Let me start with a little profanity: Internet Explorer.  Okay, so maybe it’s not the type of profanity you were initially thinking, but in the Internet world, Internet Explorer is one of the foulest, most cruel phrases anyone could say.  Why? Simple.  It’s terrible mainly due to its inability to follow simple web standards and user basics.

I will be fair though, with the release of IE 9, Microsoft has finally begun listening to consumers and web developers alike, by releasing software that follows web standards a bit more strictly. The only new problem we, web developers, face are people who don’t, or simply refuse to update.

Not using Internet Explorer? I’d like to give you a high five.  In case you’ve been living in Windows98 for the past several years, companies such as Apple, Google and Mozilla have made great strides in building better browsers to best Microsoft’s.

It wasn’t until IE9 that Internet Explorer finally supported HTML5.  Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari have been supporting it since 2009, whereas IE was two years behind.

HTML5 support isn’t the only reason to update your browser, though.  Recent improvements Apple, Google and Mozilla have been implementing are hardware acceleration, user preference and bookmark sync features, as well as faster rendering for the jQuery JavaScript library, which can be found on most websites.

Here are a few other reasons you should update your browser:

• Security updates – Most releases usually have some form of security updates, whether it’s dealing with SSL, HTTPS or other small operating system related fixes
• A better web experience – Take a look at http://dowebsitesneedtobeexperiencedexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/ Crazy URL, but hover over the word you see. Do you see a black background with white text?  How about a blue and purple backgrounds?  Do the words appear differently?
• Themes – Everyone likes a little personalization and customization, right?  Why not break away from the typical gray/sandy colors and jazz up your browser with a new theme?
• HTML5/CSS3 – Animations are no longer confined to Flash.  With CSS3, animations and transitions are fully supported, speeding up webpage load times.
• I’m a happier person – Building a website to look aesthetically pleasing in a browser takes time.  Making it work in IE7 requires a lot more time.  In fact, it usually requires the use of its own stylesheet, just to make web pages appear correctly.
• Beautiful interfaces – Currently, everywhere you look, advertisements and pictures are using color gradients to make products more visually appealing.  With modern browsers, creating beautiful websites is much, much easier and doesn’t require the use of hundreds of images.

STOP SOPA

This is important — I’m sure you’ve heard a little bit about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), but I think it’s important to stand out against it.  If you search anything on Wikipedia today, you’ll not be allowed to view the results.  Instead, you’ll be automatically redirected to a page asking for your zip code to contact your state representatives and tell them you are against SOPA.

It’s important to oppose SOPA because to summarize it, webmasters would be in charge of filtering EVERY bit of information posted to their sites.  For small companies, this would be a tremendous task, as they’d have to filter all comments, posts, or bulletins before being displayed online.  This would in turn cut into company budgets, due to having to hire someone full time to monitor the information.  On a larger scale, websites such as YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, would be responsible for filtering every post that’s made.  This would create a hassle, as a team of people would have to moderate every single post/comment.  With thousands of Twitter messages, Facebook status updates, and videos uploaded to YouTube every second, you can see how this can begin to be a BIG issue, and a big bottleneck for most websites.

It’s important let everyone know that you oppose SOPA.  We have several late-aged men and women making decisions about how the Internet is being formed and how it “should” be managed, instead of letting the youth dictate how information should be shared.  It’s no secret that the world’s youth download/share music/videos/media in an illegal manner.  It’s the same as recording a song to a cassette tape from the radio.  The government and other agencies will never be able to stop people from breaking the law — it’s simply impossible.

SOPA is affecting your freedom of speech, in the digital format.  Although the principle of regulating what is shared online is a good idea on paper, SOPA has been developed for all the wrong reasons.  Voting begins on January 24th, 2012, so it’s imperative everyone speak up!

For more information, look at Google’s “Doodle” today — you’ll see that the Google logo has been censored.  Do a search on Wikipedia — you’ll be surprised at what you may find.. or won’t find.

If you oppose SOPA, please sign the petition below:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

My name is David M. Auble, and I oppose SOPA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E46

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Please feel free to pass this post on to anyone and everyone you know.  People need to know and be educated about SOPA and the real threat it can be.  Watch more information:

Most people agree that Google is the leading search engine (by a significant margin).  By receiving over 65% of all search traffic, Google has been busy at work with trying to return the most relevant results as quickly as possible.

Recently, the search engine giant has released their latest version of their algorithm, Panda.  With the release of Panda came a series of changes and new factors that are taken into account when “grading” a website. The Panda release affects nearly 12% of all search results.

Let’s take a look at some of the new factors Panda takes into account when crawling a website.

• Focus on the basics: UI/UX
  It may sound scary, but Google’s web bots (the Googlebot) are becoming more human-like by “understanding” page layouts.  By taking factors such as bounce rate, time spent on each page and site, page response times and conversion rates, the Googlebot is able to determine if the page contains content that people are actually wanting to view.

  With this information, the Googlebot is able to make an educated guess as to how people are engaging with your website.

• Content Quality, Including Spelling
  Something our content writers always ask themselves is “How original is my content?”  It’s no secret that Google has virtually limitless space to store indexes of your content.  Because of this, it’s relatively easy for Google to determine the uniqueness of your content.  Pages with trustworthy and reliable content are favored more by the Googlebots, too.

  It seems trivial, but you would be surprised at the number of websites that have small spelling and grammar errors.  Googlebots recognize this and actually penalize sites with errors.  By looking through a website’s PageRank, or how reputable the website is, spelling and grammar affect this significantly.

• Ad Spacing and Layout
  If you’re like me, you probably despise ads.  Googlebots are no different.  If they deem your page to have too many ads, your website may become flagged as a link farm, or may be seen as a page that serves no purpose other than to advertise for other companies. Being flagged as a link farm will severely affect your rankings, as most link farm websites have no real value.
• Cleanliness of Code
  Any developer will agree that clean code is much easier to manage.  By writing clean code, it’s much easier to ensure your website renders the same way in any browser, regardless if it’s Internet Explorer or Chrome.  By validating your website against the W3C, this is your best ally in making sure everyone and Googlebots can view your website properly.

The Internet changes constantly. Google recognizes the inevitable changes and continually updates their algorithms.  Panda is the latest big change and certainly won’t be the last. By keeping these tips in mind, a website can please the “Google Gods” and improve its page rank.

Anyway, I’ve stumbled upon a few pictures recently that have really sparked an interest with me.  They’re called Cinemagraphs, and are super awesome, to say the least.  I read an interesting article from a web design blog the other day and it featured a lot of cinemagraphs.  Cinemagraphs are more than your typical late-1990′s animated GIFs, as found on just about every GeoCities page.  You know the kind I’m refering to.. the awful “Under Construction” graphics.  If not, here’s one for your viewing pleasure.

Yes.  You all remember them now.  Oh how the Internet has evolved, thankfully.  Enough about them, let’s check out the cool parts of cinemagraphs.  Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg can be credited for creating this new type of image.  They would define a cinemagraph as “an image that contains within itself a living moment that allows a glimpse of time to be experienced and preserved endlessly.”  In other words, taking a picture, then animating a small aspect, capturing a glimpse of time, eternally.  I think they’re on to something, and may start a new revolution of photography, or even be the inspiration to new camera and/or printing technology.

Enough technical mumbo-jumbo, let’s see some of my favorites, pulled from Noupe and Beck/Burg’s website.

Pretty cool, huh?  They’re more than simple animated GIF images; they’re higher quality GIF images that reflect scenes and take some time to stitch together.  What do you think, would you be interested in seeing some of these on your website or social media pages?

[Via Noupe, Cinemagraph]

If you’d seen my portfolio before, you would have noticed it was divided into three columns — one for Web, Print and Graphics.  In taking a step back and thinking about how most portfolio sites are laid out, I discovered that most are not broken into columns and that it could cause some confusion.  Not to mention it made my work seem more spaced out.

So, I decided to group everything together and list them by piece.  Now, it looks much better and items can be found just as easily.

Take a look and let me know what you think!

Design:
Boasting a brilliant 4.3″ WVGA screen with a 480×800 screen resolution, there is plenty of screen to view everything you could imagine on a smartphone.  It’s your typical candybar  type phone, however is much thinner than most phones I’ve seen.

HTC Inspire 4G screen

HTC Inspire 4G thickness

Performance:
Boasting a 1GHz processor, the HTC Inspire 4G seems to be plenty fast.  With the 2.2 Froyo operating system, the Inspire 4G multitasks much nicer than the iPhone 4.  It has 768MB of RAM, which is more than most phones available from retailers.

Hardware:
The Inspire 4G is pretty tricked out with faster hardware than most other devices available on the market.  As mentioned previously, it has a 1GHz processor, 786MB RAM and 4GB ROM.

Battery:
This is my favorite part of the phone.  The battery life is amazing.  With the Froyo update, I can easily leave WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS on all day and still have approximately 70% battery remaining by 5pm.  By listening to internet radio on WiFi, I can usually have 50% remaining at the end of the day.  Texting, surfing and calls are kept to a minimum, which I usually send/receive a few text messages, receive 30 emails and talk for approximately 5 – 10 minutes each day.  I can comfortably stay unplugged for 12 – 15 hours.

Pictures:
Coming from an iPhone 4 and being used to a phone with a 5MP camera, I figured this camera would be much nicer, seeing how it boasts an 8MP camera.  It has two built-in LED flash strobes which are surprisingly bright.  During the day, the pictures come out pretty crisp and clear, as seen below:

HTC Inspire 4G picture, in daylight

In dimly lit conditions, the camera begins to lack, as seen here:

HTC Inspire 4G picture in dim light

The camera has a built in auto-focus feature, where you can tap anywhere on the screen and set the auto focus point.  This works very well, yet it can still be difficult to get a crisp picture.

Video:
Video playback is smooth.  YouTube videos and other web videos appear sharp and load quickly, whether on WiFi or  on HSUPA+.  The YouTube app launches quickly, whether surfing the web, or from another app such as Facebook.

Audio:
The back of the phone says it has Dolby Mobile audio, yet it sounds like any other phone.  I’ve found it a bit difficult to hear the phone when it’s in my jacket pocket, or when I’m driving in the car with the sunroof open.  Other than that, in most situations, it’s easy to hear and plenty loud.  The speaker in which one listens to voice calls could definitely use a volume tweak — I’m constantly finding myself wanting to turn it up louder.

Dual LED flashes and Dolby Mobile audio

Apps:
Being an Android phone, there is a large amount of apps available on the App Market.  You can find an app for anything, and now that mobile app development has taken off, it’s easy to find an app for just about anything.

Conclusion:
Of the phones that AT&T now offers, I think this is by far the best Android phone.  I’ve had experience with the HTC Aria, but liked this phone much more.  I’m now used to the massive 4.3″ screen and am getting used to it, although I would prefer to have something a bit smaller.  Since the phone is so thin, it does not take up much space in a pocket, however, it does tend to slide out of jacket pockets easily.  The case seems to be durable, however it is a bit slick and can slide out of your hand easily.

Overall, I’m happy with the phone and the features it offers.  HTC has done a magnificent job bringing this to AT&T.  Let’s just hope AT&T releases their 4G network soon, and that it’s reliable.

The project was simple: simple data I/O, quick search and a dictionary of items in the database.  It’s a pretty straight forward project, so I took my laptop to the nearest Starbucks and got to work.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I was given a database file that had been created in Microsoft Access.  I didn’t think too much, as I could upload it to a private server I manage and pull from it.  After an hour of searching on the Internet, I realized it wasn’t going to be as simple as I had thought.

So, to save everyone a bit of time, here’s a brief tutorial as to how to use PHP to connect to an Access database and return records.

< ?php

// list most recent beer here
$sql = "SELECT TOP 5 TableId,RowName FROM TableName ORDER BY TableId DESC";

$conn = new COM("ADODB.Connection") or die("Cannot start ADO");
$connString= "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=path\\to\\your\\database.mdb";

$conn->Open($connString);

$rs = $conn->Execute($sql);

while (!$rs->EOF)
{
$fv1 = $rs->Fields("TableId");
$fv2 = $rs->Fields("RowName");
echo  "<li><a href='/results.php?page_id=$fv1'>" . "$fv2</a></li>";
$rs->MoveNext();
}

$rs->Close();

?>

So there you have it.  Each time you want to ping the database, you cannot simply include a connection file at the top of each page, then close it at the bottom, but rather, you must open the connection, declare the data source, then close the connection each time.  This presents a bit more work and a bigger hassle, I think, but it can be done.

Have you ever needed to use PHP to connect to an Access database?  If so, maybe this will help.  I’m open to suggestions, so if you have any tips or recommendations, please inform me!

When I was young, it was great — schools everywhere were canceled, allowing everyone to go outside, build snow forts, castles and tunnels.  It was fantastic, playing outside with my dad, snowball fights and ice skating.

Purdue was great, because classes were actually canceled for two days.  This was great, since students everywhere were taking trays from the dining halls and doing what every other college-aged student would do — go sledding.  It all seemed great, but unfortunately, I decided to get sick, so I wasn’t able to get out in it and partake in the festive events, which had only occurred once or twice in all of Purdue’s history.

This year, however, things changed.  Living on the north side of Indianapolis, it’s interesting to see the drastic changes in weather, in comparison to the East side.  We got an inch of ice, then about two inches of snow, then another two inches of ice, all within a 48-hour window.  Thankfully, I was able to work from home for a couple of days, so it was nice to be “off” on my birthday, even though I was actually a good employee, and did work.  (I launched a new, global site search for the Helen Wells Agency website.)

I took some pictures, this year, of my car, just to show how much ice was actually on my car.  Keep in mind, it took me over an hour to get my car de-iced and thawed out.  Then, once it was out, it was a bit of a challenge getting over the small mound of ice, which was conveniently placed at the end of all parking spots, thanks to the snow plows.  All said and done, it took 90 minutes to get my car out, and to Meijer.

Anyway, enough chatting, here are some pictures, for your viewing pleasure.

As you can see, it was pretty well frozen shut.  Now that the weather has broken, I’m able to get out and drive around, despite the enormous piles of snow/ice, at the sides of roads.  If we can just get rid of the cold weather, we’ll all be set!

The GUI:
GUI is short for Graphical User Interface.  It’s what you look at when you’re using a computer.  Xerox first developed the concept of a GUI in the early 1980s and called it PARC.  Shortly after, Apple release Lisa, the company’s first GUI-based operating system.  Microsoft followed, and we now have the modern GUI.

Command Line:
Command line was the first type of input for computers.  It required the user to enter a series of commands, in order to tell the computer what to do.  It is still widely used in the Linux operating system and is implemented in each operating system.

Personally, I prefer a GUI for simple tasks.  Although I can use both, I like the “look and feel” of the modern GUI.  The command line does make some tasks simpler, however.  For instance, on a Windows machine, Command Line is the best way I’ve found to determine your IPv4 settings on your local machine.

On OS X, however, it is a bit simpler.  By opening up the Network Activity application, you’re presented with many bit of information.

So, let’s ask this.  What do you prefer to use?  What OS do you primarily use?  What do you use Command Prompt for, as opposed to a GUI?

Enter VideoJS.  VideoJS is an outstanding player that’ll not only play the videos in the standard HTML5 formats (OGG, OGV, MP4, WebM), but if the browser doesn’t support HTML5, it will automatically change to a Flash embedded video.  This is an outstanding plugin, and my hat goes off to the developers.

Enough talk, let’s see this thing in action.

Take note as to how the video is rendered.  If you’re in Firefox, Safari, Opera or Internet Explorer, it should render as a Flash video.  If you’re on an iPad or iPhone, it should play, using the MP4/H.264 codec.  If you’re using Chrome, it should play as an HTML5 video, since it uses the HTML5 <video> tag.  If, for some reason you do not see this video, please let me know so I can look into why it is not working properly.

I have noticed a few problems with this new way of handling videos online. First, the new file formats drastically increase the file size. The files of these videos are ranging from 13MB for the MP4 and an outrageous 43MB for the OGV file. Because of this, the files take a fair amount of time to play. Granted, I may not be using the best encoders to convert my videos, and this video was shot in 720p. The fact that still remains is the files are huge.

This all brings up a big question.  What is the best browser that’ll support all of this?  I suppose the answer is Chrome, seeing how it displays much of the new HTML5/CSS3 standards pretty well.  I’m a die-hard Firefox fan, so I won’t be changing any time soon.  HTML5 will be around for a while and still hasn’t caught up to the popularity of Flash-based video.. yet.  I think there’s great potential in Firefox4, but without having tested it out, I’m not sure of it’s capabilities as of yet.

I’m not an expert at any of this by any means, these are just my opinions and I’m still learning. Feel free to leave some comments and/or insights on this topic. I’m hoping to generate a little bit of feedback, in order to learn more.