One thing I've learned from my conversations with Alexander Muse, is that I need to network a lot more with other entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts. He's giving us a great opportunity to do exactly that with the SpringStage Startup Happy Hour, starting on July 7th.
Networking has been a nagging problem for me. Between a full time job and a 10 month old son, any extra time I have is precious. If I'm out networking, then I'm not writing code. But if I know Alex, then this event is guaranteed to be worth skipping my usual evening hackathon.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Do web standards matter?
At some point we're probably going to hire someone to do some web design for us, because our main website is in such a deplorable state.
My partner and myself are both perfectionists when it comes to writing software. So when it comes to web design, we would prefer a web design firm that understands the medium and will adhere to the published w3 standards.
Out of sheer curiosity, I google'd "dallas web design", and ran the front pages of about 30 design firms through the w3's validation service. The results were depressing.
Out of the 30 or so design firms, only one of them had a front page that passed the validation test, and that was Dallas Website Design, so I'm giving them props for that.
As far as the rest of the firms, c'mon!! You guys are supposed to be the experts, and yet only one in thirty take the time to make sure they are writing standards compliant markup?
If a web page isn't valid markup, the browser is forced to fall back into "quirks" mode when rendering. That means poorer performance and unpredictable results across different browsers.
So the only conclusion that I can arrive at, is that the majority of web designers are either incompetent, or they simply don't care.
So in the end, do web standards even matter if everyone is going to ignore them? Should we look for a web designer who crafts 100% compliant markup? Or should we judge designers purely on aesthetics, and accept the fact that we might need a complete overhaul every time a new version of IE comes out?
My partner and myself are both perfectionists when it comes to writing software. So when it comes to web design, we would prefer a web design firm that understands the medium and will adhere to the published w3 standards.
Out of sheer curiosity, I google'd "dallas web design", and ran the front pages of about 30 design firms through the w3's validation service. The results were depressing.
Out of the 30 or so design firms, only one of them had a front page that passed the validation test, and that was Dallas Website Design, so I'm giving them props for that.
As far as the rest of the firms, c'mon!! You guys are supposed to be the experts, and yet only one in thirty take the time to make sure they are writing standards compliant markup?
If a web page isn't valid markup, the browser is forced to fall back into "quirks" mode when rendering. That means poorer performance and unpredictable results across different browsers.
So the only conclusion that I can arrive at, is that the majority of web designers are either incompetent, or they simply don't care.
So in the end, do web standards even matter if everyone is going to ignore them? Should we look for a web designer who crafts 100% compliant markup? Or should we judge designers purely on aesthetics, and accept the fact that we might need a complete overhaul every time a new version of IE comes out?
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
GeoMata 0.5 Alpha released everywhere!
GeoMata 0.5-alpha has been released on SlideMe, trackdroid, anddev.org, helloandroid.com and of course the GeoMata website.
Wow. That took awhile. Updating all these websites every time we do a new release is going to be a real pain in the ass. I'm hoping Google's upcoming showcase website will have some kind of restful api so that all these other distro sites can pull down updates from a central repository of sorts. That way, us developers would only have to distribute our applications in a single place, and then we can get back to fun stuff, like coding, sleeping, gaming, tipping strippers, etc.
Anyway, there it is, in all it's bug infested, alpha quality glory. Feel free to make comments or suggestions. I know it could use a lot of improvement. This is basically the same version that I submitted to the ADC I competition.
Wow. That took awhile. Updating all these websites every time we do a new release is going to be a real pain in the ass. I'm hoping Google's upcoming showcase website will have some kind of restful api so that all these other distro sites can pull down updates from a central repository of sorts. That way, us developers would only have to distribute our applications in a single place, and then we can get back to fun stuff, like coding, sleeping, gaming, tipping strippers, etc.
Anyway, there it is, in all it's bug infested, alpha quality glory. Feel free to make comments or suggestions. I know it could use a lot of improvement. This is basically the same version that I submitted to the ADC I competition.
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