Dev Dawn

Mike from the Mindvalley Blog commented on a post of mine about Social Bookmarking, pointing me to what seems to be his flagship product, BlinkList.

I’ve spent a few moments going over it, and wanted to post my initial reactions. Initial. Reactions.

So take those two words for everything they are. Initial because I haven’t had any time to experience what the site has to offer past the first. Reaction because that’s what happens. We experience something and we react. End Rant/Disclaimer.

BlinkList has a lot of functionality. It seems to combine bits from Digg, Slashdot and Del.icio.us all into one. There is the bookmarking, the ranking (Blinking in this case), the elements of getting to the front page, and the cool ajax functionality.

I guess something that is exciting is that you can get to the front page pretty easily at the moment. Only a few Blinks are required. At least, that’s what it looks like if you click on the “Hot Now” tab.

The Tag Cloud is nice. It’s colored, as well as the size and opacity functionality that I discovered recently using Wordpress plugins. The Tag Cloud is a cool thing. And is probably what the Live Plasma originated as. Well, I guess that’s what it is, just with a fluffy exterior. Just looking, and BlinkList doesn’t have the opacity going on for the tag cloud. So strike that off the list. Just the size and the colors.

Something that just occured to me is that soon, saying “cool ajax functionality” won’t mean squat. At least, in the current understanding. Soon, sites are going to have desktop functionality as a matter of course, so then all the desktop development/design issues that we’ve been dealing with for years will become a real element in designing a website.

Which, when you think about it, is a good thing for people with desktop development experience. In fact, you could hypothesise, that in the next few years, having a good understanding of how to put together desktop apps, the pitfalls, the strengths, will give you a greater leverage within the web development world.

I might just be blowing steam. We’ll see.

Anyway, BlinkList. I think it’s probably got the elements, so time will tell. I’ve got my years of being in the gaming industry to tell me that just because a game has all the elements doesn’t mean it’s gonna fly (Troika, Looking Glass, …). And that crap will most probably move more units (lots of EA drivel, some Interplay, a lot of the big franchise games).

Initial Thoughts (short) :: Over.

Nice, the Clarion Wiki page has had an extensive update. Very cool. Especially of interest is the history, which Bill wrote a little about back in Journey Back In Time.

It’s nice to see movement at the station.

Law #24: A client is more likely to listen to a consultant if s/he doesn’t do any contracting for the client. (ironic isn’t it!)

Get your feed on! Check out the dev dawn feed on My Yahoo! below. I tried also with Google’s new “Reader” but it screwed up, likely still in beta issues.

Or, using thunderbird set up a News and Blog account and add the feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/DevDawn ! -> Awesome, all the text, in your email client <- Stu - how to get archived content on feed?

LivePlasma. Go. Now.

I discovered this place just today, when looking at a News.com article on Multiverse. News.com has collaborated with LivePlasma to produce an awesome searching tool for all their news.

Before really looking at it though, I clicked on the LivePlasma link, and had a play.

Unbelievable. This is so very cool. The way the tree of related nodes flies out from the main sphere. The way the searches fade. The Zoom spheres. The roll-over functionality. You just have to go have a look.

Now, if only this was a plugin for Wordpress. Ha ha.

It’s got a massive amount of potential. And the coolness factor.

Anyway, it’s possible I’m excited about something that will fade away … but I don’t think so.

This is just that cool.

Here’s what a search for “x-men” under Movies looks like:

(more…)

Thanks to a post on Great Nexus, I have discovered the world of Shouting, as opposed to Digging.

Now, the first time you light this puppy up, that is, visit, it looks like a greener cousin of the afore-mentioned Digg. And then you start looking around, registering, etc etc, and you realise. It is the same thing, with some small differences.

1. You Shout instead of Digg
2. It’s more than just Techo
3. It’s not as complete an experience, at the moment, as Digg. Only really because you can’t have the “friends” functionality, although that’d no doubt be on the way.

So from my five seconds of knowing about it and using it, ShoutWire looks pretty cool. It’s got a clean interface, and is simple. No doubt, it’s the sibling of Digg, but that’s cool. I Digg the Shouting.

Okay.

The Extended Live Archive plugin is now working properly (check out the Dev Dawn Archives) , thanks to some helpful hints (thanks Arnaud).

There’s also a new polling system. It’s powered by Democracy, which is pretty awesome. In fact, Andrew seems to have his gear on, so to speak. He’s got an awesome site there at Jalenack, but also Jalecode. Not only is the site looking good (easy to use, flashy), but they know their stuff. Hats of to you gents and lasses.

Cheers.

Smarty Blog has announced the winner of their Australia’s Best Blog award. See Darren’s post and the ensuing comments. There is a bit of general annoyance over the winner, Singing Bridges. It would be hard to judge 530 blogs, because your personal opinion would no doubt play a big role. I guess having criteria would break down most of the problems, and you will never please everyone.

I’d have to say of the top eleven, Karen Cheng’s leaps out first in terms of simplicity in design. Nice clean interface, piccies, easy to read. Content would be a lot harder. In terms of learning, Darren’s would be my pick. There’s so much for the developing blogger on that site.

I’d like to see Smarty put together a listing of all the blogs they reviewed, and how they fared against the categories. Give some indication what they are looking for. Not that one single group defines what is good for a blog, especially Australia’s Greatest Blog, but it’s good to get an understanding of what other people see as being good. Also, Smarty are doing a good work, putting money towards promoting blogs.

Anyway, back to work.

Hey can Peter Jackson remake star wars please? Since hes just remade king kong - another classic that needed refurbishment. I mean G.Lucas - how much does he suck these days? Hey - can we get a poll Mr Admin Stu? (yes [ED])

How Much Does George Lucas suck?
* Lots
* Really Lots
* I’d rather not say since it is extremely lots

What should P.Jackson remake next?
* Star Wars
* Star Wars
* Star Wars

And in other news;
Wiktionary - Wiki dictionary and thesaurus (less annoying than commercial sites).
Top 500 English sites on web - according to Alexia (that annoying plug in some ppl are sucked into using).

TOP 10 ENGLISH SITES
Yahoo
MSN
Google
EBay
Passport.net
Amazon.com
Microsoft
Myspace.com
Google UK
AOL

–
Adam
CodeMonkey Blog

A very random thought occured to me walking down the street today. It’s inane and most probably useless, but anyway.

There are three types of learning for me.

Learning :: The New
This is the largest cloud by far. In the last year, my new learning has sky-rocketed. I hope it continues.

Learning :: The Old
This is stuff I’ve come across before, but has dimmed in my memory. It’s there, and will come back with a certain level of prodding. I guess this is a sliding scale. If something hasn’t been used in a long while, then it might take more rehashing to get up to speed.

Learning :: The Existing
What I’m working on right now. It’s fresh in my brain, and exciting usually.

—

Reading this short little post, I suspect anyone reading might be questioning my sanity. Learning is learning. That’s right I suppose. But sometimes exploring a random thought isn’t a bad thing.

Anyway, back to the new, the old, and the existing.

Things are slowing down. By that, I mean, my fervour to constantly push Dev Dawn. I’m not sure why this is happening … actually, I think it’s a mix of a few different things.

The “new” feeling is no longer there. Dev Dawn, though still really young in terms of other blogs, is no longer a new thing in my life. It’s been around for a while.

Work is picking up, major. Am “Under the Hammer”, so to speak. Crunch time. Boom.

My creative ideas seem to come in waves. And when the tide is out for a particular project, it’s hard to go swimming. Not impossible, but a lot harder.

Yeah.

Now that I’m writing this though, I’m wondering what’s the point of having a mope. I still love writing my thoughts on Development, pushing my understanding.

So this is a snap-shot of the pillar shifts that can happen in the span of a short time. Down, Up, Down, Up.