gdgt (pronounced "g-d-g-t" or "gadget") is where social networking meets the gadget world. Gadget lovers alike simply make an account then from there they can search through the gdgt database and find and add the gadgets that they own, gadgets that they want, or even those that they have had in the past. Can't find it? Gdgt allows users to add new gadgets to their database so that others can add them to their various lists. The gdgt database for each gadget gives you the full specs of the device, user reviews, and all discussion threads it's featured in.

Once you have your gadgets all picked out, jump in and join the community by discussing your gadgets and sharing the experiences you've had. The community aspect of gdgt really seems like it has the potential to grow into a very solid, user driven, product review database that ... [More]

So I was playing around with the Google Calendar portion of the Gdata API the other day and did some searching and found that there wasnt a Codeigniter library for it, probably because it seems that Google has teamed up with the guys that are working on the Zend Framework to bring Gdata to the PHP world. So I took the ZendGdata API for Google Calendar and implemented it in Codeigniter so that you just need to make a few simple function calls to gain authorization to a calendar, add events, query events, etc. This is my first attempt at writing a "library" for something, so hopefully it turned out well. If you find any errors in it or have any suggestions for improvement, just let me know!

Files you'll need:

Codeigniter-Gcal (Link fixed)
ZendGdata

I also have it managed through a G... [More]

So recently a couple of my friends from back home have decided to try out twitter but seem a little lost and don't exactly know how to use all of the features that may not be all that clear at first.

Firstly, we must clear up a common misconception. Whenever I talk about the use of twitter to other non twitter users all they do is complain and say "twitter is for losers. I don't want to know what you are doing every second of your life. I dont want to know that you just ate a sandwich." Yes, it is true that some people like to post what they are doing every second of their life. Heres a solution, just dont follow them. Which brings me to the first step in having a twitter account.

1). Follow people.

One of the benefits of twitter is following people to see what they are up to. The majority of people (or atleast according to the people that I follow) dont post stupid things every second of every day. But howeve... [More]

A spinoff of O'Reilly's FooCamp, an annual invitation-only participant driven conference, BarCamp is an Ad-hoc conference born of the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. Participants prepare ahead of time, but all presentations are scheduled the day of the conference on a giant white board schedule. This year will be the fourth consecutive year for Barcamp Rochester and promises to be the largest yet and is still growing in size. As of now, over 90 people have signed up to share their interests with topics ranging from "Getting to know the Itanium Architecture" to "The Zombie Apocalypse" to "Lady Parts and You" with a wide variety of other topics thrown in. I personally plan on co-presenting on the PHP framework Codeigniter as well as providing live cove... [More]

When it comes to web development on the Mac, there is a very wide selection tools available all the way from a full fledged IDE to simple plain text editors. Lately we have begun to see these ?one window development? suites cropping up. Mac app developer Painc decided to build Coda, an all in one app that combined a web development environment complete with the tools that would normally occupy 4-6 separate applications dedicated to everything from CSS, to previewing your page, syncing with your server, and even providing terminal access all in a single application. As much as I love Coda, sometimes you just need a simple text editor. TextMate is a powerful, multifaceted plain-text editor that will be able to provide syntax highlighting and functionality for web languages like PHP, XHTML, and CSS all the way to C and C++. But with TextMate I stil... [More]

Today I have finally my CMS has reached a deployable state. Right now it has all of the functionality that a basic blog CMS will have. And when I say basic I mean extremely basic. Right now I can currently add posts, edit/delete posts, people can leave comments, you can edit the personal settings for the sidebar to the right, and you can upload pictures (even though they just sit in a directory on the server). Some things design wise are not quite done, but they are independent of the CMS. The system down the road will support templates and you'll be able to switch to a different one by simply clicking a button. TONS more to come...so stay tuned!!! Google... [More]

Because Drupal is just far too slow and I wanted to practice the art of web design, I have decided to completely overhaul my blog. I have ditched Drupal and the theme that I was using and am now in the process of migrating to a new content management system that I am in the process of developing. Currently you are looking at the raw HTML, hand coded, completely static version of my site because the CMS is still in the development stages. So in the next week or so I should have a basic working version running as well as some documentation so that if people want,they can download it and give it a test run.... [More]

So I finally decided to suck it up and make myself a blog from scratch that shows off my skills (well, maybe not necessarily my design skills, but more of my coding skills and back end web development skills), work, and whatever else I decide to put on it. To take a look at it head over to my other web server http://euler.csh.rit.edu/ to take a look at how its going. Right now Ive almost finished the design and Im beginning to code the first live web mock up. After thats done, I plan on making a content management system from scratch using the PHP Codeigniter framework.... [More]