xGPS 1.2 Released. This looks like promising technology. Can I track my wife?

Check the site

Technorati Tags: 1.2, GPS, iphone, iTouch, xGPS

“I just started playing Fable 2 and I’ve heard from several reviews and posts that its possible to have pre-marital sex. And judging by the stats for STD’s and the fact that you can buy condoms, I assume this is correct. I, however, have only seen the option for marriage so far when people fall in love with the character. How do you just get them to sleep with your character? ”

Update: Oct. 23rd 1:36pm EST

I woke up at 3 am on Wednesday morning and I checked out Google Trends. I noticed the search term “How to Have Sex in Fable 2″ …So I blogged about it (I was one of the first to do so). At About 3:06am the post went live. Here are screenshots of my hit stats since then:

This blog has only been live for 19 days and this post accounts for more than half of all my page views. My adsense revenue is at $0.02. This is a lesson in something. I am not sure what it is yet.

Technorati Tags: fable 2, fable 2 walkthrough, how do you have sex in fable 2, how to have sex in fable 2, sex in fable 2

This article will explain in the most basic terms how you can use the JQuery API to insert form values to a MySQL database using no form actions, just JQuery. Pretty cool stuff.
I wanted to create a CSS/Ajax powered database management system and the code you see here is the very streamlined version of this effort.

Download JQuery

Download all the files that I refer to in this tutorial.

Let’s begin.

You will need a copy of jQuery running on your server in order for this tutorial to work. Check the link above.

You will need to create a MySQL database called ‘name’ first then use the SQL below to create the table called ‘names’ using the provided SQL:
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `name`.`names`;
CREATE TABLE `name`.`names` (
`nameID` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`name` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
`ts` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`nameID`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=38 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Next, create a PHP file to connect to your new database. NOTICE: This has not been proven to be safe from SQL injection.

ndb.php

<?php
# FileName="Connection_php_mysql.htm"
# Type="MYSQL"
# HTTP="true"
$hostname_ndb = "localhost";
$database_ndb = "name";
$username_ndb = "root";
$password_ndb = "";
$ndb = mysql_pconnect($hostname_ndb, $username_ndb, $password_ndb) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR);
?>

To start off, we create a class which will define the properties and the method of the ‘name’ class. In this case, the method simply echos the users name and the timestamp when the class is invoked.

class.name.php

<?php

?>

Instead of using $name, we use $this->name within the method. This is how properties are passed through a method when using PHP classes. This starts to make sense very shortly, I promise.

Next, create a PHP 5 insert class:
class.db.php
<?php

?>

The purpose of this class is to grab the SQL from the implementation PHP file – which I will show you next. Call me crazy but I usually save an implementation file with a prefix of ‘i’.

i.Name.php

<?
include_once('../classes/class.name.php');
include_once('../classes/class.db.php');

?>

What this implementation file does is rather simple. It grabs the values from the JQuery script, instantiates the object from the name class and defines the values for the SQL. It then does the most important thing of all. It echos the results back which then gets picked up by the JQuery script below. See if you can find out how it does it:

jgo.php

$(document).ready(function(){

}); //end DOC

The JQuery’s job here is to collect the variables from the HTML markup. Why we do not need a form here on the markup is because JQuery ‘listens’ for the click event to fire on the “a.sendName” css class, once it does, it passes the markup values to this JQuery script. Gotta love that. It then assigns the values to a JSON string which then gets sent to the implementation PHP file “i.name.php”. The implementation file echos out the results. The “.html” method in the JQuery above parse the echo and displays this into the “#loadName” DIV on the markup. I have to say, I like this and you should to .

Here is the markup:

name.php

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jgo.js"></script>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>

</div>
</body>
</html>

Download all the files

The code and the article was written by Dana Martinelli

Technorati Tags: Classes, How to, Insert, Jquery, MySQL, PHP

Download JQuery

Download all the files that I refer to in this tutorial.

Let’s begin.

You will need a copy of jQuery running on your server in order for this tutorial to work. Check the link above.

You will need to create a MySQL database called ‘name’ first then use the SQL below to create the table called ‘names’ using the provided SQL:
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `name`.`names`;
CREATE TABLE `name`.`names` (
`nameID` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`name` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
`ts` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`nameID`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=38 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Next, create a PHP file to connect to your new database. NOTICE: This has not been proven to be safe from SQL injection.

ndb.php

<?php
# FileName="Connection_php_mysql.htm"
# Type="MYSQL"
# HTTP="true"
$hostname_ndb = "localhost";
$database_ndb = "name";
$username_ndb = "root";
$password_ndb = "";
$ndb = mysql_pconnect($hostname_ndb, $username_ndb, $password_ndb) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR);
?>

To start off, we create a class which will define the properties and the method of the ‘name’ class. In this case, the method simply echos the users name and the timestamp when the class is invoked.

class.name.php

<?php

?>

Instead of using $name, we use $this->name within the method. This is how properties are passed through a method when using PHP classes. This starts to make sense very shortly, I promise.

Next, create a PHP 5 insert class:
class.db.php
<?php

?>

The purpose of this class is to grab the SQL from the implementation PHP file – which I will show you next. Call me crazy but I usually save an implementation file with a prefix of ‘i’.

i.Name.php

<?
include_once('../classes/class.name.php');
include_once('../classes/class.db.php');

?>

What this implementation file does is rather simple. It grabs the values from the JQuery script, instantiates the object from the name class and defines the values for the SQL. It then does the most important thing of all. It echos the results back which then gets picked up by the JQuery script below. See if you can find out how it does it:

jgo.php

$(document).ready(function(){

}); //end DOC

The JQuery’s job here is to collect the variables from the HTML markup. Why we do not need a form here on the markup is because JQuery ‘listens’ for the click event to fire on the “a.sendName” css class, once it does, it passes the markup values to this JQuery script. Gotta love that. It then assigns the values to a JSON string which then gets sent to the implementation PHP file “i.name.php”. The implementation file echos out the results. The “.html” method in the JQuery above parse the echo and displays this into the “#loadName” DIV on the markup. I have to say, I like this and you should to .

Here is the markup:

name.php

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jgo.js"></script>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>

</div>
</body>
</html>

Download all the files

The code and the article was written by Dana Martinelli

Technorati Tags: Ajax, Database, How to, Jquery, MySQL, PHP 5, SQL, Tutorial

Article written for TEQ Magazine April 2008

Coordination, if done with accuracy, can be key to a successful outcome on many levels. It is most difficult to facilitate coordination from disparate processes when each player has his own methods and time lines. Finding tools to help with this are rare. As interactive design problems become more complex, the teams that drive the solutions must evolve to meet those needs.  Compounding this is the reality that is now common to be working with teams in other time zones and with people who speak different languages. Managing a coordinated effort is vital to the success of a project. For interactive solutions to be solved timely and precisely, they need to fit within multi-layered metaphors and support elegance and sophistication both visually and programmatically. Most importantly, the solutions need to support the goals of the sponsor, stakeholder, or business need.  For all of this to work well, there is a need for a central system to bridge relationships between each independent group. If used strategically, I find a tool like Axure can play that vital role.

In my experience, Axure can work to satisfy the communication efforts between multi-faceted groups in a seamless way. Before I started working with Axure back in 2005 on the Hollywood.com redesign, I was using traditional tools like Visio, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver to capture my use cases and web simulations for user testing with Nielson Norman. The three rounds of intensive testing were mostly successful and my simulations worked well, but the process was laborious and time consuming. It had taken 5 months from start to finish (yes, you can mostly blame NNG for this) but naturally I wanted to expedite the process. So, I went searching for a tool to help in the user testing phase of a project. I found Axure by chance and after my first few hours with it, I knew I had a tool to not only help in rapid user testing, but one that would enable me to help bridge many of the efforts I was using other tools for. Not only could I quickly build wireframe simulations, but the ability to capture functional specifications at the object level and then produce a complete word document with all of this intact, automatically, sent me to IA nirvana.

Soon after my discovery, I showed my Director of IT a fully working simulation of one of his .NET modules.  He had coded this module in the morning, and by the end of the day I had a fully working, interactive simulation based on his code, ready for first level user testing. He purchased the tool ten minutes after my presentation. We both were hooked and became very efficient collaborating together from that point forward, increasing our lifecycles by at least 30%. After a few years of daily usage with this tool, some best practices have emerged which I’d like to share.

What It Is Not

I will begin with what Axure does not do. It is not a tool that can export working production ready HTML. Although it may seem like it can, it cannot. It is not the best flowcharting tool. It has stencils to create flowcharts and use case scenarios in a crunch, but you soon revert back to standard tools like Visio, as it is, of course, more powerful. Axure does not have the ability to version control well (however, this may be addressed in future releases). If you have teams of IAs working together on simulations or wireframes it would be ideal to have check-in, check-out capabilities specific to users, much like Visual Source Safe, Subversion, or Harvest. It does not work on Mac OSX, since it is a .NET application and it appears they are not interested in pursuing the Macintosh option. I would suggest the developers of this application to port to Linux using Mono if at all possible. Axure will not change existing methods and protocols overnight within your organization, but it can be successfully introduced into an existing production process at any point, no matter how big or small your project may be.

Best Practice

After using Axure successfully with very aggressive deadlines, as well as in slower paced research environments, I have discovered many benefits this tool brings to the people involved. I enjoy IA as a career path because of the satisfaction I get from seeing people work together to build something. At first glance, this complexity seems impossible to build. The challenge in this is what drives me as an IA. Fine tuning efficiency is critical to making a project a success when it feels large and unmanageable. I find that the IA is not only there to build relationships between systems, but to build efficiencies between individual skill sets in order to reduce risk.

Where Axure shines is in the Agile/SCRUM development process, especially for remote team collaboration. From my experience, the Agile method morphs from team to team, but is the same in essence. It is in the iterative approach to software and web development that Axure works really well. When I start a project, I start at the 1.0 iteration. This is primarily a very low-level abstraction of the structure and navigation – I call this the XO document. As the fidelity increases and the Axure project grows into a more mature document, the iterative tracking of each instance of the project becomes very useful. I can go back to 1.4 or 2.4 of my document with ease. With HTML publishing built into Axure, I can publish to a live project blog where the client can track the history of the development (every client falls in love with this, by the way). In parallel to the publishing of the HTML prototype iteration, Axure can generate a Microsoft Word Document of the same interval which I save as a PDF for client download. This PDF is the main source of all client feedback, since they can add comments directly within the document. The client can explore the simulation, track, and comment on the functional specifications within the PDF. This is a great process for remote team coordination and Multilanguage constraints. There are times within a teleconference where I may choose to update the project blog in real-time and have the client refresh their browser to see live changes we just reviewed (clients love that too).

Summary

Axure is not a complete replacement to your standard design, documentation and development toolkit, but it is a fantastic way to aggregate these documents and share them quickly and effortlessly. For fast paced production environments where research and usability tends to be a gift and not a mandate, the more quickly you can get your product into a state for user reaction and engagement, the better. Axure can do this for you.

Technorati Tags: Axure, Axure Software, iRise, Protoshare, Prototyping, Simulation