August, 2011

Melt is a new PHP framework. It has all the features most similar frameworks have (routing, error handling, and AJAX integration) and more.

Melt has an unix-like interface to allow programmers to interact with the framework; this allows rapid prototyping, simple maintenance, and access to other development widgets.

Melt is great for start-up projects, as well as projects that need a versatile, strong core.

There’s a great Getting-started video, which can help you to decide whether to give Melt a try.

A recent interview with Mozilla’s Director of Firefox Engineering, Johnathan Nightingale, shed some light on the future of Firefox and its different approach compared to Apple, Google, and Microsoft.  In the interview on conceivablytech, Nightingale highlights the differences between Firefox and its competitors and talks about the future of “browsing”.

“We do not have to respond to shareholders,” said Nightingale, who pointed out the lack of any motives other than making the best browser possible for users.  While this view of Mozilla may seem romantic, it is perhaps the most obvious difference between Mozilla and the other big names in the browser wars.

Nightingale also talked about the influence of Chrome on Firefox, and denied that Firefox are copying features from the Google browser.  “Chrome does not have a monopoly on the UI and being fast,” Nightingale said. “If there is a good idea that comes from someone else, we will take as well. We really don’t want to claim that we are the only ones who have good ideas.”

However, the most interesting discussion in the interview was based around the convergence of browsers and operating systems.  Nightingale said that browsers will start to do “more than just render web pages,” and will become an “agent” as users embrace the cloud and the Internet becomes the primary source for entertainment, business, and communication.

“The attempt to fence users into proprietary platforms with apps today is reminiscent of the previous effort to do the same on computers, and the Web disrupted that ecosystem,” Nightingale said. “On the Web, an application is accessible to everyone, regardless of the operating system their computer runs. Apps on phones should be no different. The web can win there, too, and Mozilla is working to make that happen.”

html5media is an awesome HTML5 media player that is tremendously easy to use.

Although there aren’t many settings or events, html5media does a good job at… getting the job done.

You can embed videos simply with:

<video src=”video.mp4″ width=”320″ height=”200″ controls preload></video>

and audios with:

<audio src=”audio.mp3″ controls preload></audio>

This week we speak with Edward Lujan, CEO of Setster.com about his online appointment booking application. He reveals the importance of listening to clients when developing new features.

How would you describe what Setster does?

Setster is an online appointment booking application.  At its core, Setster syncs service providers calendars and availability and show that availability to clients via web-pages and widgets so they can book appointments 24 hours a day 7 days a week without having to call.

How is it different to other competitors in the space?

Scale.  We have clients that range from single providers up to enterprise clients that have thousands of users.  It was designed to support a very sophisticated user case yet our UI is easy and manageable from a functional prospective.

 How did you come up with the idea?

When you look around, there is a gap in the market where local businesses are marketing online, but are not accepting appointments online.  We saw this a few years ago but with the introduction of daily deals sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, service providers are seeing the immediate benefit of having an online booking system.

 How long did it take you to get Setster off the ground?

That has to be answered in stages.  It took about six months of market research, competitive research, product analysis and wire-framing.  From there it was about another six months of initial development to get the first beta version out the door.  Once live, we pushed on improving the user experience and functionality this took another six to nine months before we saw real traction.

 What’s been the most difficult aspect of setting up the company?

Setting up the company was easy, it’s the decisions that need to be made before hand that is hard.  Everything has cost; investment, time, or opportunity all have a price and a start up can accelerate a dramatic loss with each.  The commitment to start a company is absolute so once you make the decision to press forward, the most difficult thing to do is stay positive and stay the course.  Success never comes from quitting and that’s hard to remember when things are not going the way you want.  If you didn’t weigh out the worse case scenario in your analysis, you are doing yourself an injustice.

What is your business strategy for growth?

Our primary focus is on customer service.  Since this is a recurring revenue model, it’s extremely important that we keep the clients we have.  Adding more clients via social networking, referrals marketing to niche markets and keyword advertising all play a role.

What has been your biggest success?

We came to market in this space very early and listened to the people who would be, and are now using our service.  Features are developed by first thinking how our clients will use the feature to make them more money.

What piece of advice would you give to someone setting up their own start up?

Know your market, build a product that fills a gap and services a need.  Get the product to market quickly even before it’s “perfect”.  Get feedback on your product, adjust your offering and content to reflect the markets real expectations.  Once you’ve done this, put your head down and sell, sell, sell.  Develop for your clients by letting the feature requests bubble up to the top.

Where do you hope to the business in the next five years?

We are not building this as a lifestyle business.  It has massive scale and applicability for an as of yet untapped market.  We’ve already been approached by multiple potential exit partners so hopefully by then it should be sold or acquired.

jQuery.twinkle is a jQuery plugin that helps you to grab user’s attention to special parts of your website.

The visitor’s attention is drawn by highlighting the reference area with glowing circles.

Using the plugin is quite simple. You need only to call the twinkle method on selectors you want to use as in the snippet below:

$( selector ).twinkle();

jQuery.twinkle supports also multiple elements and multiple built-in effects.

Cuepoint is a Javascript plugin that allows you to add cue-points and subtitles in your HTML5 video.

Using Cuepoint is straightforward. You simply need to pass an object containing your slides to the plugin.

The following snippet explain how to add subtitles to HTML5 video with Cuepoint:

$(document).ready(function(){
  var slides = {5:"Hello World"}
  cuepoint.init(slides);
  cuepoint.play();
});

If you want to create skip to links you can use the setTime(seconds) method and bind it to a jQuery click event

$('a').click(function(){
  cuepoint.setTime(60);
});