Jack and the (subversion controlled) Beanstalk

Posted on February 16, 2008 by

As a developer, have you ever wanted to banish your fears of hard disk failure and stupid mistakes in one easy step? Did you ever consider that using a hosted version control system could do just that? It’s long been established that using a version control system is A Good Thing for software quality and developer productivity. Joel on Software goes as far as claiming it as the very first step on the path to writing good code. Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

7 essential planning tips when developing your application on Facebook Platform

Posted on February 11, 2008 by

Once you have come up with a great idea for a Facebook application, seeing an idea all the way through its implementation can be a tricky business. Once you’ve figured out how the application is supposed to work, your design of the implementation – the strategy of how you will code up your app – is crucial to the success of your initial version.

When targeting the Facebook platform, it’s essential we consider the following seven items before we even begin to start coding:

  1. Access control integration
  2. Life cycle callbacks
  3. Friend tracking
  4. Notification map
  5. Invite/request positioning
  6. Advert usage/placement
  7. Your main logic!

To guarantee your app’s successful development, read on for tips and tricks about all of the above.
Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | 4 Comments

New blog launched – the fonic monkey lives

Posted on February 6, 2008 by

I’m proud to announce the launch of the fonicmonkey blog. fonicmonkey is designed to be the perfect complement to this start-up blog, aimed squarely at developers who enjoy all things technical.

The main focus at the moment for fonicmonkey will be a set of quality articles about developing on Facebook platform. It’s a complex platform that I intend to help people take advantage of over the next several months.

(UPDATE Feb 16th) The first big article, “7 essential planning tips when developing your application on Facebook Platform” is online now.

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Be strict with your FBML for Facebook notifications

Posted on February 4, 2008 by

UPDATE: Facebook have completely discontinued support for notifications.

The Facebook platform can be a very restrictive mistress at times.

The documentation for sending notifications states:

“The notification parameter is a very stripped-down set of FBML which allows only tags that result in just text and links.”

But they’re lying – it’s even more restrictive than that. At the time of writing, enclosing any text in <strong> tags will cause it to disappear from the notification! It’s unclear why developers are restricted from emaphisizing the important text in a notification. I mistakenly assumed basic stylings would be possible.

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A cross-browser Windows Media Player component for ASP.NET 2.0

Posted on February 4, 2008 by

ASP.NET 2.0 is a very powerful, extensible web framework. Its component model allows for very efficient re-use of code and user interface designs.

As Microsoft created the entire framework, you might reasonably expect the default ‘Toolbox’ to offer you a wide range of components to integrate with other Microsoft technologies. Technologies such as Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger, Movie Maker or other client-side applications. Alas, this is not the case. Continue reading →

Posted in Dot net | 2 Comments

Create an SEO-friendly website and be up and running in minutes

Posted on January 30, 2008 by

When you haven’t got any money and you need a website that will look nice and professional, my advice would be to head over to wordpress.com. As well as being really easy to update (even for non-technical users), they offer all sorts of nice features for creating web pages and news/blog posts. The bonus is that they have stats tracking built right in, so you can how popular your site is (or isn’t!) getting. Their site is built on the same engine that this website uses, and you can sign up with them for free.

Just what every bootstrapper needs.

Once you’ve built your site using their tools, it’s only a few dollars to ensure it appears whenever you visit your company’s main website address.

Posted in HOW-TOs | Leave a comment

How to build a web start-up

Posted on January 26, 2008 by

Ryan Carson just posted a link to a short video he’s made listing some top money-saving tips for starting up a web company. He also talks through a useful spreadsheet that helps you plan your cash flow for the first year.  Check it out.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Leave a comment