It has recently come to our attention that the MixTape sample listed here on the blog and on our Selected Work page hasn’t been operational. There’s nothing wrong with the player itself, simply that the sites we were streaming the songs from were no longer serving the mp3 files. We’ve gone back and found some other great songs to share with you, and everything should be working perfectly now. We hope you enjoy!
It’s been quiet on this blog lately, for which I send my apologies. However, it’s not without rhyme or reason. We’ve been working on a great new project called NoteCut. NoteCut is will be an online note sharing platform which allows students and teachers to easily share notes. The goal is to help students learn more effectively and serve as an learning aid, not a learning substitute.
There will definitely be more to share regarding NoteCut as it develops, however, what I’d really like to do is quickly evangelize some of the technology we’ve been using in its development.
First off we have CodeIgniter which an amazing PHP framework. If you’re familiar with the Rails approach, this is pretty similar. CodeIgniter has substantially expedited our development process thanks to its built-in functionality. Interfacing with a database really can’t get much easier, and it generates clean URLs for you (query strings, I won’t miss you). Of course it does more, but those are my two favorite niceties. However, what really rocks about CodeIgniter is the documentation. Learning basics of the system was a breeze with their getting started guide, but beyond that nearly everything is documented, and documented well. I’m a big fan of the PHP documentation, but CodeIgniter goes one step further with startlingly un-cryptic descriptions of its classes and helper methods. It’s TINY too. At the cost of sounding hyperbolic, I really haven’t found anything I don’t like about CodeIgniter yet.
That’s not all though. We wanted to incorporate a FlashPaper solution on our note pages, but we found the technology to be virtually dead. We considered rolling our own solution, but then we stumbled upon iPaper from Scribd. Aside from the cliché naming, iPaper hasn’t stopped wow-ing us in its simplicity and execution. The API is awesome - simple, sweet, and effective. Plus, the thing just works. It seems obvious, but if you think about your daily struggles with software, I bet you’ll start to realize how frustrating it can be.
We’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date on all our developments with NoteCut, as well as the rest of the news from NPL Solutions. But please, someone send me a harassing email next time it’s been over 70 days since the last blog post.
Below is an excerpt from an essay I wrote recently:
It has been hard to ignore the major changes on the Internet in the past few years. The phrase “Web 2.0” has become the inherent moniker for this development, and while the meaning of the phrase has become convoluted, it ultimately represents a major departure from the Internet of five or ten years ago. I believe we are in the middle of one of the most interesting and influential periods in the history of the web.
The poster children for this generation are sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, and Google Maps. These and other groundbreaking sites provide rich user experiences traditionally reserved for the desktop environment. Web 2.0 is often characterized by the simplistic approach that developers have taken in both the markup of their applications, as well as the user interaction, which is constantly achieving a more desktop-like look and feel. However, what really makes this progress so impressive is the fact that most of the technology that drives these sites (HTML and JavaScript) has been in wide use for the past ten years.
While the rest of the computer industry has seen some tremendous progress in the past decade as well, these developments have been highly influenced by the improvement and introduction of new technology, not the revitalization of old. Many of the eye-catching visual effects typically associated with Web 2.0 also capitalize on greater processing capacity as well as greater broadband proliferation; however, the roots of Web 2.0 – increased user-interactivity and useful data manipulation and presentation – exist regardless of the glitz and glam.
Beyond the effect that the Web 2.0 revolution has had on users, it has also allowed a new generation of entrepreneurs to make their mark on the technology world. The majority of successful online businesses from the past decade have been online retailers. Amazon.com and eBay certainly come to mind. While these companies are still heavyweights in today’s online economy, the past few years have seen a tremendous influx in the number of firms who focus on information aggregation, interpretation and presentation. Fueled to a large extent by the popularization of blogs, companies such as MyBlogLog, del.icio.us and FeedBurner have been able to achieve great success by offering a tightly-honed service, breaking away from the long-tailed approach used by the Internet giants of the 90’s.
It’s nothing revolutionary or groundbreaking - I’d assume that most have noticed the same changes and trends. However, what really made me sit back and think “wow” is how the prevailing attitude towards JavaScript has been so drastically altered over the past several years.
I remember working on some of our first sites here at NPL Solutions, being terrified of using “big bad JavaScript” due to its poor adoption rate. Now it’s hard do to much of anything on the Internet without having JavaScript enabled, which has been a godsend to developers.
It reminds me of the cliché, “if you build it, they will come”. The introduction of compelling services which require JavaScript has been the driving force to so radically change the world’s perception of this technology - not a paradigm shift from perspective of the user.
So here’s to another decade of under-appreciated technology, and another decade after that where we will finally be able to see its true potential.
We’re proud to say that we launched two projects last week. The first was a website for a local dry cleaner, Art Cleaners. The Art Cleaners project was a lot of fun, and it’s the second site we’ve used our custom templating process on (our site was the first). I think it turned out really well, and the word back from Art Cleaners is much the same.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.nplsolutions.com/content/mt/sample.swf" height="100" width="250" fvars="myPlaylist=http://www.nplsolutions.com/content/mt/sample.xml ; skin_url=http://www.nplsolutions.com/content/mt/skin.jpg" /]
The second project we finished was an in-house development called MixTape. You can see a sample MixTape to the right, and find out more information on our Selected Work page. MixTape is a skinable, portable, xml-driven Flash MP3 player. Many Flash products offer similar functionality in areas like playback, playlisting, or customization, but MixTape brings all three of these features together in one small, easy-to-use, and free package. MixTape is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, so feel free to download it and try it out on your site.
We’re working on a more in-depth look at how MixTape works, and what makes it unique, so be sure to come back and check that out.
I’ve blogged about Intense Debate as one of the TechStars 10 before, and have finally gotten around to re-implementing their comment system on this blog. To commemorate the occasion, I’m offering up my FIVE invites to join the ID beta. If you’d like one, please leave a comment, and be sure that I’ll be able to track you down to give you your invite somehow.
I’d like to wish Google a very happy 9th birthday and hope that their next nine years are as influential as the first.
It’s hard to believe that Google has only been in the game for 9 years, especially when you think about what they’ve accomplished and what kind of hold they have on the market. I don’t think that anyone could have guessed nine years ago what kind of reach a search engine could have. Congratulations!
I’m very excited to see what Google has in store for the next few years. If the past is any measure of the future, we’re in for a great nine years.
Templates don’t work. Plain and simple, but why? Templates are often times much less expensive than a custom design (if not free), and when you purchase a template, you see right away exactly what your dollar buys you. What’s more, templates usually look really cool. That sounds pretty good, right?Wrong. Ok, those things are true, but to what extent should they really influence your decision? When you pay for website design, you’re not paying for nice graphics, fancy JavaScript effects, or even a powerful backend - those things exist everywhere, often times for free.
What you are paying for is the knowhow to put all of those elements together into a finished product that truly reflects your business and capitalizes on technologies in a way to best serve your business and your clients. You may get lucky and find a script or a template that looks just the way you want it, or works exactly how you pictured it, but chances are you’re going to have to compromise at some point or another unless you have some professional guidance.
Disclaimer: We are a web design firm, so our opinion here is going to be slightly biased; however, still worthwhile.
Recently, Comcast has been at the center of a debate over whether or not it is shaping traffic in order to restrict use of the BitTorrent protocol. According to many, but not all, Comcast users, their ability to seed (upload) torrents has been crippled. Unsurprisingly, Comcast denies this accusation.
Whether or not Comcast is shaping BitTorrent traffic is really part of a larger problem - net neutrality. The big question behind this issue is whether or not ISPs should be allowed to arbitrarily limit or enhance a users experience on the internet based on some sort of pay scale or by charging content providers a premium in order to provide their content at a higher priority than non-paid traffic.
As a content provider, our stance is that all information on the internet should be freely and equally accessible to any user from any provider. However, for many ISPs, deciding to offer a higher tier for both providers and users is becoming more and more tempting.
Imagine, your ISP, Acme, decides that traffic from the iTunes Music Store is using too much of its bandwidth. Acme then goes to Apple and proposes that Apple will pay some large sum of money in order for Acme to continue serving iTunes traffic. Acme then turns to the users and starts charging a $5 per month surcharge for any account that accesses the iTunes Music Store. Keeping in mind that music downloads on iTunes are perfectly legal and legitimate - we’re not even discussing P2P networks here. Doesn’t that just make you feel bad all over?
While this is simply a hypothetical situation, if ISPs start continue to shape their traffic, this situation, or a situation like this, might not be so far off. We’re teetering on a slippery slope here, so hopefully ISPs will decide to make decisions with the user in mind.
It’s been a busy week here, and that’s to say the least.
Our biggest news is the launch of our redesigned site (here). I really think that this new design shows the very best of our work and potential. For anyone who’s bookmarked this blog, those links will still work, but you might want to reference the new address in the future.
I’ve also had the great opportunity to meet a couple of really cool people in the last few days. Last week was Brad Feld, local VC and business guru, then this week Dave Jilk of Jilk Systems and Brian Kellner of Newgator - all very interesting and extremely bright individuals.
We’ve got some more news and articles coming down the pipe, so check back soon.
Today is the Investor Day for the TechStars teams. I wish all of them the best of luck.
As I noted in a previous post, each of the 10 teams will present to a group of nearly 100 Angel Investors and VCs to try and gain some more substantial funding. The work I’ve gotten to see from these teams is outstanding - I really can’t imagine they’ll have much of a problem winning over these investors. Even so, this day will surely be an anxious one for everyone participating in the program.
Kimbal Musk of Me.dium and Todd Vernon of Lijit are already doing some preliminary critique of the presentations today. The feedback seems generally pretty positive, especially for some of my personal favorites: Socialthing, J-Squared Media, Intense Debate, MadKast and EventVue.
Good luck TechStars!
