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So…I started a write up on CodeIgniter (my favorite PHP Framework) earlier this week, but I haven’t gotten around to finishing it just yet. I’ll look to get that pushed out soon. Yesterday though, I had a run in with a rather frustrating web accessibility issue that I thought I’d share. Not necessarily because it’s uber important, but more because it’s something that frustrated me, and that I’ll surely be keeping an eye on now.

As a web developer, and a pretty recent advocate of the standards movement, I find myself giving more and more thought to web accessibility over various mediums. As I build a site, I’m always thinking about who could be visiting the site, and how they’re viewing it. My two most common thoughts are - what will this look like on a mobile device, and how will this look to a search engine. There are obviously plenty more to consider (screen readers, low resolution monitors, etc) but I’ll save those for another conversation.

A back story as always…I’ve been contemplating switching from my Palm Treo to the iPhone for a little time now. While I really feel like the iPhone kind of goes against my open source beliefs, I realize that it would be incredibly helpful in making me more efficient. Until I can get Android up and running on a phone, it’s probably the most cutting edge phone out there. But I digress.

So, I’m driving home after work yesterday, and I wanted to check with Verizon to see when my contract expires. If I’m gonna make the switch to the iPhone, I’d rather not pay the contract cancellation fee. I’m sitting in traffic, so I pull out my Treo and fire up the browser to look up their number. I realize it’s a little slow to load, but that’s no big deal. When the site finally comes up, I’m kind of excited to see the “skip to content” link at the top of the page. Sweet, maybe this isn’t going to be a painful process. I’m not gonna have to trek through a ton of navigation images to get to the information I need. I find the link to the contact us page, and click on it. After another short wait, the contact us page comes up. Again…I click on the “skip to content” link and realize they’re asking me for my zip code. To begin with, this is something that always frustrates me with the Verizon website. WTF? I just want a way to call you - what on earth do you need my zip code for? Oh well, lucky for me I’m pretty comfortable on the Treo keyboard. I type in my zip code, and I start navigating to find the submit button. hmm…I don’t see it. I look around for a couple minutes and it’s nowhere to be found. What the…I can’t give you my zip code, which in turn means I can’t get a number to call you. All because your website wasn’t prepared for a user like me? I think that’s kind of shoddy. As much as you guys charge me for my phone bill each month, you’d figure you’d have someone somewhere QA’ing your website and making sure that everyone can get to the information they need. Verizon Wireless - I think you’ve failed.

Point of the story…don’t always assume that everyone will have a full featured browser when they’re looking at your site. More and more people are turning to their cellphones to find information online. If they can’t get the information they want, it’s likely that they’ll get pretty frustrated.

I do realize that this could be a plot to keep me from ever switching my service to another provider, but I’d like to think it’s just an oversight on Verizon’s part.

So…this is my first real post for 2008. Thankfully, it’s technology related. As I mentioned, I’m hoping to begin posting on this blog more regularly. I’ve even created a recurring event in my calendar to try and set aside some time to do so. On to my posting…

I’ve come across the Google Apps website on a couple occasions before, but I haven’t had the time to sit down and really see what it’s all about. I knew that it provided users with a way to utilize the awesome applications that Google puts out on a more customized basis - specifically for your organization. But that’s about as far as I had gotten. Until the other day.

A little background…I’ve been giving some real thought to improving my companies’ collaboration efforts, and have been doing some research on different options. Our current solution is just too flaky, and piece mealed together. We currently host our e-mail on a dedicated server off site. Some use IMAP to connect to the server, others use POP. On top of that we don’t really have a calendaring solution in place. Some of us are using Google Calendar, others are using .mac for their iCals, etc. In the IM realm, we all have our personal IM accounts that we use to communicate when we’re online, but none of this is centralized, or personalized to the company. With all of these different tools, it’s difficult to find contact information for any one person. Needless to say, that makes planning meetings and staying on top of e-mails when we’re out of the office a little difficult. Which, as we continue to grow, I find myself needing to do more and more. What do we do?

There are plenty of options out there for an organization to try and centralize these communication channels. As a small business, we really don’t have the money to throw at this problem so some of the larger scale options are out of the question. After doing some research, I came across what I thought was a good option. I contemplated the idea of setting up an internal server and managing an open source application called Funambol. This really seemed to be the most viable option as it provided truly centralized collaboration efforts, and even gave us some cool features like push email, and over the air sync. Not to mention, it’s open source so we had the ability to customize it if we needed. While I didn’t really like the idea of managing another piece of hardware, I thought it was probably our best bet.

As I was playing around with Funambol last week, I remembered coming across the Google Apps site and figured maybe I’d take another look and see what it was all about. Perhaps it provided a solution that could be pretty simple. I was right! The more and more I looked at the site, and saw what all it had to offer, the more and more excited I got that I might have found an answer for us. Google Apps provides your organization with a truly centralized suite of web applications that focus mainly around collaboration between employees. The initial offering provides organizations with semi-customizable, hosted versions of their GMail(e-mail), Google Calendar(calendar), and Google Talk(chat) applications. On top of that, they provide organizations with access to Google Docs for file collaboration, Google Sites for creating team or project pages, and iGoogle for customizable dashboards for each user - one thing we’ve been looking at developing in-house.

I’m not ruling Funambol out just yet, as I want to make sure that Google Apps really meets all of our needs. However, my initial findings are looking very promising. I think I may pilot the standard edition on cdev technologies and see how it all works out. With the upcoming launch of my new technology partnership, I’m thinking we may start the company with these tools in place. Assuming everything goes as planned with the pilot.

Google never ceases to amaze me. The people that they have working over there are brilliant.

I’ll be sure to chronicle my findings as I play some more with Google Apps. I’m sure others will be interested to hear about the process.

Till next time!

Well…I thought I could do it. I thought I could keep a blog up, and write in it on a regular basis. Apparently it’s a little harder then I thought Life…you’ve beat me again - throwing your fun social events, many trips out of town, and late nights at work my way. Damn you!

I’m pretty sure there aren’t many of you reading this on a consistent basis, but…for those of you that have somehow stumbled upon my little playground, I do apologize for my slackerness.

So here’s my ploy. It’s a new year, and so…a new beginning. I’m finally nailing down the partnership with my technology firm. This will obviously put more work on my plate, but hopefully it will also give me the ability to have a real life (think delegation). All of this being said, I’m hoping to start again on this blog, as well as my up-and-coming technology blog, so stay tuned. Hopefully I’ll do a little better in ‘08 then I did in ‘07.

Thanks for reading, and happy new year!

I remember this day, 6 years ago.

I remember not knowing what to think.

I remember thanking god that my family and friends were all okay.

And hoping that my prayers for those that lost loved ones were heard.

Times have changed, and people have moved on.

But I will never forget.

I apologize up front for two reasons.

1. I have been busy lately trying to get organized for an upcoming move so I haven’t been good about keeping up with this blog.

2. Because today’s post has no real content to it either.

That’s right…nothing technology related, nothing business related, nothing really even about me. However, I think it’s worth checking out

It’s been one of those days where I’ve hardly had time to get away from the computer. I was starting to feel the effects - I was zoning, getting irritable, and generally not being myself. Then, I got an e-mail. A buddy sent this video over to me, and it made everything just a little bit better! This little kid rocks, and apparently he’s only 5 years old (at the time of the video).

Get it Bobby Jay!