In an effort to better understand how developer’s feel about a particular JavaScript framework they use on a daily basis or in their projects, I have created a short survey.

I would be very grateful for you to take this survey and to pass it on to others if you would be so kind.

I understand that the data that I receive from this will most likely be skewed and extremely inaccurate on a broader level, nevertheless I am quite curious about the topic. In addition, I will most likely be spreading the word on the results of this survey. In addition, I’m also aware of the existing posts available in regards to the measured speed of these frameworks.

Thanks!

Please take this short survey on JavaScript Frameworks

Alternatively you can fill out the form here:

Black Friday may not be here just yet, but that doesn’t mean you cannot get in on the action now (yes even before preparing that huge Thanksgiving meal). Why not get a good start on the incredible deals that Amazon.com is offering from now until December 4th!

Plus, get in on the hourly Gold Box deals (also shown below) from midnight to 11pm on Black Friday.

Finally, vote on the six products with crazy deals you want to see on Black Friday by participating in the Amazon Customers Vote end-of-year promotion.

Bookmark this post so you can keep an eye on these Gold Box deals and lightning deals as they happen:

Here’s a heads up if you plan on giving gift cards around the holidays. You need to be careful that the cards will be
honored after the holidays.

Stores that are planning to close after Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though the cards will be worthless January 1.
There is no law preventing them from doing this. On the contrary, it is referred to as ‘Bankruptcy Planning.’ Below is a partial list of stores that you need to be cautious about.

It seems Amazon.com gift cards are probably the safest bet.

• Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
• Ann Taylor 117 stores nationwide closing
• Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug and Catherine’s to close 150 stores nationwide
• Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
• Cache will close all stores
• Talbots closing down specialty stores
• J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
Pacific Sunwear (also owned by Talbots)
• GAP closing 85 stores
• Footlocker closing 140 stores more to close after January
• Wickes Furniture closing down
• Levitz closing down remaining stores
• Bombay closing remaining stores
• Acorn closing down remaining 36 stores (owned by Christopher & Banks / C.J. Banks)
• Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January
• Whitehall closing all stores
• Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
• Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January
• Home Depot closing 15 stores
• Macys to close 9 stores after January
• Linens and Things closing all stores
• Movie Galley Closing all stores
• Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
• Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
• JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
• Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores
• Wilson Leather closing down all stores
• Sharper Image closing down all stores
• K B Toys closing 356 stores
• Lowe’s to close down some stores
• Dillard’s to close some stores

With Adobe Spry, you can dynamically populate a select box (aka. dropdown) with a dataset very easily:

If you are familiar with Spry, than the above makes complete sense. I came across a problem this evening, however, when using very similar code as a filter mechanism for a separate dataset. The problem with the above code is that once it is populated, the select box will by default choose the first value as selected. If you are filtering data, you want the initial/reset state to be blank and not have any values.

Since I am using spry:repeatchildren to repeat my option tags, I cannot simply drop in a blank option tag above the current one because than it would also repeat for all the other rows in the dataset.

Thanks to the built in variables for each dataset, we can get special information during the loop of the dataset rows. This is valuable information since we technically need to drop the blank option just above the first row of the dataset.

We modify the above code to be the following instead:

The spry:if simply checks if the loop is on row number 0 and if it is, it will drop in that option tag. Otherwise, it gets left out on all of the other rows.

Adobe AIR not only makes developers more productive by allowing them to write a single code-base for multiple distribution platforms, but it also produces excellent productivity apps for the average computer user. Here is a lit of 100 Awesome AIR apps for Productivity.

Everyone is familiar with the clear stiff plastic clamshell packaging that beautifully wraps that new computer mouse, kitchen knife, toy car.  Parents know all too well what awaits them in order to free their child’s toy from its casing. They are confronted with stiff plastic-coated wire ties strongly securing the toy set to the cardboard packaging, followed by a suggestion to use a coin to unwind a plastic lock.

Amazon.com, the leader in online retailing, has taken the initiative to innovate the painful process of freeing our beloved purchases from the strong hold of form-over-function packaging. On the front page a letter from Jeff Bezos, the company’s CEO, outlines the current frustrations of modern product packaging and how Amazon.com is working with many companies such as Fisher-Price, Mattel, and Microsoft, to revolutionize the packaging industry in creating easier to open, recyclable boxes to make customers happy while respecting the environment.

Respect is due to companies who listen to their customers and work diligently to change their processes to better the purchasing experience for the buyer. In addition, if they can better the environment while they are at it, all the better. 

Initially, Amazon.com will be offering it’s trademarked Frustration-Free Packaging with 19 of their best-selling items and eventually would like to convert all their products to the new packaging style.

See a funny video comparing the unpacking processes on Amazon.

Happy Halloween everybody. In the spirit of the season and working in the tech industry, I felt it more than appropriate to show my love with an emoticon pumpkin:

Enjoy!

It is a common fact that fluorescent light bulbs conserve a considerable amount of energy in comparison to incandescent light bulbs. Until a few years ago, these types of bulbs were limited to the long tubes you traditionally see in commercial and industrial applications. Then the CFL was invented allowing these highly energy efficient light sources be used in lieu of incandescents in conventional situations.

Unfortunately, the popularity of the CFL didn’t really take off as quickly as the energy providers had hoped. Fluorescent lighting tends to be a harsher light and may be fine for those large warehouses and office buildings. When it comes to a home, however, these harsh lighting conditions are undesirable to use in the home, where warmer and softer lighting conditions are more welcoming. In addition, when CFLs first came out, they were quite a bit more expensive then traditional light bulbs.

All of this has changed over the years as the technology of the CFL has improved dramatically. I personally have been on a constant search for that perfect incandescent replacement to lower my energy usage and also gain longer life of my light bulbs. Still yet, every time I drop by the store to find a new CFL that claims to have the same “Soft White” color temperature that incandescents are known for, I am disappointed by it’s strong yellow and green tint that it emits into the rooms of my house.

About a week ago, I noticed that the GE brand was selling a new kind of CFL that claimed to be a “Daylight” color temperature (6500K versus 3000K). I rushed home and screwed it into my torche lamp to only be stunned by the ultra-bright blue “daylight” glow of the lamp. There is no doubt this was the daylight temperature they were shooting for, but what I don’t realize (and likely others) that is actually not what you want in your room at night or when you need light. From outside, it appeared as though I was performing surgery or conducting science experiments from the amount of output it produced.

My search continues to find the best CFL out there that provides me with the light that I am looking for. With that, I have decided to inform my readers with the information and research I come up with. Please note, however, that I am not conducting any of these tests with the utmost accuracy and that my observations are simply that.

I read in Consumer Reports that Wal-Mart has the largest selection of CFLs. I purchased two brands today: GE, and Sylvania. These are the largest brand name choices in the CFL category. I will probably test the off-brands at a later date and post my findings.

I was not able to find two packs that contained the same number of bulbs between the two brands. The GE I purchased came with 3 bulbs, and the Sylvania came with 2.

I provided a chart below that contains all the relevant details of these two bulbs. My brief observations are as follows. The GE is cheaper than the Sylvania (which is probably due to the 3-pack versus the 2-pack), however, sometimes you get what you pay for. The first thing you may notice when comparing the two packages, is that the Sylvania lasts for 11 years, where the GE only lasts for 6 years. If you read the fine print, you will see that is not an even comparison. GE is making that claim of using the bulbs for 4 hours a day, whereas Sylvania is making that claim when using the bulb for only 3 hours a day. When you make the adjustment for the GE bulb, it turns out to be just shy of 11 years as well. Another way to compare is the number of hours that each last, which is printed on the box as well.

The Sylvania bulb was the one that I tested first. After the initial warm up time (which only occurs when the bulb is cold) I immediately was thrilled by the kind of light it was producing. It had a very warm yet bright white light, just like an incandescent.

As for the GE, I was not as impressed. It looked the same as all the other CFLs that I have purchased in the past. Not nearly as bright, yellowish green tint, and took a long time (over a minute) to warm-up. Another nice feature of the Sylvania is it’s ability to instantly turn on, without having to wait for a flicker start-up that fluorescents are accustomed to.

Finally, I also like the Sylvania bulb’s design better than the GE. It was a little bit smaller, the spirals were more compact, and a nice base.

Here are the specs:

Google announced today its latest project, Google Chrome, a competitor in the browser market. Here are some of the high-level points to know about Chrome:

• Uses multi-threaded processes to isolate page executions, allowing for better performance and quicker, more reliable memory freeing
• Built off the WebKit code base (used by Safari, Adobe AIR, Nokia, iPhone, Android mobile platform [Google’s mobile OS) due to its impressive speed
• Faster and rebuilt JavaScript virtual machine called V8 (Virtual machines provide safety and platform independence)
  • In V8, as execution goes on, objects that end up with the same properties will share the same hidden class
  • In Chrome, JavaScript is not interpreted, it is compiled to machine code for faster execution in the browser
  • Precise garbage collection
  • V8 is independent of the browser so other projects can use the engine
• Better URL bar interaction design
  • URL box (coined Omnibox) is a apart of each tab (rather than the browser window)
  • Omnibox not only handles urls, but also suggestions for searches, top visited pages, and popular pages you haven’t visited
  • Full text search for your historical pages
  • Smarter URL completion
  • Searching sites like Amazon or Wikipedia, captures their search boxes on your local system, allowing you to search those sites later on straight from your URL bar
• New “home page” when opening a new tab displaying your nine most visited pages and the sites you search on
• Incognito window for private browsing
• Pop-ups are scoped to the tab they came from and confined there. If you do want a popup to occur, just drag out a graphical area to open it’s own window
• Webapps can launch their own browser window with a minified chrome without the URL box and the browser toolbar
• Sandboxing to keep page processes from being able to write files to your hard drive or read files from sensitive areas on your computer
  • User must initiate actions requested to run by the browser
  • With one exception, plugins, can run at higher levels than the browser itself.
• Plugins are now run in their own process
  • The rest of the page can still be sandboxed
• Chrome continually downloads lists of harmful sites, one for phishing, one for malware, presenting the user a warning if they stumble upon either
  • If a user visits a site with malware, Google notifies the owner of a website to let them know so they can clean up their site
• Google Gears is built in
• Completely open source

Ever since I have converted over to using Gmail’s online interface, I have also been using Google Calendar ever so frequently. The workflow Google invented for these products is very efficient and I enjoy using both of them.

While Google Calendar is great in that I can view and edit it anywhere, it’s not so great, when I am not somewhere there is an Internet connection for my computer, or for my iPod Touch. One way I attempted a while back in keeping the these calendars in sync, was to use the private iCalendar address that Google provides for my calendar. The issue I quickly found was that is a read only link of course, I needed to be able to add events via my iPod Touch or iCal.

I stumbled upon a little product known as Spanning Sync, which at the time was in private beta. After a couple of weeks of signing up to be notified when they were opening more beta spots, I garnered an invitation to the beta. I have been a loyal user ever since.

Spanning Sync does an incredible job at syncing your Google Calendar with any of your Mac Calendars (iCal, Entourage, etc.). It uses a centralized syncing engine that is always being improved on that is extremely accurate and very efficient. I have my preferences set to sync every 10 minutes. When I add an event on Google Calendar, I can be assured that when I go home, that same even will be sitting in the iCal database waiting for me.

You don’t have to keep iCal open all the time either for all this to work. iCal actually reads it’s data from a centralized user account database that is stored on your Mac. Spanning Sync, syncs with that very database even when iCal is closed. In addition, they give you many options for which you can choose the calendars you would like to sync from iCal to Google Calendar.

I highly recommend you give them a try by signing up for a 15-day trial. And, if you click through my site, you’ll save $5 on the annual subscription (which is normally $25, which I find to be more than reasonable if it means having my life synced up so well).

One final note, they are a company built off of great morals. They really respect their user’s wishes and are very attentive to the customer support they offer.

Leave comments below if you have tried them before, and what your experiences were or are.

Click here to save $5 on Spanning Sync!