloved foreach in modifying loops. 

Foreach, you’re out!

P.S. I guess you can take them all results with a grain of salt, but they seem pretty much well worked on and accurate. Thoughts?

Now here’s a nifty idea to make sure your users have read well (and understood) your terms of use. Test them!

Newly arrived AudioJungle.net actually tests the users’ knowledge of its TOU upon hitting (hastily, I must say) ‘Agree‘, before starting to upload their own music files.

For a music sharing site that’s bound to face some copyright issues sooner or later, it’s a nice addition, even if kinda annoying.

audiojungle, terms of use, quiz

I didn’t really get too much into Friendfeed until recently - eventhough I have my Twitterrific on (and checking) all of my home computing time, I never thought that *everything* my net pals do would be interesting enough for me to watch obsessively.

So I decided to give Twhirl and Alert Thingy, the two major AIR FriendFeed apps, a go the other day. And boy I was confused, and disappointed, and pissed.

First of all, Alert Thingy just won’t work for me. It will load but it won’t connect, it just sits there stuck in a “connecting” state. I updated my Adobe AIR, I restarted, I did everything I could but it wouldn’t get unstuck. So long, much-hyped-about Alert Thingy.

Twhirl, well… Twhirl Twhirl. Aren’t you a looker (not). Well, it works, but, meeeeeh… *any attempt of proper argumenting ends here - I just don’t like the way it looks*

Then I was prompted to MySocial 24×7, which is a Firefox extension for keeping an eye on Friendfeed. I never use Firefox but I installed to check it out, and there it was. A nice little subtle extension, with likes and comments right from the sidebar, with a pretty and cosy interface and, well, right where you usually socialize: in your browser. I loved it. Plus, it works in Firefox 3.

So I won’t be a cool kid and won’t use AIR applications, for the time being. I’m perfectly fine with most apps in my Mac, and AIR applications are just so off its usual interface it’s off-putting. I’ll stick to extensions and native applications, thank you very much, kthnxbai.

P.S. Please notice that I don’t actually use Firefox for my day-to-day browsing, Safari is my browser of choice. But MySocial 24×7 is a cool extension, nevertheless. Just don’t install it on your work PC, huge time waster!

twhirl, alert thingy, friendfeed, mysocial 24×7, adobe air

When the week has been rushed and busy… there’s one way to shake the week off your back on Friday night.

It can be found in my muxtape (cool site by the way).

Warning! Takes-your-steam-off song ahead.

[thanks nuc, oh you sponsor of nice music that I haven’t heard of]

kinobe, hammock island