Kids Video Education Sites

by Steven 29. December 2011 20:46

Science video education 
http://richannel.org/

Short science films
http://scicast.org.uk/

Games/Creative arts 
http://kids.tate.org.uk/

Huge collection of educational videos for all ages
http://www.khanacademy.org/

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family

Links for Configuring MSBuild & TeamCity & WebDeploy

by Steven 19. December 2011 17:29

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2607428/msbuild-target-package-not-found
http://www.geekytidbits.com/2011/09/web-deploy-ms-deploy-from-teamcity/
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/516/configure-the-web-deployment-handler/
http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/11/you-deploying-it-wrong-teamcity_24.html
http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/11/you-deploying-it-wrong-teamcity_25.html
http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/11/you-deploying-it-wrong-teamcity_26.html
http://thecodedecanter.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/one-click-website-deployment-using-teamcity-nant-git-and-powershell/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5071495/specifying-project-name-in-msdeploy
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2636153/how-can-i-get-tfs2010-to-run-msdeploy-for-me-through-msbuild
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/amol/archive/2011/02/09/errors-seen-while-using-msbuild-to-deploy-on-a-remote-iis-server-and-their-solutions.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd465337.aspx
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/1023/web-deploy-error-codes/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3097489/how-to-publish-web-with-msbuild
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=25230

 

msbuild /P:Configuration=Deployment /P:DeployOnBuild=True /P:DeployTarget=MSDeployPublish /P:MsDeployServiceUrl=<SERVER> /P:DeployIISPath=<IISAPP> /P:AllowUntrustedCertificate=True /P:MSDeployPublishMethod=WMSvc /P:CreatePackageOnPublish=True /P:UserName=<> /P:Password=<> /v:diag > log.txt

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tech

Virtual

by Steven 14. December 2011 17:14

"Zynga was selling 800,000 virtual tractors a day. All of that was happening amid the greatest financial collapse in modern times."

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tech

You must have content

by Steven 14. December 2011 17:11

Simply put, it doesn’t matter how great a piece of technology you have invented, or how innovative a distribution platform you have created. You must have content.

 


Hollywood, Silicon Valley Are In This Together

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tech

Jonathan Ive - Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc

by Steven 6. December 2011 17:01

"Simplicity isn't just a visual style. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep."

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tech

Nielsen Norman Group Report - Usability of Mobile Websites & Applications on iPad

by Steven 6. December 2011 16:34

Summary points from Usability of Mobile Websites & Applications.

  • When developing iPad apps/sites assume that multiple users use the device. Not permanentlty signed on and may quickly forget the passwords. (how then to make switching easier)
  • Many sites/apps use mobile content for their iPad with richer data on their main web site. However many users use iPad in the home as a replacement for their laptop and so can't access much of the rich data.
  • Search refinement is harder on iPad - often the rich facet navigation etc is missing.
  • The ideal target size for a button is 1cm x 1cm - no smaller
  • Include a search box
  • Users expect padding - the whole row should be clickable, not just the link.
  • Users don’t know that something is touchable unless it looks so.
  • Build affordances by making buttons look tappable and relevant to the task they accomplish. This means choosing the right icons and labels for those buttons or action links.
  • If the app does not store any information that is sensitive (e.g., credit card), then the user should definitely be kept logged in.
  • If you have a lot of content (such as product information) to display, use a separate page rather than a modal view.
  • When using Swipe make sure it works across the whole screen (in headers, carousels... otherwise provide a specific button.
  • Always include a back button and make sure it works on the homepage as well in a true back style.
  • Carousels are not appropriate for long lists (for instance, for search results).
  • Two-dimensional carousels make it harder for users to remember which items they had already visited.
  • Make sure that the same navigation scheme is used in landscape and portrait orientations.
  • Don't make your launch/splash screen complex.
  • Focus on a single feature at the time. Present only those instructions that are necessary for the user to get started.
  • Users shouldn’t be forced to make decisions about non-essential tasks.
  • Magazines on iPad should contain a table of contents in the header which should go to a details ToC rather than cursory headlines.
  • Do not use multiple navigation schemes in the same app.

You can get a copy at http://www.nngroup.com/reports/mobile/ipad/

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Patterns

by Steven 1. December 2011 19:12

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tech

Enabling CORS on Chome, IE9, Safari & Firefox

by Steven 3. October 2011 16:17

In my previous post i discussed how one can add CORS request headers to Firefox via an extension, which is very useful working with PhoneGap deployed apps which you can debug locally in the browser under the file:/// protocol.

My preferred browser is Chrome and although it was great I could do this with Firefox i was pretty determined to find a way to do this with Chrome. The following is the solution using Fiddler and a bit of script hacking.

 

1. Get Fiddler.

2. Go to the Filters tab and click Use Filters.

3. Add the domain you are working with to the hosts box (optional but stops a ton of traffic appearing).

4. Click the FiddlerScript tab.

5. Go to the OnBeforeRequest function and add the following:

if (oSession.HostnameIs("YOUR_DOMAIN_OR_IP_ADDRESS")) {

oSession.oRequest["Access-Control-Allow-Origin"] = "*";

oSession.oRequest["Access-Control-Allow-Methods"] = "POST,GET,PUT,DELETE";
}

6. Go to the OnBeforeResponse function and add the following:

if (oSession.HostnameIs("YOUR_DOMAIN_OR_IP_ADDRESS")) {
oSession.oResponse["Access-Control-Allow-Origin"] = "*";
oSession.oResponse["Access-Control-Allow-Methods"] = "POST,GET,PUT,DELETE";
}

7. Click the Save Script button.

8. Run your requests in Chrome :-)

 

 

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Enabling CORS on Firefox for BackboneJS

by Steven 3. October 2011 15:28

Great utility for enabling CORS on Firefox (so you can debug Phonegap HTML5 apps) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/forcecors/

 

Typically PhoneGap apps are deployed to a file:// location and although the mobile browsers seem to cope with with this, debugging on your desktop (as file://) brings up all kind of CORS issues (due to null origin). The above addon simply adds adds the following headers to outgoing requests, fixing the issue and allowing you to debug :-)

 

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET,POST

 

BackboneJS Apps

You may also want to debug BackboneJS deployed apps in the above scenario, so you need to also add the PUT and DELETE headers to each request.

Type "about:config" into the Firefox omnibox and enter "forcecors" into the filter box. Double click on "forcecors.headers" and add the above methods in the box that pops up.

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET,POST,PUT,DELETE

Thanks to @jo5ef for the extension.

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routing with backbonejs, phonegap and android

by Steven 30. September 2011 02:41

 

If you deploy your app via PhoneGap you will need to update your BackboneJS routes as follows:

 routes: {

          "android_asset/www/index.html": "index",

      },

 

Actually this this't quite the case - it may have been related to issues i was having with PopState on PhoneGap apps (which dont' behave as one may expect). You can in fact use "" as the default route.

 

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