journal

Wow is this a Godsend.  One of the biggest pains in flash development is no ability to double check that your version updater is working.  Problem solved.

Just another entry in my Christmas list

Alright for those who don’t know, JotSpot is a collaboration platform kinda like intranets.com…but with BALLS!!

Check out the preso here

UPDATE: Just wanted to add this article in real quick about some good speculations as to what Google is going to do with this new service

I promised myself I wouldn’t get into politics on my blog but this isn’t really about politics. I tend to think this is more about the fabric of our democracy and how it can be ruined in one fail swoop. America has a constitution and political process that’s been around for 200+ years. We’ve had different voting technologies throughout that time but the medium has remained the same. Paper ballot. You can punch, check, write in, color, draw in your candidate however you like and a person is there to tally it. Its been happening like that since the dawn of our great democracy. Its a pretty standard and proven method of voting and its essentially what made a democracy a democracy. The technology of the paper is exactly what built America, from the paper ballots to the paper our constitution is written on. The technology of paper has been around since the beginning of recorded history.

Behold the information age! From analog to digital, snail mail to e-mail, paper to pdf, the digital world is invading our lives at an extremely fast rate. I’m a web developer, I like that fact, keeps me in business. But it also gives me a sense of caution. Because all forms of technology have a certain level of feedback. Things that man never thought was possible become possible. Foresight is the key to new technology implementation. When man created fire or used tools to collect food, new possibilities emerged and so did new problems. So what’s the point in all of this? The digital age has only provided a good 20 years of quality feedback as compared to centuries of analog or in this case, paper feedback. Just like paper ballot voting has been around since America was founded and its electronic voting counterpart has been around for less than 10.

I came across this article and recognized a new form of feedback I didn’t foresee and maybe a lot of you never foresaw either. Its simple really. The new bug in e-voting is a natural fear of failure. Even if the system works, it appears to be broken. This has pretty extreme consequences for our democracy. That vote is so en grained into our democratic process and so rudimentary that illusion of failure would result in that same illusion of failure of our democracy. I can’t see our government being able to function correctly with its populace thinking its no longer viable. Diebold, has even gone so far as to boosting its PR activities after a recent Time magaine article questioning its trustworthiness.

And being a web developer and programming software daily I realize the extent of the e-voting problem. Electronic voting is simply a technology that hasn’t been time tested like paper. It’s going to naturally have its fair share of bugs and holes. Its going to naturally produce feedback because history has taught us that all things technical and all things made by man eventually will. But history has also taught us that mankind eventually corrects itself and responds to the feedback by evolving to it. Or do we?

So when I walk into my polling station and I stand in front of my voting machine I will question, like all of you, who … or what … exactly have I just elected to represent me? And will my new Diebold overlords be satisfied with my choice?

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That’s right you heard me!

TextMate this morning decided to get into the Halloween spirit by dynamically updating their icon.  Pretty cool if you ask me.

If you’re a web developer on the mac and you haven’t purchased TextMate yet, you’re just doing yourself a disservice.

This guy has compiled a list of every damn programming cheat sheet ever posted on the internet!!!

And its big!!

Check it

A new burning app called Disco for OS X Uses a couple amazing features the most noteable, ’smoke’ which only the video can do justice. ‘Coaster’ another where if you move your laptop the sensors will pop up a message saying “Hey stop messing around.” Really cool stuff so hope you enjoy.

Check it out