Blog posts

With PHP 5.3 looking very close to release, bringing with it significant changes such as namespaces, this is an awkward time to release a PHP book of any generality. Within a few months it will be clearer how well the new features are taking hold and there is almost certainly going to be a clamour for books that show how new features affect development practices and how to make use of them. Even without that, it is hard to recommend this book as it fails to live up to its promise and provides a poor introduction to Object-Oriented programming. ...

Josh Owens » Rails Edge Change: How to add a counter cache to an existing db table Counter cache attributes are protected in rails 2.0 so you need to use slightly different syntax to update them manually/in a migration (tags: countercache rails2.0 rubyonrails) BBC NEWS | Technology | Weblogs rack up a decade of posts We’ve now had 10 years (and a few days) of blogging, apparently. (tags: blogging) Premailer — preflight for HTML e-mail — dunae.ca ...

If you’ve encountered Ruby primarily through Rails and know it chiefly as an elegant tool for writing web applications it’s easy to miss its longer history as a tool for systems administration. Before Rails made Ruby the language-du-jour sysadmins bore much of the responsibility for keeping it alive, with the result that it has a suite of libraries helpful for server monitoring and a range of other administrative tasks. Author André Ben Hamou is clear that his book is not an exhaustive guide to using Ruby for systems administration. Rather than try to cover every possible context he provides an introduction to the language and some of its key libraries intended to give a feel for how it might be used and why it leads to succinct and expressive solutions. A number of the more important libraries for working with network protocols and files are covered, and there’s a good introduction to rubygems and how they can be used and created. ...

Developers take REST with Rails | Technology | The Guardian Rails 2.0’s release gets covered by the Guardian (tags: guardian rubyonrails) Opera complains to Europe over IE lock-in - The Web Standards Project “Opera has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Union to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer and to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop.” (tags: antitrust eu internetexplorer microsoft opera windows)

More people are visiting charity websites, according to research - Communications - Third Sector “The proportion of people visiting charity websites has leapt by a third in the past nine months, according to research by think tank nfpSynergy.” (tags: charity nptech statistics thirdsector traffic web) Adapt to the web or lose donors, voluntary sector warned - Communications - Third Sector “The research report says that information technology has not increased the amount given to charities each year, but it is changing the way people give – and handing control of giving methods to the donor.” ...

When running a campaign a good strategy always used to be to ask your supporters to write letters to their local newspaper. Local newspapers are far more widely read than their national equivalents, you’re much more likely to get your photo published in them, and because of their more tightly defined audience they present a much greater chance to contextualise your message and suggest options for local action. In many ways, that is the campaign tactic that a strategy for web 2.0/social media should build from. It’s not about having a presence on flickr, delicious, facebook, upcoming, myspace, or any of the dozens of other “web 2.0” sites, though an official presence may be useful in some cases and personal experiences with all of them is a good idea. Instead it’s about resourcing your key supporters to be there for you, just as they would in their local papers. ...

David Byrne Journal: 12.06.2007: Embedded (at the New York Times) David Byrne recounts an exploration of the new New York Times building and muses on the future of newspapers. (tags: davidbyrne forblog futureofmedia newspaper) Dopplr Blog » Dopplr launches at LeWeb3 in Paris Dopplr is out of beta and open to all. I keep using dopplr as an example when writing about how social network sites can be done right. Now everyone can try it. ...

David Byrne Journal: 12.06.2007: Embedded (at the New York Times) David Byrne recounts an exploration of the new New York Times building and muses on the future of newspapers. (tags: davidbyrne fordevblog futureofmedia newspaper)

Since moving from a house (in Michigan) to a flat (in London) I’ve had a number of occasions to get frustrated with delivery people who don’t make sufficient effort to leave notes where they won’t be trampled underfoot, or with myself for forgetting to include the flat number when entering a delivery address. With my In Rainbows discbox taking a while longer than expected to reach me I was worried that that was what had happened to it, and then very impressed with a text I received this lunch time. ...

Whether or not you should build your own social networking site and/or make use of sites like facebook is currently a hot topic within the not-for-profit web developer/consultant world. The launch of sites like Amnesty International’s “unsubscribed”, which bears many hallmarks of a social networking site, combined with growing attention for facebook campaigns and tools like SuperBadger bring the options and potential into clear focus. Elizabeth Dunn’s post last month " social networks, walled gardens, and decision trees" makes a compelling argument that non-profits should be focussing on these questions now even if they’re not key for their current audience: sooner or later they will be and you don’t want to be playing catchup. ...