John Wang

Once upon a time (1994), free web hosting was available with no advertisements. Your web host limited you to a size of 2 MB.  And URLs were even more obscure. These were the days of GeoCities, Tripod, and Angelfire. It was hard to tell someone to visit your website when your URL was in the form of https://www.geocities.com/tokyo/temple/4460. Enter the social web of the 90s, Web Rings. The SEO technique of submitting your website to a circular network of similar subject websites that required a small badge on your website.

This was were my adventures in web design started. I began with GeoCities in 1996. Having to own an entire block of a neighborhood to host images due to the 2MB limit, which was later raised to 5MB then 10MB, etc. Joined Web Rings to promote my websites. Stuffing as much keyword meta tags as possible. And submiting them of the search engines of the world. Search Engines before Google exists. AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, DogPile, MetaCrawler, InfoSeek, Northen Light, WebCrawler, HotBot, and Yahoo.

Back then, there was no CSS to style your site. People had to used HTML Tables instead of Divs. Animated Gifs and background Midi music ruled the web. These were the days of Netscape Navigator, where you needed to use a text editor or Dreamweaver to code a website.

Enter the era of Microsoft FrontPage, HomeSite, and Adobe Go-Live. Now anyone can create a website if they know how to use Microsoft Word. And everyone did just that. WYSIWYG allowed anyone to put up a website. Failure to have valid code never mattered. W3C had no impact on anyone. And FrontPage extensions to boot.

The new century quickly brought us the world of blogging through Blogger, MovableType and LiveJournal. I first started a LiveJournal blog thanks to TechTV‘s Megan Morrone providing me an invite. It was the beginning of many things to come. In a world now dominated by WordPress, TypePad, MovableType, and Blogger.

Not much later, in 2002, Friendster came out. The beginning of Social Networks. Quickly following suit were MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. The current state of the web now dominated by Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and many other Social Networks. Web 2.0 has taken the world by storm and it’s showing no signs of letting go.

Care to share you history of web design? How did you get started in this business?

Read More →

I have been riding the Dahon Speed D7 folding bike for a little over a month now. In that time, I have put in just shy of 130 miles on it. Dahon has been in the business of folding bikes for 25 years now. And the Speed D7 model is their best-selling folding bike. It was also awarded BusinessWeek’s Best Value Folder Award.

The Bike Specs:
Weight: 25.74 lbs.
Speeds: 7
Folded Size: 33 x 64 x 81 cm (13″ x 25″ x 32″)
Tire Size: 20″

I have been commuting about 3 miles during weekdays. I have taken the bike out for a longer run of 8 miles and the ride was still quite comfortable. It is a bit challenging on the steep hills when compared to a standard 26″ mountain bike.

In the past month, I have run into a few problems with the bike.

• Every now and then, the quick-release for the handle-bar will loosen.
• In addition to that, the handle-bar post loosened as well. The latter is much harder to adjust without the appropriate tools. The quick-releases are quite easy to tighten, so that’s not too bad.
• There is a wheel magnet that aids in holding the bike together when folded. The magnet sometimes would either fall out or come out when unfolding the bike. Again, this can be remedied by applying superglue.
• The elastic bands on the back rack lose stretchiness fairly quick. It can be adjusted, but replacements cannot be purchased.
• It is very hard to mount a water bottle on the bike. But it can be done.

All said, there is quite a list of great things to say about the bike.

• The bike folds very small. It’s small enough to fit under my cubicle desk at work.
• The bike is fairly light. You can carry it on the bus if you’d like. Dahon does have other lighter bikes also.
• The small wheels allow you to accelerate fairly quickly.
• The rack on the back of the bike is very handy. (Some models do not come with this. It is a separate accessory.)
• It is a great conversation starter. You will get a lot of people inquiring about it.

Dahon has a Flickr group where you can meet other Dahon bike owners and also see various pictures. On their own website, Dahon has a forum and picture gallery which you can contribute to.

This is a wonderful bike to start commuting to work and zipping around town. There are special baskets that fit perfectly on the front of the bike for going to a farmer’s market. I highly reccommend this bike. If you’re looking for something a little lighter, I would take a look at the Mariner. It’s essentially the same bike as the Speed D7, but comes with a tire pump built into the seat and is made of Aluminum (making the bike rust-resistant NOT rust-proof!!!)

Read More »

Read More →

Moving to a new OS is never an easy task. You have to get all new applications that are compatible with the new OS. You probably want to transfer all your data from the old one to the new one. And you may even need new hardware if your old one isn’t compatible with the new OS (ie. wifi cards, keyboards, webcams, etc.)

After observing some PC switchers at a local Apple Store, there are a bunch of things that I noticed bugged the average PC (Windows) user trying to switch to a Mac to no end.

1. No “Home, End, Pg Up, Pg Down” buttons. Not sure why this is, but that’s the way it was designed for better or worse.
2. No “Delete” button – ok, ok. Technically there is a “Delete” button, but to a Windows user, that translates to “Backspace.”
3. No “Insert” button – I haven’t figured this one out myself yet.
4. Tapping the trackpad does nothing! This seemed to be a big one. Especially with the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. You have to physically press down on the trackpad to click a link in Safari. This seemed to drive some of the users nuts. Go figure.
5. No “Right-Click” button. Simple enough to understand that a PC user is used to having a 2-button trackpad. As soon as the Apple Genius told them that they needed to just press with 2 fingers, the users seemed ok. Though, still confused as to why not just put 2 buttons there.

Of course, these annoyances are easily overcome once the user has gone through the learning curve or a workshop.

Were you a switcher? What growing pains did you go through?

Read More →

As managers, team leads, project managers, and supervisors, we have a responsibility to those we lead. And most often than not, the reason we lose them is our own fault.  It’s a very hard realization to learn that you are the problem and not them. That’s not to say that there aren’t cases where they are the problem. There’s plenty of those too. From my past experience as a developer, leader, co-worker, and designer, here are the biggest reasons that I’ve seen cause either myself or another great person to leave.

Read More »

Read More →

Ever since the iPhone 3G came out, I’ve been looking for the perfect Twitter iPhone app. I’ve tried Twitterific, Twinkle, Twittelator,TwitterFon, Twittervision, and Twitxr.

Some of them are actually good and have some really interesting features. Such as: attaching pictures to a tweet (Twitxr), GPS location posting and seeing if anyone is near-by (Twinkle), and searching + add to following list (Twittelator).

But all that said, I’ve found my favorite Twitter app for the iPhone in Yahoo’s oneConnect. It’s a free app and it has a nice UI that is very user friendly.

Read More »

Read More →