Well thanks to our web host “MediaTemple” we had an unscheduled outage here at studiowhiz tonight - and on the handful of other sites I host.

I can’t wait till I’ve got Studiowhiz Hosting up and running, at least then I’ll be able to yell at the guy (in the mirror) responsible for the sites being down. He he .. no no in all seriousness, we are working out a “ZERO downtime” policy. I’ve had enough of this 99.9999999999999999% uptime crap. Oh … did I mention it might just be FREE. (kinda, well maybe, but defiantly NOT ad supported).

6 weeks and counting … (maybe sooner) .. watch this space!

I’ve written about this before here on Studiowhiz, in fact I was involved in early beta tests with the Macromedia team to create a way to allow developers to drive internet based applications without the need of a browser. Kevin Lynch was then one of the top dogs at Macromedia, he coined the term “KevinCloud” and was probably one of the first to think of the internet as a cloud.

Today GigaOM and the New York Times both talk about how Adobe is gearing up to release AIR to the public. Of course this is a good thing and I for one am happy to see this come about. After all I’ve been saying for years it’s time for the internet to operate outside the browser. (more…)

There is a problem in WordPress - actually if you look around far enough there are a number of them, however for now I want to pick on one in particular.

I’ve been pushing and shoving and sculpting wordpress over the past few days to try and make it perform like a CMS - which is actually really easy provided you don’t have anything complex in your layout. I thought “Sweet, WordPress lets me publish code - you know good ol’ fashioned HTML”. (more…)

A Short Primer

You have probably already heard about Microformats. You’ve probably also wondered what they are. So let me tell you: microformats are set a of predefined attributes that you add to already existing markup. These enable both humans and machines to easily access the data they hold. Simply, they are small semantic tweaks to your web pages’ HTML/XHTML that make available previously inaccessible information. This information can include:

• Contact information
• Event information
• Resume information
• Reviews
• Bookmark information
• Syndication information

The beauty of microformats is that they don’t affect how your web pages are rendered by a browser. They are built upon already existing standards that you know and love: the class, rel and rev attributes.

An Example

This is a review taken from a popular online store.

This is how the code looks:

<div>
<p>
 <img src="/img/5-stars.png" alt="5 star rating"/>

 <strong>this book will change your life</strong>, January 3, 2007</p>
 <p>Reviewer: <a href="some-link">kristen</a> (San Francisco, CA) -
 <a href="some-link">See all my reviews</a>

</p>
<p>If you build web sites (or intend to have one built for you), and you
 haven't read this book, then stop what you are doing and buy it. When
 it arrives, stop what you are doing, and read it. It is awesome, and
 funny (believe it or not) and you will be happy that you did.</p>
</div>

Now consider the following code:

<div class="hreview">
 <p>

  <img src="/img/5-stars.png" alt="5 star rating" title="5" class="rating" />
  <strong class="summary">this book will change your life</strong>,
  <abbr class="dtreviewed" title="20070103T1146">January 3, 2007</abbr></p>

  <p>Reviewer: <a href="some-link" class="reviewer vcard"><span class="fn">kristen</span></a> (San Francisco, CA) -
  <a href="some-link">See all my reviews</a>

 </p>
 <span class="type" style="dispay:none;">product</span>
 <div class="item" style="display: none;">

  <a class="fn url" href="http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Web-Standards-Jeffrey-Zeldman/dp/0321385551/sr=8-1/qid=1171921047/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6812629-1991344?ie=UTF8&s=books">Designing with Webstandards</a>
 </div>
 <p class="description">If you build web sites (or intend to have one built for you),
 and you haven't read this book, then stop what you are doing and buy it. When it
 arrives, stop what you are doing, and read it. It is awesome, and funny (believe
 it or not) and you will be happy that you did.</p>

</div>

Not that much different - just a few extra class attributes (in bold) and a new HTML element here and there. That is what makes Microformats so cool - you don’t need to learn any new markup language - it’s all the same stuff you work with everyday!

How is this useful?

Having all this information available in a format that can easily be gathered is the key to Microformats. Not only can third party web applications easily access this data, but desktop applications can store it, too.

Imagine a world where you visit a web site and your browser tells you there is contact/event information available on that page and gives you the option to save the date to your address book/calendar application of choice.

Imagine a world with search engines that return resumes, reviews or events from millions of web sites. All this can be achieved by using Microformats.

Currently there are few smart applications and bits of software that can deal with Microformats:

• Finda
  All finda’s company listings are marked up using hCard so you can simply save their vCard to your address book
• .Mac Webmail
  The .Mac Webmail service now supports hcard
• Microformats Extensions for Dreamweaver
  Dreamweaver Microformats Extensions (download) support authoring hCard, hCalendar, XFN, rel-tag, rel-license
• Firefox Extensions
  Operator - provides an architecture for Microformat parsing which is likely to be incorporated into the core of future versions of Firefox.

  Tails - The Tails Firefox Extension allows you to view microformats embedded on a web page, and perform customizable actions on the microformats via Tails Scripts.

• hKit Microformats Toolkit for PHP5
  A php toolkit to extract common Microformats from a page
• Technorati Contacts Feed Service
  Technorati Contacts Feed Service is a deployment of X2V to convert hCards to vCard (.vcf) format.
• Technorati Events Feed Service
  Technorati Events Feed Service is a deployment of X2V to convert hCalendar events to iCalendar (.ics) format.
• Technorati Microformats Search
  Technorati Microformats Search. Search for contacts (hCard), events (hCalendar), or reviews (hReview) published on blogs and other web sites.
• Upcoming.org
  Upcoming.org - hCalendar support in events listings and individual events.
• X2V

  Brian Suda has created several XSLT files to extract microformats from HTML. From that the X2V webservice/favelet emerged. The XSLT and favelet extracts hCard and to produces .vcf (vCard) files and hCalendar to produce .ics (iCal) files.

• Yahoo Local
  Yahoo local supports hCard, hCalendar, and hReview.
• Yahoo UK Movies

  Yahoo! UK Movies supports hReview.

Conclusion

We - as web professionals - need to start using Microformats in everything we build. The more we use Microformats in our web development the quicker it’ll be embraced by software houses and application developers. We need to bring Microformats to the mainstream and it’s only you and I that can help that push!

Don’t be scared of Microformats. Embrace them, use them, love them. It’s easy!

Wow, it seems like an age since I was last helping out in the back end for Swhiz. What a thrill and a privilege it is to be able to contribute to my all time favourite place on the net once again! Thanks K.

This section I’m starting is to take interested persons on a journey with me as I discover the joys and challenges of becoming a concept artist. For those who remember from years gone by you may recall I used to produce web sites for clients, so this isn’t too huge a leap into the unknown. I hope… (more…)

I am getting fedup with Google & their poor service

 Has anyone else noticed that Google are loosing their shine? I have to admit I do love Google and the services they offer. I use them on a daily basis and I find myself relying on them. In fact I have recently recommended a charity & a couple of businesses switch to using Google Apps.

However in the last few days I’ve loaded up my Gmail account to be presented with an incorrectly loading page. The image on the right here is a pic from my mail box. As you can see it’s not looking right. Yet I can log into my other accounts no worries. I can switch from Flock to Safari and login to this account and it looks fine. (more…)

Right, it’s about time. I had been using a free theme for Studiowhiz for a while now - and while it was a lovely theme it was high time I did something myself.

Now I’m not totally done with this one yet, and I’ve not tested at ALL in IE (put any bugs in the comments) I do like the concept of this design. I hope to refine it over time and add little touches to it, but for now, it’s done.

Have a look, have a play - pass your comments below

Something is brewing, you just know it is. It’s almost 11pm, the latest I’ve been up for a long time.

I’m doing CSS, HTML and would you believe I’m actually sculpting WordPress to get it to do what I want for a change.

So yes, something is brewing, I think you might like it, I hope you do. I will admit I am drawing heavily from other successful … oh wait, I’m giving to much away. You are just going to have to wait.

I have a word of warning, I’m not going to name names, but I know who you are.

I learned very early on in life that what you say can come back to you. When they do their effects are often amplified. This is very true when you are in business. If you have a client facing role, if you go to a job interview, if you are sitting with friends around a coffee in a mall you words have a far wider reach than you think.

Read on to see 5 rules to live by (more…)

Hey there all you web nutters … I’m thinking of a little side project. And I need your input. If studiowhiz was to offer hosting to you would you consider using it? I’m not just talking any old hosting, I’m talking about hosting that will allow you the ability to run PHP beside ASP, Perl beside Ruby on Rails, MySQL beside MSSQL, pop, imap and all that usual stuff.

We could give you the flexibility you need to build the web apps you always dreamed of. Our hosting would scale as you do, with a small monthly fee & pay as you go add ons, hosting with us could be the advantage you need. You’d have access to 24hr, 7day support, your site would be hosted on some of the most robust systems on the net today.

Would you be interested? I’m considering this as one way of helping grow Studiowhiz. As this site continues to grow and I have more ideas we need community support to do that. By offering a service we all need & use we can get fantastic hosting and any profit will be funneled directly into the growth of Studiowhiz from a blog to a resource.

I would need 10 people/websites to consider driving this forward (that would see you paying around US$13 a month). Oh and yes this would potentially be a ‘cloud computing’ solution (don’t ya love buzz words). Register your interest by either a comment or drop me an email webmaster [at] studiowhiz (you figure the rest out).

Edit:
I now have 2 or 3 other parties interested so need maybe 7 more to register interest