A Day in Paradise

I opened my google docs this morning (like I open it up every morning) and noticed that we now have the ability to create web based presentations from within google docs.

Not only did I find the interface fairly intuitive (after a 3 minute clicking session), but it comes with the functionality to actually present your presentation online, invite viewers etc.

There is currently no way to export as a powerpoint (although you can import) but it will give you a html version of the presentation for offline use.

Now I need to see what kind of API it gives for programmers. I can see this being LOTs of fun.

some “intelectual comedy” for a saturday afternoon!

notice the new mybloglog link in the sidebar and thanks ChristyZ for being my first community member

The first version of this post was eaten when Y! Pipes decided to take down firefox (seemed to happen a lot when I was hovering over the sources waiting for the tooltip top pop up – FF1.5.0.9)

Y! Pipes is a cool toy. There is a lot of interesting functionality, but a lot that could still be added. My problem is the scalabilty aspects of it. It looks fairly resource intensive on the part of Y! and with every additional feature that’s added more resources would be needed. In the half hour I spent playing with my pipe, I already created a monstor that takes 4.86 seconds to generate. And if I were to do any serious (and add specific tools) then I would need even more generating power.

There are a couple extra things I would like to see right off:

1. It needs an exclusion gate, possibly as an option of the union operator, where I can select all items from feeds a-y which do not exist in feed z.
2. I had some trouble parsing some old google RSS feeds I had. I was about to yell conspiracy but I re-generated the google urls and everything worked
3. I couldn’t see how to extract/interact with information directly from a feed. I want to embed a flickr image into the description of my news article, but couldn’t figure out how that was done.

If anyone wants to clone my pipe and fix it, feel free. Anyway, I loved it… reminded me of ning, but without the code

In the footsteps of a couple good friends I’ve decided to make the first blog entry of the new year yet another year in review round-up for the year 2006.

It’s hard to believe that we’re already done with 2006, this one went by fast. A lot happened, and due to the overflow of work, I missed a lot of what I did last year (specifically LinuxWorld Expo and LinuxTag).

One of the big work-related events is a new venture that I’ve been working on this year. <project-pimping>HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website Creation was officially launched on December 1st, however about 18 months worth of work had gone into the product and building a client list before the site launch. The sprang out of my work with HedgeCo Networks which involved a the development of a high-end statistics/graphing package which generated quantitative statistics for Hedge Funds. After deploying the product on their flagship product, they started receiving request to license the package on various other website platforms, so the package was reworked into a slimmed down edition which can be deployed in smaller sites.

As we started deploying the product we realized the potential, and reallocated some of the design talent that we had been working on other project into creating entire websites and Hedge Fund start-up consulting/compliance packages. Since our Dec. 1 launch we have had a fantastically profitable month (to keep up-to-date with what we’re doing check out the Hedge Fund Websites blog)</project-pimping>

All of the above required me to reallocate my own time away from other projects, until the point that for the last year I have done little else. So as of Jan 1, 2007 I am officially working full time for HedgeCo Hedge Fund Websites… Freelancer no longer! This year I’m also moving my family up to West Palm Beach, Florida and will be working in the brand new HedgeCo offices (will post pics of when we move in later this month).

OK, so now that I’ve spent all my time pimping my current project I’ll skim through the news.

January: Slow month, Sid officially joined our family as “brother”. I weighed in on the PHP Security debate du jour wondering when good security verges on paranoia and the side effects.

February: Traveled to UK for PHPLondon conference. This was a fantastic event (looking forward to next year), as far as I remembered there were about 250 geeks attending the 1-day event. Got a cool new LCD. In defense of PHPNuke (and other applications of low repute whose name starts with PHP*) I responded to Marco’s post reminiscing about how great PHPNuke was back in the day.

March: Slow month… google releases finance portal, barra stops reporting S&P numbers and screws up my webservice. Tom Fox is Executed.

April: Gearing up for the world cup 32Cards PHP-based card game is released. I start using backpackit to organize my life (note to reader, I stop using it in a couple months, when it stops scaling with my needs). I spent 10 days in Florida, unfortunately missing PHPTek by 10 days.

May: I question open-source for highly specific niche applications (more specifically my statistic package). I enjoy Scott Sigler’s “Infection” which is in full swing. I start watching theshow with ze frank.

June: DSL CRASH!!! I try to “upgrade” my connection by switching providers which turns into 3 weeks on dial-up. During this time I camp at friends houses during all night product launches, and drive everyone around me insane. I finally return. World cup is in full swing, and Germany is World Cup CRAZY! I take pictures.
I travel to Norway for the eZpublish conference & PHPVikinger. Ammar Ibrahim comes to Frankfurt, we watch some football!

July: A slow month… I try Fedora Core, only to get frustrated when I can’t mount my ntfs external drive with the correct permissions (worked fine in root, was able to find no usable explanation). Infection ends. Put out a notice for css code monkeys get more response than I can handle. Macs Rock? During one of the hottest months on record the kids have chickenpox and we are confined indoors.

August: I subscribe to Gail Orenstein’s Flickr feed during her trip to Israel. cool pictures (quite possibly NSFW) with political commentary. Two talks are accepted for ZendCon. I manage to squeeze into the PHPConference schedule at the last minute. We take the kids on a mini-vacation to Legoland and then visit some friends in Switzerland.

September: Catch Mark Nemcoff on in a 5-minute-review. I deploy a site using eZpublish, blog about lessons learned. RIP Lilo. Do some myspace defending.

October: The Pear book is out!. I speculate about google world domination, and yahoo opens up the login api. Spend a week in WPB Florida, then fly to LA and drive down to San Jose for Zendcon.

November: Conference season. Meet Scott Sigler!!! Give talks at Zendcon, fly back home and give tutorial at IPC2k6. After seeing that the Zend Framework is more than hype I take a look at it and start my Zend Framework Hidden Gems article series. I dump backpackit for google docs (which I am still happily using). When is it a good time to rewrite your platform?

December: HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website launch. Fantastic month on the work front, however not a whole lot of time for anything else. David (CPUNerd) on the other hand has way too much time on his hands, and immortalizes me in kilt.

And that’s about it… probably the longest blog entry ever! I’m looking forward to this year as being the craziest yet. I’ll be flying to WPB next week, and for this first quarter will probably spend more time on that side of the pond.

A big THANK YOU to my readers (let’s make that anyone who made it this far into the blog entry). And most of all thanks to Stella, Annie and Mia for putting up with me during this hectic time.

Light a virtual candle to raise awareness of AIDS/HIV in the US.

Current candle count: 1261368

We’ve been busting our balls on the infrastructure of our new Hedge Fund Website creation project over the last couple weeks and since we did the official launch yesterday I figured it deserved a little link love

The heart of the hedge product a niche tool for hedge fund managers to manage their investor portfolios and relations. The underlying system is currently a custom PHP/MySQL system, however we are working with WebStyle Systems to create platform using eZpublish to which we can move some of our accounts and base future products on. We will also be launching another niche product based on this platform. This is still pre-alpha development.

One interesting tool that we are using for our support is SupportSuite by Kayako. This is a great support/ticket platform, what I have been most impressed with has been the moderate use of AJAX in both the backend and frontend support interfaces. Internally we use Mantis to manage our projects.

The project is still in it’s early stages. We are working on the “flagship” hedge fund websites website and moving that away from it’s launch state. Of course we have a blog where team members will be blogging (just me so far).

Thanks for the space, I now return you to your regular programming… Oh yes, we’re looking for another designer (isn’t everyone), check out the blog if you’re interested.

Anyone who has taken pictures of a group of kids will see the usefulness of this cool application. You take several shots shot in sequence, and then you can create a composite image which uses elements from both pictures.

Just choose the best faces from any of the pictures you’ve taken and then add them to the composite image and let the program take care of the rest.

Thanks UB

On the heels of last night’s rant, here’s a list of the 50 Coolest Websites of 2006. Some of my favorites are among them including:

Podcast Pickle
The 9
YouTube (just uploaded a test video I made last week today, I’m starting a series of street musicians in frankfurt)
Kevin Sites
Human Clock
and of course MySpace