- Cheat sheet for jQuery: static image
- Cheat sheet for jQuery: Ipod Touch / Iphone
- Focus on a DOM element with ID “elementID”
$("#elementID").focus();
Archive for December, 2008
Useful jQuery snippets
Monday, December 29th, 2008 by The BCM TeamReview: Balsamiq Mockups For Desktop
Monday, December 29th, 2008 by The BCM Team
To kick off our reviews of the tools we love, we thought we would start with Balsamiq Mockups. Not only is this a great product, but the story behind it is truly inspiring.
What is Mockups?
Built entirely in Flex and deployed through AIR, Mockups for Desktop is a simple tool for sketching up user-interface (UI) mockups. We use it to get a rough idea of what we want our UI to look like and we love the sketch-like approach for a number of reasons:
- its ease of use replicates the scribbling on paper we do anyway
- it really does only take minutes to create a mockup
- it’s so easy-to-use that even your clients can participate in the process
- it constantly reminds people that you are developing a work in progress and this seems to facilitate better collaboration
- it forces you to focus on the form and function of what you are designing before even getting into the look and feel
Additional benefits include the affordable price, the perpetual free upgrades (hear that Omni Graffle) and the excellent support.
Who is behind Balsamiq?
Balsamiq was founded by Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni in March 2008. Prior to setting out on his own he was a Senior Software Engineering Lead at Adobe.
The company’s first product, Mockups, has generated over $100,000 in sales in less that 5 months. Check out the company blog to learn more about Peldi’s inspiring approach to developing software and running a small business.
You can download a trial of Mockups for Desktop (Windows, OSX and Linux), minus save and export options, so you can give the software a good work out before you buy. Plug-ins are also available for Confluence, Jira and XWiki.
Our Verdict:
You should definitely give it a trial, you won’t regret it.
Further Links
Mediaportal TV Server: Failed to create database
Saturday, December 27th, 2008 by The BCM TeamIf you are getting a “failed to create database” error message after installing Mediaportal ver. 1.0.x then there is a chance that you have actually upgraded your MP installation and the database that MP is trying to create already exists.
To fix: go to X:/Program files/Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data and check if the Mediaportal database is already there. If it is, then uninstall MSSQL, wipe Data directory manually and reinstall Mediaportal.
Hello VPS
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 by The BCM Team
I have decided to say goodbye to the shared hosting once and for all and finally moved all of my personal sites and blog to a virtual private server (VPS) running CentOS 5.2 and Plesk.
I didn’t do this because I was unhappy with my former shared hosting provider as they had good up-time and the support was fast and helpful. I did it because I needed greater access to my hosting then shared hosting can provide; e.g. tweaking the server, installing custom software and controlling the versions of software installed on the server (e.g. symfony and subversion).
The switching process took a little more than a week. A little slow I know, but it wasn’t a full time gig. But at last I can announce that my switchover to a VPS set-up is complete.
Now here’s hoping my new host does not upset me with frequent downtime 
Just in case you were curious, my shared hosting was with A2hosting and I highly recommend them if you are after shared hosting. They also offer VPS hosting but I have not tried their offering yet.
Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philschatz/312633642
Our Bookmarks: Dec 15 – Dec 21
Monday, December 22nd, 2008 by The BCM Team
Development & Production
- Context, Not Content Is King by ADWEEK
- Viral Video Hits Blur The Authenticity Line by ADWEEK
- What Is Viral Marketing? by Seth Godin
- Language Is Critical To Usability by Useful Usability
Promotion & Distribution
- Distribution & Consumption In 2009 by Cinevegas
- Strategies For Building An Audience by ClickZ Experts
- Streaming Continues Strong Growth by Ipsos News Centre
- Consumers Watch VOD More, Visit Theaters Less by Variety
- YouTube Finally Embraces HD, Launches New Video Player & Topical Portals by Techcrunch
- Syndication Roundtable 2008 by TV Week
Business & Monetisation
- The Death Of The Online Video Ad Model? by Fierce Online Video
- Free? The ‘Wired’ Economy Is Still 80% Atoms, Not 100% Bits by ZDNet
Technology & Infrastructure
- Ramblings On The Internet In The Era Of The CDN by Telecom Ramblings
- H.264 Licensing Terms by Streamingmedia.com
- SaaS And The Renewal Question by ZDNet
Tips & Tutorials
- Exercise: Users, Objects & Goals by Sean Howard’s Consulting Blog
- Migrating To Amazon Web Services: The Blueprint by ZDNet
- An Introduction To PureMVC For Adobe Flash & Flex by Adobe Edge
Our Bookmarks: Dec 08 – Dec 14
Monday, December 15th, 2008 by The BCM Team
Development & Production
- Video Panelists Debate Content Vs. Distribution by Media Post News
- TV Is Not Dead by ClickZ Network
Promotion & Distribution
- The 10 Most Popular Videos Of 2008 by Silicon Alley Insider
- Clerk Dogs Promises To Find Better Flicks For You by ReadWriteWeb
Monetisation
- Universal: Let’s Stamp Out $1 Movie Rentals by CinemaTech
- Would You Pay Money To See Your Favorite Site Without Ads by Advertising Age
- Online Video Branding: It Is A Whole New Game by Fierce Online Video
- The Emerging Case For Open Business Methods by ZDNet
Technology & Infrastructure
- Back To Basics: H.264 Transcoding For Flash by Streamingmedia.com
- Silverlight Beating Flash When It Comes To DRM Protection by Dan Rayburn
- Sun Launches JavaFX To Try And Compete With Flash And Silverlight by Dan Rayburn
Miscellaneous
- How YouTube Broadcasts Your Taste In Videos by NY Times
- Designers: Why Spec Work Is Not Going Away by Jeremiah Owyang
- What Keeps Microsoft Strong Is Incompetence by SmoothSpan Blog
- Lessons Learned From My Biggest Mistake by Seth Godin’s Blog
Videos
- Dropping In: Dries Buytaert (Drupal) by MIT Technology Review
- Kara Visits Hulu’s Jason Kilar by All Things Digital
Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) Now Available In Europe
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 by François
At last the moment we have all been waiting for. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has just announced that Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) is being rolled out in Europe.
This is great news for us as we’ve been playing with EC2 while it was only available in the US. But now there’s a fully-fledged European data centre we can really get going with what we’ve been planning to do for quite some time.
Let me explain:
We believe that every client has their own unique hosting requirements. That’s why we’ve never resold hosting or entered into any affiliate relationships.
This mindset has given us the opportunity to test and use a wide range of hosting set-ups and providers.
From virtual private servers (VPS’s) to managed dedicated servers we’ve toyed with them all.
We aren’t particularly keen on adding to all the hype but we are genuinely excited by what Amazon Web Services has to offer.
Now that EC2 has finally landed in Europe we will be upping our testing of AWS by deploying our own live site on EC2.
Yes, yes, I can hear your wails of derision. Why do this when you could get a dedicated server for a similar price? Why would you deploy your live site on an untried platform? Etc, etc, etc.
Well of course many of these assertions are valid but here’s the thing: we’ve guesstimated the risk and believe we can derive far greater value from migrating now and learning from the experience.
Having looked at server logs over the years it is clear that numerous people and companies overpay for underutilised server capacity. And in these cases it is clear that using a service such as AWS would offer numerous operational benefits.
What’s more we don’t particularly feel comfortable advising clients to use something if we have no “real world” experience of using it ourselves.
So in a nutshell the potential benefits AWS could provide, in certain circumstances, is to compelling to ignore.
Irrespective of the outcome this is something we are certainly looking forward to and deep-down I have a funny feeling we won’t regret this one.
Our Bookmarks: Dec 01 – Dec 07
Monday, December 8th, 2008 by The BCM Team
Development & Production
- Class Act: What Makes For Compelling Video? by Streamingmedia.com
- Widgets Are Made For Marketing: So Why Aren’t More Advertisers Using Them? by Advertising Age
Promotion & Distribution
- It’s Nervous-Making Time At Sundance by LA Times
- Kangaroo Ruled Anti-Competitive by paidContent:UK
- Kangaroo Ruled Anti-competitive, But In All The Wrong Ways by Screen Digest
Monetisation
- DadLabs Snags Six Figure Deal With Baby Bjorn by Tubefilter News
- A Winning Web Formula: Benefitting From Analysing The Early Popularity of Online Content by MIT Technology Review
Technology & Infrastructure
- Surviving The Exaflood by Economist.com
- Open Source: The Model Is Broken by Business Week
- Did YouTube Just Turn On HD For Real? by Techcrunch
- Facebook Releases HD Video by FastCompany.TV
Miscellaneous Tips & Tutorials
- The ABCDEF’s Of Conducting A Technical Interview by Lessons Learned
- Encoding For Streaming by The Netflix Blog
- The Startup Conundrum: Scalable vs Services by Jeremiah Owyang
Collaborating Remotely
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 by The BCM Team
I have just got back to Sydney and am ready to spread the love for Border Crossing Media into the Aussie territories.
My brief trip to Scotland was a success as in the time I was there we launched our corporate site, started alpha testing Border Crossing TV and even managed to get the planning for our second phase of development underway.
For those of you who are not familiar with our story here’s a brief summary:
The collective was launched by Francois and Diogo and I joined the team on a part time basis in August 2007. By February 2008 I had accepted a full-time position and things really started to motor with Border Crossing TV. In July 2008 we made a decision to meet-up and have some good old face-to-face time. I promptly applied for a visa, packed some bags and went on the now normal 25 hour flight to Europe.
By the way a freezing Scottish summer is great for straight-thinking. I recommend that all programmers consider relocating to colder regions – the quality of code you’ll produce will be great.
Anyway, from July to November 2008 we worked hard, sometimes too hard (keyboards were broken and twitches were developed) but it was certainly productive.
Since returning we have settled back into our usual routine of collaborating remotely and even though it was great to be over in Scotland there are certainly some positives to distance working that you really can’t escape.
- we are more productive. Not working in the same office removes any distractions. You get into work and get your head down straight away. Moreover, thanks to the tools we use, we never feel that distance working inhibits us achieving what we set out to do.
- we are always online. We all work in different locations and time zones so work never stops and sites are always up … because whatever time of day it is, there’s guaranteed to be someone on-call.
So in summary it was great to head over to Scotland, but in truth it’s also great to be back home.
Distance working or collaborating remotely certainly isn’t easy at first but the more you do it the more you realise that it is a viable option. Now that we have the right procedures and tools in place it certainly works for us and if your considering it, dive in, you won’t regret it!
Have a great day or night.
Anton
Our Bookmarks: Nov 24 – Nov 30
Monday, December 1st, 2008 by The BCM Team
Development & Production
- The Ultimate Guide To Creating Online Video Content, Part 2 by Streamingmedia.com
- User Generated Video Under Siege by Fortune
- Viral Video Stars by DMNews
Promotion & Distribution
- For A Thrifty Audience, Buying DVDs Is So 2004 by NY Times
- Online Video Not Killing TV, Says Nielsen by ReadWriteWeb
Monetisation
- Are Producers Of Online Video Making Money? by Tubemogul Research
- eStara Video Connect Enables Higher Value And ROI In Video by VideoNuze
Technology & Infrastructure
- A Closer Look At Adobe FMS 3.5 by Streamingmedia.com
- A Call For Revolution Against Beta Culture by Gizmodo
- Sharing The Browser by MIT Technology Review
- Embed Ads In User Generated Videos With ZunaVision by ReadWriteWeb
Miscellaneous
- The Art Of Bootstrapping by Open Forum
- Secrecy Or Transparency? One Startup’s Experience by ReadWriteWeb
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