A web agency weblog

A few days ago I mentioned how to capture long web pages with a neat Firefox extension, Screengrab. As I have Java always installed in my box I forgot to mention the extension needs Java, actually I didn’t even notice it.

Now that I upgraded from Fedora Core 4 to 5 and also moved to Firefox 2 RC1 the neat extension stopped work.

I fixed the problem unzipping Andy’s .xpi of the 0.8 version and changing these lines in install.rdf:

<em:version>0.8b</em>
<em:maxVersion>2.1</em>

You can grab the modified version, which I called 0.8b, here.

There are occasional crashes in some web pages but that also happened in the original 0.8 and I’m sure Andy will have it fixed by version 1.0.

This should work with other extensions as well, I’ll try with another of my favorites: the one for del.icio.us.

Update: Yep, it worked with del.icio.us too, here my version 1.1b.

I like Rojo, a very efficient web based feed reader. The Rojo guys have added many nice improvements to their user interface after the company was bought by SixApart, of Movable Type fame, a few weeks ago.

And of course I love the upcoming Firefox 2, already in release candidate 1 stage.

So it was disappointing not to find Rojo in the list of feed readers that Firefox supports. There comes the question: what’s a mozillorojoish guy’s got to do?

How To Add Rojo in Firefox With Just Three Lines

These steps are based on what Ben Goodger wrote some months ago in his Inside Firefox blog. Thanks Ben!

I assume you already have a Rojo account, you’ve logged in and you have Firefox 2 running.

• Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter. You will see a list of preferences.
• Type browser.contentHandlers in the filter box and press Enter. Now you see a smaller list.
• Each preference is of the form: browser.contentHandlers.types.#.something where # is a number, which goes from 0 to 5 in my Firefox, and something is title, type or uri.
• You clever quick guy already got the pattern here and know what to do, good for you! For the rest of us let’s elaborate: you have to create an additional set of preferences, three additional lines. We will base our new lines in the 0 numbered lines and will use number 6.
• Right-click on the first line, browser.contentHandlers.types.0.title and select Copy Name.
• Right-click, select New, String, paste the name you copied and change the number from 0 to 6, or another corresponding number if you have more than five sets of lines.
• Enter the name of the feed reader you are adding, in our case: Rojo. You won’t see your new line automatically in the list, just press Enter in the filter box on top if you need to.
• Create a new instance of the second line, browser.contentHandlers.types.0.type, following the same procedure and also changing 0 to 6. You can also right-click and copy the value here, application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed, for that won’t change.
• Create the third line based on browser.contentHandlers.types.0.uri and use the following value for Rojo: http://www.rojo.com/add-subscription/?resource=%s. I got it from the bookmarklet, you can find a similar url for any other feed reader. Use %s as a placeholder for the feed url.
• Restart Firefox and you are set!

Too Many Clicks?

Ok, just open your prefs.js file (in my Fedora box I found it at /home/my-user-name/.mozilla/firefox/uk3kd43k.default/prefs.js) and add these lines:


user_pref("browser.contentHandlers.types.6.title", “Rojo");
user_pref("browser.contentHandlers.types.6.type", “application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed");
user_pref("browser.contentHandlers.types.6.uri", “http://www.rojo.com/add-subscription/?resource=%s");


Set your default feed reader the first time you subscribe to any feed or using the feeds tab in Firefox’s preferences menu.

Now you can click on any feed link, including the icon appearing in the address bar, and you are already set. One click subscription to any feed.

Ready?, why not testing it here?

I was wondering about a way to track the comments I post in many blogs and sites. There are interesting conversations going on and most current feed readers aren’t enough to keep updated with what others are saying.

Bart was kind enough to point me to cocomment (that’s the name, I’m not stammering), a nice service that makes life easier for commenters and bloggers alike.

Commenters just have to install a Firefox extension and a small bar will appear at the bottom of the text area where they write their comments. cocomment works with Internet Explorer using a bookmarklet but I didn’t test it, who needs that browser anyway?

Once you post a comment, it’s tracked by cocomment. There’s a little icon at the status bar of your browser that alerts you whenever somebody adds a new comment to the discussions you are following. It’s small and non distractive but even so you have to keep yourself under control. Highly commented posts could consume your whole day if you try to read them too often.

Clicking the cocomment icon takes you to the cocomment site and there you’ll find a simple but usable table with the latest comments from the posts you’re tracking.

Everything is quite simple to use.

And bloggers don’t need to worry, most blogging systems are supported by cocomment. If yours is not, integration consists of playing with a few lines of Javascript and the code of your content management system or blog platform.

I spent a few minutes with my Drupal templates before finding out that Olav had already written a cocomment module. Great work, thanks dude. A couple of clicks later and both mumobo and Telework People were cocomment-enabled.

cocomment’s Firefox extension also installed a bookmarklet where you can enable tracking of a discussion even if you are not commenting. A good idea for blog-voyeurs.

So, pay a visit to cocomment, it can save some minutes a day and help you find lots of interesting discussions where you can waste your whole day once again. Nothing is perfect, uh?

Reading some posts at the improved Rojo, I promise to write about it this week, I was thinking: “boy, how nice being able to read my favorite pieces of content from just one simple interface.”

Then the what if appeared. What if we could have the ability to comment in every blog or website without visiting it? Imagine a universal method for comments. Something like RSS is becoming for easily reading your favorite sites.

I resisted the temptation to google this before posting, maybe there’s somebody already working in some kind of reverse-syndication system and I’m just another silly guy with a dumb idea. It doesn’t matter, there are millions of us already.

Ideally feed reader and comment writer should work under the same user interface. Going one step forward we could ask for having our content management systems or blog tools integrated with these features. Imagine writing your content, reading feeds and posting comments from one single location.

In fact, we already have the writing and commenting part, we call it a trackback.

There is, of course, the big problem of spammers using a commenting tool like this, but I think captcha-like or validation features would help.

We already have the technologies for such a platform, would it work? What ya think?

There are many occasions when you need to take a snapshot of a web page, maybe one of yours to include in your portfolio or other’s when commenting on design, usability or maybe writing a book or tutorial.

Windows users are used to pressing the print screen key and then pasting into their favorite graphics application. There are also some commercial applications available for this apparently easy task.

I’ve been using using KSnapshot under Fedora Linux for a few years and was enough for most of my needs.

But there are times when you need a snapshot of a complete web page, including parts below the fold, parts that aren’t in your browser’s viewport. What’s a clever guy got to do?

Vertically scrolling, taking two or more snapshots and putting them together in your graphics application is the obvious solution but takes a little more time and soon becomes tiresome, specially when many snapshots are needed.

Some commercial applications include the feature but come on! there are smart and free solutions for almost everything.

I was thinking about that when I found ScreenGrab!, a neat Firefox extension. ScreenGrab is the solution for the long web pages snapshot problem and, as every Firefox extension, can be installed with just a click and a restart. Then you just have to visit a web page and right click to capture it.

ScreenGrab offers three options for capturing a web page: document, viewport and window.

Choose document is you want the complete web page saved as an image, including parts below the fold. Viewport captures just what’s visible and window includes your browser in the picture. The images are saved in PNG format.

Here’s a capture I just made from my music, movies and books reviews site. The image was later scaled with Gimp. Nice, uh?

Ready to launch, a new Drupal based site, mumobo is here. It’s a place for writing about the books I read, the movies I watch and the music I listen.

It’s a project I’m quite fond of, includes my most complete PHPTemplate to date and my first fixed 1024 x 768 layout.

Completely developed with open source tools: Freemind for IA, Inkscape and Gimp for design, vi for editing and, of course, Drupal for content management.

It’s all Drupal 4.7. I started working with HEAD first (pre 4.8) but then decided to go with the stable 4.7, many modules and some details were not working yet a couple of months ago.

I wanted to create an easy to use and different, kinda retro, design this time, but my focus is on content, writing with a very personal voice and sharing my comments about the stuff that fills most of my days.

Writing the articles took almost as many hours as design and programming, but I think it was worth the effort. Now I plan to add fresh content on a weekly basis.

What do you think?

Take a look at mumobo and publish some comments, would you?

As a way of helping teleworkers do their jobs faster and easier I wrote a guide about syndication and feed readers.

I know I’ve written about the subject two years ago, but this time I avoided the use of techie words as much as I could, made use of an easy-to-grasp analogy and included a little tutorial about Rojo, my favorite web based feed reader at this time.

If you already use feed readers you will find some ideas on how to explain the technology to others without being seen as a wacko.

If you don’t care much about technology take a look anyway, you may save many precious minutes in your busy days.

I’ve just made available a free download of the advantages of teleworking , part of my book Telework People.

Learn about how working away from the office, at home, a coffee shop or telecenter, can increase your productivity and make your life a healthier and happier one.

Get the free download now. I’m sure you’ll find quite interesting ideas.

Good news today: FeedBurner Email is already available. A free service that allows your readers to subscribe using just email.

Quite useful for those users not familiar with a feed reader.

Want to know how to use the Internet and your current skills to work away from the office and spend more time with your family?

In Telework People I’ll tell you how to do it.

Teleworking, or telecommuting, means doing your job away from the conventional office. It means working online. From anywhere.

You can earn much more money than you’re currently making by teleworking, but to do so you need to know a few tips and techniques I’ll share with you.

Get the book today for only US$ 22.22:

Update: You can now get the printed edition at Lulu.

disponible en español

Who’s This Book For?

Everybody can telework! No matter if you are an employee, busy manager or entrepreneur. You can start teleworking today.

You will find useful advice and ideas in this book.

Forget about rush hour, endless meetings with a stressed boss or the annoying chit chat of the guys in the next cube.

You can telework from home, a coffee shop, a bench in the park and even from a plane 35,000 feet up!

Teleworking is about people, and that’s why I’ve included cases from people I know. Friends and colleagues all over the world.

You’ll also know what I’ve learned in the last eight years, while working happily from home, including my mistakes, so you won’t repeat them.

Grab a free sample of the book

What Does The Book Contain?

In this 140 page downloadable PDF book you’ll find:

• The benefits of teleworking
• Ideas for convincing your boss to let you work from home
• What you need to telework
• Jobs suitable for teleworking
• How to start
• How to manage an online team
• How to spend more time with your family
• How to avoid becoming a workaholic
• Real cases from my friends and colleagues in many countries
• Useful resources for teleworkers

Unconditional 60 Day Money Back Guarantee

If for any reason you think this book is not for you, you can get an immediate refund. No questions asked, just contact me and let me know.

How To Buy?

Telework People costs only US$ 22.22. You can buy using any major credit card or Paypal.

You will receive an email with a link to download the PDF once you complete your order.

Get the book and start teleworking, and changing the way you live and work, today.

Update: You can now get the printed edition at Lulu.

disponible en español

Imagine a radio station playing just the songs you like, and giving you the ability to tell when a song doesn’t fit your tastes and not playing it anymore. That is what Pandora does.

Pandora is a web based service that allows you to create your own music stations. Stations that “learn” what kind of music you prefer based on the choices you make. Pandora only needs a web browser with the Flash player plugin installed, that is almost any computer in the world.

Pandora rewards our curiosity, hence the name. It’s a great way of finding new music. No matter if it’s the latest hit by a mainstream artist or an unknown local band from Biloxi, Mississippi.

I signed up to Pandora a couple of months ago and I instantly loved it; thus, when I got a newsletter written by Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora and who started the Music Genome Project in 1999, I decided to ask him for an interview.

Tim replied quickly and we had a talk over the phone yesterday.

Here you have it, Tim Westergren from Pandora, at Ventanazul.

Continua leyendo …

A regular day at the studio:

“Gee, I’m thirsty man!”

“So I am dude, so I am”

“What you have in the fridge?”

“Dunno, let’s see … great!, I’ve got a couple of bottles of Google Gulp“

“Cool, give me the Beta Carroty”

Google. These guys are nuts or they are just too smart for the rest of us. What do you think?

I knew Yahoo had a new web based email application running in beta, hence I signed up for the waiting list three weeks ago. Today when I logged in to my Yahoo Mail account a greeting page appeared telling me I could start using the new system, it also told me that my operating system was not supported yet (Linux, Fedora Core 4) and that I could experience some problems, but everything is working fine.

This is my review about the new guy in the web based mail arena.

Continua leyendo …

You may already know I am writing a book, actually an ebook, it is an ebook about teleworking, or telecommuting if you prefer that term.

I will be launching a web site dedicated to the book, and all things teleworking. I already registered the domain name, and I think is a good one. My writing is progressing and I already started thinking about the best way to distribute the ebook online.

To begin with, I will use some pay per click campaigns to attract targetted traffic to the new web site, then I plan on maybe making the book available in other sites. That is why I am writing this post, I would like to know your suggestions and experiences with ebook distribution services.

I have reviewed Lulu, I like their community and the possibility of print on demand publishing and ebook distribution. They allow me to distribute a book through well known stores such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble, although it seems this is only for the printed editions.

I have also found ebook stores like eBookMall and Mobipocket that offer distribution of ebooks but I am still searching for testimonials of their customers to see how well they work.

Most of the sites I have reviewed have a non exclusive agreement, which is good, but royalties are sometimes too low and some charge additional fees.

What are your ideas on ebook publishing and distribution? Should I just sell it on my site? Will it be worth selling my ebook through other sites?

Technorati tags: ebooks | telework | telecommuting | publishing

This one is going fast. I already have 6 referrals signed up under my account to win an iPod Shuffle and I’m just waiting for 3 of them to complete one offer, maybe they already did it but getting the credit can take some time.

Recently Freepay has imposed a time limit for all its sites. For the iPod Shuffle contest I have until May 30, 2006. They want people to complete the offers faster, but this could be a problem if you don’t get it quick.

Well, I still have some time and hope to get there soon. I’ll let you know.

Update: My new book is already available for purchase. Get your copy of Telework People now.

I’ve started working in a book about teleworking. I already told some friends and got many nice messages from all over the world offering help with feedback and translations, thank you all! It will be a really challenging project, a global book, and I’m sure it will be fun.

I would like to ask for your help; I’d like to know a little more about your teleworking experiences. I am including my own and a basic list of questions that you could use as guidelines.

Plese feel free to let the Shakespeare in you go wild and tell us all of what you think is relevant about your life as a teleworker.

Continua leyendo …

Hello, I’ve posted a thread in Forums Ventanazul for sharing our teleworking experiences, it’s a part of my research for the book I’m writing on the subject.

I invite you all, my fellow teleworkers, to participate and be a part of the project.

I got it, I really did.

Today Freepay confirmed me that my free iPod is being shipped soon, I’m already counting the days. At the end I got 8 persons signing up as my referrals, I just needed 5 to win the gizmo.

Now I’ve started to get referrals for winning an iPod Shuffle, I only need 3 persons and guess it should be easier than the iPod (which took me a very loooong time).

The iPod Shuffle is only 1Gb but it’s so tiny, portable and good looking that I’m sure my daughter will love it, she loves all things small. She could even use it for playing with Barbie, Ken and the whole gang (they had a party at home today but with no music, sad, uh?).

Thank you all of you who helped me winning the iPod, now you can help me on getting the Shuffle. What do you think?

I’m getting so used to vi for my editing that I find myself using / (slash) for searching text many times a day.

I also use the Ctrl+F keystroke a lot in Firefox, mostly when viewing source code.

Imagine my surprise when I pressed, by mistake, the slash key in Firefox (Linux version, I haven’t tested in Windows) and the find box appeared, now I can just use good ol’ slash to search code in both vi and Firefox.

It could seem like a small detail but after spending lots of hours coding and going from vi to Firefox and viceversa, using the same keystroke can be very helpful, don’t you think?

One of my clients obtained a merchant account with Authorize.net, one of the most stable payment gateways out there, I’ve been using them for years with no problems.

I’ve setup many sites using Authorize.net and other gateways but this time I had to implement eCheck processing for this account, something I hadn’t used before, and could not find information on how to make test transactions.

Some googling gave me this fictional ABA routing number: 122400724, it works, of course you have to put your Authorize.net account in test mode.

Little details like this can be very helpful when launch date is almost here.

I really like the new features in PHP5, many great web applications already support it, but there are times when you need good ol’ PHP4.

I needed to setup a CRM application, VTiger, which doesn’t run in PHP5 yet, and had to get PHP4 in my server.

Fedora Core 4 comes with PHP5 pre-installed and getting back to PHP4 can get a little messy, fortunately there are several solutions.

I found these links very helpful and now I’m running Fedora Core 4 with PHP4: PHP4 on Fedora 4 and PHP4 and Postgresql 8.

My library dependency problems happened with Postgresql: “libpq.so.3 is needed by php-pgsql-4.3.11-2.8.i386″, but you could have a different setup and need to yum or rpm other packages.

I got all php4 related packages from Fedora’s server, except php-snmp-4.3.11-2.8.i386.rpm, I had a dependency problem there and didn’t want to mess with SNMP.

I hope this helps you.

Many of you may already have heard about Ajax, the suite of technologies powering sites such as GMail, Flickr and Google Maps.

Another web application that uses Ajax, and lots of great usability features, is Basecamp, a tool created by web developers for web developers.

At Ventanazul we have many months working with Basecamp and our clients really love it.

Basecamp allows an easy interaction between developers and clients, you can set milestones, to-do lists, upload files and post messages in an incredibly easy to use interface. Most of my clients needed little time to get things rolling.

This is a great replacement for email, where you can have problems like: “hey, why didn’t you posted our latest changes to the site?", “what changes?", “the ones I emailed to you a week!", “I did’t get those!”

The application is developed by Jason Fried and company, the guys from 37Signals, they seem to have shifted from working in client’s projects and now they offer their own web apps, very useful ones.

Take a look at the free version to get the feel of Basecamp and upgrade when you need more features, I really recommend this application if you need to get your web projects professionaly done.

Disclosure: The links included in this post are using my link to the recently launched Basecamp affiliate program, however this is not an attempt to sell a product that I don’t believe in, Basecamp is really great. Thanks John for reminding me about the disclosure, the post sounded too “commercial”

University of Illinois graduate Frank Anderson is the mind behind Blingo, a new search engine, powered by Google results, that is offering random prizes to people searching the Web.

The idea is actually simple, you only need to search as usual and could be randomly selected to win any of the following:

• Sony PlayStation Portable video game system
• Apple iPod Nano, 2GB digital music player
• Toshiba or Samsung portable DVD player with 7″ screen
• Apple iPod Shuffle, 512MB digital music player
• iTunes Gift Certificate or Movie Ticket Certificates

You can also cash your prizes and get Visa gift cards instead. The selection of prizes varies each month.

With Blingo you get the power of Google results plus the opportunity to win. The site and business model seems legit and I read they have some kind of partnership with Google.

I think Blingo is using the incentives to get attention and maybe introduce new services, paid ones?, in the future. Could the Adsense revenue be enough to cover the cost of the prizes they are giving away?, maybe, they could have done the math and get it working, time will tell.

Currently Blingo is open just for US residents and you don’t need to enter any personal information to join, just when winning and you’re limited to 10 qualifying searches per day.

One of the things I like is that you can refer friends and if one of them wins a prize you also win, there is no limit to how many friends you can invite and of course you should respect the usual terms of services: no spamming, no fake accounts, etc.

Could Blingo be the next kind of FreeIpods like sites? I don’t know, but this only demonstrates that there are many more online business models to be discovered.

Give it a try, this is my Blingo link:

Recently I found a little problem with Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Professional, using the 7.2 update, when you want to change the polystar tool settings, for example to draw a star, you get the following error message in the Output window:

Plugin tool script error in method notifySettingsChanged

I couldn’t find any solution for this in Google so I started looking in the Flash files and found some XML configuration files, in the “en\First Run\Tools” directory (I use the Windows version) there is a file called PolyStar.xml, “this must be related!” I automatically thought, so, I opened the file and found some lines of code.

I just changed the attribute defaultValue in the Style element to the number 1, from the list attribute you can see that 0 is a polygon and 1 is a star, restarted Flash and problem fixed.

Of course you should backup this file before making your changes, I hope it helps, see you around!

And thanks to this little movie he’ll know how to do it right:

Little Billy learns to post.

Way to go little Billy!

Hello, we are already working in the first drafts for the website of our soon to be launched domain registration service: JustPickIt.

I would like to invite you to provide your feedback at our discussion forums.

We will be launching in a few weeks and giving away domains to the participants who provide their honest and helpful feedback.

Simon too, so he decided to interview 150 strangers he found in the streets of New York and Copenhagen and create The Thought Project.

He just stopped these men and women in the middle of the street, asked them what they were thinking one second before meeting him and took a picture. He used a microphone to record everything and published exactly what they said.

It’s an amazing idea: knowing what people are thinking just by asking them. Gosh, sometimes I think humans are so special and unique, well at least until they start doing stupid things, like they are so used to.

Well, and what were you thinking one second before reading this?

Long time I don’t post here, and now that I do it is to write, again, about winning an iPod. The good news is that I’m about to get mine.

When I first signed up at FreeiPods I never thought that a post in the blog would be enough to get my referrals, well, I was mistaken. I have already four people who signed up and completed an offer, I only need one more sign up to get the iPod.

I was thinking how I could get that last sign up, started reviewing my server access logs and noticed that Forums Ventanazul were getting many hits (even more than the home page and the blogs), so I designed a banner:

Well, what do you think? Will I get my preciousss … err … I mean, my iPod?

I don’t really believe in getting things for free, there are so many multi level and affiliated marketing schemes online, most of them just scam, that most of us doubt there could be any serious offer, you know, they say there’s no free lunch.

I already own an MP3 player, well, actually an Otis Audio Book Player, courtesy of Audible, which can also play music, but they, yep, the same they, say nothing compares to an Apple’s iPod, right? Well, I believe them.

Being unable to afford the 299 bucks I decided to look for iPod offers online.

After reading this Wired article , and realizing that giving away iPods could perhaps be a serious business model, I decided giving FreeiPod a try.

FreeiPod give you a free iPod after participating in one of their sponsors offers and referring 5 more friends, who will have to also choose an offer. They only accept US residents at this time.

I chose the offer from RealRhapsody, the Real Networks music service competing with Apple iTunes. At US$ 29.99 for a 3 month subscription, I think is well worth the money, in fact, I’m currently listening some Green Day at RealRhapsody.

Some of my friends are going for the BlockBuster offer, first two weeks are free and you can enjoy lots of movies.

Now I need the 5 friends for completing the process and getting my precioussss … errr … I mean, the iPod.

So, if you want to have a chance of getting a free iPod and helping me in getting mine, just sign up here.

One last detail: you will have to use Internet Explorer at FreeiPods, their site doesn’t work right with other browsers.

Keep rocking baby!

Just installed this plugin to fight the spam in the comments.

Now you will have to enter a small code before posting.

I hope I won’t have to moderate and delete more messages from Mr. Texas Holdem or Mrs. Viagra and will be able to write some new articles instead.

Peace. (Oh, and to hell with spammers!)

I can’t remember where I found about Real Life, but the minute I read this great online comic strip I liked it.

So, take a look at Real Life and tell me about it, oh, and don’t forget to read from the first chapter.

The folks at Slashdot run an article about the World Community Grid Project.

The World Community Grid Project aims to solve complex computing problems using grid technology, which allows distributed computer resources to work together. By harnessing millions of otherwise idle PC’s, the Grid could be able to trim the time it takes to find answers to complex problems from years, to months.

IBM is one of the organizations behind this project and so far there are more than 50,000 people participating.

Joining is easy, just download a small installer, run it and will run whenever your PC is idle. The software is secure and doesn’t affect the way you work. You don’t need to be online for the software to work, it just downloads a task when is connected, can work on it while offline and will send its results back to the grid when your PC is back online. You don’t have to do anything else.

Currently the Grid is working on mapping out every protein in the human body, this will help in finding the cure for several diseases.

The project maintains very useful statistics about donated time, organized by individuals, teams and countries.

This is an excellent chance to be part of something good for humanity, you can join now and then be a part of Ventanazul’s team.

Now you can do something to help the world, er, well, at least your computer can.

Geez, maybe we can even find the answer to the last question:

“How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?”

I was just wandering around MSN Search Beta and decided to look for some of my urls. I was glad to see them, together with some of my Overture ads.

Even if I already know what Overture offers, I decided to click on their Advertise with Us link to see if they offered something interesting.

I just got this:

Do you think is fair that Microsoft does this?

They say you have to upgrade to Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator … 4.00!! Are they crazy or what? Where am I going to get Netscape 4.0? And why would I want to do that if I already got Firefox?

I just can guess that Microsoft is so afraid of Firefox, that they don’t want their advertisers using it, even if they pay.

What do you think?

Reading a Douglas’s post about underlining text in Illustrator, I noticed how his own comments are highlighted.

Douglas uses Movable Type, so I went to WordPress forums and quickly found this article.

These are the easy steps:

Edit your comments template in WordPress and before starting the loop:

<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) { ?>

include the following:

<?php
$isByAuthor = false;
if($comment->comment_author_email == 'YOUR-EMAIL') {
$isByAuthor = true;
}
?>

then, before starting the comment text, add:

<?php if($isByAuthor ) { echo '<div class="authorcomment">';} ?>

and before closing the list element (li), include:

<?php if($isByAuthor ) { echo '</div>';} ?>

You should create a class called authorcomment in your CSS.

That’s it!

A post from Slashdot, actually a post and millions of comments (usual stuff at /.), let me know about the funds raising organized by Spread Firefox for publishing a full page ad in the New York Times announcing the release of Firefox 1.0.

It appears that Spread Firefox got in just 17 hours what they intended in 10 days, thanks to /. and, of course, the love of so many people to Firefox.

You can still donate, get your name printed on the ad, and make the web a better place!

Yep, I have to admit it: I admire the guys at Google.

They launched a product in an arena dominated by the big boys, in a time when nobody thought we needed another search engine. They had a plan which they followed patiently and now they are clearly the more important search engine in the world.

This year they launched their very expected IPO, Gmail, the new web based email service by invitation only is leaving Yahoo and Hotmail behind, and Adwords profits are, obviously, going up.

Orkut, their pet social network project is also working by invitation, by the way: lots of brazilians at Orkut.

There have been lots of rumours about a Gecko based Google browser too, but nothing confirmed, or negated at least, for now.

What else could Google do?

Invade the desktop, that’s what they just did with their new Google Desktop, which allows searching your local hard disk documents with the familiar Google interface.

Google Desktop is a very small download, under 500Kb, and very easy to install. Once you get it running it will start crawling your disk whenever your computer is idle.

To search you only need a visit to www.google.com, as usual, and you will see a new Desktop link, just click it and you will get results from your PC.

I have tried some other local search applications before, in fact I was googling around to get the url of the last one I used, its name started with “k” but I forgot it completely.

I really like what Google has done by integrating the local results with their familiar site.

At this time Google Desktop only works with Windows, but I hope soon there will be Mac and Linux versions available.

Hats off to Sergey Brin and Larry Page, you have demonstrated that it’s all about results and built a very strong, the strongest I think, brand.

Hi, after reviewing the site of the excellent UK based Computer Arts Magazine, I found Zinio.

Zinio sells subscriptions to many magazines in digital format using DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology from Adobe and offers great prices on their magazines, most of them cost less than their paperback editions.

You will find magazines such as eWeek, PC Magazine, Cosmogirl, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Business 2.0, and many more.

There are many free samples so that you can try the technology.

I recommend a big screen, I’ve got a 17″ screen and feel is not enough to experience the magazines.

The quality of the digital issues is amazing, you get a very magazine-sque feeling, specially when turning the pages. The subscription coupons are great, with the only difference they don’t fall.

Zinio magazines can also be downloaded to Tablet PC, unfortunately I don’t have one but would like to know if some of you have tried it.

One last thing: If you go to Zinio home page, you will be able to fill a survey and win yearly subscriptions to PC Magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly and Computer Gaming World. At least those were the subscriptions I got for free, it could change depending on your answers to the survey I guess.

Let me know what you think about Zinio!

Despite being published in 2000, Steve Krug’s Don’t make me think is a great book covering the most important aspects of usability.

Believe me or not, I have just finished reading it for the third time. Steve offers us excellent ideas which you need to remember in a daily basis if you really are into web design. He has good jokes too (the donuts drawings in the first pages reminded me of many distracted customers I’d had).

You can read the book in one afternoon, he really applies the omit needless words concept here, one concept borrowed from Elements of Style and also mentioned by Stephen King in his excellent On Writing. The whole chapter on this subject is just a couple of pages.

I really like the way used by Steve to explain most usability concepts from the user perspective, specially the part in how users see a web page all blurred versus the way a designer hopes.

You can tell that Steve has been there when he talks about the religious debates arising between programmers, marketing people and designers when choosing certain interface elements .

But not everything is focused in design, Steve also talks about internal politics, which, as we all know, most of the times tie web developers hands.

There are many great resources online about usability, but Steve has made a great job of putting the most important issues in one easy to read package.

You should grab a copy of Don’t make me think even if you are not into web design, these concepts apply to many other fields too.

Get it, read it and let us know what you think about!

Are you looking for a high profile job? A job that allows you to show your skills in a great environment?

Then I am sure you will be interested in this Google job offering.

I already applied. I wish you luck and don’t forget to tell us how it went!

Hey, I’ve got some Gmail invitations, you can win one just by suggesting a nice slogan for Ventanazul, something that goes along with our design, style and solutions.

Just make your suggestion in the comments and let’s see.

The folks at the Web Standards Project has launched another interesting campaign: Browse Happy.

The site explains why using Internet Explorer is unsafe and showcases testimonies from many people who have, happily, changed to safer, easier to use and standards compliant web browsers.

I am currently using Firefox, even wrote an article about it, but you have other choices as well, the WaSP campaign mentions Safari, Mozilla and Opera.

Why don’t you give them a try?

And while you are at it, this could be a good time for moving your email to Thuderbird, another great open source product from Mozilla. I’ve just did it and will tell you more about it in a few days.

The last weeks I’ve been happily using Firefox for my browsing needs, today I have some good comments to share with you.

Firefox is developed by the Mozilla foundation, I almost forgot: Happy first year anniversary guys!

Firefox is based on the web standards friendly Gecko engine (like its parent Mozilla and their cousin Netscape) and has many features which allow us a better user experience. Let’s review some of them:

Multiplatform support: You can download and install Firefox for many different operating systems.

Tabs navigation: This is one of my favorites, you can have many tabs, each pointing to a different url. Some of you will say “I can do that with multiple windows in my current browser!", but let me tell you this is really better, you can open a new tab with ctrl+t, want to open a link in a new tab?, just ctrl click it!.

You, weblog readers, will find tab navigation helpful, you can be reading a post and ctrl click the links on it, you will have tabs with the related url loaded by the time you end reading, it’s a great time saver!

Extensions: Using easy to install extensions you can make Firefox perform many different tasks. There are many people creating great extensions out there. If you are a web developer I strongly suggest you download this one. It will make your life better. Did I mention all of this is multiplatform?

Excellent bookmarks control: You can administer your bookmarks from an easy to learn interface and assign keywords to any url. Keywords are nice, just type them instead of writing a very long url, for example I only use the keyword “r1″ to read this weblog (and “r2″ for my other one), you can even add parameters to your keywords, nice for using with online dictionaries.

If you are a mobile user and work with different computers then you really need to install this bookmark extension to keep your bookmarks always synchronized.

And finally:

Great support of web standards: I already mentioned that Firefox is a Gecko browser, or should I say an NGLayout browser?, Firefox support for web standards is brilliant. If you want to design compliant web pages then Firefox will be your best friend.

There is a great community around Firefox and all Mozilla projects, people from the great Netscape era, nice people like Eric and Dave, to name a few, also contribute.

I really think all of us, web developers, should support Mozilla and its products, not only because they create great open source products, but because they are helping us build the web of tomorrow.

I can not finish this post without recommending you to read Ben Goodger’s excellent article about Firefox benefits.

Happy firefoxing!

Some days ago I made a public question to my favorite web designers.

Unfortunately I did not get the feedback I expected.

Yesterday I got an email from Dave Shea (thanks!), who kindly pointed me to some clever, and logic, issues to get a better feedback from designers.

So, it would be great if you, everybody into web design, could tell us:

What are the two first steps you take when starting a web design project?

A quick and simple answer is enough, for example, in my case is:

Logo and color palette.

Of course you can elaborate and include more steps.

Regards!

I applied to Google Adsense a couple of days ago and today I got my approval email.

I have inserted their code in this and my other blog, in the agency forum and another forum where I spend time with some of my friends.

I knew that I should have to wait some time until getting results, some minutes ago I logged to my Adsense account and noticed that I got my first click!

Now Google owes me US$ 0.14, how about that?, less than eight hours after pasting their code.

Today I read about Newsgator, a feed reader that integrates with Microsoft Outlook, I decided to download a trial and here are my comments about it.

Newsgator is an easy to install application, just download it and install it with a couple of clicks.

The application will be added to Outlook, you don’t need to start an additional program, just go to Outlook as usual and you will be able to administer your feeds from it.

The program includes an easy to follow getting started guide, I had subscribed my first feeds very quickly after setting up a folder for my feeds.

A nice feature is having a button in your browser (I have only tried in Internet Explorer but I read about some testing with Firefox in Newsgator forums) which allows to subscribe any weblog you are currently visiting, just by clicking a button in your toolbar.

I found some problems with this, some weblogs appeared in my subscription list but the folder and posts were not visible in Outlook, I read that this had been fixed a couple of versions ago (I tested with 2.0.33) but I still had the problem. Manually adding the feeds resolved this issue in some cases.

I was able to use the importing and exporting of OPML files to exchange my feeds between my Outlook/Newsgator installation and Bloglines, great if you need to work at multiple locations.

Conclusion:

Newsgator is an easy to use application for those needing to have feeds and email in one place, any Outlook user will be able to use it right out of the box, at US$ 29 is a nice addition to your online tools.

There are some interface improvements that can be made and bugs still around (such as the invisible folders for subscriptions made from your browser) but I am sure future and better versions are on the way.

Update: Ulrich made a comment about IzyNews, I took a look at it and found it interesting. I’ll make some more testing and let you know.

Every weblog, news site or regularly updated web site is talking about feeds, syndication, XML and RSS. I will try to explain these terms and how they can help us. You will also learn how to subscribe to a feed using a feeds reader.

A feed is like an envelope containing information to be distributed in an easy way. For example this weblog feed contains summaries of the last articles posted. In a news site the feed could contain latest news.

RSS is the technology (one of the available technologies, another one is Atom) which allows these feeds to be delivered. Both, RSS and Atom, are based on XML.

Syndication is the process by which people get the content from the feeds. Actually, visitors don’t get the feeds by themselves, they use specialized software known as feeds readers or aggregators. When you read “Syndicate this content” is like: “Hey, you can have this content delivered to you as a feed in a very easy and fast way".

Why should you care about all this?

Let’s see a practical example:

Every morning you get online, visit your five favorite blogs to see if there are new posts which you may be interested in reading, then go to a couple of news sites, see what is happening in the world and finally visit your favorite band site to see when their next tour will begin.

We are talking of loading at least seven or eight web sites on your browser, looking for the relevant content and waiting for all the text and images on each site to download.

Our routine morning browsing could take from half an hour to much more if you find something worth reading, in a worst case scenario you won’t find anything today and just lost half an hour opening and closing browser windows.

Using content syndication you could just subscribe to the web sites you like and get summaries of updated content from one place. If you want to read something you are just a click away, you don’t have to lose time going to each site.

Currently I am subscribed to more than thirty different feeds and use only five or ten minutes a day to see what is new. Of course, if you find something interesting, I always do, you could spend a lot of time reading.

How do I subscribe and use feeds?

First you have to get a feeds reader. These two are the ones I am currently using:

NewsDesk: Free, Windows based, requires .NET framework installed.

Bloglines: A web based free service. You can see all your subscribed feeds from one single web page. It offers interesting options for blog owners. For example, our weblog showcases some of my bloglines subscriptions.

After you have selected your feeds reader, and read its instructions, browse to a site offering a feed.

Many sites show their feeds as a link with acronyms such as XML, RSS 2.0 or Atom, others prefer to use an orange box with the letters XML in white. Our weblog uses these simple words for its feed link: “Syndicate this site’s content".

If you click on the feed link with your mouse you will be taken to an XML document. Copy the url from your browser address bar and paste it in your feeds reader software. That was easy!, now you are subscribed to a feed.

Optionally, at least in Interner Explorer for Windows, you can right click the feed link and choose “Copy shortcut", then paste it to your feeds reader, this way you don’t have to open the XML document.

Now you can stop wasting your time looking for information and start wasting it just reading.

I have made some changes to the weblog: The articles text got bigger and changed color (more contrast with the links), I also used left alignment, being justified seemed too boring for the readers.

The right block headings are using a different color and our friendly bullet.

XML feeds now have their own section and I have included a link which will point to an article about RSS and XML which I am preparing.

Comments?

Sometimes it is very difficult to explain my customers what is designing with web standards, I found this excellent post by Andrei Herasimchuk explaining why we have to care.

It is a very interesting article and have been commented by many well known designers and authors on the net.

If you need a good list of links to know more about web standards you can check the comments at this contest by Dan Cederh