The Internet on Computers?

CBC's coverage of the "Canadian DMCA" backlash online.

admin — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:56:24 +0000

The Principles of Project Management - what’s in it for you

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:41:26 +0000

SitePoint’s got a 200 page book that covers the mysterious world of Project Management. Written by GeekManager blogger Meri Williams this covers what PM is, isn’t and why it’s good to know.

Like many of the new SitePoint books this book explains a complex topic with a few illustrations and a clean layout…For a topic I was quite unfamilir with when I started, I’d recommend this book as a good overview to the topic.

Net Beutrality Bill Hits Canadian House of Commons TODAY

admin — Sat, 31 May 2008 14:41:31 +0000

Will this actually make it through? A net neutrality bill has just hit the Canadian House of Commons! A landmark piece of legislation.

“The NDP is “very wary” about the government intervening in the internet, Angus told the House of Commons. But the bill isn’t about regulating the internet, it’s about ensuring there will be scrutiny of those who provide access to it, he said.”

read more | digg story

Targeted Ads?

admin — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:15:18 +0000

Just checking in on YYZtech.ca this evening and noticed a whole lot of ads for the Sex And The City movie coming out this week. Now I’m guessing they where targeting city-specific sites, otherwise, I can’t figure out how we ended up with these ads? Just one of those strange things.

Google App Hacks: Turn your Spreadheet into a CMS system

admin — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:50:41 +0000

Besides that hack there’s a whole lot more on gMail and rest of the Google eco-system (Blogger, YouTube, etc.)

One of the new style O’Rielly Hack books, this one looks at how to use Google’s applications through a series of short examples (aka hacks) covering, not just the office applications, but many other applications under the Google banner. For web designers, there’s a lot of material here too on how to integrate Google’s services into your own website.

Blogging with Twitter

admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:52:56 +0000

I haven’t updated this blog in a while, but that’s not to say I haven’t been blogging pre-say. I realized a few months ago that most of my blogging had moved to Twitter.

Why? Well there’s a few reasons:

via its gMail interface, blogging is as simple as sending a text message, making it very immediate
the restrictions (160-odd characters, no images, short urls) make tight writing a necessity
you don’t feel like you have to write 2-3 paragraphs (that’s me) when you can sum things up in a sentance
the social aspects - it’s not Facebook, but that’s probably a good thing - really if i want post an album, I can use Flikr
the 3rd-party apps - there’s a whole host of things built on Twitter’s api, from search engines like TweetScan to Twitbin there’s a lot of interesting things being built around it.
it’s fun

Blogging certainly has its place, but if you’re looking for something less formal- and quite possibly the way things are going, give it a try.

building a restaurant search engine - beginnings

admin — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:17:11 +0000

A few years ago, my company was contracted to build a restaurant portal similar to some other Toronto-area websites at the time, with the important addition that it would focus on searching, kind of like a Google for restaurants. A few years later ZEE4 built a second search engine for them, this time based on a system of tags. In late December 2007 I took a full-time position with them as the senior developer (aka, CAA: Chief Applications Architect).

In these articles, I’ll talk a bit about these past projects how it evolved and maybe give readers some ideas some ideas if they want to take on such a project themselves.

But lets start with the obvious (and not followed too many times early on): the solution to many problems starts with looking at how other people have approached a problem, before starting. This bit of advice might have saved a lot of problems early on, and saved.

An an example, and a teaser, if you want to build a search engine ten readthis article on the building a search with the symfony framework.

Until next time…

SitePoint Blogs YYZtech.ca’s Web Design Book List

admin — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 03:04:00 +0000

It looks like Sitepoint noted YYZtech’s list of best books for web designers 2007 a few weeks back - thanks guys! Seriously, SitePoint seems to be one of those publishers that is really improving, I remember their one of their early checklist books, good information, but very functional layout, flip forward to something like their CSS Anthology and you see how far they have come.

NachoGrid.ca - All Nachos, all Toronto, all the time

admin — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:02:12 +0000

A critical hole in coverage of all things food has been patched with the launch of NachGrid.ca - Toronto’s guide to Nacho-serving bars and restaurants.

Basically this is our newest website that reviews places (mostly pubs), that serve particularly good nachos. Simple really - we can’t help but wonder wonder if there’s going to be an all-burger or all-poutine (ok, maybe more of a Montreal thing - though there are a few places on and off wheels that do it right - Mel’s anyone?) site coming from somewhere.

Opps … somebody already did NachGrid!

admin — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 15:23:14 +0000

While finishing up some reviews for NachoGrid, in anticipation of putting it up today, a search for Artful Dodger yields this lisiting on alltorontopubs.com. In fairness, their’s is on pubs in general, ours is a bit more nitch, but at least it shows there’s life beyond the big three Toronto restaurant guides.

Hats off to the folks at AllTorontoPubs.com - they’ve done a nice job on their site. We’ll just have to make our nicer