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A farewell to tabs

I’ve used tabbed layouts in web sites for a while without thinking much about it. I find them less obtrusive than menus, and have always believed that the idiom was familiar to nearly all users because...

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One app store to rule them all …

During my university studies, I first encountered the idea of the Myth of Progress — in 19th and 20th centuries a lot of people assumed that the world generally gets better each generation (aside from...

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What's the value of a life?

What’s your life worth to you? “Priceless” is the obvious answer, but in reality, you put a price on your life all the time. Safety vs. money Here’s a simple example: let’s say that you want to go on a...

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The thing about creativity …

I left this comment on Simon St-Laurent’s interesting and thoughtful post How dare Apple … (which, in turn, was partly a response to Tim Bray’s post Nothing Creative). I don’t believe that most...

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The past, future, and present of mobile apps

Now that I’ve had a few weeks to play with my Nexus One, I’m starting to grok the gut-level experience of living with a smart phone. I understand why people download apps, how it feels to have the...

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Balisage 2010 Silent Auction

The Balisage 2010 conference runs next week in beautiful Montreal, focusing on XML and other markup technologies. I cannot make it this year, unfortunately, but I gave some help (far too little) to...

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Evil or misunderstood? Google and net neutrality

So what happened last week?  Did Google backtrack after getting caught trying to be evil about net neutrality and the mobile internet, or were they a victim of a misunderstanding (gleefully amplified...

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Mobile users want fresh data

Summary: Mobile web users’ needs differ by more than UI features (small touch screen): they may check information more often, and expect it to be fresher. Last night, I finally got around to...

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RIP Java, 1995-2010

Java is dead. A lot of developers have thought they were too hip for Java, but I still liked it. I implemented SAX in Java first of all, and have developed software in Java and encouraged my...

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Google Voice (sort-of) available in Canada

I installed the Google Chat Voice plugin today, and found that I was able to make free Google Voice calls from Canada to both a US and a Canadian POTS number. I’m still unable to register for Google...

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Amazon EC2 “micro instances” vs. Google App Engine

A note in my inbox this morning announced that Amazon’s EC2 virtual computer hosting service now supports “micro instances” for $0.02/hour ($0.03/hour if you’re confused enough to want to host a web...

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SQL and simple polymorphism

SQL is about tables and sets. Object-oriented programing is about types, subtypes, and polymorphism. There are nasty, nasty frameworks available to try to move between the two worlds (say, by...

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Coming soon … something sweet

My sweetie has been leading a group of talented Ottawa-area actors and crew members to create a new web series, Sweet Tarts Takeaway. I’ll post again when the web series goes live in a couple of...

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Is fluid layout old-fashioned?

No one would mistake me for a graphic designer — I believe that no merely visual design can match the breathtaking beauty of a properly-normalized database schema — but still, I recently found myself...

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The zero-home experiment

Yesterday a new web series launched, Sweet Tarts Takeaway. I helped to set up its web site. Too many clicks Copyright © 2011 by YOW! Productions. Used with permission. After making one mockup of the...

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How can I make money from writing sonnets?

I’ve written a sonnet, and I think it’s very good. Now I’d like to get paid for it so that I can quit my job and live off the revenue. Any suggestions? Perhaps you’ve asked this question yourself: just...

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The last time I voted Conservative …

[Blushing update: a reliable source informs me that I misremembered the question I asked 23 years ago — updated below (different, but closely-related issue).] … (Progressive Conservative at the time)...

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Teachers, students, and online behaviour

This passage recently appeared in a CBC story entitled “Ont. teachers advised not to tweet with students“: The Ontario College of Teachers says teachers should avoid connecting with their students on...

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MySQL wrapper script: variables from the command line

There’s a lot I like about PostgreSQL, and I’ll probably switch eventually, but for now, I’m still more comfortable with MySQL, especially its ability to update huge amounts of existing data in-place...

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POST, PUT, idempotence, and self-identification

I realize that the title of this posting might be a bit off-putting for non-RESTafarians, but it’s about a topic that matters to anyone building an application that uses simple web standards for...

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