Daily Links
The Arrogance of Nuclear Engery
Once one of the most highly regulated and watched industries on the planet, it has become clear that they now police themselves. That is never a good thing as companies have shown over and over that they are incapable of making the right decision before the profitable one.Wikileaks and a Canadian DMCA
Wikileaks has released dozens of new US cables that show years of hidden lobbying by US government officials to pressure Canada into implementing something like the DMCA. So basically it's been everyone in Canada saying "no" and a few people in the US saying "yes" to all those unpopular bills this whole time?Daily Links
Weird software bugs
A wikipedia list of unusual software bugs. I think I've run into every single one of them. :)jRumble
jRumble is a jQuery plugin that rumbles, vibrates, shakes, and rotates any element you choose.Kings of Comedy
Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Louis C.K. Worth your hour of time if you admire anything about the craft of making people laugh.Daily Links
President Obama's Birth Certificate
Not that he didn't already do so back in 2008, but with a campaign coming up, you can't keep a good conspiracy down. So to put this nonsense to bed, the President of the United States has had to post his long form birth certificate on the White House website. Sheesh.Firefox 4 on PPC Macs
Though Mozilla dropped support for PowerPC processors, TenFourFox has tuned Firefox 4 to run on PPC-architecture.Friendster Erasing User Data
Huh, I didn't even now Friendster was still around. Apparently we should expect "a new and improved Friendster site in the coming weeks," but that will require wiping the slate clean.How to Tile Backgrounds Almost Infinitely by Understanding Cicada Cycles
Making tiling backgrounds can be hard to do. Especially if you are trying to keep the files small. With a little logic, some prime numbers a few small graphics and some understanding of cicadas, we can now tile nearly infinitely. Also be sure to check out the Cicada Project and enter your best examples!Daily Links
Canad Inns Stadium Is For Sale
With the new Bomber stadium in the works, the city now is hoping to sell the existing stadium. Anyone got a couple million handy?iPhone 4 and MTS
Now available, starting at a hundred and sixty with a three year contract.Apple Fixes Font Issues
If you're running 10.6 and have been having font issues preventing PDFs from being printing, Apple has finally released a fix through the regular software updates.Sony Admits to a Complete Train Wreck on the PlayStation Network
Ars Technica has a complete article on what is turning out to be more than just a PR disaster for Sony. Given that I had my GMail account hacked in the last 2 days, I've taken the precaution of having my credit card cancelled and I'm in the process of changing all my passwords to the hundreds of online services I have accounts with. (image from redditor icechen1)Daily Links
Nintendo Confirms Wii Successor
Nintendo has confirmed it will launch a successor to the Wii gaming console in 2012, and have a playable unit at the E3 Expo this June.Lessons From A Cloud Failure
"Frankly, we screwed up. AWS explicitly advises that developers should design a site's architecture so that it is resilient to occasional failures and outages such as what occurred yesterday, and we did not follow that advice."Shaw Planning To Implement UBB This Summer
After a huge public outcry against usage-based billing, Shaw stalled for a couple weeks with some public consultations and then decided what the public really really wanted was usage-based billing.Daily Links
JavaScript/WebGL Jellyfish Simulation
If you're running the latest version of FireFox or Chrome, check out what's possible these days with WebGL. There's even a debug console where you can adjust the rendering parameters.iReview Fail
A collection of bad, amusing, annoying, and entertaining reviews on iTunes app store pages.Tweeting Election Results Is Illegal
Elections Canada reminds social media using Canadians that an old law regarding transmitting election results (purported or verified) before polls are closed will be enforced on Twitter and Facebook users.Daily Links
iOS Retains Location Data
Researchers have discovered iOS devices secretly log and retain a record of every place you go. The info is synched to your PC and other mobile devices. Why the hell would it need this? Android does not keep such a file.Typekit and Support for Subdomains
I keep forgetting that we can do this now. When setting up the kit, just specify your URL as *.yourdomain.com and built your kit. You can also throw a list of domains together if you separate with a , like: *.yourdomain.com, localhost, 127.0.0.1, etc... Full post at typekit has the details.Weird Al and Lady Gaga
"This is my parody of Lady Gaga's song Born This Way -- which, I'm sorry to say, will NOT be included on my upcoming album. I will give the details of the whole Gaga saga (and offer free mp3 downloads of the song) on weirdal.com very soon." - Weird Al YankovicPhoneTracker
Here you go, a link to PhoneTracker software that will show you what is stored in the iPhone locations.db file that it keeps. See the link from Wil above for the start of the storm.Why Use Emoticons?
Poe's Law, that's why. Put a smiley after it so I can assume your crazy rambling is satire and not the sincere thoughts of a completely unhinged human being with access to the internet.TheForks.com Launches Version 4
If you live in Winnipeg, you know about The Forks, where the Red and Assiniboine rivers merge on their way to Hudson Bay. Without question, The Forks is one of those jewels of Winnipeg that visitors remember long after they have left. From the waterfront dining, to the walk ways, the buzz of activity to the Market, The Forks has something for everyone.
The Versions Before
Before we jump into a technical post about what improvements we have made to theforks.com, we need to look a little at the evolution of the site. Usually by the second or third iteration of a site, most clients have a good idea of what their visitors are looking for. The Forks North Portage Partnership (theforks.com parent company) understands their visitors, but also has the unique challenge of having to represent:
- The Forks Calendar of Events - because there is always something going on
- Information about The Forks, such as merchants, dining, locations for parking and the history
- Information about their other properties, such as Imax, The Forks Foundation and the Forks North Portage Partnership
Focus on the Content
With version 4, our design partners at Fusion put the focus on the two things that people want to see, relevant content and beautiful imagery. At Visual Lizard, we are big fans of keeping things simple. This version of theforks.com does just that. Pages are easy to scan at a glance, images are prominent, but hidden away until you want to focus on them, and the navigation is simple.
Calendar of Events
The Forks understood very early on that the Calendar of Events at theforks.com was one of the primary information points for over half of their visitors. It needed to be upfront and easy to scan at a glance. Mission accomplished!
Merchants and Dining
People visiting theforks.com are also interested in dining there when they arrive. With this version of the site, we have made the Shopping and Dining sections very easy to scan. The administration team has full control over what is displayed for each merchant, they can link to merchant websites and also provide photos.
Better Organization
All web sites need some sort of Information Architecture in order to exist. With this version of theforks.com, the site navigation is presented in two, clear navigation blocks at the top of the interface. The primary navigation now focuses exclusively on the content associated with The Forks. Colours have been carried over from the previous design and are used to provide visual cues for the visitor. All of the additional navigation can be found at the top of the header or in the footer. Nice and clean.
The Experience Layer
With version 4 of theforks.com, we finally got to say good-bye Internet Explorer 6. This allowed us to use some nice little CSS3 transformations in the corners and shadows. We also added several elements that are using jQuery to enhance their presentation, such as the image animations on the homepage and the photo galleries. For visitors in Internet Explorer 7 and 8, they still see the site and all the content, but they loose some of the CSS3 touches. This is acceptable degradation of the site.
Content Management System
Theforks.com has been running on our Catalyst CMS for several versions now. With this version of the site we have done the following:
- upgraded all systems to our latest Catalyst 4 system
- built some new tools for managing the calendar of events, dining, shopping and the bibliography
- attached a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to the site for serving up all the static media elements, such as the background imagery. One of the primary advantages to using a CDN is that it allows your visitors to pull content from servers that are geographically as close as possible to their location. Another side benefit is that your browser gains additional connections above the default 2.
- have multiple URLs managed through Catalyst for their admin team.
- some awesome caching techniques to store views, models and modules, as well as clearing them when changes are made within the CMS.
- perhaps a small, front end easter egg. This one is just for us, but good luck finding it if you go hunting
Happy to Help
Visual Lizard has been working with The Forks on their web site for almost a decade. When we were asked to help with version 4 of their site, we were ecstatic. We think version 4 is the best one yet!