Do you take pictures with your iPhone?
Then you should check out iTookThisToday.

News

Can Mozilla Change the Way We Browse the Web?

August 28th, 2008 - Mozilla has released a pre-beta Firefox plugin called Ubiquity that aims to change the way users interact with the web. Think of it as "developerless mashups" or "the web as database" instead of a collection of HTML pages. Or maybe it's more aptly described as a screen-scraper for non-programmers.

Yes, the examples are a bit contrived, but I have to admit that the video does demonstrate what might finally be the beginning of the paradigm shift that futurists have been predicting for a while now. Mozilla is touting Ubiquity as a new way to browse the web, but I think that they are just dumbing down the message for the masses. To me, it's really the first step toward a realization of what the semantic web people have been advocating for years - namely, a shift from telling your computer what you are looking for to telling your computer what you want to do.

Think of it like this... Right now, if you wanted to find the cheapest flight from your local airport to San Franciso, you'd probably spend an hour performing searches on Travelocity, Priceline, and Orbitz. If you were super-savvy, you might even set yourself up on Kayak. If you finally find a flight, you are faced with a fairly tedious purchase process.

When you think about it, that kinda sucks.

What if it wasn't like that? What if you could just go type "book flight from here to san fran for next Monday" into your browser? Shouldn't your computer know what "here", "san fran", and "next Monday" mean? Shouldn't it know your bank balance and credit card info? Shouldn't it know that you are a vegetarian and that you prefer the exit row, as long as it's not a middle seat? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. It kind of reminds me of Captain Kirk shouting across the bridge: "Computer, initiate evasive maneuvers!" Wouldn't it be so much better if your computer knew who you were, and what you meant, and could just do what you wanted?

Look, I am fully aware that I'm a complete web geek. I know that things that I find compelling are probably not going to be considered useful by the general population for quite some time - in fact, maybe never. Furthermore, I know that the cool kids at Mozilla are 100X bigger geeks that I could ever hope to be. That being the case, it's reasonable to assume that something like Ubiquity might end up in the same category as learning to speak Klingon. However, I think this could be the start of something different. Ubiquity itself will prolly not become, well... ubiquitous, because it's too far ahead of the curve, but - and this is the proverbial BIG BUT - the concept looks like the beginning of the next step in the evolution of the web.

Photosynth Public Release Looks Amazing

August 25th, 2008 - A few months ago, I saw a video of Blaise Aguera y Arcas on TED demoing something called Photosynth that Microsoft has snatched up. The demo was jaw-dropping, but I figured it would just die a slow death in Redmond and I completely forgot about it. Well, I just heard that the public release was a few days ago, and this version is just as incredible as the demo.

Sure, it's Windows only for now, and there isn't a ton of great content yet, but I found a couple of synths of Boston where I went to college and it was like the next best thing to being there. It's hard to describe, but the experience of "flying" through a synth is sort of like pausing a video, and being able to zoom into the cool areas of the screen for more detail. Well, not exactly - you kind of have to see it. It's a whole new way to view digital images. If you saw Blade Runner, it's like the scene where he zooms into the refelctions in the photo of the crime scene. As far as I'm concerned, this makes Google Street View look like a flip book. Keep your eye on Photosynth - someone is going to figure out how to pull an image feed from Flickr and synth every interesting portion of the earth. I can see it now - Micro$oft will be selling ads on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in no time.

PHP 5 Certified

June 18th, 2008 - Today was my first experience with the PHP certification exam and let me tell you - it was tough. Weeks of studying (and years of development work) apparently paid off, because I - thankfully - received a passing grade. If you are considering taking the test, I can highly recommend php|architect's "Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide" by Davey Shafik and Ben Ramsey. I also found the Vulcan online sample tests to be very helpful.

FileMaker 9 Certified

June 13th, 2008 - I finally had a chance to take the FileMaker 9 certification exam and I'm happy to report that I passed with flying colors. I have been doing mostly CWP with FileMaker for the last year or more, so I was a bit nervous that I'd be a rusty on the rest of the application. Much to my relief, it's apparently a lot like riding a bike.

iTookThisToday.com™ Traffic Up 1000%

June 11th, 2008 - After being posted as a staff pick on the front page of the web app section of Apple.com, traffic at iTookThisToday.com increased ten-fold. Although newer web app entries have since pushed it off the front page, iT3.com is currently in the top ten most popular social networking web apps on Apple.com.

Parnership with iTookThisToday.com™

June 2nd, 2008 - I have decided to partner with iTookThisToday.com as CTO of iT3, LLC. iT3 was interested in building an iPhone photo sharing website and felt that what I had done with tittr.com was a perfect starting point. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we joined forces to bring what we think will be the most drop dead simple photo sharing site for mobile phone photographers.

JS to join Filemaker Advisor editorial council

May 30th, 2008 - I have been asked to join the editorial council of FileMaker Advisor as a technical editor, a position that I proudly accepted. Other members of the editorial council include Chris Moyer, Bob Bowers, Brian Dunning, and John Mark Osborne - I'm honored to be in such stellar company.

iPhone SDK Too Good to Be True?

March 9th, 2008 - Earlier this week, Apple announced the availability of the software development kit for the iPhone and iPod touch. As a developer of web apps for the iPhone, I was very excited about this. I admit that I was not looking forward to learning Objective-C but the thought of being able to build local applications on the iPhone was tempting enough to make me download the SDK and the extensive library of training videos.

As it turns out, I might not have to learn Objective-C after all. Evidently, the Apple team has not forgotten about us lowly web app devs and has made some "too good to be true" improvements to Safari on iPhone that I can hardly wait to use. For example:

  • Full-screen mode which hides the default location bar and tool bar at the top and bottom of the browser.
  • Native CSS support for transforms, transitions, and animations with -webkit-transform, -webkit-transition, and -animation CSS selectors. These are hardware accellerated which means no more choppy javascript callbacks to support sliding pages back and forth - woo hoo!
  • Offline data storage that goes well beyond cookies. It has a simple JavaScript API that supports SQL querys to the client-side data store. For example:

    executeSql("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM OfflineNotes")

    It has the same security as frames and iframes, and even supports transactions for crying out loud!
  • Gesture events such as gesturestart, gesturechange, and gestureend. You can use JavaScript to handle and interrogate the events just like you would for mouse events.
  • Upgrades to Dashcode that make it a full featured, drag and drop IDE for building, testing, and debugging a browser-based application.

Like I said, this all sounds too good to be true, so check back often to see what I find when I finish downloading the 2GB(!) SDK. Thanks Apple! Great job.

Jonathan to speak at DevCon 2008

January 31st, 2008 - I'm very happy to announce that I've been selected to present two sessions at the 13th annual FileMaker Developer Conference. My sessions are entitled "Securing your FileMaker Web Applications" and "Building iPhone Applications with FileMaker and PHP". This year's convention will be July 13-16 at the JW Marriott Resort & Spa in Phoenix, AZ. I hope to see you there! For more info, please visit filemaker.com.

FileMaker Addict Interview

January 24st, 2008 - Tim Dietrich of FileMaker Addict interviewed me via email earlier this week and has just published the exchange on his popular FileMaker blog.

FileMaker Addict Book Review

January 21st, 2008 - Tim Dietrich of FileMaker Addict posted a very nice review of my book "Web Publishing with PHP and FileMaker 9". Thanks, Tim!.

Steve Jobs triples traffic on Tittr.com

January 16th, 2008 - Whatever you think about Mr. Jobs, you can't deny that people listen to him. Apparently, half the internet was hanging on his every word at the MacWorld keynote yesterday. Many of the micro-blogging sites that were covering the event live were brought down by the huge wave of traffic generated the Apple event. As an apparent side-effect of the excitement, the number of visitor at Tittr.com was just shy of three times higher than the previous record set three days earlier on January 12th, 2008. Thanks, Steve! Please keep up the good work.

The Netherlands discovers Tittr in a big way

January 14th, 2008 - For some unknown reason, traffic to Tittr spiked over the weekend. Closer inspection revealed that the increase in visitors originated almost exclusively from the Netherlands. And not one picture of clogs. Weird ;)

Apple posts GossipDB on iPhone Apps page

December 1st, 2007 - I just noticed that the pageviews of my GossipDB iPhone web application went up about 10,000% and concluded that Apple must have posted the site on their iPhone Apps page. A quick check revealed that my suspicion was correct. When you get a minute, please take a peek for yourself. Thanks Apple!

Tittr goes ".com"

November 20th, 2007 - Last last night, I migrated Tittr from tittr.net over to tittr.com. Last week I bought the .com version of the domain name from a nice guy in the UK. I would have made the change sooner, but it took the registars about 5 days to transfer ownership. I set up the .net site to forward requests to the .com site, so tittr.net users might not even notice the difference. Picture submission emails can be sent to either tittr.net@gmail.com, or tittr@gmail.com.

GossipDB gets an iPhone interface

November 18th, 2007 - Over the weekend I optimized GossipDB for the iPhone. For those who have not seen it, GossipDB is a seachable database of celebrity news items pulled from all the major outlets. Each post has links back to the original site where you can read the full story or view pictures. It looks best on the iPhone (or Safari 3), but you can view it in any modern browser. Beware, it's addictive!

Blogosphere Starts "Tittring"

November 13th, 2007 - A quick google of blogs for the word "Tittr" reveals that a bunch of authors have begun posting about Tittr. From what I can tell, all the reviews are good so far - although I can't understand this one.

Tittr makes Apple's top ten list

November 11th, 2007 - As of 2:37 AM EST, Tittr is number 7 on Apple's list of the ten most popular of social networking web applications for the iPhone.

Tittr gets over 9,000 hits in first week

November 10th, 2007 - Since it's launch on November 4th, Tittr has received over 9,000 page views - the vast majority of which were in the four days after Apple posted a link to the site in it's list of social networking web apps for the iPhone.

Apple posts Tittr on iPhone Apps page

November 5th, 2007 - I can hardly believe it, but Apple has posted my iPhone application on their web site. Tittr is a free service that allows users to send pictures to the Tittr website from their phone via email. The pictures are made publicly available online within seconds. Although primarily aimed at iPhone users, many major brands are supported. You can check it out here.

Web Publishing Book Available

Web Publishing with PHP and FileMaker 9 is now available in stores and at Amazon. You can also purchase a Rough Cut of the book from the O'Reilly website which will give you instant access to the book in PDF format. [more]

Tittr makes Apple's top ten list

November 11th, 2007 - As of 2:37 AM EST, Tittr is number 7 on Apple's list of the ten most popular of social networking web applications for the iPhone.

Tittr gets over 9,000 hits in first week

November 10th, 2007 - Since it's launch on November 4th, Tittr has received over 9,000 page views - the vast majority of which were in the four days after Apple posted a link to the site in it's list of social networking web apps for the iPhone.

Apple posts Tittr on their iPhone Apps page

November 5th, 2007 - I can hardly believe it, but Apple has posted my iPhone application on their web site. Tittr is a free service that allows users to send pictures to the Tittr website from their phone via email. Although primarily aimed at iPhone users, many major brands are supported. You can check it out here.

FileMaker 9 Released

July 10th, 2007 - FileMaker, Inc. today released the FileMaker 9 product line. There are too many excellent new features to list, but one in particular is going to blow everyone's minds -- you can now point your FileMaker file at an external SQL data source (aka External SQL Source, or ESS) and have it show up on the Relationship Graph like a normal FileMaker table.

Basically, this allows you to create layouts, scripts, value lists, etc... based on a MySQL table, for example. Not all SQL databases are supported and there are several nuances to working with this external data. However, this feature is extremely powerful and I can't wait to start using it -- particularly for allowing direct access to website backends rather than having to sync data between FileMaker and MySQL.

Other notable aspects of FileMaker 9:

  • Web Publishing with PHP is now built in to FileMaker Server and does not require Server Advanced.
  • All aspects of FileMaker Server administration are now managed with a single interface that is identical on Mac and Windows.
  • You can schedule FileMaker Server to run scripts contained within hosted FileMaker files.
  • Conditional layout object formatting (no more overlaying fields just to create a background highlight color).
  • Layout object can now resize to fit the window.
  • Multiple scripts can be open and edited at the same time (and you can interact with the layout while you are at it!).
  • Many upgrades to the Tab Control object.
  • Visit FileMaker.com for more...

FileMaker.com posts PHP articles

April 18th, 2007 - It looks like the folks over at FileMaker, Inc enjoyed the 2-part article I wrote for PHP Architect magazine. Apparently, they worked out a deal with the magazine because FileMaker for PHP Developers is now available for download as PDF from FileMaker.com. You can check them out for yourself here.

Jonathan to speak at DevCon 2007

March 23rd, 2007 - I'm very happy to announce that I've been selected to speak at the 12th annual FileMaker Developer Conference. This year's convention will be held in Orlando, FL from August 5-9. My session is entitled "Intro to PHP for FileMaker Developers". For more info, please visit advisorevents.com.

SmartPill PHP Edition 1.0 Released

February 14th, 2007 - Scodigo has announced the release of their SmartPill PHP Edition plug-in for FileMaker, as well as a major upgrade to their website.

Pricing options start at $59 for a single seat liscense and go up from there. 30 day trial versions are available, so run, don't walk to scodigo.com to check out this awesome plugin for yourself.

Just for the record - other than thinking Micah and the gang are super cool, I have no affiliation with Scodigo. The plugin is just great and I wish them lots of much deserved success.

SmartPill PHP Edition Release Candidate Announced

January 9th, 2007 - Scodigo has announced that the release candidate version of their SmartPill PHP Edition plug-in for FileMaker is now available for download from their website.

PPC, MacIntel and Windows versions are provided. There have been a few nice tweaks and additions made since the release of the beta, so make sure to check it out. Also, the new example file and documentation are excellent.

Scodigo expects to release the commercial version at the end of January 2007. I, for one, can't wait and will be putting it into production as soon as it is released.

Revolutionary FileMaker Plug-In

August 11th, 2006 - Scodigo announced the beta release of SmartPill for FileMaker. It allows you to run PHP code inside FileMaker, without having to have PHP installed. It is available for Windows, Mac PPC, and Mac Intel.

I was fortunate enough to be selected as an early tester for SmartPill and have been playing with it for a couple of months. At this point, I love SmartPill so much, I want to marry it. If you are a FileMaker developer who is even slightly familiar with PHP, you are going to want to check out SmartPill.

You just have to see it to believe it. You can download the SmartPill beta from Scodigo's website. There is also a very informative tutorial video available at filemakermagazine. Enjoy!

Jonathan to speak at DevCon 2006

I am very happy to announce that I have been selected to speak at the 11th annual FileMaker Developer Conference. This year's convention will be held in Orlando, FL from August 13-17. My session is entitled "Why Traditional Data Modeling Doesn't Work (And What To Do About It)". For more info, please visit advisorevents.com.

Please Note: This is the same session that has been listed in a couple of places as "Implementing a User Defined Data Model in FileMaker Pro". I changed the title after I orginally submitted it and the change didn't trickle though the system as quickly as I would have liked. Maybe Advisor could use a FileMaker database ;)