Web developers often use local servers to mimic the environments their code will eventually live in once it launches. OSX allows a wide variety of configurations to run code locally, such as XAMP, WebserverXkit, and good old fashioned Apache via the command line.
Another great entry into this list is MAMP, or “Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP”. Much like the other solutions out there, MAMP provides an all in one package for your web server, database, and scripting language. MAMP brings a lot of polish to the table though, as it comes with phpmyadmin preinstalled making database administration a snap, and the ability to toggle between php4 and php5. A great finishing touch, MAMP provides an OSX dashboard widget that displays your server and mysql service status, as well as giving you the ability to start and stop those services on the fly. The one addition I’d make at this point is the ability to tie given directories to virtual hosts, rather than requiring the user to change their document root when ever they pick up on a different project.
Multiple project directories aside, MAMP is free, so give it a try: I’m finding it to be a great solution!
Posted in Web Development, Technology, Crashlog
Last week Apple posted an interesting interview with Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson: the minds behind 37 Signals. This is one of the companies that’s leading the charge towards distributed online applications, so it’s nice to get a feel for their philosophy and ethics.
Granted you’ll have to get through quite a bit of heavy handed Apple propaganda, but there are some good quotes in there, like “it’s not the low end of the market, it’s the smart end of the market“. Along with Google, 37 Signals is showing the world that the best solution for productivity isn’t necessarily the next iteration of Microsoft office: it’s often a lightweight webapp that fills one roll, and fills it well.
Posted in Web Development, Internet
The developers behind a new search engine called
Powerset are attempting to change the way we communicate with our computers. Instead of always modifying our queries to something that machines can understand, i.e. “iPod”+”reset”+”KCRW podcasts,” founder
Barney Pell would like to have web search learn to understand the way we speak: “Why does my iPod reset itself when listening to KCRW podcasts?” There is more to this than just saving time reformatting your searches:
Pell lays out a convincing argument that natural language search is important in order to communicate meaning and intent. He uses example searches to make his point - “book for children”, “book by children”, and “book about children” are all equivalent to “book children” to search engines today. His core argument is that there may be no way for us to properly express the query “books by children” without using natural language.
I think this is a really exciting idea. There have been numerous occasions where I have needed to find a page quickly but have wasted time trying to figure out how to tell Google that I was looking for “that thing” not that “other thing.” I think this concept was originally attempted by Ask.com (formerly AskJeeves) so I have to believe the concept will live or die on its execution and accuracy. If Pell and his team succeed, they could make searching as we know it today seem incredibly archaic.
Blogged with Flock
UPDATE: Crashpod reader Ron asked us if we knew the answer to why KCRW podcasts cause some iPods to reset. Well Ron, unfortunately we don’t have the technical answer for that. A coworker of mine was experiencing the problem and was also unable to find any information. His final solution was to delete all KCRW-branded podcasts off of his 5G iPod. It now works just fine. Thanks for reading and be sure to check back often!
Posted in Web Development, Internet, Crashlog
CNET has an interesting article concerning the 10th anniversary of Adobe’s (that still sounds weird) Flash plugin for the web. There are some interesting tidbits in there, such as the purchase of the company that created flash and the threat that AJAX poses, but this is what got me the most:
“Today the shift is from animations to applications,” said Kevin Lynch, chief software architect and senior vice president of Adobe’s platform business unit. “The community around Flash has been pushing us–and technically we’ve been working–to enable” Web applications.
I hope companies understand that while it’s not a bad thing to have flash in a webapp, whenever possible to should be relegated to the presentational layer, rather than the actual user interface. If Adobe really wants flash to be the way users interact with web 2.0, they might as well build a flash browser, from the ground up.
Wow. That’s actually sort of a scary prospect.
Posted in Web Development, Internet
