MediaFresh News:

Node.js rocks

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:23:40 +0000

I’m absolutely loving Node.js. Running Ubuntu on my lappy and building the new version of Fresher on it. Looks like I might even be able to run it on our Windows servers too:

http://blog.dtrejo.com/how-to-install-nodejs-on-windows

Too much tech, too little time

admin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:48:10 +0000

It has been a while since I’ve posted because I’ve been a busy lad. I’ve become a huge fan of GitHub and I’ve been keeping up with new technologies. Since then a few new and very interesting projects have come up where I get to work with these new technologies especially node.js which I have previously written about. I can’t talk about the new projects until they’re done.

In the meantime, we’ve added new features to the music vertical for Fresher. The widgets are now fully integrated with Google Analytics. We track loading/play/stop and can tell where the tracks are most heard. We’re also working on tracking all transactions so that we know where the sales are coming from and produce valuable reports for our clients.

IE trouble

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:01:36 +0000

Quick fix in Fresher* for Internet Explorer downloads. When attempting to download a file in IE, the link would lag out and IE complains. Fix in ASP: Response.CacheControl = “private”

Node.js and CouchDB FTW?

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:43:54 +0000

I’ve been digging deep these days getting up to speed on technology and I found two things that I find extremely exciting. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been looking for a scalable back end in SSJS (server side Javascript) trying to avoid the allure of RoR. I think I might have found my killer combo: CouchDB and Node.js.

CouchDB is written in Erlang (telco grade language), uses a document based model that’s so close to Fresher I could literally port our client’s data to it (we’re using an SQL Server), AND switched from XML to JSON earlier this year as native output through a RESTful HTTP API.

Node.js is an SSJS server but built around the Javascript event model (addListener for sockets) and uses V8 (The Chrome Javascript engine).

So I’m drooling at the possibilities here. What’s more is I can test run a CouchDB instance at cloudant.com (if they accept my application for a beta account).

I still might want some SQL for things like logs, orders, and CRM – but then again, we’ll see once I get my hands dirty…

JSONP and jQuery

admin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:22:05 +0000

Nice little trick I just found out about the getJSON function in jQuery. If you add an extra “?” to the end of the url, it’ll read it as JSONP. JSONP simply wraps the server’s response (JSON object) in a function. It’s a way to work around cross domain issues. We can finally use the widget creator anywhere, no just on the artist’s own site.

Google Gears vs HTML5

admin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:12:54 +0000

One feature I hadn’t discovered about HTML5 is the ability to cache files like Gears and run in offline mode. It in fact has local store with SQL… Huge. A colleague recently explained that Google was dropping Gears in favor of these new features in HTML5. See:

http://digitizor.com/2009/02/22/google-prefers-html5-over-its-own-homegrown-google-gears/

Wave

admin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:11:45 +0000

Gotta say that I’m really digging Google Wave. I love the technology behind it and I think it’ll change the way we build apps for the web. It looks like real time but all done in micro requests web style. Very very cool.

Google Chrome Frame

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:28:10 +0000

Was going to activate my Wave account today (which is turning out to be a pain) and had the wrong browser open.

Hilarious. So much for the open web.

eLearning

admin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:23:51 +0000

I haven’t done an eLearning project in a while and having done so much Web 2.0 stuff recently, I’d forgotten how horrible XML and SCORM are. Blows my mind how much time is wasted writing manifest files and breaking things up into “reusable learning objects” when no one ever reuses them. It’s a glorious make work program. I think they need a major revamp and need to move towards AJAX/JSON.

Looking more like Fresher every day…

admin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:14:55 +0000

Updated my WordPress and was surprised to see how much the back end of WordPress looks like Fresher. Not only that but WP also got an award recently for best OS CMS… I still don’t think WP is a CMS. Sorry folks. Too many things still missing.