Thinkubator – A Thoughtprocess Interactive Blog

I love a good list.

I have a slightly Type A personality and, to me, organization is a beautiful thing (Although I have to admit that all the recent ‘Best ____ of 2011’ lists that every publication on earth seemed to be putting out around New Year’s were getting a little out of hand, amiright?). That being said, I’m intending to keep this list fairly short and just give a little shout out to a few of my current favorite bookmarks that I hope might be useful and interesting.

I do most of the front-end programming (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.) here at TPI World Headquarters, so anything that I come across to help me streamline that process is aces is my book. I’m also fortunate enough to have a few friends in the industry who help keep me in the know and introduce me to the latest and greatest technology for creating beautiful and functional websites:

1. Visual jQuery – (http://visualjquery.com/)Ok, ok, this Javascript library (jquery) isn’t news to anyone in the industry. It’s been around for a while now, but I gotta admit that I am still enamored with the way jquery simplifies javascript and makes things like animations and manipulations so easy and, dare I say, fun. This site is one of the most easy and useful documentation sources I’ve ever seen. It’s clean and easy to navigate and I can find what I’m looking for, usually, in a matter of seconds. Bonus: Each entry has syntax, examples and options all lined up and organized (Type A, remember? *sigh*).
2. Chosen – (http://harvesthq.github.com/chosen/)Speaking of jQuery, this little gem is a great plugin if you’re digging on some creative ways to utilize select lists.  Whoa. Did I just get a little excited about using select lists? I did. What can I say? A few lines of code and your oft-unwieldy multiple selects become an enchanting experience for the user. Ok, I have to stop now before this gets embarrassing.
3. CSS3 PIE – (http://css3pie.com/)Mmmmm, pie. If you’ve been reluctant to embrace the new-fangled awesomeness that comes with CSS3 because you’ve been worried about IE compatibility, fret no more! My friend, early-adopter, and programming wunderkind, Skye, introduced this to me on a recent project we worked on together. What a difference! While I haven’t had much opportunity to utilize it on other applications just yet, I’m definitely going to be putting it through its paces on some upcoming victims, er… projects we have in the works.

A short list, but a good one.

There’s new plugins, languages and tricks coming out all the time, it seems, to make our lives as developers ever more exciting. Have you come across something lately that’s changed your coding life forever? Let us know! We love expanding our knowledge and keeping our clients happy with interesting and engaging websites and applications.

It turns out there’s an advantage to old-school search directly from Google.com. Not just content to sit around fine-tuning their algorithm and counting their money, the web wizards of Mountain View, CA have also taken to working some clever tricks and treats into their programming to the delight of users that happen to stumble across or successfully uncover them. These fun little surprises have come to be affectionately known as “Easter eggs,” hence the shade of  hide-and-go-seek involved.

Here’s a few of our faves for your viewing pleasure (Fair Warning: this list is a time drain!):

• Find Chuck Norris…if you can.  Type “Find Chuck Norris” into Google, hit I’m Feeling Lucky, and Google will tell you what’s up with Chuck
• We can only assume that this one is meant as an ode to lost productivity: www.Google.com/Pacman
• Type “Do a Barrel Roll” into the search bar.  We dare you not to turn your head
• Type in “Askew” or “Tilt.” Same dare
• A holiday classic:  type in “let it snow” and watch the magic happen.  You can even defrost your screen and write in the snow with your mouse!
• See if you can find the subtle humor in this one: type in “Recursion.” Get it?
• Type “gravity,” click I’m Feeling Lucky and watch the Google logo defy Isaac Newton
• Ask Google Maps for directions from Japan to China.  You might want to pay close attention to step 42…
• BONUS: Google has a bit of Pirate in ‘em with this next Easter Egg.  Simply click here and have a good time, matey (or whatever pirates call friends)

Picture this: I’m walking through the park with my dog last week and my phone rings.  I take my phone out of my pocket to answer it and I can’t.  Why not?  Because I have gloves on.  I made it work by using the tip of my nose but you can just imagine how silly I looked!

For the rest of my very cold walk through the park I took my gloves off so I could text, take a picture of my dog and answer my phone…I might have been able to do all this with my nose but I choose not to look like an idiot and just let my hand freeze.

Fast forward to last night when I’m Christmas shopping at Target and I happen to come across the perfect present for everyone who has a smartphone:  TOUCH SCREEN GLOVES!  How did I not know about these before?  I ended up buying a pair for all my friends and family with smartphones – which is everyone.  So after my semi-expensive trip to Target, I Googled these gloves and it turns out they are everywhere!

While I realize you (or my boss, hi James!) are probably thinking this has absolutely nothing to do with what we do here at Thoughtprocess Interactive, consider this:  Morgan Stanley’s analysts believe that based on the current rate of change and adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015.  That means if you want to get on the internet anytime during the winter in the future (without your hands freezing off) you may want to invest in these touchscreen-friendly gloves.

Or you can just use your nose.

How funny that I should stumble across this article today on Slate while eating lunch: Copy-Editing the Culture: The Holiday Horrors of Starbucks, Wendy’s, and a Foreign Film.

From the headline alone, I knew immediately what the author was referencing as far as Starbuck’s goes. I saw an ad on Facebook this morning that featured their new holiday tagline, “Let’s Merry,” and though I’m not quite as worked up about it as this guy is, I definitely winced when I saw it.

“Merry” is an adjective. “Let’s,” as in “let us,” as in “permit us to,” demands a verb. Presumably, this slogan represents some effort to make a pun. The effort fails. Would Starbucks write, “Let’s funny” or “Let’s delicious”? Apparently, Starbucks would. Customers ought to be concerned: Word play at the expense of grammar is not play at all. It’s antisocial.

I’m with ya, buddy (although you’d probably smack me for my use of “ya”).

I also second his call out of the Starbuck’s sizing terminology:

(The shop’s drink-size appellations shift, inexplicably, from general descriptions to specific numerals—and, what’s more, from English to Italian.)

I love you Starbuck’s, but seriously, what is that?

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we took an internal survey to recap all that we’re thankful for.

Here are some of the clear winners:

• Family
• Friends
• Kids
• Spouses
• Health
• Employment

And here are a few of the more random replies:

• Soy peppermint mocha latte’s from Starbuck’s
• Alexander Skarsgard
• Habanero peppers
• DVRs
• Alcohol
• Opposable thumbs

And of course, we’re thankful all year round for great clients that trust us to do good work!

Got anything else you’d add to the mix?

We know, we know, Facebook has had so many changes lately it’s hard to keep up with them all. If you are a casual user, there are plenty of new features to explore. You may see some changes in accessing some of your games, or notice different content on some business pages, but generally you’re good to go.

However, it gets trickier if you’re a business owner who has developed Facebook apps. Starting October 1st, apps that run on Facebook must be hosted from a secure server. Facebook is requiring this to help protect the privacy of its users. What does it mean to you? If you don’t have a SSL certificate for your app’s site domain, your app will not show up on Facebook anymore – meaning your fans won’t see it!

Don’t worry, we’re here to help. If you host your application with us, we can get a SSL certificate set up for your domain. If you use a different host, they’ll be able to help you. Either way, you’ll just need to provide some specific information that verifies you are the owner of the site, and you’ll likely have to pay a small amount to buy the certification from the company that provides it. The most commonly known certificate provider is VeriSign, but there are plenty to choose from, with a variety of features and prices.

If we can help you, let us know. In the meantime, enjoy the latest features on Facebook… we will be back soon to guide you through more of the interesting changes that are happening there — stay tuned!

Change. No one likes it.  There are a lot of complaints on the social feeds today about the new features on Facebook.  Every 6 month or so our News Feed fills up with “I hate this new layout” and “I’m gonna stop using Facebook if they keep changing it” (like that will ever happen).  However, if you take a couple minutes to figure these features out it you will see that they are actually very useful.  So don’t fret, we have put together a quick and easy guide to understanding these new features.

Ticker & Chat: The new ticker on the top right of your homepage shows real-time posts making them easier to go through.  Just hover over any story to see entire update.  Additionally by clicking your chat sidebar the ticker attaches to the top.  You can chat while navigating to any page you like while watching your friend’s status updates change.

Photo Layout: You probably noticed the creative way our pictures are now laid out in our News Feed.  This is purely for our viewing experience and gives business pages a more unique way to attract “likes”.

Top Stories:  Facebook’s new concept shows posts that you will most likely find interesting and puts them at the top of your feed when you first log in.  The top stories are marked by a blue tag on the top left corner of the post.  To remove them from your top stories just click on the blue tag and they will be removed.  To add a top story that you are interested in just hover over an update where the blue tab would be and click-it’s that easy!

Friend Lists:  Facebook’s new “Smart Lists” are just that-Smart.  Smart lists automatically create lists for your city, work, family, and school.  You can add friends or brands you follow to the lists Facebook automatically created for you, or you can create a new list to organize your friends even better.  To create a new list or edit an existing list click on “Lists” on the left of your News Feed.

Here you can see a list I created based on my favorite movies and television shows making it easy for me to skip all the news feed and go straight to my shows.

Friend List Dropdown:  You can also organize your friend into lists right from their profile page.

Subscribe:  The subscribe button allows you to hear from people that you are interested in, even if you’re not friends.  You are automatically subscribed to all your current friends updates and with the subscribe button you can choose which of their updates you see.  For example, if you have a friend who is always playing Facebook games (we all have those friends), you can hide all those game posts in a simple step.

Not all profiles have a Subscribe button.  Only people who allow subscribers will have the Subscribe button on their profile.  If you choose to allow Subscribers they will only see the things you share publicly.

What do you think of all these new features?  Love it or hate it?

Have you always longed to play music on a stage for an audience?  Well your chance has finally come…sort of.  A few months ago a new social music site launched called Turntable.fm. I know what you’re thinking, but this is no everyday music playing website.  There is no limit to how much music you can listen to, unlike Pandora who allows you to listen to a whopping 40 hours a month, in which I personally go through in less than a week.  Turntable.fm allows you to make your own private channel or join in on someone else’s channel that you may like, while chatting with all your fans, or new found friends in the room!

Once there you select your avatar and create your own playlist, which can be anything you want in Turntable’s huge library of tracks or you can upload your own.  You can also bookmark songs on other sites and if you like a song that is playing you can buy it right there from iTunes or add it to your own playlist.

The beauty of this social music site is that you can choose if you like the song that is being played or not…it’s either “Lame” or “Awesome”.  The more “Awesome” points you get the closer you become to changing your avatar to something bigger and better, if the song gets “Lamed” too many times then that song is skipped and the next person DJing” gets to play their song.

Simple enough right?  Well there is one downfall…for the moment you need an “invite” from a Facebook friend in order to play music or join a room, but once you’re in, you’re in!  You can start inviting friends each time you start to play music!  Enjoy!

UPDATE: Now you can take turntable.fm to go with it’s new iPhone app.  It offers all the same features as the online version but fits right in your palm.  It’s easy, just log in with Facebook and up pops all the rooms you are used to seeing!  I’ll be in the Top 40 room!

iPhone Screenshot of turntable.fm

Exploring the Buddypress Add-on for WordPress to turn our blog into a social community.

http://buddypress.org/

Check out these web sites:

http://2011.uxlondon.com/
http://www.saltercane.com/

Any person or company with a consumer-facing web site, if they are paying any attention at all, will want their site to be mobile phone accessible soon if not sooner. Assuming 1024 pixel wide screens isn’t going to cut it, these two sites show how it can be done really well in just one smart design, rather than the usual way (sniffing out the client browser and redirecting mobile phones to a different version).

Resize your browser and watch what happens as it get narrower. (Use Firefox or a webkit browser like Safari — IE need not apply.) The first site re-flows in each section and the bio pictures shrink down as the page gets narrower. The second site dynamically re-flows from three columns to two columns to one.  If you have a browser on your mobile phone, look at the sites there too. Very cool!

You can read about the technique from the guy who designed those sites here:

http://adactio.com/journal/

Something to think about.