Here’s a quick Pepper plugin called Holy Crap! I wrote for Shaun Inman’s Mint software. The idea is simple: it sends you an email alert whenever it detects your site has become popular on del.icio.us, Digg, etc. Think of it as an early warning system. It’s easy to add your own warnings to the Pepper. Out of the box it…
Bank of America has a great online banking system. It’s why I switched to them three years ago. I’ve often wanted them to provide an RSS feed of recent transactions on my account — I’ve emailed them multiple times, but no such luck. So, today I finally got around to doing what I always do — I wrote a script…
For better or worse, most of my coworkers live and die by their Exchange calendars. Unfortunately, as a developer working on a Mac 24/7, there aren’t many options for dealing with the barrage of Outlook invites I receive each day. I can either use Entourage which only kinda-sorta-works, or I can just deal with it and transcribe each invite manually…
A favorite theory among tech pundits is that the company that will eventually dethrone Google doesn’t exist yet. Rather, it’ll be the brainchild of former Googlers who quit when their current job becomes boring or their stock options vest. Imagine a mass exodus – hundreds of very rich, very smart engineers with nothing but free time and creativity on their…
Uncov is good. But sometimes they’re great. The proliferation of stupid is the cancer that is killing the internet. In the quest to re-implement every conceivable desktop application in Ajax, you mental midgets are setting computing back 10 years. The worst part about it is, you think that you’re innovating.
For seven years I ran the largest Stephen King site on the net. When I sold itin 2005 I thought I put that world behind me for good. I had a final article printed in Lighthouse Magazine and moved on. But, like most things, it has a way of creeping back into my life. I had the good fortune of…
Unlike previous version of OS X, Leopard doesn’t come with PHP’s PEAR repository installed by default. Luckily, installing is quick and painless. From a command line: Just press enter to select all the default choices except for the installation directory. For that, use /usr/local. (Thanks, Steve.) Next we need to modify our php.ini file to include the new PEAR files:…
Google has an experimental search page where you can test drive new search result layouts. My favorite is the Keyboard Shortcuts option. This lets you navigate and view search resultsusing only the keyboard – no mouse required! It’s a huge benefit for Quicksilver fans. Now that Yahoo! is my default search engine, I desperately didn’t want to give up the…
Earlier today I was asked what I look for in a job. Specifically, what it would take to retain me past the typical “three year burnout” period tech workers often find themselves up against. The usual answers came to mind: a fun corporate environment, challenging assignments, working with people smarter than myself. Those are all important factors, but they’re also…
Anders Pearson posted an interesting programming puzzle today on Thraxil.org: Take the names of two U.S. States, mix them all together, then rearrange the letters to form the names of two other U.S. States. What states are these? He found out about it from Mark Nelson who, in turn, heard it on NPR. It’s not a terribly difficult riddle if…