New Juicy Couture @ Westfiled SF

This is nothing to deal with web dev stuff. I stopped by the new expanded mall, Westfield Centre that opened yesterday. After my stressful day, I was too exhausted to shop so I decidec to just check out a new Juicy Couture store and Bloomies. The blurry photos here are snapshots from Juicy boutique.

Last week I read an article about Juicy's business success, and liked the quote by "so not corporate" co-founder, Gela Nash-Taylor.

We thought an IT platform was a shoe

I wish the industry I belong were that stylish...

Crafty Girls Go Web2.0

I've been a crafty girl ever since I was little. I have made a lot of dolls, stuffed animals, beaded necklaces, hats etc, and I was even a leader of a craft club in my grade school era. When I was unemployed in 2001, I bought tons of inredients and equipments to make soaps, and I spent my free time (= when I was not browseing Dice or Monster) for soapmaking. Since I am such a geek, I even created some online calculatior with girly interface for soapmakers to compute the amount of NaOH.

Therefore, I am happy to find this social networking site for crafty people like me - designestolove.com. Here, you can showcase your designs, share your opinions and ideas and meet people with the same interests. This site provides RSS feeds so you can always get informed with latest additions, but some useful features such as serach or tagging are missing. Since this is still in beta, I hope they will add in future.

DNC Launches PartyBuilder

The Democratic National Committee launched PartyBuilder, an social networking site for civic action to empower Democrats to get more involved in the November elections.

Memo: Mobile UAProfile

Mobile Device User Agent Profile (UAProf) specification:

• UAProfile Central
• UAProf profile repository (Major manufacturers)
• Nokia Device UAProf RDF List
• List of User Agent Strings (incl. Nintendo64)

Other Useful tools/docs:

• openmobilealliance.org UAProf spec (PDF File)
• Firefox Extension: User Agent Switcher
• Nokia Mobile Device Specifications
• CameronMoll.com Mobile (XHTML-MP Testing)
• W3C Mobile Web Best Practices (Validator)

Google/Yahoo! SMS

Send SMS to somebody's phone From PC:
Google Send To Phone
Yahoo! Mobile (Send Message from Your PC)

Send SMS to Google from mobile phone:

1. Start a new text message and type in your search query
2. Send the message to the number "46645" (GOOGL)
3. You'll receive text message(s) with results

Tip: For help send the word 'help' as a text message to 46645.

What you can search with Google SMS:

• Business listings (Sample Query: pizza 10013)
• Residential listings from PhoneBook(Sample Query: john smith palo alto ca)
• Driving Directions (Sample Query: pasadena ca to santa monica)
• Movie Showtimes (Sample Query: king kong 94103)
• Weather (Sample Query: wx houston tx)
• Stock Quotes (Sample Query: wmt for Wal-Mart)
• Q&A (Sample Query: population of Japan)
• Product Prices (Sample Query: Price ipod 20gb)
• Definitions (Sample Query: d crepuscular)
• Sports (Sample Query: chicago bulls)
• More useful information (Caluculator, Translation, Currency conversion, Area code look-up, Zip code look-up)

Memo: Flash and XML

Dynamic Flash with XML

1. Create XML (generate with JSP)

jsp:

<%@ page contentType="text/xml" %>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<itemlist>
...
</itemlist>

2. Load the external XML into Flash (fla). Create swf

ActionScript:

myTest = new XML(); //create a new xml object
myTest.ignoreWhite = true; //ignore whitespace
myTest.load("sample.xml");
...

3. Embed the swf (and set xml path) in HTML

HTML:

<object width="250" height="250" id="some_id">
<param name=movie value="test.swf">
<embed src="test.swf">
</embed>
</object>

Bookmarks

1. JSP / XML

• Development with JSP and XML-- Part II: JSP with XML in mind (Article by Sun)
• Working with XML: The Java/XML Tutorial (Tutorials by Sun)
• Generate dynamic XML using JavaServer Pages technology (Article by IBM)
• XML JSP Tag Library (Open Source JSP Tag Library for Java XML-driven Web Applications)

2. Flash

• Introduction to XML in Flash by kirupa.com
• XML/SWF Charts Excellent downloadable swf demo by maani.us

Memo: XMLHttpRequest object tutorials

When I first tried a simple Ajax to create a MP3 device catalog last year, I used Apple's demo site that helped me to get started:

• XMLHttpRequest Object Demo (by Apple)

I found these articles by IBM this year and read partially:

• Mastering Ajax, Part 1: Introduction to Ajax
• Mastering Ajax, Part 2: Make asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax
• Mastering Ajax, Part 3: Advanced requests and responses in Ajax
• Mastering Ajax, Part 4: Exploiting DOM for Web response
• Mastering Ajax, Part 5: Manipulate the DOM
• Mastering Ajax, Part 6: Build DOM-based Web applications

I will read later:

• 60 More AJAX Tutorials

YouOS - Web2.0 Online Platform

YouOS is an Ajax-based experimental "Web operating system" creates by guys at MIT. It is a window-based operating system with GUI that runs on browser so you can access your desktop from any computer anywhere. YouOS tracks a user's state across user sessions, so after you log off, you can log on from anywhere and your desktop and applications will be in the same state where you left them.

Amazingly, there are already nearly 200 applications you can install on YouOS account - rich text editor, email client, chat, RSS reader, also a couple of different web browsers! It's funny that the OS runs on browser and has its owen web browser. The screenshot show my other blog site displayed on YouBrowser. I dunno if it is really useful to view web within web though.

Ajax Software - Free Adobe and Microsoft alternatives?

More and more online Ajax applications are coming. Online word processor, spreadsheet, and now, an image editor. This screenshot is taken from Snipshot where you can edit your images uploaded or imported from web such as flickr. (I used their sample photo to demo.) This online application allows you to edit images with basic tools like crop, rotate, resize, basic image adjustments.

List of other online "Office" appz:

• Writely (Word)
• Google Spreadsheet (Excel)
• ajaxXLS (Excel)
• ajaxWrite (Word)
• think free (Office all)
• ajaxSketch (Illustrator)

Social Shopping List

It seems like an another big wave of Internet trend has been around (but hope this is not like the late-90s dot-com crap), the social-networking sites have been massive success (though I hate MySpace), "tagging" has been everywhere, and I started hearing news about new startups all the time.

Today, I've read about this "a collaborative shopping community" called Stylehive, whose office is located here in San Francisco. Though this site has so much more to be improved, the idea and look-and-feel of the site are something I can relate.

Browsing the tags like manolo makes me want them really want them. Bad for me, but this fits perfectly as we live in the material world.

(This blog entry was originally written on June 16 for my other blog and copied it on Blogger on Sept.27)