Like my past Lil’ Text project, this new one is also a URL shortener, but I’ve taken it a little further this time. I wanted to create one that was a bit more original than the rest. I also wanted it to work well with Twitter, a social networking site that is used not only as a communication tool, but as a “cheerleader” for people that work on the web. I idea is, why just shorten a URL when you could potentially tie your name to it?

So after a lot of thinking and working, I came up with the concept for Eeny.me. I wanted a service that could use a Twitter user’s name in the sub domain and create links from there. For instance, my name on Twitter is mauteri. Once I log in using my Twitter user name and password to Eeny.me, I have access to the URL http://mauteri.eeny.me/ to shorten my URLs and promote them on Twitter (ex:http://mauteri.eeny.me/0).

And not only that, but if I go to just http://mauteri.eeny.me/, all my past URLs are logged for everyone to see. So if someone likes something I just posted, they can find other sites I’ve posted in the past. If they like enough of these, I potentially have a new followed on Twitter.

So anyway, I’m currently beta testing the basic workings of this new site while still further developing it. So far a few people on Twitter have taken quite a liking to Eeny.me, which made me feel like my time was well spent. Take a look and let me know what YOU think of the site!

To get the ball rolling, if you look at almost any of MY social profiles, you’ll find this snarky line:

I don’t particularly like social networking sites, but they do keep me updated with the lives of people I know and care about, but don’t care or know enough to call or see.

The funny thing is, I’ve always enjoyed social networking sites. Even the ones I absolutely hated *cough, cough* MySpace *cough*, I still visited pretty regularly when they were at the height of their popularity. But the most interesting thing about these sites is that most of the people you connect with are people whose friendship wasn’t really that important to you to begin with. People in my generation, and ones prior to my generation, are re-connecting with these people like never before. People in the current generation are never losing touch to begin with. This will probably make class reunions less interesting in the future.

After the jump, I hone in on a few websites that I find most interesting (or interesting when they were popular, at least)!

LiveJournal

Circa 2000 I started my LiveJournal, and it was the beginning of blogging for me. Most of the people I “friended” there were people I didn’t know, but there were a few that I did, and LiveJournal really helped me keep in touch with them pretty effortlessly. Up until a few months ago, I read my LiveJournal friend feed pretty regularly.

Friendster

In college it was pretty common to play the trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Who would have thunk that soon after graduation, a website would come out that would show you the separation of YOU and your friends. Interestingly enough, I met my wife through this site. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the separation. And more unfortunately, Friendster’s popularity went down the tube when MySpace started gaining traction…

MySpace

Probably my least favorite social site to date, mostly because the MySpace platform was utter crap. That, and they allowed full reign to users when it came to control over their profile. I remember distinctly trying to load so-and-so’s page and having 16 videos trying to load, a song, and a crap-load of images, all at once! I’m so happy to see that site finally fading away.

Facebook

I didn’t sign up for Facebook right away. I figured I had signed up for so many social networking sites in the past, what was the point. I finally did sign up, and now look, it’s one of the most popular sites on the whole Internet. The funniest thing about Facebook is that it started out for just college kids, and now my 60-something-year-old aunt is on it. Facebook does attract a wide range of people, and it really has a knack for connecting you with people it thinks you might know. This I think is why it’s so darn popular… and the fact that it doesn’t look like a steaming pile of crap like MySpace does.

LinkedIn

I have a LinkedIn profile, though I must admit that I hardly ever use it. It’s more of a professional tool than a way to keep in touch with friends. You’d think I’d use it more since I DO have my own business and I am always looking for new, interesting work. I don’t know what it is about LinkedIn, but I am just not that interested in it. Maybe it’s too grown up for me.

Twitter

Micro-blogging became quite popular pretty recently. And the most popular micro-blogging website is, of course, Twitter. I didn’t join Twitter right away. I didn’t see the point. Actually, a lot of people still don’t see the point. However, there are people that are addicted to this 140-character-limit means of communication. Most probably just find it challenging to say all you need to say in as few words as possible.

Plurk

It’s a lot like Twitter in the fact that it’s a micro-blogging platform, but Plurk is a bit different in the way it handles and displays it. First, it has a horizontal timeline, which is kind of weird and takes some time to get used to. This horizontal timeline does make commenting easier and more manageable, which is a plus. And Plurk has something called “karma,” which reflects the user’s involvement in Plurk. The more involved you are, the higher your karma. Lastly, Plurk tells you how many Plurks you haven’t read yet. Twitter doesn’t do this, which is unfortunate. Anyway, I was pretty involved in Plurk at one point, but eventually made my way over to Twitter. For all of Twitter’s faults (and there are many) it still has the most people and the interface I find is still more comfortable.

Gmail

The Gmail App is indispensable in my opinion. Sure, I could use the regular ‘Messages’ app that comes installed with every BB, but that’s not nearly as cool for Gmail. With my Gmail app I can star, label, and so on just like my Gmail account on the web. Plus, the interface is way nicer and it is actually synced with Gmail, so unread messages are marked as read after accessing them whether it was on my BB or on the web.

Opera Mini

I HATE the default web browser on my BlackBerry Curve. It’s terrible I tell you. What’s more, I can’t change Opera Mini (a really GREAT mobile browser) to my default browser *sigh*. I can, however, use Opera Mini as much as I can… Just not when I click on links in other apps. Like my twitter apps…

BlackBird & TwitterBerry

I might not tweet as much as other people (e.g. my lovely wife), but I love reading other people’s tweets and commenting. Best way to keep up in transit or on my couch is with BlackBird or TwitterBerry. I have both on my BB just for kicks, though I use BlackBird more these days. It’s faster than TwitterBerry, which is important when you’re using a Java-based OS. TwitterBerry is prettier, but BlackBird is catching up in aesthetics.

Viigo

This app is a neat little aggregator that feeds you everything from News, Politics, Weather, Sports, RSS, Podcasts, Flight info, Stocks, and much more. I haven’t fully explored this app, but I do like reading news articles, the Onion, and the Weather regularly on it. You can easily add “channels” to each catagory and really customize Viigo to your needs.

Pandora

I just got this app a couple days ago… but I love it to bits! Srsly. Just like on the Pandora website, you have all your different band channels, Pandora plays songs it thinks you will like based on that band, you give it a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” and from that it gets better at selecting music for you to listen to. Perfect for when I’m driving (just plug it into my 1/8″ cable). Warning: if you don’t have an unlimited data plan, your bill can skyrocket from too much Pandora goodness.

Google Sync

Great app for the most part. Really helps keep my contacts and calendar organized. However, sometimes when I make updates on my calendar, it screws up if when I try to sync it manually. For some reason, it doesn’t know which record (the one in my phone or the one in Google calendar) is the most up-to-date. Hmmmmm…

Pacman

Because no BB is complete without this classic game at your disposal… at ALL times!

What are some of your favorite BlackBerry apps? Let me know in the comments!

But that wasn’t all! There were also Free bagels, Free coffee, Free pizza, Free soda, and even a Free raffle where I won a Free book! Plus, of course, the Free knowledge gained from others much more experienced in Drupal than me as the best part of all. Learned a whole bunch of new stuff which I’m really excited about applying to new Drupal-backed web sites that I plan on creating and working on in the very near future.

We ended up not staying the whole day due to parking issues (not Free, but only $7 until 5pm), which I think cost me a Free t-shirt. Oh well… Also, attending Drupal Camp was great because I won’t be able to attend DrupalCon this month (which isn’t Free nor is it local), so this was the next best thing. Better even from a financial point of view.

Sunday I did some Free work for my wife’s professional blog community Freelancedom. I set up a basic forum, created her a new logo, and hacked away at her CSS stylesheet (which wouldn’t be that difficult expect the person that designed her theme is AWFUL, AWFUL, AWFUL!). Anyway, it was a pretty busy weekend to say the least.

What interesting things did you guys do this weekend? Let me know in the comments.

Well, there are a few ways around this problem. The first is get a plug-in or service that sends you a screenshot of your page viewed in X browser. This isn’t a great means of testing because viewing structure is only part of it. What about elements that are interactive? It also takes a few minutes to create the screenshot, so that’s pretty time consuming and annoying too.

Another option, and a better one than the screenshot, is to install VMware or something similar so you can boot up another copy of Windows (or some other OS) where another version of IE is installed. I don’t like this option either if the only reason for creating this setup is to test in IE. On the plus side though, you see how sites work on different operating systems, which is kind of nice.

Now for ones I like a lot…

Before upgrading to Vista, I had multiple IEs installed on my machine for testing purposes. This was a great and easy setup on XP since it essentially is the browser in a standalone form. The problem I had after upgrading was that IE6 and below are not compatible with Vista.

That’s when a friend and fellow web developer introduced me to IE Tester. This piece of software is AWESOME! Works on Vista (as well as XP) and emulates IE5.5, IE6, IE7,  and IE8 beta. It’s currently in version 0.2.3, but seems to work quite well for my needs. Best part about this is that though there are some known bugs, it’s still being actively developed and improved upon. Go on, tell all your friends!

Well, that’s a post for another day. Today’s post is about BALANCE, which I have little of… but I do try, or at least I want to start trying! Right now I’m juggling a full time job that “encourages” me to stay late; a lucrative freelancing gig; an online Ajax class; and time for my wife, friends, and, of course, me. Honestly, I just feel there are not enough hours in the day!

So what am I doing right and what am I doing wrong?

One thing I’m doing right is that I set freelancing work hours for myself. I want to work 10 hours a week, so I’ll split that up and dedicate exactly 10 hours where there are no conflicts. Unfortunately, this rarely works out—mostly due to deadlines—and I just continue to work past my set 10 hours. Need to work on that one a bit harder, me thinks…

That’s where this comes in!

Something neat I recently discovered is Toggl, which helps me log my time and organize my tasks. This has helped me at least ATTEMPT to keep my set work hours! Before, I merely glanced at a clock when I started, and glanced again when I finished. This made switching between tasks, or taking breaks, difficult. I think the coolest thing about Toggl is the Adobe AIR app you can download, so you can run it on your desktop and not worry about keeping a web browser up to access your account.

Now, where I’m truly failing in life balance is in the fun/social department. Sure, I go to a friend’s house maybe once every other week, or attend my monthly Meetup groups, or go out for for dinner/coffee/movie every blue moon with my wife, but I haven’t taken a real vacation since my honeymoon (going on 2 years) or even a weekender in a few months. Maybe because it’s winter, maybe because we’re in recession, but really, if I don’t start living, I’m eventually going to burnout. And that’s no fun.

My (hopefully) next post will further explain how I’m planning to achieve the life balance I’ve always dreamed of. Stay tuned for that..

And before I sign off…

How do you maintain balance in your life? Let me know in the comments!

If  you’re anything like me, you get up early on Saturday morning and go straight to your computer. What? You don’t do that. Oh, well in that case, you probably missed all the excitement this past Saturday. Okay, it’s not very exciting, but interesting at least.

As I was building a new form for a site, I was interrupted by a fellow web developer via Google chat. “Dude,” he said. “Have you seen Google?” Quickly, I pointed my browser Google-bound to see what in heck he was talking about. Turned out, every site had the warning This site may harm your computer.

Well, that isn’t good, I thought. I guess even Google still has humans working for them. How old fashion…

Here is the explanation Google released shortly after fixing the problem on their blog:

If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message “This site may harm your computer” accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms.

We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again.

Thanks for your understanding.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience

I only had to do one search that morning. Fortunately, Yahoo! was still in good shape.

1. First thing I did in late 2007 was establish Mike Design as an actual business in Passaic County, NJ. After that, I established a bank account. By doing this, I made myself more “official” and professional. Not just some guy who builds web sites.
2. I started speaking to my accountant more often. I stated how much I would like to make in 2008 and how I was going to go about it. He was also the one that told me to establish myself as a sole proprietary business with the county and get a business account.
3. I joined a few meetup groups. The one I am most active in is the NJ Web Design/PHP/Blogger group. I’ve met some really great people there and learned a whole hell-of-a-lot from the professionals that attend. 
4. A few years back I was experiencing a condition called Skill Rot. Basically, I wasn’t keeping up with the ever-changing web and was struggling to remain relevant. Luckily, I realized this and began enrolling in online classes at eclasses.org and ed2go.com. In 2008, I continued seeking knowledge by completing courses in XML, SEO, advanced PHP, and 2 levels of Photoshop. These classes are great for establishing the fundamentals of a technology and learning best practice. I still continue to read blogs, visit sites like sitepoint.com, buy books, and talk to people to evolve further.
5. Networking, Networking, Networking! I probably had my best year of networking and that attributed most to my success. I kept in touch with past connections, made new connections, and made new connections through past connections. You never know where you’re going to get your next great connection, so always be prepared. If you are looking to make new connections, my best advice is to tactfully bring up that you are a web developer (or whatever it is you do) in conversation with new people, always have your business cards on you, if you don’t have business cards get some, do a stellar job no matter how small the project is. Like I said, you never know where your next great contact will come from.

Five, that seems enough. So anyway, here’s another short list of what I’m doing to prepare for a successful 2009.

1. I enrolled in another new class focusing on Ajax. So yes, I’m continuing to take classes. I also want to take classes in advanced CSS, Illustrator, and Flash this year. I’m experienced in all 3 (especially CSS), but I want to fill in some knowledge holes. Plus, learning is fun!
2. I bought a copy of CS4 Web Premium. I had a registered version CS2, so purchasing an upsell version of CS4 didn’t break the bank. I won’t lie, it was expensive, but well worth it. Plus, I can write it off.
3. I also took advantage of a one-day promotion Staples was having that I blogged about here. So yes, now I have a “free” copy of Quickbooks 2009. Once I get my mail-in rebate, I will have only spent about $11 on it (tax, ya know).
4. I got a cool Bamboo Pen and Tablet for Christmas! Should come in handy for the Illustrator class I want to take.
5. I bought this book and this book to help me with my business.
6. Lastly, I plan on blogging regularly here at mikedesign.net. It’s sure to help me get more traffic to my site, especially if I use it along with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
7. I want to get more organized. Right now, my Mike Design folder is just that: one manila folder. In the past it was fine because I didn’t do much business. Now I think I need a much larger folder with divisions for each month. This I think will be good for now. Hopefully next year I’ll be saying I need a whole darn filing cabinet dedicated to Mike Design!

So what are you doing to prepare for 2009? Let me know in the comments section!

Soooo… After a couple of weeks of testing, I have a verdict… Google Sync is pretty darn awesome! Not only does it automatically SAVE all your BB’s contacts to your gmail account in case—you know—you lose your phone or it dies beyond repair, but it syncs up with Google Calendar too.

And this is great because now I won’t forget that I have a meeting with a potential client tomorrow at 10am and a meeting with my accountant at 5pm. YES, both Google AND my BB are reminding me of this. Sure to be even more helpful when my schedule is busier in the future.

But, the thing about this app is the saving of contacts, hands down. Sure, I can easily plug in my BB to my computer, open some software, backup my contacts… OR I can just have it done automatically.