Blog

Bring me CSS3 compliant browsers!

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:15:00 -0800

Working in my preferred "best-of-breed" environment (i.e. the closest thing I can get to a completely CSS & XHTML standards compliant browser...Chrome or Firefox) and then working backwards, I noticed myself trowling the intertubes for a CSS selector...and then getting totally hung up (again...) on the nifty things CSS has in store for you IE users, y'know, when Microsoft finally wraps it's noggin around CSS3 - fully. My example is short and sweet, but totally useless to the IE market. Basically, I have an unordered list of items that I want to turn into an inline footer navigation with pipes between each item. SilverStripe's templating makes this a little difficult; that's why I started playing with CSS. This is what I came up with, and I'll be darned - like a sock, bwahaha - if it didn't work in everything (but IE):

Upgrading SilverStripe Installation to 2.4b

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:00:00 -0800

Of the many things I've done this weekend, (lawn work, fiddling with site optimizations, packaging xulrunner applications for Macs, saving the planet...y'know, nothing too difficult) the thing that probably annoyed me the most, but had the biggest payoff (SEO-wise) was updating the site to SilverStripe 2.4. I apologize to anyone who may have stopped by (yes, I did see a number of 404's in the logs when I checked) this afternoon and gotten that message: my bad.

Mac SQLite Manager Standalone App

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:12:00 -0800

The nice folks from the sqlite-manager project (of the Firefox SQLite Manager Plugin fame) were nice enough to grace us with a XULRunner version of the addon. After much chagrin with having to launch this WONDERFUL tool from the command line *every time I wanted to run it*. Yes, I know I could have been a serious Mac user and crated an Automator script or an AppleScript for it...but I'm a little more hardcore (read: hard-headed) than that. On top of everything else, this app kicks serious ass when it comes to the world of SQLite on Macs. Everything else out there (even the really expensive paid stuff) just plain pales by comparison. Having this badboy as a standalone app is what I needed to feed my obsession.

Social Engine ... full throttle!

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:30:00 -0800

So, you went and got yourself a SocialEngine site, huh? Built that little online community you've been dreaming of for years? Now you have more than 50 users and your VPS or Colo can't keep up? You, my friend, need to learn some SocialEngine optimization techniques.

Speed up your Joomla! (Or any CMS, really)

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:46:00 -0800

Wow...I didn't know that there were still PHP/MySQL sites (let alone those powered by Joomla! 1.5) that were taking *any* appreciable time to generate nowadays. Until a client came to us saying that his Joomla! 1.5 powered news site was taking 7 to 10 seconds, to generate a page, and up to 20 seconds to download the page.

Extending SilverStripe's SiteConfig

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:30:00 -0800

So, SilverStripe 2.4 (still in alpha at the time of this post) has introduced a new feature (and class) called "Site Config". This is huge, folks - on the level of discovering XRays huge (except without the radiation poisoning part - unless you're just that sloppy with your code, then, perhaps you deserve it). My use for the SiteConfig class is to level the playing field with other CMS offerings like Joomla! and WordPress and allow users to change some (semi) static content within their sites, without having to come to me to update their templates.

A REALLY Good E-Commerce Question

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:34:00 -0800

I want to set up a website with a Content Management System and an e-Commerce component. I've heard really good things about Magento, WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. My head is spinning with all of my options. Which should I choose?

10,000 Friends vs. 1,000 Enthusiasts

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:30:00 -0800

Your business is considering a social media strategy and your consultant keeps buzzing about ten thousand (or some other ridiculously high number) of fans over night. You keep thinking to yourself "This is too good to be true; sure, he's done it for other people, but my brand?" You're right. It is too good to be true, for a few reasons:

Our Reno

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:00:00 -0800

Take a tour with Jeremy and Frank of the newly reno'd kiveo office!

33 Reasons Your Business Needs In on Social Media

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:56:00 -0800

33 reasons your business should be engaged in social media outreach to your customers. (Original post here)

Linkr...finally!

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:43:00 -0700

I've kinda disliked Joomla's content management for a while. Main reason: there isn't, by default, a mechanism to link from one article to another in the content management system (unlike SilverStripe - love it!). Until now, enter Linkr. The most amazing little tool for finding links in your Joomla! install and automatically inserting them into your editor. If you have to use Joomla's content management system, I highly recommend checking it out!

Transparent Backgrounds

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:30:00 -0700

Over and over again, I find myself needing to put text over an image for some reason or another. (Darned designers and their good ideas!) Recently, I decided to fake it and just cut the image from a designer's PSD and use an image map. I know, I know; I'm bad. It was the quickest way I could think of to get this task done, until the customer wanted different wording and I couldn't track down the PSD.

Broken Social Engine Comments

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:30:00 -0700

Recently, as we were wrapping up work on a Social Engine project (stay tuned for more info on that!), we noticed that people who put colorful text art (see below), were unintentionally (or maybe not) breaking the blog comments display. Really, what it came down to was the over exuberant use of special characters in the word art, specifically single quotes and double quotes. Looking into this a bit further, we noticed if we escaped the incoming text using PHP's htmlspecialchars() function, we'd no longer have this problem. So, for all of you looking for the answer to this question, here you go!

A Coda Panic

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:13:00 -0700

So, we've been using the most amazing editor ever, Coda by Panic Software for a little over six months. Amazing, rock solid and well, amazing. This site you're viewing, built in Coda. We heart it...real hard.

Over 2000 kurl'd clicks!

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:54:00 -0700

After reviewing some site stats today, we've noticed that kurl.it (our URL shortening service) has been used over 2,200 times (i.e. - people who have clicked on a kurl.it link). Not bad for a small in-house system we set up and haven't been pushing too much (get ready for that to change, though!). Thanks to everyone who used it and we look forward to providing you some very interesting features in the future.

Changing Branding For Social Causes

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:52:00 -0700

Recently, Ben & Jerry's, the iconic Vermont ice cream manufacturer decided to re-release one of their flagship product "Chubby Hubby" as "Hubby Hubby" for the month of September in Vermont as a show of support for Freedom To Marry in honor of the Vermont legalization of same-sex marriage. While my general view of the issue doesn't matter (marriage is a church matter, not a matter of the state), I would like to applaud Ben & Jerry and the folks of Vermont for taking progressive stance on the issue. This product change prompted me to ask the lesser controversial question of "When is it acceptible to alter a flagship product to meet a perceived social need?"

Social Media Blues

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:48:00 -0700

If we bribe you, will you be our fan?

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:47:00 -0700

No, seriously. The rules are simple. We'll select 5 of the first 100 Facebook fans and send you a t-shirt.

iPhone Geolocation Fun

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:13:00 -0700

So this morning I was working on one of our new projects. It's a web based iPhone application that among other things uses geolocation. The latest Safari on the iPhone with the 3.0 update has geolocation abailities built into it, so it was time for me to take them out for a test drive. Here below is the sample javascript I wrote. Any of you that enjoy lolcats, or know of some of our inside jokes here at kiveo will probably get a kick out of this. You don't even have to know programming to enjoy it, I promise. For those of you programmers out there who might read this. This code actually works.

Almost got it...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:11:00 -0700

As a part of my job and as a way to provide you with information, I'm constantly following Twitter conversations about Social Media and I've noticed that a lot of people are finally getting it, and that a surprising number of people almost get it. Like this image from headstreampr.com - a company trying to position themselves within the media-verse as a go-to company for social media and public relations integration. Take a look at the image and see if you can tell what's wrong (hint - just think about my previous post "It's about the conversation"):