CodeIgniter – PHP MVC Framework

My first shot at CodeIgniter was with DateDesigner.com (by persistent recommendation from @strebel).  Wow…once you grab the concept of the MVC framework, CodeIgniter makes your life tremendously easier when throwing together a site.  I literally thumbed through documentation and built DateDesigner.com in 30 days (scratch to launch).  I have learned how to set it up better and have learned a lot after putting together a few more sites with it (Twitrratr.com, FindMyDogADate.com, BajaSurVacationRentals.com), so now when I go back through some of the DateDesigner.com code, I curse myself a little as I refactor.

Have you built any sites with CodeIgniter?  Do you have an cool plug-in’s for CodeIgniter that you can suggest?

jQuery – Javascript Framework

Now – I have sucked at javascript for going on…ummm…ever?  It was actually @chuckreynolds that intro’d me to jQuery, but at the time, I still didn’t get it – because I was just too lazy to take a good look at it.  Well, again, my first shot at jQuery was on a simple interface tweak in DateDesigner.com, but it has spurred off on to nearly every site I work on now (including all of the 944 web sites internal/external).  There are a plethora plug-in’s available for jQuery – I’ve recently worked with jCarousel and a few others.

Do you have any jQuery plug-in recommendations?  Anyone know of any where I could essentially paginate images in 2 columns like a book/magazine w/o using flash?

Day 1 – Pick up the car

Met the rep at the #tukeedevhouse to pick up the car…fully loaded…in white!  First impression – “its definitely not Grandpa’s Lincoln…”.  Ford has really stepped up the styling on the Lincoln brand with their newest vehicle releases – I’m totally loving the lines of the car!

Get in to the car – and its got Sirius Satellite Radio – that’s a given in most cars today.  I didn’t really have an opportunity to mess with it too much before heading back to work, but the THX sound system & the Sirius satellite radio was crystal clear cruising all the way back to Scottsdale.  Got out of work, and bolted over to the kids school for Dom’s end of the year party – still didn’t have too much time to mess with the gadgets or the car, but I planned on it as soon as the party was over.

Ended up leaving the party and I literally sat in the parking lot of 7 Eleven for 20 minutes or so going through the manual and playing with Microsoft Sync.  I had thought that since it was Microsoft software, it wasn’t going to really support my Blackberry 8900, however, I was wrong!  I paired up my phone within a minute or so and made a call to Lexi (again) to wish her happy birthday – this time, through the phone interface in the car.  Awesome!

My battery was dying on my phone, so I knew I was going to have to head home, plug my phone in to my laptop, and let it take a charge before I could play with it some more, but then that got me thinking.  I figured, ok, there’s got to be more to the Microsoft Sync – it HAS to have a USB port somewhere in the car.  Sitting out front of my parents house (I had to stop by and show them the car – both my parents were jealous), I began looking everywhere, and then I opened up the center console and found the USB port.  I figured there was no way this was going to be as cool as I had imagined…and since I just had 2 strikes against my thoughts about the car and the Sync technology…whooosh…swing and a miss!  My phone started charging, and then I noticed that I had a USB media option – it totally loaded up all the MP3′s I had on my internal SD card and I could access my full library of music.

Streaming MP3′s via USB + charging phone + Bluetooth tech + aggressive styling + smooth ride = BIG GRIN!!!

Later in the evening after stopping by Gangplank to show the boys the car and giving them a ride in it, I discovered how to stream my media from my phone over Bluetooth…holy freakin’ cool!

Tomorrow I’ll touch more on how the car drives and any more gadgets that I find!

Check out the video that Chuck filmed late last night while I paired up the 8900 again & streamed MP3′s over Bluetooth to the sound system…

To be perfectly honest, this blog post has been sitting in my drafts section for a few months.  I wanted to start this post about people bitching about the MLB.tv service, but I think I had this little voice in my head that told me to just give it some time, enjoy my already stellar experience, and see where it goes from there.

The journey to MLB.tv started late in the season last year when I wanted to be able to stream the playoff games from whatever office I may of been working out of that day, however, I forgot to read the fine print that stated all live playoff games were blacked out, but an archive copy of the game would be available AFTER the game…meh.  Small fail for me…but that seems to be some what of a daily occurence as I get older. :-)

So fast forward a few months, and I start poking around and seeing if I could find ANYTHING on the internet about MLB.tv offering live games streaming in HD…I couldn’t find anything.  So I went to the social channels, sent out a msg on Twitter, and oddly, my friend Nicole of all people responded to me on Facebook (my Twitter feed goes through to Facebook as well).  She said that she knew all the MLB.tv guys from when she lived in New York for a few years and she immediately got on her IM, asked if they were going to be offering streaming HD content for 2009, and they said yes!

The power of social media is awesome!

So anyway, when it came time to roll out streaming HD over the internet from MLB.tv, I was on it like white on rice with my credit card in hand!  Its roughly $20/month for me to be able to watch ALL of the Red Sox games live in HD…ummm…yeah…IN!

When I signed up, the player was still in “beta” mode with some limited functionality, but it worked well for a beta…not gonna lie.  There were some issues with the “NextDef” java based plug-in initially, for many users, but as far as I can tell, those issues are gone.  The player itself is all Flash based, and has some really cool options.  You can literally use it as a DVR with an unlimited amount of space to store ALL games ALL season long…in HD!  Its like a media mecca for any diehard baseball fan.

We are a few months in to the MLB season now, and I’m still watching my HD stream every chance I can get.  The picture quality isn’t perfect all the time, but this is new technology, and since I’m REALLY in to new tech (oddly I’m writing this blog post on my PC that’s connected to my 46″ Samsung LCD TV), I can pretty much “go with the flow” when it comes to bumps in the road when new technologies roll out.

Kudos to the MLB.tv crew…you guys are doing a great job…love the service…keep pushing forward!  And, if you are a die hard baseball fan, and your team isn’t within your local market, do yourself a favor and get the service already…no…seriously…get it, and if you do get it, and don’t like it, come back and tell me why…maybe we can get some group collaboration together and get some new features packed in for the 2010 season!

As a web developer, I have many things that I factor in when developing a new site, or adding on to an existing site, and you know, people could really save some cash if I didn’t have to spend extra time making Internet Explorer play nice like the other browsers do with no “extra” help.

Let’s say that some normal markup would take about 10 hours…well I’ll quote it out as 13+ just because of that extra bit I’m going to have to spend on making Internet Explorer display the same way that the other browsers do just because they conform to standards.

So do yourself a favor…if you want to save some development costs, spread the word, Internet Explorer is the devil as far as XHTML/CSS is concerned – it just HAS to be different and it is costing YOU more money.

I think Microsoft did it that way, because you know you didn’t pay for that Office software you are using…so they are just stickin’ it to ya in another way! hahahaha

Download Firefox or Download Safari – and save your soul!!!

The “Sweet on Geeks” charity auction event is happening on March 14th, 2009 at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ at 8pm.  I think I’m gonna take the most in auction dollars…I decided…

I wasn’t a fan at first, but its slowly been growing on me due to its vast features that allow you to create groups, and setup various searches so I’m not going back and forth in a Search.Twitter.com window all day long!

New Features

Language Translation: Sweet…now I can understand what all those 13 year old asian kids are talking about!

StockTwits Integration: I’m not totally in to stocks yet (although I probably should be since I’m still ‘relatively young’ – like that in quotes hahaha), and I do believe this site was made by local phoenix all star Howard Lindzon.  I like integration with other apps…A+.

Hash Tag Support: I love me some hash tags – no seriously #I #love #me #some #hash #tags…and I love when I am #thefirstonetocreateahashtag – I’m an attention whore…sue me. :-)

User Search: Uh…I’m lost…can’t we just do that with a “global search”?  That’s what I do…so I can stalk @chuckreynolds and @miley__cyrus – ok, maybe not Miley Cyrus, cause that’d get me on “Dateline: To Catch a Predator” faster then Miller drops the soap in county lock-up, but definitely Chuck – that bastard never tells me when the cool shit is going down.  Wait…maybe that’s a sign……… :-/

Ok…well…here you go…read about the new Tweetdeck improvements in depth…and get a new version now!  W00T!

I probably shouldn’t be promoting this, since it’s likely to bump the stats that I’m trying to beat, but it’s for Chase, and its for GangPlank HQ, and it’s just good business – give more than you get…right Derek? :-)

Another project out of GangPlank HQ has arrived in full public mode – AuthorityLabs.com – Simple Search Engine Monitoring.  Basically, the jist of the site allows you to track keywords against your domain to see how you are ranking for those keywords on Google, Yahoo, and Live.  I’ve been beta testing it for a few weeks, and so far, I check it just about every morning.  I’m really trying to get my blog ranked first page on Google for keyword “beau”, and I’ve been able to track the rollercoaster so far with all it’s nifty graphs and so forth.

I’ve also been tracking keywords for DateDesigner.com – my project out of the GangPlank HQ Incubator.  So far, I’m loving the results.  Keyword “date ideas” has been yielding nice results in Yahoo & Live – hopefully I’ll see that growing trend in Google soon!

Any way, get on over to AuthorityLabs.com and sign up today!  I am pretty sure you can sign up for a free account to get your feet wet. :-)

Andrew Hyde has recently released GroupList.us.  Basically, the site allows you to easily share contact information within a group of people so you can talk about things other than your Twitter handle, or your Facebook ID.  It’s a great little tool, and I’ve participated in 2 lists so far:

• PodCampAZ 2008
• GangPlank HQ

Get out there and create some lists with your groups…share your information easily!

I successfully launched Date Designer at the beginning of this month.  If you don’t know what Date Designer is all about, to start, it’s NOT a match-making service.  The service I’m offering is to answer the question of “what should we do?” AFTER you’ve gotten your date.  Currently there are about 40 good dates entered in to the system and the number of users registering and using the system is increasing daily.

Date Designer was recently featured in the AZ Republic with Gangplank HQ, Authority Labs, Simple Seating, and Get Whuffie.  I was also interviewed on video by the Phoenix Real Estate Guy.

I also attended PodCampAZ last weekend – talk about a fun time!  Met a ton of new people, got the word out about my projects, and discovered that Jeremy Tanner (@penguin) is all about man-hugging and Andrew Hyde (@andrewhyde) is a lot quieter than I had imagined!  You guys are welcome to stay at my house anytime you are back in Phx!  And on a sadder note…I still didn’t get a chance to meet Justine…I guess my indirect game didn’t work out so well…<sad face>…

Another project I’ve been working on, that was created out of the recent Startup Weekend in Phoenix is called Twitrratr.com.  Basically, Twitrratr.com is a search engine of sorts that searches tweets on Twitter and then analyzes the content of the tweets to determine positive/neutral/negative tones and opinions.  We’ve gotten a ton of press about the site already and we’ve only been live for about 2 weeks or so!  The Twitrratr.com team consists of myself, Chase Granberry, and Mike Luby…all of which…are full of so much awesome, I’m pretty sure if we ended up getting our asses kicked by a group of rogue ninjas, we’d bleed awesome.

Update on my relationship status…single…yes ladies…I’m still single…keep those phone numbers coming…<crickets>… :-/

And that’s about it for now…I gots ta get to bed…Nate’s wedding is in t-minus 13 hours!!!

This year will actually be my first time attending PodCampAZ.  Last year they had quite the showing for the first year, and this year, its expected to be even bigger!  So instead of doing something else that is far less cool than hanging out with a bunch of other people that share the same interests as you, come play with the cool kids at PodCampAZ on November 1st & 2nd of 2008 – you’ll be glad that you did!

Oh yeah, go register for PodCampAZ 2.0 – successful planning can’t happen without participant registration… ;-)