26 Miles

Google Mashup-O-Matic

// June 8th, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

Well…almost.

For all of you aspiring to make your first million by wedding your livelihood to Google’s P&L’s … they have a new product for you.

Google has released the Google Mashup Editor to beta.

Simply put, it does this:

The Google Mashup Editor provides simple tools and features that allow you to create mashups in minutes.

• A set of tags that compiles into AJAX UI components
• Syntax highlighting
• Autocomplete of gm tags by pressing the tab button
• Quick access to documentation for any tag by pressing F2
• File upload and management
• Error checking and notification

So, Google once again has made it stupid-simple to begin monetizing SaaS PIG’s and launch a Micro-ISV empire! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

Optimizing WordPress For High Traffic Volume

// June 1st, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

Ran across an excellent article today on TurboChargedCMS about a combination of techniques to speed up WordPress using, in part a Squid reverse proxy (learn how to setup a squid reverse proxy server here).

As an aside, I’ve also heard good things from friends who have used the open-source PHP accelerator eAccelerator.

Sync your Firefox Bookmarks With FoxMarks

// May 3rd, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Technology

There are many ways to solve the bookmark syncing issue (including the Google Toolbar), but I like the one my friend Geof over at McKinney Station Design showed me.

FoxMarks is a Firefox extension that will automagically sync your Firefox bookmarks with all the browsers you use. If you’re at someone else’s computer, no problem, just login to your account at my.foxmarks.com and see all your bookmarks there.

Better Gmail

// April 27th, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

Found this today and fell in love. Better Gmail does a host of things that help make GMail even better.

They’ve compiled the best Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail into one Firefox extension which adds a lot to your GMail experience.

I really like the other GMail skins and colored labeling, but I’m just now digging under the hood.

Check it out!

Programming Language Wars, Part One

// March 7th, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

Tim O’Reilly has an article on O’Reilly Radar entitled Programming Language Wars, Part One, where he discusses books sales on the major programming languages.

Interestingly, book sales in those areas fell overall YoY for the last year, with the exceptions being Actionscript (Javascript for Flash), JavaScript, Ruby, and SQL. JavaScript was up sharply, driven (as he says) by the interest in Ajax programming.

Even my beloved PHP was off, but then why would anyone buy a book when the online docs are some of the best in the industry?