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eCRM: A Virtual Reality Check For Your Business

This week we take a step back from the web development rock-face to look at a more business-oriented topic. User-centered design is all very well, but how do you join the dots when it comes to managing your customer relationships long term? Entrepreneur Tej Kohli discusses the benefits to your business of investing in some Customer Relationship Mojo.
Publication date: 2008-07-30 more

Settling in to a New Environment at Craigslist

Yesterday was my first day as an employee at craiglist. Several folks on Twitter asked how it was, so here are my thoughts. First off, it was a bit like a first day anywhere. I had several new people to meet, a bunch of paperwork to fill out for benefits and payroll stuff, and started to get an overview of how things work. Unlike jobs in larger organizations, I had the pleasure of un-boxing and setting up my chair, desktop, and laptop computers. There's no "IT group" to do this stuff and that's perfectly fine with me. That's just one of the ways the size difference between a company of less than 30 people becomes apparent when you're used to well over 10,000. Specialization just can't take hold in a smaller group like that. Aside from a new job and new people and new computer(s), I'm also in a newish office that's referred to as "the annex." It's just down the street from the main craigslist office but isn't nearly as full yet. Unlike Yahoo, there are many, many places to eat within a very short walk from the office. To get a sense of how dense an area I'm in, check out all the wifi networks visible from my desk. At Yahoo, we were in a corporate campus environment, so all you saw were Yahoo networks. At the end of yesterday, I'd setup the bare minimum stuff on my new laptop (a 15.4" ThinkPad T61 running Ubuntu), desktop (also running Ubuntu), many accounts and passwords, email access, an IRC client for our internal channel, got wiki access, and a few other bits. I'm looking forward to learning what makes things tick and how I can make the better. I'm already getting a sense for the challenges we face in running such a popular service with a small team. Honestly, it's a refreshing change from the larger environments that I've worked in before. Plus, the commute wasn't as bad as I expected yesterday. Thanks to all the tips and advice I got last time, I headed up with the right expectations. That makes a difference. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Congrats to Chad Dickerson on his new gig!

News is out today that Chad Dickerson is leaving Yahoo! to become the CTO of Etsy in New York. That's fantasic news and I wish him the best of luck. Having made a similar decision myself, I know it's not easy. How time flies. I still remember interviewing Chad on the phone a few years back and talking about some experiences we had in common: using Perl to wrangle news and content feeds from varous partners and so on. It didn't take long to realize he'd be a great addition to Yahoo. That turned out to be quite the understatement. :-) Chad and I worked together in various capacities for a few years at Yahoo! and he truly made a mark there, kicking off Hack Days, helping put the Yahoo! Developer Network on the right track, and generally kicking ass. Seriously. Ask anyone who worked with Chad. I know this will be a big loss for Yahoo! and Brickhouse but it will be an even bigger gain for Chad and Etsy. My only regret is that we didn't get to work together longer. Good luck, Chad! And welcome to the ex-Yahoo! club. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

Photoshop vs Fireworks

Web designers use Photoshop, right? Always have, always will. At least that
Publication date: 2008-07-23 more

The Truth about Web Navigation

In Will Mainstream Users Ever Learn About The Browser's Address Bar?, Marshall probes a bit into how people use the browser's search box vs. the address bar. A lot of people seem surprised to learn that tons of people every day are "searching" for ebay.com or aol.com or just "ebay" or "aol" even though they can type those things into their address bar and get exactly what they want. I think part of the problem is the myth perpetuated by the search companies themselves. They all know that the top search terms every year are not "britney spears" or "ipone" or whatever. They're domain names or domain names without the .com on the end of them. Lots of people search Google every day for "yahoo." People search Yahoo for "google." And AOL. And eBay. And so on. They all filter out those "navigational" queries when reporting those things. I'm not sure who they're trying to protect by doing so, but I certainly could speculate. Everyone in the search business seems to mostly get this. The folks at those big destinations (like eBay) know this too. They have logs. But the rest of the techie population on-line seems to believe that normal people use the web the same we do. They don't. And they never will. Get it through your collective heads, please. People don't get DNS, domain names, or the difference between searching and direct navigation. And since they all know what it means "to google" that's exactly what they do. You can either accept that or deny the truth. That's why you're seeing numbers like this every quarter. This ends today's reality check. Please go back to trying to change the world by explaining what the address bar is for. :-) Oh, here's a bonus tip: normal people can't tell the difference between AdSense style ads and all the other links on most web sites. And almost the same number don't know what "sponsored results" on the Search Results Page are either. It's just a page of links to them. They click the ones that look like they'll get them what they want. It's that simple. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-18 more

Washington DC Digital Agency Janmedia Releases New e-edition for The Washington Times

Washington DC
Publication date: 2008-07-16 more

Janmedia Interactive, Inc Collaborates with Office Paper Systems

Washington DC
Publication date: 2008-07-16 more

Leading Washington DC Digital Agency Flying High with Aviation Adventures

Washington DC
Publication date: 2008-07-16 more

Smart CSS Ain

The web industry has never been short of zealots. Since the age of the spacer-gif, there have always been designers ready to fight for their preferred technique
Publication date: 2008-07-16 more

Weight Based Pricing of Airline Tickets

Ever since fuel prices have been on the rise, I've wondered why airlines don't price tickets based on weight rather than the current system where pricing is related to factors that few of us understand. I mean, really, if it costs more to fly a 300 pound person than a 180 pound person, why shouldn't the 300 pound person pay more? And by "300 pound person" I'm including the 200 pound person that brings 100 pounds of baggage along. That costs money to fly too. We're sort of headed in that direction with extra costs for extra bags, but why not just go all the way? Make the pricing fair. Airlines can compete on a dollars per pound from point A to point B. Clearly the airlines are desperate to save weight. This might encourage people to pack less junk. That's save fuel costs, baggage handline time, and so on. It might even encourage frequent flies to think twice about eating that Cinnabon "treat" before getting on board. Would that be so bad? After all, when it comes to buying gas at the pump for our cars, we each pay for what we use. The people who are moving heavier loads (either themselves or their cars) buy more gas and the gas stations "compete" on a dollars per gallon basis. There's no flat fee to fill up a car based on when you decided you need to fill up. Same with electricity. And water. And so many other things in life. Let's pay the actual cost and no pretend that moving a 12 year old across country uses the same amount of fuel as her overweight 48 year old father. Have there been airlines that tried this in the past? Did they end up only flying supermodels and skinny people around? Did people pack less baggage? Update: See the comments on FriendFeed too. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-15 more

Congrats to Yahoo! on the BOSS Launch

One of the more ambitious projects in the works when I left Yahoo was BOSS, a more open Yahoo! Search for developers and publishers. I see that BOSS launched today and wanted to say congrats to my friends in the Yahoo! Developer Network and Yahoo! Search. Marshall Kirkpatrick said it well in his ReadWrite Web post today: It is clear, though, that BOSS falls well within the company's overall technical strategy of openness. When it comes to web standards, openness and support for the ecosystem of innovation - there may be no other major vendor online as strong as Yahoo! is today. These are times of openness, where some believe that no single vendor's technology and genius alone can match the creativity of an empowered open market of developers. Yahoo! is positioning itself as leader of this movement. Well done. Keep on pushing... (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-11 more

Grilled Tuna Steaks Recipe

Yesterday night I made grilled tuna for the first time. And the consensus is that the results were mighty fine. So good, in fact, that paying restaurant prices for the fish was still worth it. (Yeah, tuna is a bit more pricy than I expected...) Here's what you need to make the marinade spread: 4 peeled garlic cloves 1 tablespoon coarse salt (sea salt) 1 tablespoon dried oregano leaves 1 tablespoon dried basil leaves 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil (possibly more) 4 tuna steaks (6-8 ounces each, roughly 1 inch thick) 8 bay leaves And how to do it: Combine the garlic, salt, pepper, oregano, and basil in a mortar and grind it into a paste with pestle. Add the olive oil a bit at a time until you achieve the consistency o of a spreadable paste. Rinse the tuna steaks under cold water and blot dry with a paper towel. Then cover both sides of the tuna with the marinade paste. Put the tuna into a small baking dish or pan and add the extra olive oil. Flip the tuna to get oil on both sides and then add a bay leaf to the top and bottom side of each tuna steak. Cover the tuna steaks and refrigerate for 3-4 hours. Finally, cooking instructions: Rinse and dry the tuna steaks and then apply a little olive oil to both sides. Pre-heat the grill for high heat, brush oil onto the grill, and begin grilling the tuna. After 2 minutes, rotate the steaks 45 to 90 degrees for cosmetic grill marks. Grilling will take a total of 4-6 minutes on each side depending on thickness and taste. The final product (once sampled) looks like this: And it's quite good. :-) Enjoy! (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

This is a test

This is a test document from google docs. I decided to try this procedure to see if it worked for my old MT blog install. Sure enough, it seems to. Kick ass. Sort of. You see, I'm not sure I really want to write my blog posts in Google Docs. But it's nice to know that I can do this if I want to. Anyone else tried this yet? Hmm, checking the source, it seems that there's some funky stuff getting inserted in here. I'll have to see what I can do to clean that. For some reason, paragraph <p> tags don't appear anywhere. It seems to use break <br> tags instead. That's annoying. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

Crazy Yosemite Squirrel

A few weeks ago we ended up hiking the Mirror Lake Trail in Yosemite National Park and encountered an amusing little squirrel near the end of the trial. I just happened to have finished filming a deer that walked nearby, so I pointed the Canon SD800 at the little furball to see if he'd perform. Sure enough, he did. Check out the video. I have no idea if this is common or not, but we were all amused at the little stretching thing he did at the ~40 second mark. I also have some good photos of that hike (and the visit to Glacier Point) that should be coming online soon. Watch my Flickr photostream. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-08 more

First Flight of Cirrus The Jet

Cirrus Design, the makers of the revolutionary SR-20 and SR-22 light airplanes, have flown their first VLJ (Very Light Jet) prototype: The Jet V1. Given the reputation that Cirrus Design has created for itself, "The Jet" is a highly anticipated jet. The all-new design should appeal to pilots of existing Cirrus aircraft looking to upgrade, as well as those currently flying aging twins which have high operating costs and slower cruise speeds. AVweb covered the story in this video and this article. The video is included below. It'll be interesting to see if they're able to hit all the price and performance targets they set out at the beginning of The Jet development. In the meantime, anyone have $1.5 million I can borrow to get one? :-) It occurs to me that there's a lot of development and excitement on both ends of the general aviation (GA) spectrum: light sport aircraft on the low end and VLJs on the high end. Hopefully fuel prices don't cut too deeply. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-04 more

A Day of Glider Extremes

A couple weekends ago we experienced a pair of glider extremes at Hollister on Saturday: one very short flight and one very long flight. The short one, unfortunately, was us. Kathleen and I headed down to fly the BASA Grob 103 on what was predicted to be an epic soaring day. And it was. Unfortunately, we got there a bit late and the weather had already developed quite a bit more than we expected. We towed toward the east hills and got off around 6,000 feet in what seemed like decent lift. But it was hard to stay with it and the high clouds from over-development in the Santa Cruz Mountains were quickly spreading. That blocked out the majority of sunlight and shut down most of the lift. We quickly went from "wow, this is going to be a good day" to "gee, let's see if we can find enough lift to keep from having to land soon." Before long, we were getting low and had to head back to the airport. But there was one big a problem. A wall of clouds and rain was approaching from the west and brought a wall of dust on the ground to match. There was a very visible gust front headed directly toward the airport. Folks on the radio were advising pilots to stay away because of the 30 knot crosswind. We were getting so low at that point that I didn't like the idea of flying back through possible sink and a definite headwind just to land at an unsafe airport. Luckily we were just a few miles from the private Christensen airport, so I put the nose down and headed straight to the runway at maneuvering speed (Va). No pattern. I knew where the wind was and decided to land downhill but into the wind. All the the while, we were watching lightning strikes in the Santa Cruz Mountains from the approaching storm--some of which started a few of the 1,000+ wild fires that have burned so much of the California countryside. Anyway, before long we were on the ground and sitting in the glider while the storms passed. And after the fun passed, I got on the phone to call for a retrieve. This goes down in my book as my shortest (distance and time) cross country flight. Ever. *sigh* More pictures available in my Christensen Landout on Flickr. And for something completely different... In related but much better news, Hollister glider pilot Eric Rupp set a new distance record the same day, flying his DG-300 glider from Hollister to Calexico, California--right on the Mexico border. This amazing 782.66 kilometer flight has been the subject of much planning and speculation until Eric finally pulled it off. It was an amazing combination of great weather, timing, and piloting. You can see flight details on OLC and his SPOT Satellite Messenger kept the rest of us informed on the ground while he was flying. Eric's epic flight was covered a bit in the press as well: Bay Area glider makes record-breaking flight to Mexico - Santa Cruz Sentinel 444 Miles Of Non-Powered Flight - AVweb Congrats to Eric on an amazing and inspiring flight. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Two Tech Jobs: Technology Evangelist and Network Operations

I've been getting lots of inquiries from recruiters recently looking to find good people for various tech companies. Two in particular might be interesting if you're in the market or know someone who is. Technology Evangelist at New York City Based Startup If you saw Fred Wilson's post Are You A Connector?, you know a bit about this job already. It's a NYC based startup developing a new platform in an area that's likely to see serious growth in the next few years. They're looking for someone with coding experience who loves showing other developers and users how stuff works: on stage, via blogs, in screencasts, and so on. It's important that this person have a technical (programming) background and also be very comfortable getting in front of people to demo and speak. The company is New York based and this job is too. However, I'm told that a Bay Area candidate may work as well, since a presence here will be important. Otherwise, I'm sure that frequent travel to the Bay Area will be part of the gig. The company is still a bit stealthy but more information will be forthcoming soon. Ping me if you're interested and I'll put you in touch. Network/Systems Administrator at Rapleaf in San Francisco The folks at Rapleaf ping me from time to time looking for talented engineers too. Here's the description of the position they're currently hiring for. Rapleaf is a well-funded San Francisco startup (we?re currently at 15 people). We gather publicly available information from the social web on hundreds of millions of people to enable developers and companies to give their consumers a better user experience. Rapleaf has built the largest portable social graph in the world. We provide rich insight on customers for clients such as retailers, airlines, hotel chains, social networks, lead gen firms, telcos, political campaigns, financial services, and more (these companies learn about their consumers in order to give them a better user experience). The company has processed over 175 million unique searches for businesses and consumers. You will maintain Rapleaf?s entire infrastructure and enhance the system to do great things as we?re on the trajectory to change the world. Helping grow one of the largest and most complex databases for a small start-up. Role: Manage all Rapleaf servers (Linux ? CentOS, Redhat), backups, web servers (Apache clusters) Manage relationship with hosting provider and hardware vendors Scalability and expansion (Hadoop) Systems administration (DNS,LDAP,NFS,TCP/IP,SELinux) Some scripting (Shell, Ruby, Python, or Perl) Administer MySQL databases (multi-master replication, snapshot backups) Learn how to scale with Ruby on Rails Manage complex Java systems Manage billions of data items of pages being served On-call duty Note: this job is really hard. You?ll be working with some of the top search engineers in the world and they are going to expect that you kick ass. We?re doing things that no one has ever done before and solving problems that have been open for years. Qualifications: Master of all things Internet and Linux. Incredibly smart, can learn fast, and takes no prisoners Learn new platforms fast. We use Ruby on Rails and Java ? you can pick this up quickly. Intensely driven and proactive person. Extremely hard working. This is a start-up - team members work long hours. Quick learner and real doer. Err on execution over strategy. Thrive on working with A-players. Too good to spend long hours with B-players. Likeable person who garners respect on and off the job. Thrive on chaos, risk, and uncertainty. Should be easy to get along with, nice, fun, smart, ethical, and low-maintenance. Strong desire to build a more ethical society. Desire to be an early employee and want to be a real owner in Rapleaf?s future. Want to work with extremely large datasets and indirectly build portable APIs that thousands of other companies can build applications on top of. Ability to lift and install servers (50 lbs) Should want to live in or near San Francisco (relocation available if necessary) Perks: Good salary/stock compensation. Personal MacBook Pro or Linux based machine Medical insurance, 401k. Kitchen stocked with food Work with some of the smartest engineers Contribute to the Rapleaf Dev blog (http://blog.rapleaf.com/dev/) Again, ping me if you're interested or know someone who might be. I'll make an introduction for you. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Portable Social Networks, The Building Blocks Of A Social Web

Are you a member of all the latest and greatest social networking sites? Tired of re-entering your personal details? Need to keep your information up-to-date across a myriad of accounts, and enable your user base to do the same? You need the foundations of the social web, brought to you by Ben Ward.
Publication date: 2008-07-02 more

OtterBox Blackberry Case Quick Review

A few weeks ago I wrote up my BlackBerry Curve Impressions and heard from Chad Atchison from OtterBox. I'd never heard of them before but he said: I work for a company called OtterBox and we make cases for several smart phones, including the Curve - I actually have one sitting on my desk right now. Anyway, if you're worried about dropping it, etc., I could probably convince our PR girl to send you a free sample. So I had a quick look at their site and decided to go for it. About a week later, a BlackBerry Curve Defender Case arrived and it'd been dutifully protecting my BlackBerry ever since then. The thing has been through moving stuff in a storage unit, daily use at home, a week in the Nevada desert, flying in light airplanes, hiking in Yosemite, and random stuff in between. I'm very impressed with this rugged little case. It strikes a great balance between protection and usability. The plastic keyboard cover does a good job of keeping stuff out of it while still making it easy to type on (well, as "easy" as a blackberry sized keyboard can be). Clearly this is a well thought out and tested design. If you're looking for a case to protect your BlackBerry or other smart phone from the elements, check out OtterBox. I think it'd be worth the money if you want to keep the phone in good shape for a long time. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

Integrating Social Media into a Web Content Strategy

You might know your Facebook from your Odeo, but most companies couldn
Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

I'm Joining Craigslist in July

I wasn't really looking for a new job a few months ago when I received an email from Eric Scheide (see Team Bios), the CTO at craigslist. He mentioned that they were looking for someone with MySQL experience and asked if I knew anyone. This sort of thing happens all the time. But this time it was different. Over the course of about three seconds, something clicked in my little brain and I realized that craigslist is a pretty unique combination of things: a small company with a solid financial base, a great service that I use myself, a focused groups of people who really care about doing things well, and an open-source friendly environment. I replied that I might be interested myself and things kind of took on a life of their own from there. In the weeks that followed, I got the chance to meet much of the team (including CEO Jim Buckmaster and Craig himself). Each time I came away liking more and more about the team. I've also been impressed at how well the company takes care of its people and how thoughtful they are about making important decisions. So after taking a few weeks off for some planned travel and unplanned relaxation, I'll start assimilating myself into the craigslist engineering culture and lending a hand wherever I can. Yes, some of that will entail going back to my MySQL roots. The site is growing like a weed (still!), the people are great, and the focus is on providing a great service that anyone can use. At the same time, there are a lot of technical challenges (they get a ton of page views) and great opportunities to grow the site and give back to both the open source community and all the communities around the world that craigslist serves--a list that's growing all the time. Not that I really care much what other people think, but the reactions I've had so far when telling people have been universally positive. Very positive. That tells me I'm on the right track. The only real downside is that crigslist is in San Francisco and I'm in San Jose. So if you have thoughts on getting to the vicinity of 9th and Judah using public transit, let me know. I won't be commuting up every day, but I suspect I'll be trying a few options before settling on what works best. Previously: Leaving Yahoo!, and The Aftermath. Related Zawodny Joining Craigslist In July WebProNews Yahoo's Open Source Developer Lands at Craigslist Wired Pilgrim?s Picks for June 19 - Back Home Edition Marketing Pilgrim Yahoo?s Executive Structure Crumbles: Lu, Garlinghouse and Makhijani To Leave TechCrunch Yahoo evangelist moving to Craigslist CNet Three More Managers Leaving Yahoo New York Times Yahoo?s People Loss Is Long Overdue The Inquisitr Yahoo! exec! exodus! continues! The Register Yahoo! loses yet more prominent staff Big Mouth Media More Execs Bolt Yahoo, Reorganization Expected Online Media Daily Yahoo readies reorganization as more execs depart San Jose Mercury News Bidding Yahoo Adieu BusinessWeek (comments)
Publication date: 2008-06-21 more

Building a Cheap Ass Linux PC

One of the down sides to leaving Yahoo! is that the notebook computer I've been using for last few years will no longer be mine in a few days. I'm one of those people who used their company issued computer for lots of non-company stuff too. When I start at Craigslist, I'll be getting a new laptop running Linux. But that's several weeks away and doesn't run some of the funky Windows apps I need or want access to. So I'm going to try keeping work separate from non-work this time around. What to do? I have a Thinkpad T43p at home that's been used mainly as a backup sever and lightweight web browser for a while now. It has a 2GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, 80GB disk, and a kick ass screen and keyboard. But it's running Ubuntu. So I'm planning to use the recovery CDs to make it back into a Windows box (maybe dropping in a bigger disk along the way) and using it as my personal Windows machine. But that means I need a system to take over doing backups and that other stuff that the Thinkpad used to do. My solution is to pull a few cheap parts off Newegg.com and build a low-end (but still probably overkill) machine that'll run Linux and do what I want. Here's what I ended up with. IN WIN IW-BT610T.300BL Black Steel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 300W Power Supply$50.99 Intel BOXD201GLY2A Intel Celeron 220 SiS 662 Micro ATX Motherboard/CPU Combo$64.99 Crucial 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) System Memory$21.99 Sony NEC Optiarc Black 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model DDU1671S$18.99 I already own a SATA hard disk I can drop in. Same goes for the keyboard and mouse. Plus installing Ubuntu costs me nothing other than my time. At a total cost of $156.96 plus shipping, it's not bad for under $200. It'll do the backup and other "home server" jobs just fine and serve as a web browsing station now and then if need be. I almost opted for the Intel BOXD945GCLF Atom processor Intel 945GC Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo for even lower power consumption, but wanted to stick with a Micro ATX board for now. I'm really impressed by what you can get for a cheap these days! The CPU is even 64 bit--not that it matters in this case. Thoughts? Semi-related: This old laptop: Revitalizing an aging notebook on the cheap. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-06-21 more

The Education of Geeks and Freaks

Between choosing the most semantic markup, wrangling IE6 CSS bugs, and arguing which JavaScript library would win in a fight, it is easy to forget that the future of web design rests in the hands of a small group of people
Publication date: 2008-06-19 more

Back up in your ass with the resurrection!

It's had to explain the appeal of Office Space if you don't already get it. Therefore its even harder to explain how funny the first set of comments in response to this link on reddit.com is to me. [Hint: the full sized image is easier to read.] Seriously, I'm already a fan of both Office Space and Reddit. But now I love each one just a little bit more. Feel free to insert your favorite Office Space quote in the comments below--unless you're a no talent ass clown like me, that is. Damn it feels good to be a gangster. In related news, Get Firefox 3 Today. I did. You should too. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-06-18 more

The Aftermath

Wow. That's all I can say. After yesterday's announcement, I'm rather overwhelmed with all the congratulatory notes, comments, LinkedIn invites, and pitches to work at promising startups. It almost makes me wonder if I shouldn't have decided to leave Yahoo before deciding where to go next. Nah. I needed "something next" to get myself in that mindset in the first place, I think. If you emailed me personally and haven't seen a response yet, don't worry. I have a bunch of replies to send off, lunches to schedule, and so on. Meanwhile, I'm off today (Friday) and Monday and then back at work for another week and a half or so. If you have unfinished business with me, please get in touch before my work email address no longer belongs to me. Here's an interesting bit of trivia: back when I was first at Yahoo, it was pretty easy to nab yourself an alternate email address. So I picked up z@yahoo-inc.com just because. It turned out to be far easier to spell to folks on the phone and got a fair amount of use. But it also got some decidedly weird spam and email for people who treated it as a disposable address when signing up for various services. I wonder if there'd be interest in a Xooglers type blog written by ex-Yahoo folks... Anyway, have a good weekend. We're off to hang out with family for a few days and enjoy the California weather. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-06-14 more

Leaving Yahoo!

It seems that word has started to leak out, so I might as well remove any speculation or ambiguity. In the next few weeks, I'll walk the halls at Yahoo! as an employee one last time and turn in my purple badge. After 8.5 years of service and a better experience than I could have possibly imaged back in 1999, the time for me to move on has arrived. It's always hard to make a decision like this. It took several months to finally decide. I've really enjoyed my time at Yahoo and have a lot of people to thank--people who took a risk on me, believed in me, encouraged me, and even defended me over the years. There are literally too many to name, but some of them are: David Filo, Jerry Yang, Jeff Weiner, Phu Hoang, Ash Patel, Jeffrey Friedl, Mike Bennett, Anil Pal, Bradley Horowitz, Allen Wang, Chad Dickerson, Matt McAlister, and Chris Yeh. If any of you read this, I've learned a lot from all of you. Really. I've enjoyed working with some amazingly talented coworkers (far too many to name) and have had the opportunity to help some acquired companies navigate the inner workings of Yahoo as they scale up their services. That includes people in engineering, marketing, public relations, product management, design, legal, and more. You guys rock. I can definitely say that I've had the chance to contribute to the success of Yahoo as much as I could muster. Whether it was staying up all night working on the 9/11 memorial size, launching the Yahoo! Search blog, starting the Yahoo! Developer Network, debugging MySQL problems, pushing RSS and syndication, introducing startups to Yahoo, arguing for openness, or making sure that news releases appeared on Yahoo! Finance quickly. I won't at all be surprised if some people think this is related to Microsoft or Carl Ichan and the uncertainty surrounding Yahoo's future. The reality is that there's nothing pushing me out the door at Yahoo. The reason I'm leaving is that something very compelling has come along to lure me away. Despite what the current press sentiment might be, Jerry and David have built a remarkable company. Ever since I graduated from college in 1997, I've wanted to work for a smaller company. But my first job out of school was a ~40,000 person Oil Company and my second was Yahoo! Back then Yahoo was in the 2,000 people ballpark but it eventually grew to seven times that size, give or take a bit. I've experienced the ups and downs--the layoffs and the big victories. I'd do it all over again if given the chance. It's been quite a ride, and I'm really going to miss Yahoo. I'll miss the parking debates and all the "random" stuff we're so fond of ranting about. Watching from the outside is going to be a very different experience. But the opportunity to work in a much smaller company recently presented itself and it was simply too interesting to pass up. I'll say more about that in the coming weeks. To all the Yahoos I've worked with over the years, thanks and please stay in touch. My email address will always be Jeremy@Zawodny.com and I'm on LinkedIn here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jzawodn. And, well, you've found my blog already. :-) As for the future of Yahoo, everyone working at Yahoo today knows in their gut what Yahoo should be and needs to be. My advice is to work on making that happen. Don't let anyone else (inside or outside the company) try to tell you what Yahoo is. Trust your gut. And, if you have the chance, re-read the farewell note that Ian Rogers sent out when he left a few months back. It's good stuff. And, by all means, don't take the stuff you read in the press at face value. You're all smarter than that. Now where's that Yahoo Alumni club I've heard so much about? BTW, JR is leaving as well. Reactions Prominent open-source developer bids Yahoo adieu CNet Yahoo's open-source search man to leave The Guardian Zawodny Leaves Yahoo; Weiner To Go? And Linsley Departs Ask Search Engine Land Yahoo Loses One Of Its Most Respected Employees Shoemoney Yahoo Loses Two More: Fayyad and Zawodny TechCrunch Bleeding purple Valleywag Jeremy Zawdony Leaves Yahoo: First Favorite Blogger Cartoon Barry Yahoo's Zawodny Announces Exit WebProNews More Top Yahoos Heading for the Exits New York Times Technology Bits Briefly: Key Yahoo Developer leaves The Industry Standard Yahoo Org Chart Likely To Be Redrawn?Again?With Weiner Departure; Other Major Departures Too paidContent.org Jeremy leaves Yahoo! Matt Cutts (comments)
Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Review: Building Findable Websites

All the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tricks in the world won
Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Why Do Web Startups Die? Lack of Alphalpha

Every week heralds the announcement of yet another handful of web startups, filling a new niche or competing with established services
Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

The 2008 Air Sailing Cross Country Camp

Last week, as with the previous several years, I spent some time away from work to attend the Air Sailing Cross Country Camp (see events) in Nevada. That's a week long educational camp for glider pilots who are looking to expand their soaring horizons beyond the reach of their local airport. I attended four years ago as a participant and have been going back every year since then as a "lead pilot" or mentor to the participants. The weather conditions are different every year and we have a different crowd of people attending, but we always have educational classes in the morning and some fun flying in the afternoon. This year, however, was a bit different, since Kathleen (my wife) was one of the participants. And as luck would have it, I got to be her lead pilot. We were fortunate to fly on three different occasions in the BASA DG-1000 (N451CH). I happened to have my camera handy for two of those three flights and have the pictures on my Flickr photostream in two different sets. The first was on Tuesday when we had the chance to do some ridge soaring: DG-1000 Ridge Flying at Air Sailing. Here are a few shots. The second set is from Friday when we flew from Air Sailing to the Truckee Tahoe airport so that we wouldn't have to disassemble the glider and trailer it there: DG-1000 from ASI to TRK. Here are a few shots. I also have GPS traces from each flight and some great 3-D animated playbacks that give you a sense of our flight paths. I'm working to convert those into movies I can stick online here too. See Also: First 5.5 Hour Flight out of Air Sailing (2004) In the Nevada Desert for a Week... (2004) For My 31st Birthday: Long Flight and a Smaller Version of Me (2005) (comments)
Publication date: 2008-06-11 more

Review: ScreenFlow

The Web is a
Publication date: 2008-06-05 more

Free Your Embedded Data With SearchMonkey

The web is evolving ever faster, and it feels like almost every day there is a new tool to explore and learn. But which ones will be worth your time and effort? Well, how about the ones that stand to improve your company's bottom line? Yahoo!'s Christian Heilmann walks us through the creation of their new search modification tool, SearchMonkey.
Publication date: 2008-06-05 more

Death of the $100 Hamburger

With aviation fuel (avgas or 100LL as we like to call it) climbing over $5.50/gallon in many areas (see 100LL.com for current prices), it's clear that the famed $100 Hamburger is rapidly vanishing from aviation. If you're not familiar with the concept, Wikipedia explains it well: A $100 Hamburger is aviation slang for a private general aviation flight for the sole purpose of dining at a non-local airport. Most often used by pilots who are looking for any excuse to fly, a $100 hamburger trip usually involves flying a short distance (less than two hours), eating at an airport restaurant, and flying home. "$100" originally referred to the approximate cost of renting or operating a light general aviation aircraft, such as a Cessna 172, for the time it took to fly round-trip to a nearby airport. Increasing fuel prices have since caused an increase in hourly operating costs for most airplanes, whether rented or owned. The last time we flew for a $100 hamburger was back in January when a group of group of us (two Citabrias, one Cub, and one Cessna 150) headed out to Merced for lunch. I actually did have a burger that day. :-) But when your airplane burns 6.5 gallons/hour (leaned) and fuel is $5.50/gallon, you can't fly much more than an hour each way and keep it to $100 (not including food, maintenance, or insurance!). The only I hope I see is that many of the new Light Sport Airplanes are using engines that burn anywhere from 3.5 to 5.0 gallons of fuel per hour. That's an improvement. In The $200 hamburger, Nate Ferguson at AOPA Pilot suggests that we need to increase that number. He's definitely right, but something about calling it a $200 Hamburger really spoils it for me. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-30 more

Yahoo! Developer Network Hiring a Technical Evangelist

If you happen to know someone who'd be interesting in joining the evangelism team on the Yahoo! Developer Network, please let me know. The full job listing is here. To that, I'll add a few points of interest. you get to attend and speak at numerous industry conferences you can appear on YDN Theater as much as you'd like you will work with a cool team you get to be on the forefront of stuff like YOS (see: this video and this video too) you may build prototype applications, mashups, and demonstrations to showcaswe our technology and services That's on top of all the other benefits of working at a company like Yahoo! :-) Feel free to send me a resume (that's the most direct method) or use the "Submit Resume" button on the listing. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-29 more

Tim O'Reilly on Search

Tim O'Reilly gives the following advice about Search... So, my advice to Yahoo!: continue with your plan to outsource search to Google, just like you did before 2002, and plow those increased profits and reduced costs into your own innovation, strengthening the areas where you are #1, exploring new ideas that will make YOUR users insanely happy, and generally focusing on what makes Yahoo! great, rather than on what doesn't. That is, unless Microsoft makes you so good a deal for your search assets that you just can't say no. But either way, let yourself be quit of the destructive competition and focus on adding real value for your users. In other words: play to your strengths. Thoughts? (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-25 more

BlackBerry Curve Impressions

Yesterday my wife inherited my trusty old Motorola V710 cell phone after hers vanished. I took advantage of some credit I had, plus a pair of aggressive rebates from Verizon Wireless to get a Blackberry Curve at a very good price. I'll preface this by saying that I've never owned a "smart" phone before and wasn't sure what I was getting into. But so far I'm pretty happy. Having access to some of my favorite on-line apps (in mobile form) is surprisingly handy. So far I've set up a few favorites in the browser, such as Weather Underground Mobile and Bloglines Mobile. I've also installed a few apps: GMail Mobile, TwitterBerry, and Google Maps Mobile. I expect that I'll find some useful aviation related mobile sites or apps that I need to try out as well. The best part is that once the service on my EVDO card is shut off, I'll have a cheaper bill and similar capabilities to what I had before--partly thanks to Bluetooth Tethering. And from the looks of it, there are even some Linux tools to play with. I dig that fact that I don't need to buy funky chargers. USB power is great. I'm finding the interface pretty easy to adapt to, and thanks to some BlackBerry keyboard shortcuts, I'm pretty good on the keyboard. I thought about getting the BlackBerry Pearl but couldn't see the point of having something with a retarded keyboard when the "real thing" was close in price. I haven't yet tried the camera and uploading to Flickr. Sadly, there is no ZoneTag. I have used it as a phone and it's at least as loud and clear as my old phone. What else is out there that I need to play with? I'm sure there's a lot... See Also: Motorola V710 Data Rates on Verizon Cheap Cell Phone Replacement Parts (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-24 more

Design Decisions vs. Audience Considerations

This week, we take a look at how to handle the conflict between what your users want, and what you want them to want. Robin Ragle-Davis considers how upfront audience profiling can reap customer relationship benefits down the line.
Publication date: 2008-05-21 more

Efficient Video Delivery Over The Internet

While the days of low-quality stop animation may be a thing of the past, there is no denying that high quality video streaming is alive and well on the web today. Major media outlets stream significant amounts of their programming, amateurs are in on the game, and many users will simply expect video from certain content providers. This week, Lei Zhu brings us up to speed on the different methods that can be employed to get Flash video on to a site.
Publication date: 2008-05-14 more

Good Food, Eating, and Diet Advice Talk by Michael Pollan

I've been a fan of Michael Pollan's work for some time now, so I was quite happy to run across a video of a recent talk he gave at Google in which he discusses the current understanding of food and nutrition as well as what's wrong with our "system" today. Even if his name doesn't ring a bell, you may have heard of some of his books: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to a Food and Farm Bill. Anyway, enjoy the video. And, if you found that interesting, allow me to resurrect my 2+ years old diet posts. They seem to still garner a fair amount of attention, and recent readers may not have been reading when I first wrote them. Diet Tips or How To Lose Weight with a Spreadsheet and a Web Site The Diet Plan and The Three Habits The Diet Spreadsheet Diet Tips: How To Eat Less Diet Plans and Goal Setting: How Many Calories? Closing Diet Tips and Advice (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-14 more

Monkeying with Search

A few weeks ago, at the Web 2.0 Expo, Matt Cutts dropped by the Yahoo! booth and we got to chatting a bit. He mentioned being impressed by Yahoo's willingness to monkey with our search results page--meaning Search Monkey, the tool that allows site owners (like me) and developers (like me) to, for lack of a better term, pimp their result. I haven't had a chance to write up anything about Search Monkey yet, but luckily Rasmus dove in and wrote up a developer-centric summary. As he notes, there's a launch party later this week at Yahoo. Drop by for some food, drink, and more information about Search Monkey. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-13 more

Leading Washington DC Area Digital Agency Teams Up with Carbonfund.org

Washington DC
Publication date: 2008-05-09 more

Why is it hard to work with big public companies?

People often ask questions like that. And from the inside it's clear that things aren't as easy as we wished they'd be. But I've never thought long enough about the issue to figure it out for myself, let alone try to explain it to others. Luckily Greg Cohn has. Here's just a bit of what he says in Doing Business with the Semi-Permeable Corporation: Today?s environment is transparent, open, and conversational - meaning almost anyone can get to anyone and communicate with them publicly, semi-publicly, or privately. This is great - when I need to find someone, it tends to be quite easy to reach them directly or with one degree of separation via my network. When someone needs to reach me, I am equally easy to find (and in fact have a public ?contact me? email link that?s one click away from a search on my name). As conversations become substantive, companies are increasingly transparent about their objectives, plans, competition, and even finances, all of which materially increase effectiveness. So much for the good stuff. The challenges are: a) that I?m still under the constraints of a public company, and can not in any way be ?conversational? about material inside information; and b) that open doors like mine are magnets for everything from unrelated BU inquiries (from people who should know better) to ?the Yahoo! suggestion box?, and the signal-to-noise ratio of inbound items can create a lot of distractions and confusion if I don?t filter aggressively. I can definitely sympathize with the second bit. I don't know how many random inquiries I get each month, but it can be a lot to deal with. Help me with my research project. Introduce me to someone in My Yahoo! Tell me my Yahoo! password. Fix my email. Buy these pills. The list goes on! And I digress... Seriously, go read what Greg wrote. He did a good job of helping people to see the world from the other side. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-07 more

Improve Your Page Performance With Lazy Loading

Today
Publication date: 2008-05-07 more

Open Source Nonsense: Microsoft and Yahoo Flamebait?

Writing on OStatic, Reuven Lerner (whose writing I've read in various places over the years) appears to be hitting the crack pipe in explaining how he wonders if Microsoft buying Yahoo would lead to Yahoo ditching open source projects. Huh? That's what I thought. Here's what he says Back when Microsoft announced its intention to buy Yahoo, many of us wondered whether Yahoo would be forced to get rid of its open-source projects in the wake of such a purchase. But after reading the press releases put out by Yahoo, in which they seem to indicate that they're aiming not only to survive, but to become a stronger and more profitable company, I have to wonder whether this might force Yahoo to give up some of its open-source projects. While it's not at all clear who "us" is there (open source community? OStatic writers? Israeli developers?), the implication that Open Source is somehow more expensive could use a bit of support. But let's go on and look for it. My reasoning is as follows: Yahoo is not as profitable as it needs to be, which means that they begin to shed low-margin business units. Yahoo has already indicated its willingness to give much or all of its advertising business to Google; this presumably means that everything is on the table. Okay... While it's undoubtedly true that open-source software has many benefits, we have yet to see an obvious indication that development (and giving away) open-source software leads to higher profits. Indeed, while we cannot pin Sun's steep decline in the last quarter solely on its embrace of open-source software, the correlation seems too strong to ignore. Which means that if Yahoo is looking to restrict itself to profitable ventures, they might stop funding some of the open-source projects they have supported until now. Huh?!?! Hadoop is critical to many business operations within Yahoo, including Yahoo Search. Based on what the folks from that team have said, I find it hard to believe that getting on board with Hadoop was more expensive than rolling our own (again). And lower expenses often lead to higher profits, right? And then there's PHP, another very important piece of infrastructure at Yahoo. It replaced a dozen other half-baked languages years ago. Maintaining a single server-side scripting language is far less expensive than a dozen that all suck more than PHP. I could go on. But let's keep reading... He then ends the article by saying the following, which really should have been at the beginning so that people wouldn't waste time hoping for a well thought out argument. I should note that what I'm writing is pure speculation: No one at Yahoo has even hinted that their support of such projects as YUI and Hadoop will go away. And indeed, those tools are essential to Yahoo's future, which means that we can expect them to continue to survive. I think there's a damned good reason that nobody has hinted that way: It'd be stupid to do so. I've generally been pleased by the quality of writing at thinking on the GigaOm blogs. But this one really leaves me scratching my head. Was this supposed to be some kind of Open Source flamebait
Publication date: 2008-05-07 more

Web Developer Needed

The Yahoo! Developer Network (otherwise known as "YDN", also known as "where I work") is looking for a skilled webdev to work full-time at Yahoo! HQ in Sunnyvale, California. Here's a bit of the boilerplate about the job. I've left out the "who is yahoo" stuff, since I assume your know what Yahoo is if you managed to work the Internet long enough to find this. :-) The ideal candidate will have a strong command of JavaScript 1.0-1.5, DHTML, DOM Levels 0-2, CSS 1-2.1, HTML & XHTML, web standards, PHP, object-oriented programming, cross-browser compatibility issues, progressive enhancement, optimization techniques (both in file weight and perceived/actual rendering speed), accessibility, device-portability techniques, and internationalization issues. Knowledge of XML, HTTP, Apache, MySQL, remote scripting, state management, working within a Unix environment, CVS, and bug tracking tools is highly desirable. A Computer Science degree with 5+ years of related work experience is required. The environment is fast-paced with numerous user-centered iterative design & development cycles. You'll be responsible for building everything from proof-of-concepts and usability prototypes to deployment-quality code. Interested? Shoot me your resume and I'll get you hooked up with the hiring manager. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-07 more

Quasar Fuel Efficient Light Sport Airplane

According to this AVweb story, a Brazilian-made light sport aircraft could set records for fuel efficiency if it lives up to claims. Powered by a 121-pound HKS-700E 60-hp 4-stroke engine that promoter GeBe LLC says sips about 1.7-3.5 gallons per hour, GeBe claims the roughly 500 pound aircraft could be "the greenest aircraft on the planet," or, less subtly, "the most efficient commercially available aircraft on earth." The company also calls the Quasar Lite a "2-seat trainer" and likens its handling qualities to "a Pitts in the air." In terms that should prove less subjective, the aircraft's fuselage is composite, its 30-foot-span wings are aluminum and the tail is aluminum structure with Dacron covering. With 20-gallon tanks, the aircraft's range is listed at 1,060 miles (10 hours at economy cruise) and its cruising speed at 75 percent power is listed at 130 mph with stall at 45 with flaps down. Maximum rate of climb at gross weight is listed at 550 ft/min and Quasar told us when they fly the aircraft it generally climbs 700 ft/min with full fuel and one pilot aboard. Quasar also says they routinely fly the aircraft at 120 mph true burning two gallons per hour. Drool... With prices at the avgas pump in the $5.25/gallon range here in the Bay Area, such a plane could sell quite well for casual fliers. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-01 more

Explaining the Cognitive Surplus

I really enjoyed watching Clay Shirky's talk on Cognitive Surplus at the Web 2.0 Expo last week. He does such a good job at explaining how and why watching TV is no longer the de-facto spare time activity that I'm going to simple force people to watch it when they claim not to understand how I have no time to watch television. See for yourself... It occurs to me that people like me, meaning generation X (as we're called), are part of possible the last generation where hours of TV watching every evening was a truly universal activity. Even if I had a Tivo, I probably wouldn't find the time to really use it. I've always enjoyed Clay's presentations and this one is no exception. Carve yourself out 15 minutes of whatever it is you'd normally be doing and give it a listen. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-05-01 more

User Interface Implementations of Faceted Browsing

Faceted browsing is a powerful navigation tool for content dense sites
Publication date: 2008-05-01 more

How to Get Rich with Green Putty

I realized something amusing today. If you take a 3 ounce wad of putty (just enough to put in your hand and squeeze it), color it green, and put it in a little plastic container, you can call it TheraPutty and sell it as a hand therapy product in hospitals and medical offices. As far as I can tell, the key is to make it an unmistakable shade of green. The trick to getting rich is selling this 50 cents worth of putty and plastic for just under $8. And, in related news, I've posted my first video to Flickr. I have the fun of spending about 5 minutes doing that 3-5 times a day--along with a few other finger strengthening exercises. Believe it or not, my finger is healing up pretty well so far. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-29 more

Dear Yahoo and Microsoft Management

Please do something. Soon. You know what I'm talking about. There are a lot of people wondering what the future holds and it seems like we're in yet another indefinite holding pattern while you do whatever it is you're doing and cannot talk about. Meanwhile, the rest of the world marches on. While the public staring contest is great drama for the incessant technology news machine, the rest of us are rather sick of this. I say this as a concerned observer, fan of Yahoo, employee, and shareholder. Your Friend, Jeremy (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-28 more

Introduction to Django: Helping Perfectionists With Deadlines

It seems like only yesterday that Rails was being trumpeted as the Next Big Thing
Publication date: 2008-04-23 more

F-16 R/C Scale Model with Afterburner!

Only once have a I seen a scale model fighter jet up close. That was a few years ago in Florida. I watched someone do and engine run-up test on a model F-15 while his friend held it in place. What impressed me most is how jet-like the micro-jet engines sound. It really does seem like you're witnessing a fighter jet trying to fly. So it was with some fascination and pleasure I watch this video and wondered how I would feel about test flying one for the first time, knowing how much time and money goes into it. But it sure would be fun! Especially when it has an afterburner. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-22 more

Maybe Microsoft is Right...

It's funny how infrequently you hear anyone (at least around here) say that, but it was my first reaction to this post which can best be summarized with a few excerpts: Q: What do you get when you cross a browser application with the ability to go offline? A: A client application without any the goodness that the platform (be it Windows or OS X) has to offer. Really? Do people really want this? ...and... Perhaps there?s been so much blah blah blah about web 2.0, social networks, etc., or that folks have just gotten so lazy that they?ve forgotten how to write client applications. It?s sad really. You can come at this from many points of view, really. Maybe the web is best thought of as the focus and the desktop is merely there for when the web is not. Or maybe the desktop is the focus and the web is there as an add-on (current browser technology certainly points this way). Or maybe the two should be on equal footing, as much as possible. Or... But it occurs to me that when you consider the question in terms like I excerpted above, it make Microsoft's strategy look a little less like they need to catch up with Google. Not entirely, but enough to remind you that there are some smart people there too... (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-22 more

Virtualization: VMware, Xen, or VirtualBox?

Dear Lazyweb, I wish to virtualize my computer life. However, I face an abundance of choices from which you will help me select the right one. I have a Windows XP Pro machine on which I'd occasionally like to run a virtual Windows XP machine and maybe a lightweight Linux server (probably without a GUI). I currently run VMWare server on it and am pretty happy with that. So is it worth playing with VirtualBox at all? Secondly, I have a Linux box (Ubuntu) on which I'd like to regularly run a Windows XP virtual machine. I have experience with VMWare on Linux, but also know that Xen may be a good option. Or maybe VirtualBox. Not having it break every time I apt-get and install the latest kernel would certainly be a bonus. What are the pros and cons here? And are there other solutions worthy of consideration? (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-20 more

Yahoo! is Hiring

It's hard not to get distracted by all the Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google speculation that's been building, but I wanted to take a minute and point out that we're still hiring. That other stuff is only a distraction if you waste time focusing on it. There are a variety of open technology positions from hard-core back end engineering, front end work, and everything in between. Even in the developer network, we're looking for at least one web developer and an evangelist. Rather that list all the jobs we have open, shoot me your resume and tell me what sort of work you're looking for. I'll get it to the right people internally. And if you know someone else who's looking (or should be), please pass the word. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-20 more

High Performance MySQL, Second Edition

While my involvement can generously be labeled as "minimal", the second edition of High Performance MySQL is slated to hit store shelves soon. pre-order on Amazon.com More info is available on O'Reilly. Thanks to Baron, Peter, Vadim, and Arjen for picking up the torch to get a greatly expanded seconded edition done and out the door. There's a heck of a lot of new material in it. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-20 more

Web Design 101: Photoshop

While it may be second nature to some, there is no denying that Photoshop has a fierce learning curve. If you
Publication date: 2008-04-16 more

Twitter Badge?

I'm using twitter more now that I'm trying to type less. That makes me wonder if it's worth sticking a Twitter Badge on my blog. follow jzawodn at http://twitter.com Thoughts? BTW, my finger is getting better every day. I can't wait to start flying again! (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-14 more

The Yahoo! Developer Network's New Look

Hey, check it out. YDN got a redesign. Send feedback here. More and more of the site will take on the new look as time goes on--assuming you like it. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-12 more

I Got Screwed! Twice!

Here's my post-surgery x-ray for your viewing pleasure. And another one. I'm learning to type a bit more quickly, but it's still quite frustrating. So blogging will continue to be light. I'll keep my linkblog updated, though. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-10 more

Presenting: Preparation, Process, and Pizzazz

It might seem like a good idea when you
Publication date: 2008-04-09 more

Meanwhile, there's my FriendFeed

Things have been rather quiet here since I broke my finger on easter Sunday. Since then I helped host the Hadoop Summit, had surgery, got the claw, learned to shower one-handed, and hosted a going away lunch for my manager, Matt McAlister. But what really sucks is that my typing speed is about 25% of what it used to be. Ugh! You'd think that losing one hand would mean a 50% reduction, but it's far worse than that in practice. Correcting errors is quite slow. I'm still doing stuff on my linkblog (aka my del.icio.us), and a bit on my Twitter, and a bit on my Flickr, and so on. But my FriendFeed does a good job of capturing all that. So watch that if you're in the mood to stalk me while my finger heals. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-04 more

Vim Editing Tips, Tricks, Tutorials, and References Needed

Dear LazyWeb, Though I've used GNU Emacs as my primary code/email/todo list editor for many years now, I'd like to give Vim a fair shake. Now I know the most basic of vi editing but never really got past the 8-12 keystrokes that I learned back in college. So, loyal readers and geeks, I ask you to bestow upon me your favorite on-line Vim references, tips, tricks, tutorials, references, and so on. This isn't a direct result of my hand injury... I've been thinking that I should do this for a couple years now. But it sure did help get me motivated finally. I'll be using vim on both Linux and Windows, not that it matters much for most things (I hope). :wq (comments)
Publication date: 2008-04-04 more

The Web Beyond the Desktop

When you think of the people who use your website, where do they use it? At work or a home office? What about a mobile phone? What about even more diverse devices like Amazon's Kindle or the Nintendo Wii? Dave Shea asks us to reconsider how and where people use our websites, and how best to tackle the demands of building sites for a wide array of devices.
Publication date: 2008-04-02 more

10 Tips For Your First Email Campaign

While it may seem like the natural partner to web development, the art of email marketing comes with a whole new set of important steps to take if you want that newsletter to pay dividends. Ben Chestnut lays down ten top tips for anyone wondering how best to approach that tricky first campaign.
Publication date: 2008-03-27 more

Washington DC based digital and web agency Janmedia is Hiring!

Washington, DC, March 31, 2008
Publication date: 2008-03-26 more

Broken Finger

No, that's not my X-Ray. I don't have a copy of mine to post yet, but I do have a swelling broken finger as the result of a difficult to start pressure washer. Oh, and I have Vicodin too. Now here's the funny part. It's not fixed yet. The x-ray revealed an "interesting" break. That's not my description. The physician's assistant who read them actually said that a few times. So I'm scheduled to see an orthopaedic specialist at 2:30pm on Monday to determine the best course of action. Meanwhile, it's taped to the medical equivalent of a sick and I'm at home with a loving wife and a small bottle of pills. Ugh. It took me nearly 34 years to brake a bone. Not even a pair of skis could do it. It had to be a fancy power tool. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-24 more

In New York City for the Business of APIs Conference

I tried to post this late last night but my laptop managed to freeze up on me. Gotta love this modern technology, no? And this morning the hotel Wifi is still down and my EVDO card is struggling to keep up with me. And there's some crazy jackhammer work going on outside that's been driving me nuts all morning too. Yay! Anyway, I'm in New York City today for the Business of API's Conference at the Yale Club, which sounds way fancier than anything you'd normally find me at. At about 1:30 eastern time I'll be speaking for about 20 minutes about Yahoo!, Openness (as recently noted), APIs, and that sort of stuff. If you're at the conference and happen to see this, please do introduce yourself. I'd love to meet up with other folks in NYC, but this is an unfortunately short trip. I'm flying back to the Bay Area on Tuesday morning to get some stuff done at the office in the afternoon. We've got a lot to do before the Hadoop Summit next week. But at least the weather appears to be nice, even if I don't have a good view out from my hotel room. My goal for this trip is not adapting to the local time zone, so that I can get back to normal soon after my arrival back home. Let's see how well that works in practice... Lastly, I may be playing around with FeedBurner soon. But that should be mostly transparent to subscribers--aside from a maybe a one-time "reset" of what's in my RSS feed. More on that when it happens. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-21 more

FeedBurner Implementation Note

Just a quick heads up to anyone who cares (probably only a few of you), as mentioned last night, I've implemented FeedBurner for my blog's main RSS feed on a trial basis. For most of you, that means virtually nothing changes. At worst, you may see the last 10-20 entries appear as "new" or "changed" in whatever RSS reader you use. And for most of you that's either Google Reader or Bloglines (based on the stats I have already). If you're interested in the details, the relevant section of my Apache's httpd.conf file now looks like this: ## Blog stuff Redirect permanent /backend.php http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/rss2.xml ## Added on 06-19-2006 Redirect permanent /blog/atom.xml http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/rss2.xml ## Added on 06-21-2006 Redirect permanent /blog/index.xml http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/rss2.xml ## Added on 03-17-2008 Redirect temp /blog/rss2.xml http://feeds.zawodny.com/jzawodn/rss2 That means anyone fetching my rss2.xml file will now receive a temporary (HTTP 302) redirect to feeds.zawodny.com which is, in turn, a CNAME to feeds.feedburner.com. I implemented it this way so that i can turn if off at some point (by removing the redirect) and not "lose" subscribers. Unless, of course, some folks subscribe directly to the FeedBurner hosted copy. In any case, I'm curious to see what the FeedBurner stats look like. I'm sure there are a few settings I need to tweak. I've probably missed a few. So don't get all paranoid about click tracking and whatnot. My goal is to do little of that. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-21 more

Yahoo + Microsoft = Web Mail Dominance

I just ran across this graphic in Dave McClure's Flickr photostream and realized that I never considered what combining HotMail (that name still makes me giggle a bit) and Yahoo! Mail under the same company would mean. "Web Mail Dominance" kind of jumped to mind. Granted, I know nothing of the relative growth rates of the services included in that graphic, but even if Gmail does somehow come to rule the world one day, there's going to be a long run of One Really Big Player in the web mail space if the proposed acquisition happens. Hey, I see that he blogged it too. Food for thought... or at least a quick mental snack. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-21 more

Asking as a Substitute for Thinking

Reading the comments to Patterns for email as work conversation, I came across a comment that hit on something I see all too often (and am certainly guilty of myself): I?m definitely trying to get people used to the idea that I may only answer e-mails during two periods a day, but that if they have something quick, I?m available via IM. The issue really revolves around that I need some uninterrupted/uninterruptible chunks of time during the day or I feel like I have ADD, bouncing from issue to issue. Also, to a certain extent, I find that the people who work for me will, if I?m available, use asking me something as a substitute for thinking (this I?ve learned after years of being instantly available and then wondering why the people working for me don?t seem to be developing critical thinking skills). It's really, really tempting when you're busy and heave deadlines looming to just ask the guy (or girl) who you know will know the answer. Sometimes it doesn't even enter your thinking because you're focused on accomplishing something else. And it's equally hard to estimate the impact of your interruption on their productivity, concentration, and focus. The real trick, I think is finding a way to handle this that's polite yet firm. And when you're the sort of person who's more apt to say "yes" than "no" when someone asks for help, it's difficult to help coworkers understand that you'd rather they learn to fish instead of coming to you for one when they're hungry. Do you run into this very often? If so, how do you handle it? (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-21 more

South By South West Sketchnotes

Had enough of the South By South West coverage yet? Yes? Tough luck
Publication date: 2008-03-21 more

Openness is not a Poison Pill at Yahoo!

Mary Jo Foley asks Could Yahoo?s ?openness? be another anti-Microsoft poison pill? Yahoo traditionally has been and continues to be a big open-source backer. It runs its datacenters on open-source software (something Microsoft officials have said they don?t intend to rip and replace immediately ? while avoiding saying never). But over the past couple of weeks, Yahoo has really been banging its ?we?re more open than ever? drum.? Yahoo announced in mid-February that it had implemented what it believed to be ?the world?s largest commercial application of Apache Hadoop Java-based distributed-computing framework.? Yahoo is using Hadoop to process its Webmap, which is its ?application which produces the index from the billions of pages crawled by Yahoo Search,? according to the Yahoos. I can honestly say from my vantage point that openness at Yahoo! has nothing to do with Microsoft or any other would-be suitor. We've been on the openness road for a long, long time at Yahoo. And we take it rather seriously. Some times it hasn't been as visible as others, but believe me, the trend is quite clear when you look at all the data. The Open Source adoption and work. The APIs. The way we communicate with users and partners. The Blogs. The RSS feeds. I'll be speaking about a small bit of this at the Business of APIs Conference in New York on Monday. And also at the upcoming Open Source Business Conference. And, of course, the Hadoop Summit too. You'll be reading more and hearing more about openness at Yahoo! from me and Yahoo's much higher up the food chain in the coming months. Anyone who knows me knows that I come from open source roots and am a big proponent of opening things up more and more. I'd have left Yahoo! years ago if I didn't see it happening. If you think the last few weeks are big, you haven't seen anything yet! :-) (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-15 more

Review: Pro JavaScript Design Patterns

In their new book, Ross Harmes and Dustin Diaz share their expertise in object-oriented JavaScript programming, and take us to new heights by demonstrating how to build design pattern conventions, all based on JavaScript
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Excerpt: Pro JavaScript Design Patterns

JavaScript libraries were the hot topic last year, and have made it easy for us to build ever more powerful applications
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

How To Build A Facebook Application

Wherever you turn these days, you can
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Creating The Perfect Portfolio

If you
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Better Living Through Taxonomies

As a change from our usual front-end development focused articles, this week we
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Review: CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development

Web development frameworks are a brave new world for some developers coming to them after years of procedural coding
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Greasemonkey: Code Injection is Bliss

Who doesn
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

How to Build a Green Business

Does your business take responsibility for its impact on the environment or the local community? And does it do enough for your employees? John Reeve, co-founder of Santa Barbara design and development shop Pelago, shares the tips and advice that can help make your business whiter than white when it comes to being green.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Your Social Graph: Exploring the Google API

We know social is good, but how do we tap into that goodness? There are many benefits to harnessing user information and sharing it across sites - relationships are the key, and Brian Suda explains which doors the new Google API can help us to open.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Extending The JavaScript Date Object with User Defined Methods

Once you get into the nitty-gritty of building a web app, sooner or later you
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

The Difference Between the Rich & Famous and the Rest of Us

Occasionally the Zen Habits blog publishes something I find particularly interesting--usually because the author has figured out way to explain something that's more simple and more clear than I do. And I'm a big fan of simplicity and clarity. But today's interview with Stephen Covey is not only useless, it's a slap-in-the-face reminder of how different the lives of the Rich and Famous are from the rest of us. Allow me to quote two of his answers. On his "morning routine" he says: I make an effort every morning to win what I call the ?private victory.? I work out on a stationary bike while I am studying the scriptures for at least 30 minutes. Then I swim in a home pool vigorously for 15 minutes, then I do yoga in a shallow part of the pool for 15 minutes. Then I go into my library and pray with a listening spirit, listening primarily to my conscience while I visualize the rest of my entire day, including important professional activities and key relationships with my loved ones, working associates and clients. I see myself living by correct principles and accomplishing worthy purposes. Okay. What about the "normal" stuff that the rest of us do? Making breakfast, feeding cats, putting away laundry, going to work, and so on? His next answer, about removing "distractions", sheds a bit of light on that one: I am fortunate to have a very helpful team that enables me to spend time doing things that are important but not necessarily urgent. This requires the development of a personal mission statement to give a larger context and also the determination of what is truly important but not necessarily urgent. People who have no such team need to also make these larger decisions so that they can cheerfully say No to that which is urgent but not important. Learn to use technology in such a way as to filter out that which you really know is important to you personally and professionally. Remember, technology is a great servant, but a terrible master. Ah ha! So what you really need is a "very helpful team" (is that the term for undocumented domestic help these days?) so that you can spend more time on the "development of a personal mission statement" to, you know "give larger context" and all that. Now it all makes sense! This is practical and down-to-earth advice that I can use to improve my life right away! </sarcasm> (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

FriendFeed Launches, Provides New Lightweight Social Activity. Needs API.

When I thought about writing this last night, I didn't realize that FriendFeed was launching. Good timing. My intent was to point out two things, really. First off, usage of FriendFeed seemed to be really picking up steam in the last few weeks. In retrospect, that's probably because they were letting more and more folks into the private beta as they got closer to launching. But the more interesting thing to me was the fact that my FriendFeed activity stream has become a new place for folks to comment on things I'ma doing and even voice their approval. For example, my blog post titled The Difference Between the Rich & Famous and the Rest of Us got a few reactions yesterday. That made me wish there was a FriendFeed API so that I could surface that discussion back on my blog. So I made a comment on Twitter and that garnered even more discussion on my FriendFeed. This is all pretty interesting. FriendFeed is, in a way, attempting to join together the loosely coupled bits of social "exhaust" I produce on the web. And at the same time, they've created another new source of activity that I'd like to pull back onto my own web site. Once the FriendFeed API is out, a whole bunch of interesting stuff is bound to happen. Watch this space. See Also: Friendfeed, the best software for conversations, raises round and launches publicly on VentureBeat (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

How to Copy a Filesystem and Preserve Hard Links in Linux

As part of my Linux backup scheme (which I need to write up someday) I've recently been swapping and upgrading/replacing some USB hard disks at home. There's a Linux box at home (a Thinkpad T43p running Ubuntu if you must know) that has a 320GB disk attached and mounted as /mnt/backup and was running fairly low on space. jzawodn@wasp:/mnt$ df -h /mnt/backup Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb1 276G 211G 51G 81% /mnt/backup That was after I moved about 50GB of stuff off it last night. I want to replace it with a newly attached 750GB disk and need to move all the data over to the new disk. But since much of the data consists of remote filesystem snapshots produced using rsnapshot, which makes copious use of hard links, it's rather important that I do this correctly. If I don't, the data won't even fit on the 750GB disk! (If that seems impossible, you don't quite grok hard links on a filesystem yet.) Digging deep into my Unix past, I remember needing to do this once before. The trick was not to use any of the usual suspects: cp, tar, rsync, or mv. Instead, you use either dump (yuck) or a combination of find and cpio. It looks something like this: mkdir /mnt/backup2/snaps cd /mnt/backup/snaps find . -print | cpio -Bpdumv /mnt/backup2/snaps Then you just wait a long time while stuff scrolls by and you wish you were using disks in eSATA enclosures rather than in USB 2.0 enclosures. The trouble is that cpio didn't properly preserve timestamps on directories (not sure why--I expected it to), so I had to dig even deeper to remember pairing up dump and restore. cd /mnt/backup2 mkdir snaps ( dump -0 -f - /mnt/backup/snaps | restore -v -x -y -f - ) >& ~jzawodn/dump.log And then I waited about half a day for the copy to complete. root@wasp:~# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb1 276G 212G 50G 82% /mnt/backup /dev/sdc1 688G 284G 370G 44% /mnt/backup2 Not bad. A quick edit to /etc/rsnapshot.conf to change my snapshot_root from /mnt/backup to /mnt/backup2 and that's all it took. Next time I have to go through this, it won't take me nearly as long to devise a scheme to get it done. Now, does anyone have alternative methods? Or do you know why cpio didn't preserve timestamps correctly? Thanks to the folks at TechCzar for translating my tech blog posts and including them in their blog network. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Chicken Tortilla Soup Crock Pot Recipe

If you have a slow cooker (or "crock pot") and enjoy tortilla soup, here's a good recipe to try out. Ingredients: 4 chicken breast halves 2 14.5 oz. cans of chicken broth 1 garlic clove, minced 2 tbsp. margarine 2 12 1/2 oz. cans of chopped stewed tomatoes 3 cups hot salsa 1/2 cup chopped cilantro 1 tbsp. or so of ground cumin tortilla chips Optional: cheese (whatever you prefer in your soup) sour cream The steps: Grill the chicken breasts. Shred them with a fork and knife. Combine all ingredients except cheese, sour cream, and chips. Cover the pot and cook on low for 8 to 10 hours. Enjoy the soup, adding chips, sour cream, and cheese to taste. What I like about this recipe is that it's incredibly simple, involved grilling (always fun), and takes no more than about 15 minutes to get going. You're then left with enough soup for four adults (or two for two days in our case). Personally, I skip the cheese and sour cream. The soup itself is excellent with some chips added in. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Scary Airbus A320 Crosswind Landing Video

Thanks to Thomas Kruse, I present you with the video of an Airbus A320 making a difficult crosswind landing in Hamburg, Germany. What I wonder is when the pilot made the go-around decision. Everything I've read tells me that the jet engines in use on modern airliners take a few seconds to produce full thrust from and idle (landing) power setting. I suspect there were a few moments of doubt about whether or not he'd be able to salvage it. Then again, I'm sure the passengers were pretty skeptical at one point too! :-) (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Yahoo! FireEagle: Personal Location Service Platform for Developers

Today FireEagle launched as an invitation-only beta for developers to start testing. I think of it as a personal location service platform, but the more formal description comes from the announcement on the YDN blog: Fire Eagle is an open location services platform offering web, mobile, and desktop developers a simple way to build new location-based applications while also ensuring that consumers have complete control over their data, including how, when and where their location is made available. Want to easily make your site responsive to a user's location? Or, maybe you've found a way to capture someone's location and you want to find cool apps to plug it into? By doing the heavy lifting and connecting you to a community of geo-developers, Fire Eagle makes it easier to build location-aware services. Tom Coates was the ring leader for FireEagle and talks about it in this video shot earlier today at ETech 2008. Don't be put off by the downer of a headline that TechCruch used ("Yahoo?s ?Twitter For Location? Goes Into Private Beta With Near Zero Functionality"). I think that Mike Arrington either got the wrong message from someone or misunderstood what FireEagle really is today. It's a location platform for developers to build on. It has an API that, among other things, lets you worry less about handling geo data and easily build in support for your web, desktop, or mobile application. It's currently not aimed at end users or "consumers" (oh, how I hate that term). I'm sure the analogy to Twitter was intended to be a loose one. Congrats to Tom and team for getting FireEagle out the door. :-) VentureBeat has good coverage here: Yahoo?s FireEagle location service to launch publicly today Oh, BTW... FireEagle uses OAuth for authentication! (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Herding Cats: Funniest Video Ever

It's hard to believe that this video has been on YouTube since 2006 and I hadn't seen it until yesterday, but the Internet has a lot of tubes. It's hard to watch 'em all. Anyway, I suspect that most readers are familiar with expressions built around the phrase herding cats: The phrase herding cats comes from the common saying that something involving coordination of many different groups or people is as difficult as herding cats. One of the commonly encountered uses of the term in technical fields is the phrase "Managing programmers is like herding cats" or "Managing engineers is like herding cats". In education it would be "Managing students is like herding cats". In reality, it would be "Managing cats is like herding cats." It refers to the individualism common in the stereotypical examples of programmers and domesticated cats. A similar phrase, allegedly of Irish origins, is "Minding mice at a crossroads". Needless to say, it gets used all the time in software engineering groups. That's why this video is so damned funny. Not only is it very well produced and conceived, it's incredibly funny in the way it takes an otherwise silly phrase and brings it to life in exactly the way you'd expect. Given that International Day of Awesomeness is just around the corder, I feel justified in saying... AWESOME! (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

The "No Laptop" Meeting Rule

I'm not about to call this a trend yet, but I've seen a few meetings at work in recent months that advertised and enforced a "no laptop" rule. Part of me thinks that it's a great idea. There are meetings I've almost skipped or found fairly useless because a significant proportion of the people in the room were suffering from continuous partial attention and often seemed lost or constantly behind the curve. Another part of me thinks that it's absolutely ridiculous that we have to mandate common courtesy and force people off their laptops long enough to have a useful meeting. I wonder what, if anything, schools (mostly college) are doing to help ensure that this isn't a problem in the workplace as more and more students start working full-time. Do they know how to put away the laptop or cell phone when the time comes? Maybe the problem is that the people "at the top" of many companies set a bad example, walking down the hallway with their eyes glued to a Blackberry screen or constantly plugged into a Borg-like bluetooth headset. Have you seen "no laptop" meetings starting to emerge in your organization yet? (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Wal-Mart and Linux: No Surprise

I hope that nobody is surprised by Wal-Mart's decision to stop selling Linux boxes (in the form of the gPC). Despite what some folks may think, Linux on the desktop is perpetually one year off. I know this because I've hoped and hoped myself over the years, running Linux on various desktops and notebook, suffering through driver problems, document incompatibilities, and so on. But that doesn't meant that things aren't getting better. When I made the move from RedHat to Debian, a whole class of problems went away. I stopped building stuff from source most of the time (with a few exceptions). I didn't have packaging and installation/upgrade hassles anymore. And nowadays, with Ubuntu on half of my computers, I don't even have driver problems anymore. Plus, with Firefox and Open Office, I can deal with just about any documents I'd need to. The only real problem is the software that simply doesn't run on Linux. And for that I could install VMWare, VirtualBox, or similar technology to run a version of Windows on top of Linux. The fact that mainstream America still wants Windows says far more about Windows than it does about Linux. This is not at all surprising to someone like me--someone who's been waiting "one more year now" for the last 5-8 years. And you know what? That's okay. Different people want different things. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Job: Architect/System Architect at Time Bridge

There's a job on my job board that some of my readers may find interesting. I won't quote the whole listing here, but Architect/System Architect at Time Bridge could be a fun role for someone who wants to get into the world of Web 2.0 business applications. We are looking for a seasoned System Architect who is passionate about building truly useful Web applications. You will be a key member of the technical team that will design and build the company?s next generation system and you will play a foundational role in delivering a new platform to increase productivity and collaboration around scheduling, managing time and holding meetings. To succeed in this position you must be incredibly smart, committed to good technical design, and driven to get things done. You will work closely with senior management and talented marketing and technical staff. As System Architect, you will be primarily responsible for the architecture of our meeting scheduling system and for driving innovation throughout the product. The right candidate will have experience with multi-platform applications, will understand and have designed distributed, high-availability systems, and will have the vision to understand how small technical details affect the way users see and experience the end-product. This position will report directly to the VP of Engineering and Operations. Disclosure: The VP of Engineering and Operations at TimeBridge is a former colleague. From what I've heard about the company, they're doing some very good work there. Check it out if you're at all interested (and qualified). As a reminder, you can browse all the jobs on my job board and post your own quickly and easily. They'll appear on my sites and other popular technology sites in the network. There's even an RSS feed for the jobs. Also, special thanks to the folks at TechCzar for their translation of selected posts from my blog and including them in their growing blog network. (comments)
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Web Design Agency from Washington DC region wins ADDY Award for JosephKahn.com

Leading Washington DC Web Design firm Janmedia Interactive wins ADDY award for best interactive B2B marketing website
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Janmedia Fights for Women in Central Europe

Washington DC web design specialists Janmedia Interactive support Amnesty International's effort to revamp the interactive image of the Stop Violence Against Women Campaign in Central Europe
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

DC Web Developer Janmedia partners up with Greater Washington Publishing, Inc.

Washington, DC, May 10, 2006
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Washington DC Web Design and Rich Media Agency Janmedia collaborates with GlaxoSmithKline to help people

Washington, DC, May 11, 2007
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Award-winning Washington DC Web Design Company to Promote BAE Systems Global Analysis

Washington, DC, May 29, 2007
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Leading Washington DC digital agency's recent web design work featured on Dow Jones MarketWatch

Washington, DC, July 5, 2007
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Washington DC based Interactive Design Agency to Develop a New Web-based Application for The Washington Times

Washington, DC, September 24, 2007
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Washington DC based digital and web agency Janmedia partners with Mars Inc. to deploy new brand

Washington, DC, October 23, 2007 - Washington DC based Digital Agency Janmedia Interactive recently announced the completion of a new web branding project for Mars Inc., a globally recognized producer of confectionary and food products. Janmedia was chosen by Mars to design and coordinate the internet branding and web deployment of a new cross-European brand, Perfect Fit.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Janmedia partners with Ogilvy PR and Mashable.com

Washington, DC, February 12, 2008
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Janmedia upgrades facilities

To quote the Jeffersons;
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more