10 Places left for the rails rumble
The rails rumble team inform us (on their blog) that they manage to open more Rails Rumble seat.
There are now 10 seat left. Hurry up.
Tag Archives: web
WiseStamp, an easy way to implement HTML signature in your emails
Are you looking to attach signature on your Gmail / Aol Mail / Hotmail / Yahoo Mail, without pain ?
WiseStamp Firefox Exension is for you.
This little extension will add a new button on the bottom right of your Firefox status bar. You’ll just have to do a right click, edit, and start your new signature creation.
A basic HTML editor (with Bold, Underline, Link, Center, Image … ) and some very useful Instant Messenger and WebServices helpers icons, like Facebook or linkedin, will be at your disposal on the WiseStamp interface.
Once saved, you’re new signature will be automatically sent with your emails.
The only problem is that WiseStamp is only available for Firefox for the moment.
I was looking for a simple solution for a long time now, thanks to Eric from www.presse-citron.net.
Here is my new signature :
Starting a new project ? Need to find a domain name, bustaname
Like a lot of other website, BustAName will help you on the hard task of finding the perfect domain name.
But BustAName has a little something in plus.
The design is good, usability is really good, response time is very good, with the ajax form you’ll be able to try a lot of combinations in a short time.
Basically you have 2 choices :
- Add some word on a list, and the website will do every combination possible with all words and check if they are free
- Just check a domain on a .com / .org / .net
Another very good service to bookmark.
Typetester.org, the ultimate tool to test your typo on the web
I’ve just discovered the kind of really useful web application, which is really useful.
With Typetester you can test and compare the render of the most used font directly on your browser.
Really easy to use, you can start with a default text (the Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet) and play with fonts size, color, alignment …
3 Columns for 3 different renders will help you decide which font to use on your website.
Easy and useful, Typetester is a very good application to bookmark.
Are you looking for some icons ? 7500 is it enough ?
Ok, it’s not the best viewer organisation we ever saw, but this guy done an excellent job by doing an huge selection of 7500 awesome icons.
Event for you web apps, your desktop or your documents, this selection is amazing.
Just give a look here at Wyd Studios Blog
How to be productive on spare time
Last Sunday I was working on my current personal project, when, during a tea break, I thought about “how to be productive on your personal projects”.
Problematic :
We all have a life (I hope for you), and we all need asocial life. But as a web developer, you also have some dreams and some personal “killer web application who are going to control the world” …
But you have also a day job, which allows you to pay for noodles, skate board, geek gadgets, beers … whatever you want.
Some of you have a partner, as myself (and she is a source of inspiration with some very good ideas) and others have a whole family.
You may also have some extra activities … (running, skate, beer … see point 2 ;))
So, how to be productive in this 3 lives a day …?
I try to be well organize, and to have a good balance between work, rest and entertainment.
Save some time :
My day job (this one which pays for noodles) is to develop and imagine the future interface of HP data storage products end user interface.
So I’m on my computer(s) all the day, and I can take some breaks to search for information I know I’ll need for the development process, I can Google for plugins or problems solving, and finally I can take some time for design inspiration or development monitoring.
Doing this during my day job time, can help me save up to 5 hours a week, and helps me focus on the development part when the coding night comes.
More free time :
Sometimes, when we come back home, my peanut needs some time for her … but it’s never too long.
I try to use this free time to do some express work like HTML/CSS or plugins install/quick test, blog entries.
In fact, I do all the things I know I can stop in the middle and come back on later.
Using this free time, helps me save up to 4 hours a week.
The development part :
Coding and testing is the biggest part of the application development process.
I try to spend 2 nights in the week and 1 day in the week end at coding.
And because I’ve used all the spare time to do the research, to think about how to solve problems and to scaffold the design part of the pages I’ll be working on, I’m very productive during these working sessions.
And to be more productive, I close my Gmail/GTalk, as well as my Twitter and anything that can disturb me. I only keep music, code editors and some pdf open.
The pros :
Using this organisation let me have some time with my peanut for discovering England, cooking, watching films, whatever we want, because I can keep 2 or 3 nigths a week and 1 week end day with her.
I have time to do sport and have some fresh air.
During my day work time and my personal work time I’m very productive. That’s because I avoid mixing them.
The cons :
Even if this organization seems to work quite well, there are some cons :
- If you make the addition of all the working hours, you’ll have up to 25 hours dedicated to your application, with ‘only’ 15 hours a week for the real development.
- When you have a coding problem, you know this
kind of little bugs that can take hours to be solved, it’s like if
you’ve lost a week of work. - You need to have a solid idea of what you have
to do every day, and be well organised in your development process
between test, development and design. - You need to wake up in the morning after the night work day …
What about you ? What’s your organization method to work on personnal project ?
Find jobs in the UK with Twitter
That’s a fact, Twitter changes the way we access the information. We are not only supposed to search for information, but now the information have to come to us.
If you’re living in the UK, working on the web development, being a fan of twitter, just have a look to these contacts, they are a very good resource for job hunting :
- https://twitter.com/RailsJobs
- https://twitter.com/Web20Contracts
- https://twitter.com/LAMPContracts
- https://twitter.com/RailsContracts
What about you ? Do you have others twitter job hunting contact to follow ?
Google chrome should be launched today
This will be the buzz of the day, announced on the Google Blog, Google is launching their Open Source web browser today, based on Webkit (as Safari).
As every Google products, the idea is to have a product with lots of innovations, but, we can assume a lot of interactions with the existing Google Apps, and the ‘in development’ android applications.
To me, it looks likes a loop. In the first time, you win the battle of search engines to become an incontrovertible actor on the ads market, then you win the online application battle, which is the future of desktop applications, and now you just want to control the enter point to all these stuff, the web browser, the real lastest desktop application.
For the moment, I’ll just give a try to this new Open Source browser, as another software, but you need to be aware off who is doing the application, and why.
And you what about you ? What do you think about the Google dominance in the web industry ?
Edit : As usual, Linux and OsX users will have to wait, only Windows will be supported for the moment.
Because we (sometime) need help, dashboard are here !
I’ve just found the ultimate web designer/developer dashboard via the excellent French Babozor’s blog.
I used to visit the ForWebDesigner dashboard but the presentation of the Agencytool’s one is just gorgeous.
Bookmarked immediately and let’s give him a chance.
Edit : After a better view, the presentation of the Agencytool is gorgeous but :
- No as many links as the ForWebDesigner
- No RSS for the new entries
I’ll keep them both, but, even if the FWD presentation is not so pretty, it seems to be better.
