Let Google Do The Work For You

One of the major challenges in web scraping is figuring out which page to scrape in the first place. Here’s a scenario: Say you need to pull some information for the film 30 Days of Night off IMDB. It would be great if you knew in advance what the URL was — something you could … Read more

Sort Apple Mail Messages Using the Keyboard

I don’t know how I ever missed this Apple Mail plugin, but you absolutely have to give MsgFiler a try if you’re a heavy keyboard user. It lets you move messages into any folder in your mailbox using only the keyboard. Press ⌘9 to pull up a TextMate-like list of your mailbox folders. Then, select … Read more

Introducing Appcaster + OpenFeedback

Today I’m proud to announce the release of two new open source projects: Appcaster and OpenFeedback. I’ve been working on them off and on for over nine months, so I’m very excited to finally see them out the door. Appcaster, which I’ve written about before, is a web-based dashboard for indie Mac developers. It’s designed … Read more

Scraping IMDB With PHP

For an upcoming project, I need to pull in metadata about movies and TV shows — genres, plot summaries, actors, etc. The de-facto source is, of course, IMDB. Unfortunately, they’re behind the times and don’t offer an API to access their data. (At least not one that I’ve ever found.) So, here’s a quick PHP … Read more

Two Weeks With Drobo

So it’s been two weeks since my Drobo arrived from Amazon. I’m sure they’re selling like hotcakes, but I don’t personally know anyone else with one — I figured I might as well gather my thoughts and post a review. Hopefully this will give a good overview if you’re not already familiar with the device. … Read more

Quickly Evaluate Your Referral Links

Clever solution from Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software to speed up reading referral links pointing to your website. His script highlights the relevant sections so you can quickly scan down to what was said about you.

Using Amazon S3 as a Content Delivery Network

[Update: You might also be interested in s3up for storing static content in Amazon S3.] Earlier this week I posted about my experience redesigning this site, focusing on optimizing my page load times using YSlow. A large part of that process involved storing static content (images, stylesheets, JavaScript) on Amazon S3 and using it like … Read more

Building a Better Website With Yahoo!

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally pushed out a new design for this website last month. I rebuilt it from the ground up using two key tools from the Yahoo! Developer Network: The new design is really a refresh of the previous look with a focus on readability and speed. I want … Read more

Dark City Director’s Cut

One of the best movies ever made just got even better. The original 1998 release ran 96 minutes and the new director’s cut is about 15 minutes longer, clocking in at 111 minutes. The new cut supposedly has improved special effects and a new and improved sound mix . . . the new release also … Read more