Jimmy Z

I just got a new blackberry pearl for work. So far I really like it. It is amazing that you can type with such a small keyboard.

I’m writing this with my phone to practice typing with this little keyboard.

Maybe I’ll start to use twitter for more practice. Does anyone know of a good way to tweet from a blackberry?

If you find yourself falling behind in getting all of your emails read, like I have in the past week, you may find it useful to put the following in your Gmail search:

is:unread in:inbox

This will filter your messages to just those that are unread and in your inbox. Pretty cool. This help a lot for me because I have a lot of filters on my mail that mark some mailing list emails as ‘read’ and put others under different labels without marking them as read.

Tagged with: Gmail, tips

I just read this on Max M’s blog as I’ve been researching how to migrate a Plone 2.5 site to Plone 3. I thought this was way too good not to share.

“There is one thing I have learned through the years. Users do not do what they should. They do what they can. And if they can upload a 12 MB bmp image, they will. So I expect this to be a normal use case on many sites.”

This statement really supports the need for data validation and good UI design.

Tagged with: Killer Web Design, usability

Three weeks ago I started my new job at FamilySearch, the LDS Church’s genealogy company, as a developer support engineer. In August, I wrote about how cool I thought it was that FamilySearch was opening up a new API for developers. What I didn’t realize then was how cool and powerful this API really is.

FamilySearch has completely changed the way that we will do our family history by creating a collaborative family tree. No longer will you have to beg your family genealogist to share his/her gedcom file with you. The family tree is already loaded with hundreds of millions of records and is ready for you to search out your family history.

FamilySearch has opened up an application programming interface (API) that allows developers to both read and write to this family tree from their own applications. Other powerful tools are available through the API that will help you to normalize place names, dates, and more. Access to a super powerful search tools are placed at the fingertips of developers who wish to create their own killer family history tool.

That is not all. The Record Search application at labs.familysearch.org is an application that is built on the new Record Search API that will be released later this year. Third-party developers will have access to a vast collection of digitized records, many of which have been indexed and categorized.

So, expect to see a lot of really cool third-party applications built around this new FamilySearch API.

My job at FamilySearch is to provide programming support to these third-party software vendors. My position has never existed here before because we are breaking such new ground. This makes my job very challenging and exciting. This job is going to stretch my abilities and provide me with a lot of growing opportunities. I’m very excited to take on this challenge and to help this new program become a big success. My prediction is that this is going to be huge.

For more info on the FamilySearch APIs, check out some of the presentations from the Developer’s Conference (Scroll down to the schedule and you’ll find links to the presentations).

Tagged with: familysearch

Safari has an interesting set of options for debugging web pages. You just have to turn it on. From the Teminal, type the following:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

You can also turn it on for Windows by adding the following to your Preferences.plist (C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari\Preferences.plist ) file:

<key>IncludeDebugMenu</key>
<true/>

For more info, check the Apple support documentation.

Tagged with: Apple Fanboy, javascript, safari

My Comcast cable Internet access recently became really slow with occasional outages. The price had also jumped from the 6-month introductory price of $30/month to $53/month. So, we decided to give Digis a try.

So far, we’ve been really pleased with the service. The technician that came and installed the antenna gadget actually knew what he was doing. They called a couple of times in advance to confirm the appointment, the technician showed up on time, and was very friendly.  The Internet connection is also very responsive. I’ve been very pleased with it so far.

When we first moved into our place, our primary means of communication was our pre-paid cellphones. We have Vonage phone service, so we needed an Internet connection to get our phone up and going. The Comcast guy came out, told us it was wired up, and left. We then tried to use our cable modem, and got no connection. I was on the phone with Comcast support for an hour (on my pre-paid phone) trying to debug it before they finally realized that it wasn’t my computer, it was their network. A half a week later, they sent another guy out who said, “Yeah, I don’t know what the last guy did, but it definitely isn’t hooked up right.” Finally, we had Internet access, but it took over a week to get set up.

Digis, on the other hand, did things right the first time and even showed us how we could get a rebate on the installation fees. Thank you Digis!

Tagged with: companies

Setting up pretty URLs is usually the first thing I do after installing a new WordPress blog. In this screencast, I will demonstrate how to turn your urls from looking like ?p=1 to /2008/2/16/post-name/. The process is pretty simple, but if file permissions aren’t set quite right, you may run into a little gotcha. This video shows how to correct this if you happen to run into that problem.

[Click here to download(.mov)] [Watch at Viddler (at full-screen or original size)]

Note About Pretty URLs

Pretty URLs, also known as Search Engine Friendly URLs, will help your blog’s content to be indexed better by Google and the other search engines. This is possible because the url itself describes the content of a page or post. Again, this isn’t the only factor that will affect your search engine rankings, but it will contribute to better rankings.

About My Sponsors

I am an affiliate of Hostmonster and Bluehost. I receive a commission for any account sign-ups that are referred from this site. This allows me to put in the time necessary to deliver useful content. This blog is hosted on Hostmonster. I have been a customer of both Hostmonster and Bluehost for several years now and have been very satisfied by their customer service and reliability. Hostmonster and Bluehost are the same company.

Tagged with: beginner, screencasts, wordpress