Posts from April 2010

A friend and I have decided to build a web service/site/whatever the kids are calling them these days.  A thing on the web to help you out from time to time.

As a result, we’re looking for a web host with great service, reliability, and scalability, and I was curious about your experiences.  Here are a few details on what we need:

• A managed server where patches are applied automatically.  Neither of us are Linux experts, and we want something secured for us without us having to worry about whether some patch breaks the system. 
• mySQL with phpMyAdmin.  (Don’t judge.)
• PHP w/cURL, mySQLi, and mCrypt, as well as an editable php.ini file.
• Apache!
• Some sort of CVS (Subversion and the like) built in.
• Bonus: some experience on the hosting side with the ability to escalate to Memcached and other noSQL techniques.

The mySQL and PHP bits are of course incredibly common, but still, no point not mentioning those requirements.  In our case, the bigger issue is really “Who can we trust to provide support for what may turn out to be a reasonably large-scale service?”  So the features aren’t nearly as important as the reliability and trust.

Thus: what say you, friends?  Who rates as a great place to plant a web service seed that could one day grow into a mighty forest?  Let me know!

• Seeking Hosting Advice was published on Thursday, April 29th, 2010.
• It was assigned to the Projects and Web categories.
• There have been fifty-nine replies.

It’s been a week since I got back from An Event Apart Seattle 2010, and I’m still aglow about it.

I know it’s something a cliché for conference organizers to say “it was the best show we ever done did!” but damn.  It really was.  That’s down to the speakers, of course.  We’ve done our best to find great speakers with interesting things to say, and I’d like to think we’ve done just that.  This went to a new level, though.

You know how a band can have one of those nights where somehow, everything seems to go just right, where every jam riff builds on the others, where the music hits an indescribable groove, where the energy feeds on and multiplies itself until everyone in the place gets charged with it?  That’s what happened in Seattle, building throughout the whole show.  You could just feel it, buzzing in the room and through everyone there.  Every time a speaker finished I’d say to myself, half in gratitude and half in awe, “That is the best talk I’ve ever seen that person give.”

That was only half the experience, of course.  The other half was the audience itself, our amazing and wonderful attendees, who are as much colleagues as anything else.  They’re whip-smart, professional, veteran members of the industry.  That’s the demographic Jeffrey and I set out to address, and they’ve come to learn from and teach and challenge us to excel at every show.  Several speakers, some of them long practiced at the art of public speaking, have told me that they get uniquely nervous before going onto the stage at An Event Apart.  I absolutely agree.  To return to the band metaphor, it’s like doing a show for your fellow musicians.  While that’s comforting in a collegial way, it’s also nerve-wracking in a way other shows aren’t.

And the conversations!  Over lunch, in the hall between talks, at the party, it was non-stop talk with smart, funny, insightful colleagues who know their stuff through and through and are as keen to learn more as they are to share what they know.

So I can’t thank our speakers and attendees enough.  You are all incredible.  It was an honor and a privilege just to be there in your combined presence.

• Seattle Memories was published on Friday, April 16th, 2010.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Work categories.
• There have been six replies.

Here’s some fun.  (For a sufficiently nerdy definition of “fun”.)

1. Launch Safari 4 or Chrome 4.

2. Drag Videotate to the bookmarks bar.

3. Go opt into the YouTube HTML5 beta.

4. Find your favorite YouTube video.  Or maybe your least favorite.  Here’s one of my favorites: Walk Don’t Run.  Here’s another that’s not necessarily a favorite, but it seems like a fairly appropriate choice.

   Note: not all videos are available via HTML5, even when you’re opted in.  If you get a Flash video, the bookmarklet won’t work.

5. Once the video has started playing, activate the “Videotate” bookmarklet.

6. Enjoy.

Thanks to Simon WIllison for tweeting the JS I modified, and Jeremy Keith for helping me realize it would be easy to do during the HTML5 portion of A Day Apart.

• Turning Web Video On Its Head was published on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010.
• It was assigned to the Browsers, DOM, Humor, and JavaScript categories.
• There have been fifteen replies.