Really cool tool to view source code on the iPhone / iPad

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Have you ever wanted to dig into your web pages on your mobile devices and don't have the capabilities to view source code or poke around? Snoopy is a bookmarklet for snooping on web pages. It's intended for use on mobile browsers like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad Mobile Safari where you can't view-source to poke around under the hood of sites to see how they're built.

Using the bookmarklet will give you an overlay that shows you information such as what Doctype the page has, what JS libraries are used in the page, what analytics, etc. It also gives you the ability to view the raw and/or generated source of the page.

Check the project out at http://snoopy.allmarkedup.com

How to add images to your iPhone Simulator

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I have been developing an iPhone application tonight and had to create an image selector. The simulator told me I can add images through iTunes, so I opened iTunes but there wasn't anything obvious.

So the next thing I tried was drag an image into the simulator and walla!

Some really easy instructions to adding images to your simulator.

  1. Have your simulator open.
  2. Drag an image into the simulator.
  3. iPhone Safari will start and it will open the image you have dragged onto the simulator. Click and hold down on the image until a menu appears.
  4. Click 'Save Image' and your done.

Any further tips for working with the simulator, just ask me.

SoundMan Installs An iPad As An In-Car Entertainment System

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It didn't take long, only a matter of hours, for Apple's new iPad to find it's way into a car.

A US car audio company, SoundMan have become the first to install the iPad into a car dashboard. As soon as the iPad was launched, the SoundMan team moved quickly to install it into a Toyota Tacoma Pick-Up truck.

I've been thinking of installing a media centre into my own car, but after watching this I'm having thoughts of simply installing an iPad.

Cool Flash Webcam Effects

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There is a number of really cool Flash webcam effects emerging from different developers across the globe. I'm fascinated by this technology as it opens a greater potential for games and enhanced website interfaces.

This is a very short list of some of the coolest Flash webcam effects.

3D Glasses Enhanced Face Tracking
http://www.boffswana.com/news/wp-content/uploads/facetracking3D/main.html
This very cool flash effect tracks your face using the web cam, when you move your face you move the small room around. The effect is also enhanced if you are wearing 3D glasses.

Webcam Baseball Game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7jm-AsY0lU&feature=related
This webcam game brings your Baseball collector cards to life with mini games.

3D Animated Paper Tracking Effect
http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality
This demo is a paper tracking and sound enhanced Flash effect. Move a printed document in front of the webcam and a 3D animation of Wind Power will appear in front of the document. Blowing will also increase the spinning speed of the fans.

3D Monster Paper Tracking Effect
One of the earliest demonstration of the paper tracking webcam effects.

Papervision - Augmented Reality (extended) from Boffswana on Vimeo.

3D Coke Can Experiment without CSS3

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Full Source: http://dallasjclark.com/experiments/css-3d-effect/index.php

The 3D Coke Can Effect above was created with just HTML, CSS, and 2 Images. The HTML is quite simple and the CSS is even simpler.

The two images used is the Coke can shape and the other image is the Coke can label.

So how does it work? In the image below, the blue lines outline the paragraph tags, each paragraph tag shows a different background position of the Coke can label.

All the paragraph tags have loaded the Coke can label, what may appear as one image is actually 55 copies of the same image. When you scroll horizontally, you are changing the location of the paragraph tag and the background position of the Coke can label. Thus, creating a 3D effect of a rolling Coke can.

To enhance the effect, the middle paragraph tags are wider than the outside, creating a sense of depth with the outer paragraph tags.

Finally, A Country Says No to Software Patents

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As many know, I disagree with patents in general, and a software patent is one that really annoys me the most. Thankfully, a country is taking a step to reform the country's standards of patentability, the country being New Zealand.

One of the biggest changes in the proposed bill is patentability exclusion for software. If the bill is approved, it will eliminate conventional software patents in New Zealand.

The official summary of the bill acknowledges that software patents are detrimental to the open source software development model and have the potential to seriously halt innovation. A large number of submissions argued that there is no 'inventive step' in software development, new software has been built on existing software.

The only thing we hope to happen is other countries will follow New Zealand's approach.

Source: New Zealand patent reform bill says no to software patents

WordPress Update Services

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WordPress' Update Services allow you to let other people know you have updated your website. WordPress automatically notifies popular update services that you've updated your blog by sending an XML-RPC ping each time you create or update a post.

When WordPress contacts these updates services, they process the ping and update the indices (database) with your update. When people are using sites like Technorati or Sphere, people can see your most recent additions and changes.

Most people use Ping-o-Matic which, with just one "ping" from you, will let many other services know that you've updated.

Otherwise you can insert your own ping services in the Settings => Writing => Update Services in the admin panel of your WordPress installation. Below is a list of some of the popular update ping services on the Internet.

XML-RPC Ping Services
http://rpc.pingomatic.com http://api.feedster.com/ping http://api.moreover.com/RPC2 http://api.moreover.com/ping http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2 http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2 http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php http://www.blogsnow.com/ping http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php http://ping.blo.gs/ http://ping.feedburner.com http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/ http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2 http://www.feedsubmitter.com http://blo.gs/ping.php http://www.pingerati.net http://www.pingmyblog.com http://geourl.org/ping http://ipings.com http://www.weblogalot.com/ping

Alternatives
* An alternative is Feed Shark (Blog and Ping), which pings over 60 services for free.
* Feedburner users can use the Feedburner Pingshot service, which will alert most popular ping services.
* If you're interested in manual configuration, have a look at the WordPress compressed ping list.
* Check Vladimir's WordPress Ping List, manually checked and updated
* The Smart Update Pinger (requires registration) and the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer plugins provide future post pings, logging, and avoid sending any ping notification when editing previously published posts. The Smart Update Pinger also provides correct extended ping request handling.

iPad’s Default Applications

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The iPad is close to release with less than 1 month to go. So you might be asking, what applications are available with the iPad by default?

There are 13 applications available by default which have been optimised and enhanced specifically for the iPad. iBooks is a new application for the iPad but the following have been removed when compared to the iPhone:-

  • Stocks
  • Calculator
  • Clock
  • Weather
  • Voice Memos

I understand why the Clock and Voice Memos iPad application may have been skipped as they would be very difficult to create an interface to suit the size of the iPad. Do you just create a bigger clock? No, of course not. I don't understand why they couldn't come up with the idea of a world map showing analogue clocks in different timezones, wouldn't that be efficient for the iPad.

Whilst people consider this to be a small utility, you wait until the calculator is not available whilst you have the iPad in your hands. We have been promised these missing iPad applications will be available on the iTunes store so hopefully this is true.

Will have to check with the staff down at my local Brisbane Apple Store.

Mootools Enter Key Event

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If you're wanting to fire an event when the enter key is pressed on a text field, then all you simply need to do is the following:

  1.  
  2. $('text-field-id').addEvent('keydown', function(event) {
  3. if(event.key == "enter") {
  4. alert("Enter Key Pressed");
  5. }
  6. });
  7.  

Nice and simple.

Finally! The CSS language has been improved.

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LESS is a easy to use markup language to extend CSS with variables, mixins, operations, and nested rules. Best of all it's easy to convert to LESS, you simply rename your CSS extensions to .less and you are ready to go.

Of course your existing CSS won't utilise the power of LESS, but it's an easy way to migrate. You could spend a day converting your CSS code to the structure/formatting LESS enables or simply modify as you code.

Variables
Variables allow you to specify widely used values in a single place, and then re-use them throughout the style sheet, making global changes as easy as changing one line of code.

  1.  
  2. @brand_color: #4D926F;
  3.  
  4. #header {
  5. color: @brand_color;
  6. }
  7.  
  8. h2 {
  9. color: @brand_color;
  10. }
  11.  

Mixins
Mixins allow you to embed all the properties of a class into another class by simply including the class name as one of its properties. It's just like variables, but for whole classes. Mixins can also behave like functions, and take arguments, as seen in the example bellow.

  1.  
  2. .rounded_corners (@radius: 5px) {
  3. -moz-border-radius: @radius;
  4. -webkit-border-radius: @radius;
  5. border-radius: @radius;
  6. }
  7.  
  8. #header {
  9. .rounded_corners;
  10. }
  11.  
  12. #footer {
  13. .rounded_corners(10px);
  14. }
  15.  

Nested Rules
Rather than constructing long selector names to specify inheritance, in Less you can simply nest selectors inside other selectors. This makes inheritance clear and style sheets shorter.

  1.  
  2. #header {
  3. color: red;
  4.  
  5. a {
  6. font-weight: bold;
  7. text-decoration: none;
  8. }
  9. }
  10.  

Operations
Are some elements in your style sheet proportional to other elements? Operations let you add, subtract, divide and multiply property values and colors, giving you the power to do create complex relationships between properties.

  1.  
  2. @the-border: 1px;
  3. @base-color: #111;
  4. #header {
  5. color: @base-color * 3;
  6. border-left: @the-border;
  7. border-right: @the-border * 2;
  8. }
  9.  
  10. #footer {
  11. color: (@base-color + #111) * 1.5;
  12. }
  13.