Blogs

Well, Now What?

Submitted by eow on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 17:08
The interior of the Salt Lake City Public Library

Image via Wikipedia

The startup I was working for in Salt Lake City died last week. It was sad, and disappointing but I learned a lot.  Failure teaches more than success they say. I hope they are right :>)

I am kind of excited to be back on my own.  I like being my own boss and FileMaker decided to ship FileMaker 11 during my first week back on my own. Nice timing! I am not sure what I am going to be doing yet, but I have a few ideas. We will see what comes of the them.

In the meantime here is a brief rundown of some of the stuff I did at my old company. Some of it is pretty cool

Teaching FileMaker to Send Alerts to an iPhone

Submitted by eow on Sun, 01/31/2010 - 12:31
PNS on an ipod/iphone using Prowl

Image by jblyberg via Flickr

Recently I had the need to send alerts to my iPhone from my FileMaker system.  I started using Twitter, and while that works ok, the alerts would get lost in my twitter stream. I needed something that would make different sounds based on what kind of alert was coming in. 

I found a super simple solution. And it was almost free!

Avatar, Earthquakes, and The Real Time Web

Submitted by eow on Wed, 12/30/2009 - 14:39
Avatar - Na'vi tribe

Image by k-ideas via Flickr

Avatar was absolutely amazing. I saw it in Real3D last week and I am going to see it again tomorrow.  In addition to blowing me away visually, it has sparked a shift in how I view the evolution of what we call the "Internet" or the "web".

Installing Aegir on ubuntu 9.1

Submitted by eow on Sun, 12/06/2009 - 12:00

I have been wanting to get Aegir up and running

on the latest ubuntu server. I finally got a chance to do it this weekend. Aegir is hosting platform for drupal. and ubuntu is my favorite linux distro. 

Ext.js Reactorized

Submitted by eow on Mon, 11/23/2009 - 01:06

Finally getting around to digging into the very awesome Fusion Reactor plugin from Digital Fusion.  I wanted to create a roll over button with text and icons.  I turned to the Ext JS Javascript library for help and this is what i came up with.

FileMaker OnKeystroke Script Triggers

Submitted by eow on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 08:08

recently I was asked by another FileMaker Developer how to set up a Script Trigger to run when the Enter Key is pressed.  Here is screencast and a sample file showing how it is done.  You can download the file at the bottom of the post.

Finally Got #googlewave... But I don't get it!

Submitted by eow on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 09:45

So I finally got Google Wave. ( Sorry all my invites are accounted for ). I was very excited. I couldn't wait to try it out.

I opened it up and... well... er... nothing! It is like a huge beautiful meeting room full of cool tools to help you interact with other people. The only problem is there is nobody else there to interact with. Or at least nobody I can find. It's like a massive echo chamber, except quieter. Hopefully this will improve as my invitees join up.

It is a nice blending of email, chat and docs functionality. And I am sure that it will grow in usefulness as more extensions are made available. But honestly, and as much as I hate email, I doubt google wave will kill it off anytime soon.

I am trying to remember that google wave is a platform, or a service, not a product per se. And I shouldn't expect to much from the first attempts to build useful stuff on it, but if I am being honest, I have to say that my first experience has been underwhelming. Perhaps I lack the vision.

sad panda!

Sir Ken Robinson | Schools Kill Creativity

Submitted by eow on Sun, 10/25/2009 - 10:08

Another reason why we desperately need Charter Schools.

 

FileMaker et al

Submitted by eow on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 09:53

I haven't written much about FileMaker lately, and I should, since it is still the most useful tool I have in my arsenal. I live in it almost every day. Together with a host of other technologies FileMaker is proving itself to be an extremely awesome platform to build a startup on. 

At DevCons past, Rich Columbre used to give a talk called something like "FileMaker at the Center". This is my version of that talk and I call it "FileMaker et al". Let me start with a little background information. 

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