Koree Monteloyola

I have been a web programmer for 5 years and I have been faithful to only 3 text editors, namely: Maguma, Dreamweaver and jEdit.

Among the 3, jEdit is my "weapon of choice". Again, this tool was introduced to me by k0n, because he's a show off. (haha! just kidding)

jEdit is written in Java and I've tried using it on Linux and Windows. It also has support for other programming & scripting language, such as java, perl, asp, php..and a lot more, you can see the list under Global options > Editing > Change settings for mode drop down box

What makes this text editor powerful is the plugins you can install to make it an advanced XML/XHTML text editor or an IDE.

Here is a screenshot of the "must have" plugins I use.

If you're using PHP, you should definitely install PHPParserPlugin and SideKick.

One of the "cool" things you can do with this editor is customizing the look&feel; if you notice I use a black background, to reduce the stress on my eyes, and I can have an upbeat Saito Hajime background image, like so:

Looks cool, eh?

So give this text editor a try, download it now!

I received this email from GlobeLabs, probably because of the Google & Globe Workshop we attended a few weeks ago. Anyway, I am sharing this to everyone:

***

Mash-up Globe and Google APIs to build commercial worthy apps!

Globe Labs is giving out five (5) one-year Globe DSL subscriptions or Tattoo packages for the first five apps slated for commercialization.

Ownership of apps submitted remains with the developer and all submitted apps have equal chance of commercialization.

Deadline for submission of applications is on August 15.
 
Make your great idea into a real app, then monetize it! For more details, visit the Globe+Google Mashup page in the Globe Labs portal.

This is the script I use to dynamically generate my site's RSS using php and mysql.

<?php
$sql = "SELECT * FROM mydatabase.mysite_articles";
$result = mysql_query($sqll) or die("Cannot generate rss");
$numrows = mysql_num_rows($result);
if($numrows > 0){
    $now = date("D, d M Y H:i:s T");
    $string = "<?xml version="1.0"?>
            <rss version="2.0">
            <channel>
                <title>title of your site here</title>
                <link>yoursite.com/rss.php</link>
                <description>".htmlentities(site's description here)."</description>
                <language>en-us</language>
                <pubDate>".$now."</pubDate>
                <lastBuildDate>".$now."</lastBuildDate>
                <docs>url as reference of rss documentation</docs>
                <managingEditor>emailhere@yoursite.com</managingEditor>
                <webMaster>emailhere@yoursite.com</webMaster> ";
    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
        $string .= "<item> ";
        $string .= "<title>".$row[title']."</title> ";
        $string .= "<link>".$row['link']."</link> ";
        $string .= "<description>".$row['link']."</description> ";
        $output .= "<pubDate>".date("D, d M Y H:i:s T",$row['date_timestamp']))."</pubDate> ";
        $string .= "</item> ";
    }
    $string .= "</channel> ";
    $string .= "</rss> ";
    header("Content-Type: application/rss+xml");
    echo $string;
}
?>

Using a content-disposition header,  which specifies the output and presentation of the body part as an xml/rss, there is no need to create a separate rss file (through fopen/fwrite).

The content-disposition header is being specified through this line of code:

header("Content-Type: application/rss+xml");

Yesterday k0n advised me that I should read or prepare for HTML 5, then he showed me several new html 5 tags, that I think is quite a leap from the way we code our current html pages - so yes, I was convinced that I should do a bit of research.

So far, here are the remarkable articles that I have found. I suggest that you'd read these accordingly for a better flow of information intake.

1. Yes, You Can Use HTML 5 Today!
2. HTML 5: Now or Never?
3. HTML 5 Editor Ian Hickson discusses features, pain points, adoption rate, and more

As a rundown,

- yes, HTML 5 would definitely reshape how we construct webpages, specifically for multimedia content. They say it would undermine Flash and/or Silverlight.
- HTML 5 would make the web a full pledged application platform
- Browsers such as Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and Opera  9.64 have support for HTML 5. So yes, you can modify "some" tags of your site to HTML 5.
- currently, Internet Explorer has the lowest level of support for HTML 5. Beware.
- if an HTML 5 tag is not yet supported by a browser you could always use javascript and css to alter its properties
- there would be APIs for the common javascript tasks such as window.location, setTimeout()
- Google would release "Google Wave"later this year. Its codes are in HTML 5.
- The expected release date of the final HTML 5 specification is on 2010.
- The proposed recommendation of HTML 5 is on 2022. Yep, that's 13 years from now.
- some groups abhor this "maturity" they say that it defies the standard of the separation of content and design

And as for me, I would heed the words of the professionals and wouldn't really focus my attention to this "yet". Although I might try some of the new HTML 5 tags for experimentation.

Three weeks ago facebook launched "facebook usernames", a feature that would allow their users to have vanity URLs. Multiply and Myspace also have this feature.

So what's the big deal?

A simple answer to that is the "brand" that a "name" represents.

(still don't get it?)

The "name" could be used as a keyword in search engines, and the "brand" is one of the major factors to determine the popularity of a website, combine these two and it would ensure a good rank in search engine results.

The aforementioned social networks already have high ranks in search engines; so, yes it would be logical to register for the vanity URLs these sites offer. 

But, I notice that some popular brands are not really taking advantage of their "space" under these social networks, more disturbing is the fact they're letting the social networks to own their site's identity, which sadly, the brands fail to realize.

I think what these brands should do is to use the popularity and features of the other site/s to "also" direct traffic to their sites.

here are some simple tips that could help you:

1. publish teaser content/articles/media to other sites, with the goal to direct viewers to your site.

2. if APIs are available, use it to your site's advantage.

3. build and strengthen the community of your social network's fanpage.

4. social networks should supplement your site, because your site is the source - and not the other way around.