yewknee.com

Nerd Tools

Some code related goodies you may enjoy perusing:

• jQuery TOOLS - from the people that developed the FlowPlayer comes a host of jQuery plugins for making development quicker / easier. The expose demo is particularly nice but there are tons of things there worth considering.
• iUI: iPhone User Interface - a framework for making web apps feel like native iPhone apps. It's based on work from Joe Hewitt - the guy that made Firebug and developed Facebook for the iPhone. Those credentials should give you pause enough to check it out.

Sexy Curls

The Sexy Curls jQuery Plugin makes adding that little upper right hand corner 'page' effect to any site 10x easier. While I understand if you have no use for such things I think it's worth noting how far alot of these plugins have come in making many "standard" practices of the past few years so much simpler to implement.

Via Keegan.

Carrot Creative

Jamie had me check out the portfolio of Carrot Creative and I must say, I enjoyed the experience. They are using a lot of out of the box jquery plugins for their design problems and it's a great solution for presenting a lot of information in a fixed height area AND impressing the end user. I particularly enjoyed the Services page.

More of the Misc

I enjoy a good unordered list, I hope you do as well.

• Metal LOLcats - "Enter Sandman" broken down, line by line, with LOLcats. The meme may be tired but this is pretty entertaining.
• 20 Best Wordpress Plugins - loads of these lists exist but I'm happy to see so many AJAX powered plugins so Wordpress can catch up a little bit on the technology front. Via CISNKY.
• Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web - a TED talk that I need to watch.

Tech Talk

• Outpost App - Basecamp for the iPhone. Coming "August 2008." Hopefully soon.
• Four Firefox Plugins You Must Have - from a developer point of view at least. Two I am familiar with, two I am not. Via CISNKY.
• OpenTape - miss Muxtape? Set up your own with OpenTape!

Entrepreneurial Websites

IFC is running a new series of web panels discussing music, the music industry and whatever range of topics they care to bring to the table. The latest topic is Entrepreneurial Websites and they've got Justin Ouellette from the somewhat defunct Muxtape, Jakob Lodwick from Vimeo and Normative Music and Maura Johnston from Idolator.

A lot of good points are made about the web and its involvement with the music industry but it's interesting that copyright law, bands being paid for number of plays and accountability are pretty much sidestepped entirely (it's discussed a little but not a lot). If you find this interesting I say read this - a nice mini-conversation that ends in one very intriguing, concise, notion.

Democratic Primaries in 8 Minutes

In case you had a hard time following the Democratic primaries, the attached video will catch you up in a quick and informative manner. Obviously quite a bit is omitted in terms of what the Republicans were up to and any involvement that Ralph Nader may or may not have but that's sorta the point.. it's focused on the Democratic race.

Indecision 2008

So, the Daily Show did a little piece on Barack Obama's recent comments in Pennsylvania regarding elitism. Honestly, I can see them as functioning as a rather harmful audio snippet against his whole campaign but Jon Stewart and crew shed some light on the larger issue at hand. Are Presidential candidates elitist? Absolutely! I've often thought about the fact that running for President means that you're a total egomaniac who believes their ideas are the best. That isn't to say they are terrible people but certainly a different mindset than the majority of us.

I do find it interesting that Barack will probably have to seriously step up to the plate to defend those comments while Hillary comes out and openly admits that she lied about her recent comments on her experience in Bosnia. Yet she's not catching serious flack for openly lying and saying "oh yea, sorry about that."

Overall, politics are exhausting to keep up with and include a huge amount of ridiculousness - fortunately places like The Daily Show help to expose that absurdity. Via Zea.

Forest City Rockers

I love the character design in the Forest City Rockers Motorcycle Club - courtesy of the artworks of Jay Howell. It's not for everybody but I love the style and hilarity of the presentation.. so over the top. I mean, it's a Motorcycle Club with just one motorcycle, how great is that?

Wordpress Overhaul

Looks like Wordpress 2.5 is finally coming to light and they've revamped the backend portion of the application in a huge way. This is good news as I have had to apply the Tiger skin on a few sites that I use WP with and I'd much prefer to use the native environment (not that Tiger Skin is bad but native is better if you can make it happen).

Friday Videos Holiday Spectacular - Dec 7th, 2007

The top two videos are full episodes and 110% worth watching. I realize not everyone has a spare 45 minutes lying around but please take time to watch them both at some point during the weekend. The GUBA video player controls are insane non-intuitive but it's the only place I could find the full episode.. turns out if you right-click the video you can play / pause at your leisure.

The Tyson clip is very NSFW but you have to see all the clips together.

The Vader Redux is a hilarious concept but waay too long. Do yourself a favor and stop watching it after about 30 - 40 seconds, you'll have the taste you need.

Enjoy your weekend.