Brand new. InstaCalc. Just like the name says, it’s an instant making use of AJAX. No need to hit “enter”. Your results are written as you type, just like any other AJAX application. You can set a number of rows and even set variables and use them similar to Excel. One neat feature is that it understands words like “thousand”, “million”, etc.

You can even define a calculator and then embed it into an HTML page. Give it a try.

Source: TechCrunch

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Personally, beyond a simple Flash banner, I don’t see much use for it in the web development world. Yes, it does have that coolness factor if you do it right. But the fact is that too many people do it wrong right now. My number one reason for not using flash is that it kills SEO. Well let’s say that’s my number two reason, number one: I can’t really use it :).
Loren Baker writes:

1. Flash requires bandwidth
2. Disabled back button
3. Flash ignores users needs
4. Problems with third-party Flash developers
5. Search engines do not like Flash

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In the world of web design you often come across people who don’t exactly know what they want. And that is usually a good thing for you because you can then charge them for the minimum and increase based on “added features”, which they should have seen up front, but they don’t always. This has the slight problem of having a contract with an indefinite time period.

A time period is usually scheduled for delivery of the product in the contract. This ensures the buyer that the product will be delivered in a reasonable time frame so that you don’t keep extending the job for not real reason. One thing I’ve learnt, however, is that you need to also specify a time frame that the user has to review the work and ensure that everything is to his liking. You absolutely need this if you’re not charging by the hour.

This is the problem I ran into a couple weeks ago and I’m still trying to get out of. I did a website for this guy a couple months ago. We agreed on a fixed price because it was supposed to be an easy enough job: a nice static layout, not much PHP, a Gallery, etc. A prototype was done in about three days. He was amazed by the quality of the website and had nothing but praise. Everything is good right? Wrong. He now had to burden of supplying content for the website. To make a long story slightly less long, this took a couple of months, and he only supplied pictures for the gallery and content for one of the six pages (not the home page). Now you may be thinking what does that have to do with me if the guy’s website
is empty, he paid for a design and that’s what he got right? Well I would agree with you there, but the problem was he had not yet paid the balance on his bill.

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Does your domain have skeletons in the closet? We know that there is a lot of domain parking going on out there. People simply buy up a ton of domain names, sit on them for a while and see whether or not they can make a quick buck off of them. When domains expire they then go back into the market and are up for sale again. What you need to make sure of is that the domain that you buy has not been involved in any shady business. This came come in the form of simple ads or even porn. You may think your domain name is very clever and relates well to you, but do you really want DirtySanchez.com just because your name is Sanchez?

How do you safeguard yourself? You can check out the domain’s history. Way Back Machine can give you some insight into the history of your domain. Type in a domain name and if it’s been alive long enough you get a list of snapshots taken throughout its life.

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First off, this is for those of us with our own servers. Not those of us on shared hosts, because we’re going to need access to the command prompt and MySQL commands, etc. Some shared hosts may allow some of these things, but most don’t.
Matt Wade Writes:

Just a quick note to recommend AutoMySQLBackup for your MySQL backup needs. This little gem does daily, weekly, and monthly backups. It handles all the backup rotations for you. It compresses the files, can backup to remote servers, email you logs, and much more.

Now if you’re like me and you’re on a shared host, here is an option for you. There is backupDB. I haven’t found something better than that thus far. One problem though, you have to have your own cron job to call it so that it’s automated.

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LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. These are the elements you will need to start a very robust and reliable web server from the ground up. HowToForge has a brilliant tutorial on how to start everything. Now take note, this is a VERY detailed tutorial. You can’t really go wrong with this tutorial. We got step by step instructions, we go screen shots, we got it all.

The Linux platform used is Fedora Core 6. Some may claim that other distributions are better, they are more user friendly, etc. etc. And they would be right, however, In my opinion, as a production environment, you can’t beat Fedora Core 6. It is very stable and reliable and perfect for a stand alone web server. There are even instructions at the end to install a free web hosting control panel if you decide to resell hosting services.

They start out with downloading Fedora:

To install such a system you will need the following:

• Download the Fedora Core 6 DVD iso image or the 5 CD iso images from a mirror near you (the list of mirrors can be found here: http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html), e.g. ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora-core/6/i386/iso/FC-6-i386-DVD.iso
• an internet connection…

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Nothing new, just a different spin on it. View the source at byteMyCode. You simply call function CSS (url, media) and that’s it. It fetches the URL of the CSS style sheet; checks to see whether the file has already been loaded. If not it dynamically sticks it into the “link” section in your document head.

I’ve seen dynamic CSS elements before, but not an entire CSS file. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Printer friendly versions. The code may have to be tweaked to be able to switch between style sheets though.

All in all, it seems like an excellent idea with a lot of potential.

Original Source Article

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I found this post interesting. Although I don’t consider myself much of a blogger, bills do have to be paid.

Tony writes:

Its as though one loses their status as a “real” blogger the instant you put up Google Adwords, or start selling ad space — as though the purity of your writings takes on a different cast because, well, you’ve got to pay the bills.

As Tony mentions, ads on a website are one thing but PayPerPost is totally different. Having contextual ads makes perfect sense and I actually do use them sometimes. When I read a blog it’s because I actually care about what’s going on there, I’m into the topic. So I would be more inclined to look into ads that were about a topic that interests me.

I say go ahead bloggers. Enjoy, you’ve worked hard.

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