Monday, February 2nd, 2009
I’m going to start developing sites using a CSS framework. I’ve read lots of arguments for and against and I feel like I won’t be delving into super complicated content anytime soon and therefore a prebuilt framework should speed things up a lot.
That’s really the goal that myself and Rob and going for, speed. We’re aiming to create inexpensive, customized, and well designed websites for small businesses and organizations. In order to keep prices down and profits up that means we need to be fast. I think that using a CSS framework will help me out.
I watched Yahoo’s YUI introduction video by Nate Koechley and it taught me a lot. Yes I have to submit to their div names and whatnot but I think it’ll speed things up.
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
I just finished watching The Hour, Canada’s great pop culture news show on CBC. Tonight they interview Robert Munsch, one of my favourite authors from childhood. On the show they are giving away a signed copy of Love You Forever, also one of my favourite and first books my mom would read to me. Here’s hoping I get it!
The Hour
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
I put up the PayPal page for our Free WiFi Project. Now anyone is able to easily order a router from us.
I made the “executive” decision to start calling each device a Community Router. Alternatively you could say Community HotSpot or Community Node, just throw Community in there because that’s what it’s all about 
Whether you want to help out at home or work you can order a community router on our website for $60. We’ll send you a box in the mail with instructions and everything you need to get started.
Tell your friends and let’s get Edmonton connected!
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
I’m almost floating in the cloud. I wrote earlier about ditching my laptop and I just found another awesome app that does the file syncing I’ve been longing for.
It’s called Dropbox, and it’s amazing. Essentially Dropbox allows one to create a special folder on their hard drive which will sync anything in there with whatever computers you have your Dropbox account on. If you run a Mac, Windows and a Linux box you can have speedy up to date sharing of files. All of your files are also kept remotely on Dropbox’s servers where you can access them anywhere.
Your Dropbox web interface allows you to share folders and files with friends or even with the public. They also handle images really well with auto creation of galleries just by dropping photos, or folders with photos into the Photos folder in your Dropbox.
I used to play around with trying to sync my USB keys with my laptop but things kept screwing up. Dropbox is another slick example of how you can ditch your laptop.
I use the following services which I can essentially operate from anything with a web browser and an Internet connection:
- For my homepage I use Netvibes. It’s really awesome and displays my RSS feeds, Digg, email, and bookmarks in a great way.
- My main email address is hosted with Google Apps for your Domain. It’s basically a free and private GMail install that directly uses my ericwarnke.com domain instead of a gmail.com account. I would even pay for this if I had to.
- Along with Google Apps several of my friends and I use Google Docs to take notes together in class as well as collaborate on all the group assignments we need to do. Working on the same document at the same time kicks ass. We tried Microsoft Office Live for a bit as well but the versioning ended up sending us back to Docs.
- All my bookmarks are kept on Delicious. I’ve used this for a few years and their Firefox plugin is a life saver. I’ll never use any browser based bookmarks again.
- Now I use Dropbox
So my email, bookmarks, homepage, and now my files are all going to be available basically whenever I need them!
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
The Delicious auto-blogging was getting annoying so I turned it off. If they ever add a “forblog” tag I would definitely turn it back on. However, right now I just bookmark a ton of stuff that I don’t want to have to question having on my blog!