Posts from 2009
Swype Keyboard Preview Leaked
Someone managed to get their hands on a preview of the Swype keyboard for Android, which allows you to type simply by swiping your finger across the letters, rather than tapping them out one-by-one. I installed it on my Droid, and so far I’m loving it. In time, I can definitely see myself being faster with Swype than with the normal keyboard.
Unfortunately, it appears as if the preview only works on high resolution Android devices such as the Droid, but hopefully the final version works on older phones as well.
(For what it’s worth, I typed this entire entry using Swype with barely any mistakes, and I’ve only been using it for about fifteen minutes.)
FCC Unsatisfied by Verizon's Response
If you haven’t been following this story already, the linked Engadget piece will bring you up to date. I really enjoyed this sentence from the last paragraph of the FCC’s letter:
The bottom line is that wireless companies can truly earn their desired long-term commitments from consumers by focusing primarily on developing innovative products, maintaining affordable prices, and providing excellent customer service.
Well put.
Eight tips for getting the most out of your Rails app
Some good tips on optimizing your Rails site. I’m already using a couple of these on this site, but I definitely want to try out the rest of them as well.
Apollo
I just finished reading Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Scott, and it is an absolute must-read if you’re a fan of the moon landings.
Capistrano Recipe for Sending Deploys to Twitter
Neat trick by John Nunemaker for sending deploy notices to a Twitter account.
Easy Deploys to Multiple Environments with Capistrano
At Viddler, we’re switching to using Git and Capistrano for our internal projects, and I was tasked with setting up the system to deploy our code to both staging and production environments. Capistrano doesn’t have built-in environment switching, but it’s dead simple to add it yourself.
The key to getting this to work is to utilize Capistrano’s ability to chain tasks–if you run cap task1 task2, it will run the two commands in the order you listed them. Variables are shared between the tasks, so if you set a variable in task1, task2 will be able to access it. To get multiple environments working, you just create tasks to set environment variables, which you call before the actual task you want to run.
The first step is to figure out which variables you need to change, and then move them into their own tasks. Here’s an example of the tasks we added:
desc "Run on staging server"
task :staging do
server "staging.myserver.com", :app, :web, :db, :primary => true
end
desc "Run on production server"
task :production do
server "myserver.com", :app, :web, :db, :primary => true
end
Now, if you want to deploy to staging, just run cap staging deploy, and for production run cap production deploy. Easy.
Project52
Just signed up my site for Project52, which will hopefully push me to hit “publish” a lot more often on this site next year:
Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!
Isolating a Logo from a Low Quality Image
Dave Shea explains how he turns low quality images from clients into usable graphics for his design.
Tom's Guide's 20 Favorite Android Apps
I’ll definitely be checking some of these out when I get my Droid on Friday.
Phandroid's Motorola Droid Review
Rob Jackson provides the most in-depth review of the Motorola Droid I’ve seen yet. Rob runs through a bunch of the major features, with videos for just about everything. If you’re looking for Droid information, this is the place to find it.
Assuming the Verizon store has enough, I’ll be picking one of these up on Friday, and I’ll try and have a quick post on my thoughts as well.
31Three.com - Version 5
Gorgeous redesign by Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain. I really love the subtle Javascript effects he’s using–try scrolling on his portfolio page, and watch how the next site fades in.
Saturn at Equinox
Wow. I can’t even begin to express how cool some of these shots are.