11 |
12 |
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/_posts/2006-03-09-more-rails-stuff-from-your-friends-at-helicoid.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "More Rails stuff from your friends at Helicoid"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - code
7 | ---
8 |
9 | There's a new plugin that you can find more info about here. It hopefully fulfils all your url naming needs, it filled ours! We are planning on soon having a public SVN repository which should hold some interesting things.
10 |
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/contact.html:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: default
3 | title: Contact Helicoid
4 | ---
5 |
6 | Please wait while the contact form loads, or visit it directly.
9 | 10 | 11 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2008-05-13-server-maintenance-ebiwrite-bug-fixes.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Server maintenance, Ebiwrite bug fixes" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - announcements 7 | --- 8 | 9 | We'll be performing server maintenance this weekend which may cause service interruptions for our applications. Read more on our "status page":http://status.helicoid.net/. 10 | 11 | Also, we recently fixed a bug on the Ebiwrite signup page which could cause problems when registering. If you couldn't register you should be able to now. 12 | 13 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2009-09-23-tiktrac-widget-update.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Tiktrac Widget Update" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - tiktrac 7 | - widgets 8 | --- 9 | 10 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/helicoid/blog/tiktrac_widget.png! 11 | 12 | There's a new Tiktrac Dashboard widget out. Download it here: "tiktrac.com/widgets":http://tiktrac.com/widgets 13 | 14 | I've also put the code in my GitHub account: "alexyoung/tiktrac-widget":http://github.com/alexyoung/tiktrac-widget -- if you're a developer check it out in Dashcode. 15 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2006-06-22-tiktrac-server-status.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Tiktrac server status" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - announcements 7 | - tiktrac 8 | --- 9 | 10 | Tiktrac's servers are currently inaccessible due to problems with our web hosting providers. 11 | 12 | This is a strange coincidence, because we're also migrating to a NEW server set up this weekend. 13 | 14 | If you're trying to access Tiktrac right now it may or may not be accessible, but our hosting providers have assured us that full service should resume within a few hours. 15 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2006-08-03-basecamp-mobile-update.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Basecamp Mobile Update" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - code 7 | - basecamp 8 | - mobile 9 | --- 10 | 11 | If you like our "Basecamp Mobile":http://basecamp.helicoid.net system, then you'll be pleased to know that I've been doing a lot of work on this recently. 12 | 13 | If you're looking forward to running this on your own server, you'll be able to _soon_. This is a side project for me, so it gets bumped out the way for other paying projects, but I promise I'm working hard on it! 14 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2009-02-03-service-outage-this-sunday.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Service outage this Sunday" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - upgrades 7 | --- 8 | 9 | We've got server maintenance planned on Sunday 8th February: add it to your Deadline account! It's likely that all our web applications will be down for a few minutes while this happens. 10 | 11 | We post about service outages here: "status.helicoid.net":http://status.helicoid.net/. We also post on Twitter about service interruptions: "twitter.com/helicoid":http://twitter.com/helicoid. 12 | 13 | 14 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2008-09-10-cutty-sark-cam.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Cutty Sark Cam" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - london 7 | - webcam 8 | --- 9 | 10 | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3127/2845719930_304c888d85_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2845719930/ 11 | 12 | Our friend (and long-time Helicoid beta tester/software breaker) Simon Starr recently created the "Cutty Sark Cam":http://cuttysarkcam.org.uk/. The Cutty Sark is a clipper ship built in 1869, and was sadly damaged by a fire in 2007. You can watch the progress of the extensive restoration using Simon's camera. 13 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2006-03-13-snippets-of-mystery.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Snippets of mystery" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - code 7 | --- 8 | 9 |Here's a sneak preview from in-house enigma extraordinaire Alex:
Here's another from myself, your favourite Gabriel:
10 |
11 | Neat stuff will be done soon now! Promise!
12 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2007-12-27-tiktrac-referral-scheme-launched.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Tiktrac: Referral scheme launched" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - tiktrac 7 | - announcements 8 | - tips 9 | --- 10 | 11 | "Tiktrac's":http://tiktrac.com now got a referral scheme. If you get 10 friends to sign up, you'll receive 50% off the Standard or Premium accounts for a year! 12 | 13 | All you need to do is get your referral URL and hand it out to friends, or even stick it on your blog. You can find your referral URL by logging in, clicking on Tiktrac settings and then Referrals. 14 | 15 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2009-10-29-riot-ruby-unit-tests.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Riot: Ruby Unit Tests" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - programming 7 | - ruby 8 | --- 9 | 10 | "Riot":http://github.com/thumblemonks/riot is a unit testing library that I've been using on a few new Helicoid products/features, and some of my open source projects. It has incredibly concise syntax, and I liked it so much that I wrote a JavaScript version. 11 | 12 | "Read my overview of Riot here":http://alexyoung.org/2009/10/26/riot-testing/ and download my JavaScript version on "github.com/alexyoung/riotjs":http://github.com/alexyoung/riotjs. 13 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2009-11-20-helipad-mac-updates.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Helipad Mac Updates" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - mac 7 | - helipad 8 | --- 9 | 10 | !http://dl.dropbox.com/u/221414/helicoid/blog/helipad_mac.png! 11 | 12 | "Helipad Mac":http://helipadapp.com/mac.html has been updated. This version makes the following changes: 13 | 14 | * Added automatic app updates 15 | * Documents can now be sorted by the last edited date (go to Preferences, Appearance to change the sort setting) 16 | * Fixed a bug where pressing Undo moved the scrollbar 17 | 18 | "Download":http://helipadapp.com/Helipad.zip 19 | 20 | 21 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2012-04-25-helipad-pdf-update.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Helipad PDF Generator Improvements" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - helipad 7 | - upgrades 8 | --- 9 | 10 |  11 | 12 | Helipad's PDF generator now supports **UTF-8** characters. The previous PDF exporter was a temporary solution that just worked on plain old-fashioned ASCII text, but this upgraded version should perform a lot better. 13 | 14 | It's still aimed at generating simple text documents, but if English isn't your first language then you should find it generates documents in your language. 15 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2005-12-21-tiktrac.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Tiktrac" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - announcements 7 | - tiktrac 8 | --- 9 | 10 | We're in the final stages of testing Tiktrac, our timesheets software. 11 | 12 | For a long time, we have had to put up with spreadsheets for timesheets. So one of us initiated a project to create a simple Ajax time management application, and then we both evolved it into something quite sophisticated. 13 | 14 | We have also updated the Tiktrac homepage, so you can read more about the features it will launch with. 15 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2006-02-17-tiktrac-reports.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Tiktrac Reports" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - tiktrac 7 | - announcements 8 | --- 9 | 10 |
11 |
12 | We've just added another report to Tiktrac, and added a few bugfixes that we've been hard at work on over the last week.
13 |
14 | If you'd like to see more reports on Tiktrac, please tell us what kinds of reports you'd like to see. You can use our contact form to get in touch, or post comments to this blog.
15 |
16 |
17 |
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/_posts/2008-11-15-deadline-api-live.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline API live"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - api
7 | - deadline
8 | - announcements
9 | ---
10 |
11 | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3038/3030078880_710fd5b7f3_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/3030078880/
12 |
13 | The "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com API is now live:
14 |
15 | "Deadline API documentation":http://pad.helicoid.net/document/public/482ae365
16 |
17 | A lot of people were asking for it, so we prioritised releasing it this week. We want to run a competition for the best apps people write with it, so stay tuned for details on that soon.
18 |
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/_posts/2009-02-16-new-tiktrac-widget.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "New Tiktrac widget"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | - widgets
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Our new Tiktrac widget is out: get it on the "Tiktrac widget":http://tiktrac.com/widgets page. This is an entirely new version that adds:
11 |
12 | * Timers to every task
13 | * Description editing (click a description to edit it)
14 | * Delete tasks
15 | * Error messages
16 |
17 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/helicoid/blog/tiktrac_widget/editing_descriptions.gif!
18 |
19 | This version was created by "Thomas Loudon":http://tomloudon.tumblr.com with support from Alex at Helicoid.
20 |
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/_posts/2010-11-19-server-upgrade.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Server Upgrade: Wednesday 24th November"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - servers
7 | - maintenance
8 | ---
9 |
10 | We've outgrown the server we use for Helipad, Tiktrac, Deadline, and Ebiwrite, so it's being upgraded. There may be some downtime on Wednesday 24th November as we move the data over to the new server.
11 |
12 | This will massively improve capacity and should improve the stability of our apps.
13 |
14 | I'll use Twitter to post updates about the upgrade in case there is any unexpected downtime.
15 |
16 | The downtime should be around 1 hour, starting at 11am GMT.
17 |
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/_posts/2010-01-06-helipad-iphone-version-16.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helipad iPhone Version 1.6"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - helipad
7 | - iphone
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Helipad iPhone version 1.6 has been submitted to the App Store. This version includes the following new features and fixes:
11 |
12 | * Add a new document to a folder
13 | * Share editor now appears properly from within folders
14 | * You can now delete folders: either just delete the folder or all the associated documents
15 | * Rename folders when viewing the documents in a folder
16 | * The full document list no longer includes documents that have been placed within a folder
17 |
18 |
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/_posts/2006-01-07-multitapnet-bugfixes.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Multitap.net bugfixes"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - multitap
7 | - announcements
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Multitap.net has had several bugfixes and improvements added today. Most are small enchancements to the interface based on recent feedback.
11 |
12 | Some of the members of the growing Multitap.net found that comments were too short, so we've increased the size.
13 |
14 | If you can think of any other changes, don't hesitate to contact us, or post a comment to this post.
15 |
16 |
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/_posts/2006-06-24-tiktrac-and-bugtagger-server-move.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac and Bugtagger server move"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | - tiktrac
8 | - bugtagger
9 | ---
10 |
11 | "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com and "Bugtagger":http://bugtagger.com have moved to a new data center this weekend. You should be able to start accessing Tiktrac as usual by the end of today, but it may take up to 48 hours for some people.
12 |
13 | The good news is: once things have moved over, they should be much faster and more reliable!
14 |
15 | "Let us know":http://helicoid.net/contact if you have any problems with your account after the migration.
16 |
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/_posts/2008-03-12-basecamp-mobile-updates.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Basecamp Mobile updates"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - basecamp
7 | - mobile
8 | ---
9 |
10 | I've been working on updating "Basecamp Mobile":http://basecamp.helicoid.net to try and solve the login issues some users have reported.
11 |
12 | * "basecamp.helicoid.net":http://basecamp.helicoid.net is now running on a faster server
13 | * I've updated legacy code and moved it to Rails 2
14 | * The public code repository has been updated: "http://code.helicoid.net/svn/applications/bcm/":http://code.helicoid.net/svn/applications/bcm/
15 |
16 | Many thanks to "ash" for his helpful suggestions.
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
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/_posts/2006-06-03-tiktrac-new-dashboard-overview.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac: new dashboard overview"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | ---
8 |
9 | We've just improved the handy table on the Tiktrac dashboard! It now shows some links so you can easily view your data for certain time periods.
10 |
11 | 
12 |
13 | Want to suggest more features for us to toil away over? "Head over to the forums":http://forums.helicoid.net and let us know!
14 |
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/_posts/2007-11-26-tiktrac-free-period-over.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac free period over"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | ---
8 |
9 | Using "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com for price plans other than free will require subscription payments starting today.
10 |
11 | We allowed free usage for a grace period after beta testing, but unfortunately this is about to end.
12 |
13 | If you do not pay, your account will be locked. However, you will still be able to access the data export page and save your data as XML.
14 |
15 | To read more about billing or make a payment, navigate to Tiktrac settings (the link at the top-right of the page), then *Billing*.
16 |
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/_posts/2008-01-04-tiktrac-1000-days-worth-of-time-tracked.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac: 1000 days worth of time tracked"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | - thoughts
8 | - fun
9 | ---
10 |
11 | We recently updated the homepage for "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com, our time sheets web application. While going over the copy we had an interesting idea: why not include a dynamic counter for the total time tracked?
12 |
13 | So now you can see the total amount of time recorded by the Tiktrac community. It currently displays *22210 hours*, which is almost 1000 days.
14 |
15 | That's a lot of work... maybe soon we'll have to switch the counter to days instead of hours!
16 |
17 |
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/_posts/2008-06-11-incredible-radiohead-remix-video.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Incredible Radiohead remix video"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - inspiration
7 | - music
8 | - video
9 | ---
10 |
11 | "Big Ideas: Don't get any":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfHHLfbjNQ is an incredible remix of Radiohead's _Nude_, using a collection of old hardware bent and twisted to reproduce the original. Featuring a ZX Spectrum and harddisk speaker!
12 |
13 |
14 |
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/_posts/2008-09-12-guerrilla-software-marketing-strategies.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Guerrilla Software Marketing Strategies"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - marketing
7 | ---
8 |
9 | "Guerrilla Software Marketing Strategies":http://biznik.com/articles/guerrilla-software-marketing-strategies is an article I wrote for "Biznik":http://biznik.com about our experiences marketing Helicoid's web applications. It covers (proven!) free techniques for marketing your software.
10 |
11 | bq. Software companies have many opportunities to get free or cheap marketing. Whether you sell desktop software or you're a web agency, you can use your own strengths to get free and honest exposure.
12 |
13 |
14 |
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/_posts/2006-03-20-tiktrac-on-the-command-line.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac on the command line"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - code
7 | - tiktrac
8 | ---
9 |
10 | This is a small example of what you can do with the Tiktrac API. We've created a script that we use with our subversion scripts for checking source code into our repositories.
11 |
12 | Whenever we edit code on our projects, we can easily log the time we spent at the same time using a slightly modified version of this script. Download it and hack it to your delight.
13 |
14 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/tiktrac_command_line.png!
15 |
16 | Download: "tiktrac.zip":http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/tiktrac.zip
17 |
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/_posts/2009-03-26-deadline-parsing-tweaks.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline parsing tweaks"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | ---
8 |
9 | "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com now works with relative time:
10 |
11 | * Visit estate agent in 3 hours
12 | * Deploy Deadline upgrade in 2 days
13 | * Plan wedding next month
14 |
15 | This update includes bug fixes, especially relating to Deadline's recognition of ranges of time for repeating dates.
16 |
17 | I've also been working on making Deadline's email interface more user-friendly. It's not quite ready yet, but it's almost there.
18 |
19 | Remember you can find us on Twitter as well as this blog: "twitter.com/helicoid":http://twitter.com/helicoid
20 |
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/_posts/2006-03-30-basecamp-mobile.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Basecamp mobile"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - code
7 | - announcements
8 | ---
9 |
10 | We love APIs, and since "37signals":http://www.37signals.com announced the Basecamp API, I've been playing with a mobile version of Basecamp.
11 |
12 | The code is currently a single ruby file, that uses their ruby wrapper for the API. If you're interested, it uses CGI and erb, so it should be fairly easy to install if your hosting provider supports CGI and ruby.
13 |
14 | !http://static.flickr.com/51/120259342_154bbe99b6_o.png!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/120259342/
15 |
16 | When it's ready, we'll release it on "code.helicoid.net":http://code.helicoid.net.
17 |
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/_posts/2009-01-12-deadline-interface-updates.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline interface updates"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | ---
8 |
9 |
10 | "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com has been updated with some interface tweaks:
11 |
12 | * A balloon will pop up as you hover over dates to show more text
13 | * The background image is now fixed
14 | * There's now an option in *Appearance/Settings* that will let you turn off the hover fading effect
15 |
16 | The date details balloon looks like this:
17 |
18 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/deadline/date_details.png!
19 |
20 | It shows you the day name and time until the event. If you've specified a time for your event it'll display the time as well.
21 |
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/_posts/2006-05-11-basecamp-mobile.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Basecamp Mobile"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - code
7 | - rails
8 | - basecamp
9 | - mobile
10 | ---
11 |
12 | We'd like to say thanks to 37signals for linking to us in "The first business built around Basecamp":http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/the_first_business_built_around_basecamp.php. We're currently working on an application that provides a mobile-friendly version of Basecamp. The application is of course written using Ruby on Rails, and will be released as open source so you can install it on your server (or your systems administrator can).
13 |
14 | There's still a lot of work to be done, but building it has been great fun, and we can't wait to share it!
15 |
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/javascripts/all.js:
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1 | function fix_ie_overflow() {
2 | if (!/*@cc_on!@*/0) return;
3 |
4 | $$('div.highlight').each(function(element) {
5 | if (element.scrollWidth > element.offsetWidth) {
6 | element.setStyle({ height: '2em', overflowY: 'hidden' });
7 | }
8 | });
9 | }
10 |
11 | document.observe('dom:loaded', function() {
12 | var page = window.location.pathname;
13 | $$('#navigation li a').first().addClassName('active');
14 | if (page != '/') {
15 | $$('#navigation li a').each(function(element) {
16 | if (element.href.match(page)) {
17 | $$('#navigation li a').invoke('removeClassName', 'active');
18 | element.addClassName('active');
19 | }
20 | });
21 | }
22 |
23 | fix_ie_overflow();
24 | });
25 |
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/_posts/2008-01-10-get-your-tiktrac-dashboard-widgets-here.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Get your Tiktrac dashboard widgets here!"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | - tips
8 | ---
9 |
10 | !http://tiktrac.com/images/landing/widgets/dashboard.gif!
11 |
12 | "Tiktrac, our time tracking app":http://tiktrac.com, has just been furnished with a Mac OS Dashboard widget.
13 |
14 | To download the widget and get instructions on how to use it, "visit the widget's page":http://tiktrac.com/widgets.
15 |
16 | We'd love to "hear from you":http://helicoid.net/contact (and give you awesome free stuff) if you've used Tiktrac's API to make any widgets, gadgets or interesting things. Also get in touch if you'd like help building something like this.
17 |
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/_posts/2009-01-28-awesome-helipad-ruby-gem.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Awesome Helipad ruby gem"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - programming
7 | - ruby
8 | ---
9 |
10 | If you want to write software that works with Helipad, there's now an awesome "Helipad gem":http://blog.nyerm.com/2009/01/08/helipad-ruby-interface/ written by Lonnon Foster. I've checked over the code, and it's clean and well-written.
11 |
12 | You could build a lot of cool stuff with this. How about a "Shoes":http://shoooes.net/ Helipad app? Or maybe something with RubyCocoa? Let us know what you build and we'll give you mad props (and possibly riches).
13 |
14 | Here's some example code from Lonnon's library:
15 |
16 |
17 |
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/_posts/2005-12-21-multitapnet-revision-100.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Multitap.net: Revision 100"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | - multitap
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Multitap.net's source has just reached a milestone: revision 100. This contains new features and improvements which we hope to launch before Christmas:
11 |
12 | * Add people to a friends list to help keep track of friends
13 | * Friendlier date formatting
14 | * Consistency improvements to the design across the site
15 |
16 | One of these features was suggested to us to a user of the site. If you wish to request features, you can use the contact form on the site, or post comments to this weblog.
17 |
18 |
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/_posts/2009-09-01-helipad-mac-and-tiktrac-widget-updated.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helipad Mac and Tiktrac Widget Updated"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - helipad
7 | - tiktrac
8 | ---
9 |
10 | "Helipad Mac":http://helipadapp.com/mac.html has been updated. This update makes it work better in Snow Leopard, and makes it sync when you press cmd-s. It's a free download by the way!
11 |
12 | "Tiktrac's Dashboard Widget":http://tiktrac.com/widgets has also been upgraded. This version fixes a few bugs:
13 |
14 | * When creating tasks, the checkbox state will be saved correctly
15 | * It now stops you from attempting to add multiple tasks in one go (this might be added in a future update though)
16 | * I'm still working on odd timer glitches
17 |
18 |
19 |
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/_posts/2007-04-08-service-status-page.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Service status page"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | ---
8 |
9 | 
10 |
11 | As part of our customer service strategy, we've just set up our "service status page":http://status.helicoid.net
12 |
13 | It's hosted away from our applications (in the US instead of the UK), so chances are it will be up in the event of any connectivity issues with our main servers.
14 |
15 | If you rely on "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com or "Helipad":http://pad.helicoid.net, why not bookmark it?
16 |
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/_posts/2006-03-10-new-project.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "New project"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | ---
8 |
9 | Whilst Gabriel's been writing plugins for Rails, I've been writing JavaScript for one of our new projects.
10 |
11 | Want to see it? If you can guess the nature of the application based on this:
12 |
13 | 
14 |
15 | we'll let you in on the alpha version. The screenshot contains some JavaScript that helps us detect things about the user's browser. Detecting the browser type, version, screen resolution, css rendering mode, and other technical factors are part of the project.
16 |
17 | Post a comment describing what you think the project does!
18 |
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/_posts/2006-04-22-tiktrac-upgraded.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac upgraded"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | - tiktrac
8 | ---
9 |
10 | We've just upgraded "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com! New features include:
11 |
12 | 19 | "Damn, this is slick!" 20 |21 | 22 | So check it out! 23 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2009-05-11-deadline-and-helipad-signin-glitch.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Deadline and Helipad Sign-In Glitch" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - deadline 7 | - helipad 8 | --- 9 | 10 | We had a glitch with our servers last night that meant people couldn't sign-in to Deadline or Helipad. It was caused by an outage at our ISP. We have dedicated servers with them which remained accessible, but the ISP's DNS was down so Helipad and Deadline couldn't resolve the address of our authentication server. 11 | 12 | Although the outage might be regrettable, they've been up consistently for 3 years (other than times when we've had to perform upgrades). Here's their report on the issue: "Network outage 1740-2100, Sunday 10th May":https://forum.bytemark.co.uk/viewtopic.php?id=1402 13 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2009-12-07-helipad-mac-updates-folders-and-full-screen.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Helipad Mac Updates: Folders and Full Screen" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - helipad 7 | - mac 8 | --- 9 | 10 | "!http://dl.dropbox.com/u/221414/helicoid/blog/helipadmac-thumb.png!":http://dl.dropbox.com/u/221414/helicoid/blog/helipadmac.png 11 | 12 | "Helipad Mac":http://helipadapp.com/mac.html now has folders and full screen support. 13 | 14 | To edit folders, select a document then press the _Folders_ button. Add a folder, double-click it to rename, them click the checkbox to add the document to the folder. 15 | 16 | Folders can be renamed and deleted. 17 | 18 | Full screen view is available in the _Window_ menu or by pressing cmd-shift-F. Press cmd-shift-F to exit full screen. 19 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2008-01-03-tiktrac-import-data-from-excel-open-office-numbers.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Tiktrac: Import data from Excel, Open Office, Numbers" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - tips 7 | - tiktrac 8 | --- 9 | 10 |
11 |
12 | "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com now supports data imports from CSV files. This allows you to "import time sheet data":http://tiktrac.com/import_and_export from spreadsheets straight into Tiktrac.
13 |
14 | Each sheet now has an *Import* tab, which takes you through the steps to import your data.
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
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/_posts/2008-05-01-unfinished-and-unpublished.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Unfinished and Unpublished"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - design
7 | - inspiration
8 | ---
9 |
10 | !http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2204/2455855641_589a1fcf7e_o.png!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2455855641/
11 |
12 | Even though we use "Helipad":http://pad.helicoid.net for our notes and to-do lists, I still think you can't beat a good paper notebook. It's hard to hunt down something unique, but we recently found "Unfinished and Unpublished":http://www.studiomatador.com/home.htm -- a limited-edition collection of very special notebooks created by a collaboration between "StudioMatador":http://www.studiomatador.com and several international artists and designers. The Isis&Pluto cover is particularly inspired.
13 |
14 |
15 |
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/atom.xml:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: nil
3 | url: atom.xml
4 | ---
5 |
6 | 
6 | {% for category in page.categories %}
7 | {{ category }}
8 | {% endfor %}
9 |
10 | 
14 |
15 | To use this feature, select 'your account' and look for 'Export your documents' at the bottom of the page.
16 |
17 | 
18 |
19 | You could use this to export your notes and work on them offline in your favourite text editor!
20 |
21 |
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/_posts/2007-01-21-tiktrac-updates.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac updates"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | ---
8 |
9 | "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com will be updated this week with some big changes to the underlying system. This will fix problems people have reported with the timer in Opera, and help make the interface feel more responsive. There's also a few usability improvements for Internet Explorer 7 users.
10 |
11 | These changes have been in the works for about 2 months, and should set things up for some pretty serious feature enhancements in the near future.
12 |
13 | We'll post again once we've finally finished testing!
14 |
15 | *Update:* I've just finished testing a new enhancement in Safari, Firefox, Opera and IE7. It's a little thing, but it makes things that little bit more friendly:
16 |
17 | 
18 |
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/_posts/2005-12-20-multitapnet.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Multitap.net"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | - multitap
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Multitap.net, our first project, was launched on December 6th, 2005.
11 |
12 | Multitap.net was designed to allow gamers to post screenshots of action during play, something we have done ourselves using forums and various image hosting services. We never felt current image hosting services were inadequate for this task, so we decided to build Multitap.net.
13 |
14 | People are already starting to find out about it, and of course, suggestions are flying in on what features we should add...
15 |
16 | Of course, following our mantra of simplicity, the features are very basic at the moment. We hope to work with the community to bring direction to future developments, only adding features the community wishes to see.
17 |
18 | During beta, the site will be free. So get posting screenshots!
19 |
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/_posts/2007-11-30-tiktrac-tip-daily-summaries.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac tip: Daily summaries"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tips
7 | - tiktrac
8 | ---
9 |
10 | This article is the first in a regular series of tips on how to get the most out of Tiktrac. If you have any suggestions or questions, please "contact us":http://helicoid.net/contact
11 |
12 | "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com sheets have several export formats. To view the export options, click "Export" when viewing a sheet. A panel opens like this:
13 |
14 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/daily_export.png!
15 |
16 | Perhaps the most useful way to export sheet data is *Export daily summaries as CSV*. This creates a file you can easily open with Excel, Open Office or Apple's Numbers, which contains the total duration for each day. If you're in the *month* view, this will export a duration for each day of the month.
17 |
18 | This really helps when submitting time sheets to contractor agencies! In fact, we implemented this feature specifically for contractors.
19 |
20 |
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/_posts/2006-12-19-helipad-updates-dashboard-sort-options-ie-and-opera-9-fixes.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helipad updates: Dashboard sort options, IE and Opera 9 fixes"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - helipad
7 | ---
8 |
9 | Helipad's just been updated with some new sort features and a load of bug fixes for IE 7 and Opera 9.
10 |
11 | You can now choose how to sort your documents by clicking a table column title. You can also use a drop-down menu, illustrated here:
12 |
13 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/sort_options.png!
14 |
15 | Sorting was a commonly requested feature, so thanks to everyone who got in touch in with their ideas and suggestions through our "contact form":http://helicoid.net/contact.
16 |
17 | Here's the full list of recent changes:
18 |
19 | * Stopped IE from warning about saving a new document
20 | * Fixed Opera 9 tag search rendering issue
21 | * Fixed tag colour editor rendering Opera 9
22 | * Added Ajax sort options on the dashboard
23 | * Added pop-up sort menu (intended for use when in "preview" mode
24 | * Added striped tables
25 |
26 |
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/_posts/2007-09-03-foldinghelicoid.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Folding@Helicoid"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - fun
7 | ---
8 |
9 | When Helicoid isn't plotting world domination we can sometimes be found in front of our PS3s. Earlier today, while I was daydreaming about big HDTVs and how pleasant the Folding@Home application looks on the PS3, I thought to myself: why doesn't Helicoid have a Folding team?
10 |
11 | So here it is: Folding@Home team 85818, newly set up today. If you like our free products such as Helipad and Multitap, and you like to use the spare CPU cycles on your PC or PS3 while it's running a screensaver, then why not set your team number to 85818? Consider it a charityware donation.
12 |
13 | I'll be keeping track of the monthly progress on this horrible ad-ridden site here, and I'll mention the top folder in the blog once in a while.
14 |
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/_posts/2006-07-08-quickly-access-tiktrac-on-a-mac.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Quickly access Tiktrac on a mac"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | ---
8 |
9 | If it's your job to "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com the time for a project, a good way to quickly access "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com is to drag the URL to your dock. Then whenever your boss asks you how long your team has spent on a project, you can quickly pull up the front page and give him the answer.
10 |
11 | First, drag the favicon in your browser's URL bar:
12 |
13 | 
14 |
15 | Then drop it in the dock, near the trash:
16 |
17 | 
18 |
19 | Since you can do practically everything from Tiktrac's front page, this can be a great time saver.
20 |
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/_posts/2008-11-26-deadline-new-features-for-this-week.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline: New features for this week"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | ---
8 |
9 | Later this week we'll be updating Deadline with the following upgrades:
10 |
11 | * New reminder system - this will reduce server load and allow us to add some clever new features
12 | * Reminder previews - when editing your reminder settings you'll be able to view a table of reminders to easily see what the settings do
13 | * Additional reminders (minutes) - you'll be able to set days, hours and minutes for additional reminders (thanks _jrk_)
14 | * Jabber bot - the IM bot will work properly with Jabber (it'll have a new account name)
15 | * More date parsing improvements (especially for phrases including the word "today") (thanks _Dougal_)
16 |
17 | These updates are still being tested but we'll let you know when they're deployed.
18 |
19 | *Update*: We've just deployed these changes to our servers. Note that you should switch to using talk@deadlineapp.com for IM.
20 |
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/_posts/2010-05-05-helipad-ssl.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helipad SSL"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | - helipad
8 | - security
9 | ---
10 |
11 | Helipad is now available over secure connections with SSL. Just visit https://helipadapp.com. It's worth adding to your bookmarks. All content is optionally served over SSL, including login and public pages. Remember this the next time you're using public wifi and want to take notes with Helipad!
12 |
13 | This is available to all customers for free. Just remember to visit/bookmark the correct URL, and not pad.helicoid.net.
14 |
15 | h3. Browser Support
16 |
17 | !/images/posts/helipad_ssl.png!
18 |
19 | You should see a lock icon in your browser. Most display it in the address bar, but newer versions of Safari show it in the top-right (it's grey on grey so hard to see).
20 |
21 | I've tested this in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE6, 7, 8. When we initially deployed one of our friends found a problem with Mac OS 10.5 Safari, but this is now fixed.
22 |
23 |
24 |
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/_posts/2008-04-28-helipad-tip-addons.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helipad tip: Add-ons"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - helipad
7 | - tips
8 | ---
9 |
10 | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3068/2448882844_4c213a48c2_o.png!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2448882844/
11 |
12 | "Helipad":http://pad.helicoid.net supports plugins and themes through add-ons. To view available add-ons, click the link at the top right of Helipad.
13 |
14 | Installing an add-on adds a document to your account that contains the code for the add-on. This allows you to edit it, which is useful for customising themes.
15 |
16 | Add-ons can be updated to a newer version if the author updates it by clicking on _Settings_ and then _Plugins_. You can also remove add-ons here.
17 |
18 | If you'd like to write an add-on, we've written some documentation on the process: "Helipad add-on documentation":http://pad.helicoid.net/document/public/9406837a.
19 |
20 | Add-ons are simply an XML container that wraps JavaScript and CSS, so if you've got some basic web development experience you should be able to write an add-on.
21 |
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/_posts/2008-01-18-helicoid-insider.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helicoid Insider"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | ---
8 |
9 | Since this blog covers our product announcements, we've decided to launch a new blog entitled "Helicoid Insider":http://insider.helicoid.net/, covering:
10 |
11 | * Technical tips on building web applications
12 | * Interface design, and design culture
13 | * Web industry observations, opinions, discussion
14 |
15 | Recent posts include:
16 |
17 | * "Start using Test Driven Development today":http://insider.helicoid.net/articles/show/6/protip_start_using_test_driven_development_today
18 | * "20 free icons dedicated to programmers":http://insider.helicoid.net/articles/show/4/20_free_icons_dedicated_to_programmers
19 | * "10 essential ruby gems":http://insider.helicoid.net/articles/show/2/10_essential_ruby_gems
20 |
21 | 
22 |
23 |
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/_posts/2008-04-18-tiktrac-updated-server-maintenance.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac updated, server maintenance"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | ---
8 |
9 | We updated Tiktrac this morning with a neater project selector. This makes managing lots of sheets much easier for those of you with large accounts.
10 |
11 | During the update we ran into unexpected server issues and had to perform emergency maintenance - this meant we had to take Helipad, Tiktrac and Ebiwrite down to fix the issue (they're all on the same servers).
12 |
13 | During this maintenance we posted updates to Twitter and our "service status":http://status.helicoid.net/ page. It's worth bookmarking out status page if you rely on our services, because we post the times and dates of any planned maintenance:
14 |
15 | "http://status.helicoid.net/":http://status.helicoid.net/
16 |
17 | Our twitter account can be found here:
18 |
19 | "http://twitter.com/helicoid":http://twitter.com/helicoid
20 |
21 | I also occasionally post technical details about what we're working on to Twitter, so check it out!
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
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/_posts/2009-04-20-deadline-for-mac.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline for Mac"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | - mac
8 | ---
9 |
10 | DeadlineGrowl is now available for Mac OS Leopard. It works with "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com and shows "growl notifications":http://growl.info/ when a deadline is due.
11 |
12 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/deadline/deadline_mac_blog.png!
13 |
14 | Get it here: "DeadlineGrowl.zip":http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/deadline/DeadlineGrowl.zip
15 |
16 | h3. Usage
17 |
18 | # Download and unzip "DeadlineGrowl":http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/deadline/DeadlineGrowl.zip
19 | # Double click DeadlineGrowl to run it
20 | # Enter your email address and password
21 | # DeadlineGrowl will now download your deadlines every 20 minutes and show a growl notification when one is due
22 |
23 | h3. Requirements
24 |
25 | * Mac OS Leopard
26 | * An account on "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com
27 |
28 | h3. Planned features
29 |
30 | * Start on login
31 | * System-wide hotkey for Add Deadline so you can quickly add one whenever you need to
32 | * Better date input
33 |
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/_posts/2006-10-20-another-screenshot.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Another screenshot"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - thoughts
7 | - helipad
8 | - tiktrac
9 | ---
10 |
11 | I'm still working hard on that pet project I mentioned a few days ago. Before I can unleash it, there's a bit of work left to do on documentation and tidying things up. This project embodies a few concepts that we hope to add to other Helicoid products, which you can see illustrated in this screenshot:
12 |
13 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/plugins_and_themes.png!
14 |
15 | That's running straight off the development version, and gives you a few clues as to what we're attempting to do. As I said in my last post, I'm actually using this day-to-day, and it's pretty great! I can't wait to release it to beta testers, and I'll give you details on that through this weblog.
16 |
17 | Meanwhile... This weekend could be the date Tiktrac finally gets a different type of view on the sheet page: I've been working on expanding it beyond monthly views. This is another step towards a production-ready version!
18 |
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/_posts/2009-09-15-helicoid-id.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helicoid ID"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | - helicoid_id
8 | ---
9 |
10 | "Helicoid ID":http://id.helicoid.net is our new account management mini app. Here are the basics:
11 |
12 | * Sign in with your Helipad/Deadline account details -- this is your *Helicoid ID*
13 | * It shows you the Helicoid services that you currently use, and other available services
14 | * It allows you to change your personal details across supported applications
15 | * News and updates about apps will be displayed here
16 | * It currently only supports "Helipad":http://helipadapp.com and "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com
17 | * It will ease the transition of other services into our shared authentication system ("Ebiwrite":http://ebiwrite.com is next)
18 | * It will host centralised billing for future paid versions of Helipad, Deadline (as well as Tiktrac and Ebiwrite)
19 | * We'll migrate "the forum":http://forum.helicoid.net eventually as well
20 |
21 | Here's what it looks like:
22 |
23 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/helicoid/blog/helicoid_id.png!
24 |
25 |
26 |
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/_posts/2006-02-09-some-rails-stuff-from-your-friends-at-helicoid.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Some Rails stuff from your friends at Helicoid"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - code
7 | ---
8 |
9 | We're Railsing it up here at Helicoid as usual, and in the process we've done a few little things that may help you in your quest for perfection in web application form:
10 |
11 | Using helpers inside a controller - for when you must pluralize() but dont want to mess with the controller namespace.
12 |
13 | A few fixes to some FormHelper bugs - need to use a form with get rather than post and find checkbox weirdness happening? fixed!
14 |
15 | RailsConf and another patch - speaking of poor neglected get parameters, here's the reason why they might not be working properly. Also, one half of Helicoid will be seeing you at RailsConf.
16 |
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/_posts/2008-09-17-helipad-updates.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helipad updates"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - helipad
7 | - announcements
8 | ---
9 |
10 | We upgraded "Helipad":http://pad.helicoid.net today. Changes include:
11 |
12 | * If you click _Preview_ you can now export documents as PDF (in addition to HTML)
13 | * The PDF functionality is very simple right now, but I've got some good ideas on how to extend it in the future
14 | * The homepage has been redesigned
15 | * We fixed a bug a few people reported to do with document indexing
16 | * The API has been updated so tags are easier to specify
17 |
18 | The new homepage features the "vine" graphics we use on Helicoid.net:
19 |
20 | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3220/2865929772_8aee3b983f_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2865929772/
21 |
22 | Here's the "old homepage":http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2865929770/ for reference.
23 |
24 | The most exciting thing about this Helipad upgrade is that Helipad now uses our *internal authentication server*. We'll be launching two new services over the next few months that will be single sign-on for Helipad users.
25 |
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/_posts/2008-12-17-deadline-upgrade-recurring-reminders.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline upgrade: Recurring reminders"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | - announcements
8 | ---
9 |
10 | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3056/3116081900_b469cebb79_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/3116081900/
11 |
12 | "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com has been upgraded:
13 |
14 | * Support for recurring reminders has been added with documentation in the _Help_ section
15 | * The last email reminder can now be set as "important" (this should show up in Gmail, Outlook, Apple's Mail and Thunderbird)
16 |
17 | h3. Writing recurring events that Deadline can understand
18 |
19 | Write a date with the word "every" to denote a recurring event. Once the deadline's date has been reached it will be automatically rescheduled.
20 |
21 | For example:
22 |
23 | * Alex's birthday *every* January 21st
24 | * Art lesson every Monday morning
25 | * English lesson every 4pm
26 |
27 | Recurring reminders are indicated with an icon:
28 |
29 | !http://deadlineapp.com/images/help/birthday.gif!
30 |
31 | Currently there's no way to manually set an event as recurring.
32 |
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/_posts/2008-12-04-deadline-fixes-and-tips.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline: Fixes and tips"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | - tips
8 | ---
9 |
10 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/deadline/3D_3.png!
11 |
12 | This week we've made the following fixes to Deadline:
13 |
14 | * Google Calendar will now show text instead of just "busy"
15 | * Time zone bugs have been resolved (sometimes typing "tonight" resulted in a date for tomorrow)
16 | * Internet Explorer 6 and Chrome support improved
17 | * Selecting "-------" as a date in the full date entry form returned XML instead of a friendly error
18 |
19 | If Google Calendar still says busy for all of your Deadline events:
20 |
21 | # Remove the calendar
22 | # Go to Deadline and copy the link to the iCal feed from the Settings page
23 | # Paste in the calendar link, but add "?999" to the end of the link
24 |
25 | The reason you need to add ?999 is a random number will fool Google into thinking it's a different URL and thus download the new version instead of using a cached copy.
26 |
27 | Your URL should look something like this:
28 |
29 | http://deadlineapp.com/exports/YOUR_ID/YOUR_CODE/file.ics?999
30 |
31 |
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/_posts/2010-03-18-blog-and-helipad.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Blog and Helipad Updates"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - helicoid
7 | - blog
8 | - helipad
9 | ---
10 |
11 | "Helipad":http://helipadapp.com/ has been updated to include multiple tag search. If you visit "/document/tags/tag1+tag2+tag3":http://helipadapp.com/document/tags/tag1+tag2+tag3 it will display documents that match all of the tags.
12 |
13 | The web interface needs to be updated to support folders, so while we're doing this we'll add an interface for multiple tag search as well.
14 |
15 | I've also updated the "Helipad API documentation":http://helipadapp.com/document/public/6313d317 to include notes on /document/all_ids and searching for documents changed since a date. These methods are used by our Mac and iPhone apps for efficient syncing.
16 |
17 | h3. Blogs
18 |
19 | We recently merged the technical Helicoid Insider blog into this blog. I also updated it to use the "Jekyll":http://github.com/mojombo/jekyll site generator, which makes it lightweight and easy to update. You can get the source code to our blog from my GitHub account: "alexyoung/helicoid_blog":http://github.com/alexyoung/helicoid_blog.
20 |
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/_posts/2007-02-07-logo-and-wallpaper.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Logo and wallpaper"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 |
6 | ---
7 |
8 | I've taken the liberty of posting a preview of our new logo:
9 |
10 | 
11 |
12 | We've discussed logos internally for months, partly because I'm obsessed with them. I wanted to incorporate Barbara Hepworth's "Helicoid in Sphere":http://www.hh-h.com/hepworth-helicoid%20in%20sphere.htm into the design, since I've always loved her sculptures. I also wanted something "classic"; I favour logos that work well in two colours, and use simple shapes. Mont Blanc, Apple, Woolmark and the Target logos are all great examples.
13 |
14 | Kev agreed with most of this, although he disliked any attempt to use a Serif font. Yuka wanted a cute creature involved, but ultimately was the one who picked the abstracted helicoid you see above.
15 |
16 | We haven't ordered any prints of letterheads, business cards and "with complements" yet, so if you have any strong opinion on our choice let us know!
17 |
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/_posts/2009-03-31-tiktrac-upgraded-times-now-stored-in-seconds.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac upgraded: Times now stored in seconds"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | - upgrades
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Tiktrac's times are now *internally stored in seconds*. This means the timer is much more intuitive. We also took this opportunity to make the timer look more like a clock:
11 |
12 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/helicoid/blog/timer.png!
13 |
14 | The task entry form now displays the end date when you set the task as completed, which saves a few seconds when inputting lots of tasks.
15 |
16 | We've also made the currently selected sheet clearer in the right-hand navigation.
17 |
18 | There's also a new manage screen which allows you to add or configure clients and sheets -- administrators will see a *Manage* tab at the top of each page. I decided to add this page because we want to remove the right-hand sheet navigation to replace it with something that uses less space in the future.
19 |
20 | The seconds upgrade was actually a difficult thing to do, but it's resulted in cleaner code internally. That frees us up to implement new features soon (upgraded dashboard, navigation and invoicing).
21 |
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/404.html:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: default
3 | title: Page Not Found
4 | ---
5 | The page you are looking for could not be found. Please try searching for the content, or browser the posts below.
8 |10 |
15 | 16 |
24 | {% for category in post.categories %}
25 | {{ category }}
26 | {% endfor %}
27 |
28 | set due id my due date -- set the due date for a deadline
17 | * set description id my description -- set the description
18 |
19 | For example:
20 |
21 | 22 | set due 39147 next week 23 | set due 39147 19:30 24 | set description 39147 defeat Zod 25 |26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | h3. Time Zones 30 | 31 | You can now set and view your time zone. This is really handy if you go on holiday and only have access to the Jabber interface. It works like this: 32 | 33 | *
time -- view your time and zone
34 | * set zone city -- set the time zone to the "city"
35 |
36 | At the moment there's no way to view or search the cities we support -- it uses the same list as appears on the settings page on the web site.
37 |
38 | For example:
39 |
40 | 41 | set zone London 42 | set zone Paris 43 |44 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2009-06-26-support-helipad.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Support Helipad" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - helipad 7 | --- 8 | 9 | "Helipad":http://helipadapp.com/ is our free notepad web app, which we've been running since 2006. It's still going strong, and people keep discovering it every day. If you enjoy using Helipad, here are a few ways you can support it to ensure continued development: 10 | 11 | * "Buy the iPhone Helipad app":http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=300412656&mt=8: a new version has been submitted to the App Store with iPhone OS 3.0 support which fixes a syncing glitch 12 | * Try "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com which works with your Helipad login and has an iPhone app (submitted to the store this week) 13 | * Share Helipad with your friends and colleagues 14 | * "Hang out with us":http://jschat.org/ and tell us what features you'd like to see in the future 15 | * Follow us on "Twitter":http://twitter.com/helicoid or join our "Facebook page":http://www.facebook.com/pages/Helicoid/24328803903 16 | * Blog about Helipad! We have "press resources":http://helicoid.net/press/ with nice icons 17 | * Build stuff with the "API":http://helipadapp.com/api.html 18 | * Try our other products, which are all listed on our company's web site: "helicoid.net":http://helicoid.net 19 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_layouts/post.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: default 3 | --- 4 | 5 | 9 | 10 |
18 |
19 | if (SSBX.isAvailable()) {
20 | SSBX.log('hello');
21 | SSBX.notify({ message: 'This is a message', title: 'Title' });
22 | SSBX.notifyOnce({ message: 'This is a message', title: 'Title', unique_id: 5});
23 | SSBX.setDockBadge(5);
24 | SSBX.log(SSBX.availableDriver);
25 | }
26 |
27 |
28 | You can also only run when there's a compatible SSB available like this:
29 |
30 |
31 |
32 | SSBX.run(function() {
33 | SSBX.log('hello');
34 | }
35 |
36 |
37 | It's still evolving, so add it to your watch list on GitHub if you'd like to stay up to date.
38 |
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/_posts/2009-01-02-deadline-sms-support-plus-fluid-and-ubiquity.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline SMS support (plus Fluid and Ubiquity!)"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | - sms
8 | - announcements
9 | ---
10 |
11 | "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com now supports SMS (text messages). The feature is currently available as a trial while we estimate costs. To get on the trial, see the *SMS page* in *Deadline Settings* for more details.
12 |
13 | h3. Notes on Deadline's SMS support
14 |
15 | * The trial is free, but SMS support will be a paid feature in the future. This is because sending an SMS costs money and Deadline is currently a free service. We may subsidise SMS using context-sensitive adverts in the future.
16 | * Two-way SMS may be available in the future, we're still looking into costs and international support issues.
17 | * You're currently limited to 10 messages a day. This number may change depending on popularity and costs.
18 |
19 | h3. Other improvements in this upgrade
20 |
21 | * Deadline now supports "Fluid":http://deadlineapp.com/ssb
22 | * Deadline now supports "Mozilla Ubiquity":http://deadlineapp.com/ubiquity
23 | * Setting "Remember me" during login should always work now
24 | * The settings page has been tidied up, with some secondary navigation to help you find things
25 | * We fixed a bug in Jabber
26 |
27 |
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/_posts/2006-10-21-tiktrac-new-features-alternate-views-and-better-text-formatting.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac new features: Alternate views and better text formatting"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | - announcements
8 | ---
9 |
10 | I've just finished deploying and testing the new features for Tiktrac that I've been working on over the last two weeks:
11 |
12 | * It's now possible to view all tasks for a sheet, or use the traditional monthly view.
13 | * Task descriptions now accept "textile":http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/, so you can format your descriptions with simple markup.
14 | * Several fixes for IE6.
15 |
16 | Here's a screenshot of how the new sheet view looks:
17 |
18 | 
19 |
20 | The view change has actually simplified the Tiktrac's internal code dramatically -- this was a good chance for me to refactor things. The upshot of this for you is that it's now much easier for me to add other views to the sheets page, so "get in touch":http://helicoid.net/contact if you have any ideas!
21 |
22 | Incidentally, the screenshot was taken in Linux, because we like to test our products in Linux, Mac OS and Windows.
23 |
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/_posts/2006-07-22-tiktrac-updates-and-keyboard-shortcuts.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac updates and keyboard shortcuts"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | ---
8 |
9 | I just updated Tiktrac, after a week of gruelling testing. Gruelling because it's hot in London, not hot beyond enjoyable -- it's just hard to work when everyone else is having barbecues!
10 |
11 | So let me explain the updates so I can finally enjoy the sun and relax.
12 |
13 | # More keyboard shortcuts have been added. Look for underlined letters (just like Windows) to see what shortcuts we've added
14 | # When you're adding a task on the dashboard page, you can press alt-s to quickly save the task.
15 | # Minor bugs have been fixed with task additions on the dashboard. Safari users probably noticed adding more than one task caused problems.
16 |
17 | More on those keyboard shortcuts: Mac users can use ctrl to access them, whereas Windows users use alt. The interface will try and give you some help by underlining things that can be accessed this way. Mac form buttons look like this:
18 |
19 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/mac_save.png!
20 |
21 | And in Windows:
22 |
23 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/windows_save.png!
24 |
25 | What do you think? Got any bugs or ideas for us? Use our "BugTagger":http://helicoid.bugtagger.com/report/tiktrac or "contact us":http://helicoid.net/contact/.
26 |
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/_posts/2006-11-16-helipad-update.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helipad update"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - helipad
7 | - announcements
8 | ---
9 |
10 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/helipad_mobile.png!
11 |
12 | If you read our "mobile weblog":http://mmm.helicoid.net, you might have noticed me talking about the W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. I was thinking about Helipad while I was writing this, and since so many of you seem to love using Helipad's mobile interface, I've updated it.
13 |
14 | I've added a search as soon as you login, so you can quickly get to what you want. If the search matches one pad or title, it'll bring that document up. If it finds more, you'll see them in a list.
15 |
16 | We've also spent some time improving usability and ironing out minor problems and inconsistencies. Incidentally, we go through all server logs regularly, so any bugs that aren't reported still get picked up. This has enabled me to figure out some rare bugs a few of you were running into.
17 |
18 | And here's an anecdote for you: some clever fellows have figured out that you can actually create accounts on "Bugtagger":http://bugtagger.com, even though we haven't publicised the URLs. Thanks for the interest! Bugtagger really helps me keep a handle on the workload at Helicoid, and I can't wait to share it.
19 |
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/_posts/2006-08-28-stopwatch-for-tiktrac-a-usercontributed-script.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Stopwatch for Tiktrac: A user-contributed script"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - code
7 | - tiktrac
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Julian Romero has kindly written a "Greasemonkey":http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/ script to add stopwatch functionality to "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com. This allows you to stop and start tasks as you work on them without needing to remember the time you spent.
11 |
12 | Check it out here: "http://wiki.mad.mw/GreaseMonkey/UserScripts/TikTracStopWatch":http://wiki.mad.mw/GreaseMonkey/UserScripts/TikTracStopWatch
13 |
14 | Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox that allows developers to modify how websites work. In this example, Julian has written some JavaScript that adds a stopwatch to each task on your Tiktrac dashboard.
15 |
16 | To install this script:
17 |
18 | # "Get the Greasemonkey extension":https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/748/
19 | # "Go to Julian's wiki":http://wiki.mad.mw/GreaseMonkey/UserScripts/TikTracStopWatch
20 | # Right click "TikTracStopWatch.user.js " and select "Install This User Script..."
21 |
22 | Now you should see something like this when you're using Tiktrac:
23 |
24 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/tiktrac_gm.png!
25 |
26 | Simply click on "start" to start the timer. I think you'll agree that this addition is welcome and very useful. Thanks, Julian!
27 |
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/_posts/2008-09-22-dynamic-rails-error-help.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Dynamic Rails error help"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - programming
7 | - ruby
8 | - rails
9 | - javascript
10 | ---
11 |
12 | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3121/2877961211_045d355329_o.png!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2877961211/
13 |
14 | Here's a "little JavaScript snippet":http://code.helicoid.net/files/model_error.js I just wrote for our apps. It parses the standard error messages Rails displays then puts dynamic popup error messages on each of the corresponding form inputs. This allows people to quickly see the error on each field. It currently only displays one error per field, but that could easily be fixed.
15 |
16 | You can customise it a bit with by passing a list of options:
17 |
18 |
19 | initialize: function(objectName, options) {
20 | this.options = {
21 | errorTextSelector: '#errorExplanation ul li',
22 | messageClass: 'popinfo_inner'
23 | }
24 |
25 |
26 | Be aware that the error popup I'm using uses some existing CSS/layout that our apps already use, so you'll want to customise showError.
27 |
28 | h3. Usage:
29 |
30 | Instantiate the ModelErrors class with the name of your model:
31 |
32 |
33 | new ModelErrors('issue')
34 |
35 |
36 | *Download here*: "model_error.js":http://code.helicoid.net/files/model_error.js
37 |
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/_posts/2007-12-07-tip-keyboard-shortcuts.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tip: Keyboard shortcuts"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | - ebiwrite
8 | - helipad
9 | - tips
10 | ---
11 |
12 | This tip applies to all of our applications. When you see a letter underlined in a link or form button, this means there is an available keyboard shortcut. This type of keyboard shortcut is called an "access key".
13 |
14 | Different browsers handle these keyboard shortcuts in different ways. In Safari (Mac OS), I press ctrl-letter. In Internet Explorer, I'd press alt-letter. Check your preferred browser's manual to see how it handles access keys.
15 |
16 | This screenshot is from "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com:
17 |
18 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/tiktrac_keys.png!
19 |
20 | To open up "Add a new task", I'd press ctrl-a. The task save form also has an access key, so I can press ctrl-s to save.
21 |
22 | "Helipad":http://pad.helicoid.net has access keys on common operations, like new document and save document. You can even get straight into the handy search bar by pressing ctrl/alt-f:
23 |
24 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/helipad_keys.png!
25 |
26 | If you use your applications regularly it's worth learning these shortcuts! If you'd like to read more about the technical side of access keys, check out Accesskeys: Unlocking Hidden Navigation.
27 |
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/_posts/2008-05-28-google-app-engine-vs-aws.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Google App Engine vs. AWS"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - cloud
7 | - development
8 | - programming
9 | ---
10 |
11 | "Rowland Watkins":http://rowlandwatkins.com, an old university friend of mine (and a friend of all the staff at Helicoid), recently wrote up a comparison of the "Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services":http://rowlandwatkins.com/past/2008/4/30/google_app_engine_vs_aws. He's specialised in grid and more general distributed computing for about 8 years now, so his comments on the topic have some pedigree.
12 |
13 | Since we specialise in Rails, leveraging the power of Amazon Web Services has always seemed more natural than Google's approach which currently relies on Python. Here's what Rowland has to say on the matter:
14 |
15 | bq. The clear separation of duty in AWS is what gives it the edge over Google App Engine. EC2 allows businesses to deploy complete OS images from S3 to produce novel environments such as Morph. It gives business more control on how to put together business processes which currently isn’t possible with the Google App Engine.
16 |
17 | It was announced today that Google are now "allowing hosting of JavaScript libraries":http://mir.aculo.us/2008/5/27/google-served-javascript-libraries from their servers, which has direct benefit for businesses like Helicoid and our customers. Perhaps in the future we'll enjoy a cloud of cloud-like services?
18 |
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/_posts/2006-02-04-tiktrac-mobile.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac Mobile"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 |
6 | ---
7 |
8 | We really enjoy using several mobile services, including:
9 |
10 | :warn. However, these logs are useful because they contain information that can help fix bugs, or ensure proper operation of long running or background processes.
11 |
12 | It's a good idea to take some time out to properly manage your log files. This post discusses two tools for this: logrotate and logcheck.
13 |
14 | h3. Logrotate
15 |
16 | It's worth taking some time to manage server logs. Most Linux distros install logrotate which gradually expire old files. You can set logrotate up to rotate your Rails app logs too. Have a look at the examples in /etc/logrotate.d/ and make one for each of your Rails apps. No more 100 MB log files!
17 |
18 | h3. Logcheck
19 |
20 | Another great tool is logcheck. This runs through lists of regular expressions to report anything unusual. If you're installing in Debian or Ubuntu, make sure you grab the logcheck-database to filter out some of the noise from popular daemons on your system.
21 |
22 | Logcheck can be set to email you reports, so you should have some interesting reading every Monday morning after a weekend away from work email.
23 |
24 | A similar tool is "swatch":http://sial.org/howto/logging/swatch/
25 |
26 |
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/_posts/2006-08-07-new-product-ebiwrite-the-translators-toolkit.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "New product: Ebiwrite, the translator's toolkit"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - ebiwrite
7 | - announcements
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Over the last three months I've been working with a translator to produce a unique new product. The translator in question found that she wanted to keep her documents online, so she can easily access them and edit them anywhere. She also wanted to be able to see the original source text alongside her translation. Flipping back and forth between documents, printing things out, and general mucking about made her yearn for an application built just for translators.
11 |
12 | !http://ebiwrite.com/images/screenshot.gif!
13 |
14 | We've taken the concept from an idea, to paper prototypes and now a working prototype. Amazingly, this prototype has only taken 3 weeks to design and code (all developed by me), and it's now ready for our translator to play with.
15 |
16 | Technically, the project is interesting: we've used a JavaScript model of the document within the browser, combined with Ajax to provide all the features you'd expect in an editor: keyboard shortcuts for quickly saving documents and auto-save. Our translator loves to write, and hates fiddling about with presentation, so we have simple formatting through textile and a well-thought-out print stylesheet so when she prints documents they look great.
17 |
18 | As usual we're in no great rush to release this, but if it sounds like something you'd like to play with, check out: "Ebiwrite":http://ebiwrite.com.
19 |
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/_posts/2008-02-01-tiktrac-and-ebiwrite-bug-fixes.textile:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac and Ebiwrite bug fixes"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - ebiwrite
7 | - tiktrac
8 | ---
9 |
10 | 
11 |
12 | "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com and "Ebiwrite":http://ebiwrite.com have recently surged in popularity thanks to generous coverage by excellent blogs (thanks "100shiki":http://www.100shiki.com/ and "Emily Chang":http://www.emilychang.com/go/ehub/!) Whenever this happens, the barrage of new users discover bugs lurking we weren't able to catch with our tests. I've been working hard to keep on top of these, at pretty much all hours.
13 |
14 | Here's what we've fixed this month:
15 |
16 | * Parts of Ebiwrite became unusable when people used tags with a period in them. We've temporarily prevented tags with "." from being created, but there's a fix on the way that permits them (it requires more testing due to other dependancies). Thanks Futty!
17 | * Under certain conditions Tiktrac imports created tasks with no user set, which caused problems viewing the associated time sheet. This is now fixed.
18 | * Tiktrac imports also became unusable when importing CSV files with blank headers. Tiktrac now renames the headers.
19 | * Tiktrac imports should now work with exports from "On the Job":http://stuntsoftware.com/OnTheJob/ - Thanks Sam!
20 |
21 | We're still working with a designer to create a "next generation" Tiktrac widget, and we're also working on improving Tiktrac's project navigation.
22 |
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/_posts/2006-01-21-we-love-our-beta-testers.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "We love our beta testers!"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | - tiktrac
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Thanks to all our beta testers for the excellent feedback! Gabriel and I have been working very hard this week, employing the little-known rule of software development: test, test, test, then test some more until you fall asleep at the keyboard. We've also started adding small tweaks that our beta testers have requested.
11 |
12 | * Interface - Added loads of small changes to make the user interface more friendly.
13 | * Interface - Added the contact form to every page, so if you're really having problems with your account you can easily get in touch with us.
14 | * Interface - Gabriel made an excellent favicon, so Tiktrac looks great in your bookmarks.
15 | * Interface - We've added another template to the Appearance setting.
16 | * Technical - We've made as much as we can valid XHTML Transitional, which should be everything, and we've also fixed a JavaScript error.
17 | * Technical - We've added robots.txt to your accounts, so they don't get indexed by search engines.
18 | * Technical - Fixed date formatting in XML feeds.
19 | * Security - Added more validation and data sanitisation to help keep your accounts secure.
20 | * Security - XML feeds are now secure. You must use your Tiktrac email and password with your feed reader. There's more on this on the Tiktrac 'help' page.
21 | * Feature - There's now a setting for currency delimiters.
22 |
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/_posts/2009-02-20-loom-exception-logging-for-your-apps.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Loom exception logging for your apps"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - loom
7 | - development
8 | ---
9 |
10 | We've recently added exception logging to "Loom":http://loomapp.com. There's an open source "rails plugin":http://github.com/alexyoung/loom-exceptions-rails-plugin/tree/master which you can use to integrate Loom with your Rails apps. The API is simple so we'll probably collect plugins and libraries for other platforms (I'll look into iPhone support for iPhone apps).
11 |
12 | If you haven't seen it before, "Loom":http://loomapp.com/ is a tiny app we built to track bugs in our apps. It also works well as a customer support tool. It originally started off as Bugtagger in 2006, and it had some work towards remote exception logging but this was never finished. Bugtagger was a quick app I built to support "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com's customer support in the early days.
13 |
14 | So now remote exception logging is _almost_ ready for the public. You can check out the plugin and integrate it with your apps by adding your Loom account details to a controller. The README on Github has more details. The code looks like this:
15 |
16 |
17 | enable_loom :email => 'alex@example.com',
18 | :password => 'test',
19 | :url => 'http://yoursubdomain.loomapp.com',
20 | :project_id => 1
21 | 
14 |
15 | Simply click on the colour you wish to edit, drag the sliders and click 'save.'
16 |
17 | The next update provides a new way to enter time. Instead of just entering decimal values or whole numbers, you can now enter times in _hh:mm_:
18 |
19 | 
20 |
21 | I've also modified the sheet list, found on the right-hand-side of most pages. It's now possible to collapse the list of sheets by clicking on the client's name:
22 |
23 | 
24 |
25 | Finally, we found that the sheet list could become broken on small displays in Internet Explorer when clicking on a task's description, so we fixed that too.
26 |
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/_posts/2008-10-16-tiktrac-updates-reports.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac updates: Reports"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | ---
8 |
9 | "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com has been upgraded with the following fixes:
10 |
11 | * Reports set to show tasks with client filters will now work correctly
12 | * Certain reports weren't exporting CSV data, this has now been fixed
13 |
14 | A few Tiktrac fans have suggested that they'd like more flexibility from the RSS feeds. This made me realise reports should be available as RSS. I've just finished work on this and you can check it out now.
15 |
16 | Navigate to one of your reports (or add one), then click the _Export_ menu and select _RSS Feed_:
17 |
18 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/Tiktrac/sheet_nav.png!
19 |
20 | Your browser will show you the feed:
21 |
22 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/Tiktrac/subscribed.png!
23 |
24 | You can then subscribe in your feed reader of choice. Note that these screenshots were taken in Firefox 3. If you use Safari or Firefox you can subscribe to feeds within the browser.
25 |
26 | h2. Tips
27 |
28 | * If you want to create a list of tasks (rather than summarised data), make sure you create a report with _Summarise_ set to _Tasks_ and _Group by_ set to _All_
29 | * Try to use report filters creatively to create really useful feeds
30 | * If your browser doesn't support feeds, right click the _RSS Feed_ item in the _Export_ menu and select "Copy link". You can then subscribe anywhere
31 | * Tiktrac RSS feeds require you to enter your email address and password for security reasons
32 | * Tiktrac RSS feeds are limited to 20 items. We'll offer pagination as a URL parameter if people need it
33 |
34 |
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/_posts/2008-09-18-lighttpd-422-unprocessable-entity-and-activeresource.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Lighttpd: 422 (Unprocessable Entity) and ActiveResource"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - technical
7 | - programming
8 | - sysadmin
9 | - ruby
10 | - rails
11 | ---
12 |
13 | Recently we deployed an internal server that works using ActiveResource to share objects between our applications. All my tests ran, and eventually I deployed the service. The tests ran on the server. I took a night off and got loads of wine and pizza.
14 |
15 | However, after a few days I noticed *errors weren't being received from the server*. I tore my hair out checking everything even down to the versions of the server software and libraries. Then I noticed: when I ran the application with webrick it returned errors and ActiveResource objects correctly displayed error messages.
16 |
17 | I then went on a huge lighttpd/fcgi/rails/activeresource search engine hunt and found nothing. After getting a friend in to help, we discovered that it looked like *lighttpd wasn't responding with the full body when responding with 422 (Unprocessable Entity)*.
18 |
19 | We even checked the source, and eventually found:
20 |
21 | * http://trac.lighttpd.net/trac/ticket/1412
22 | * http://trac.lighttpd.net/trac/browser/trunk/src/connections.c
23 |
24 | So if you're tearing your hair out with ActiveResource and lighttpd it looks like there is a problem with lighttpd. We're now running the service off mongrel for the time being.
25 |
26 | *Update* Lighttpd just updated to 1.4.20, and this was in the patch notes:
27 |
28 | bq. Allow all http status codes by default; disable body only for 204,205 and 304; generate error pages for 4xx and 5xx (#1639)
29 |
30 |
31 |
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/_posts/2008-02-06-lateral-thinking-of-withered-technology.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - inspiration
7 | - culture
8 | ---
9 |
10 | Gunpei Yokoi, a former Nintendo employee and creator of the Game Boy, is also credited with an inspirational philosophy about innovating "mature" technologies. In his book _Yokoi Gunpei Game House_, Yokoi discusses his approach to improving on old ideas using lateral thinking to produce something both radical and innovative. He even suggested that pushing cutting edge technology sometimes gets in the way of developing a new product.
11 |
12 | It's easy to draw parallels between his philosophy and the Nintendo Wii's recent success. "Wikipedia's article on the topic":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_of_Withered_Technology even goes back to Nintendo's Game and Watch products, explaining how other innovations at that time meant LCD screens were cheap and plentiful, so by thinking laterally Nintendo used to this to create a new type of product. The same article contrasts this with knowing when the time is ripe for technological advances, comparing the Nintendo 64's cool reception with the success of the Sony PlayStation.
13 |
14 | This reminds me of 2004-2006, where the rise of Ajax and websites with a strong social aspect became hugely popular. A blend of technological innovation and lateral thinking helped push web-based products further than ever before. So are we about to hit a new wave of innovative products, or are people going to seek new ways to utilise existing technologies?
15 |
16 | Hopefully Gunpei Yokoi's philosophy will inspire both lateral thinking and technological evolution.
17 |
18 |
19 |
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/_posts/2008-11-19-deadline-and-tiktrac-updates.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline and Tiktrac updates"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | - tiktrac
8 | ---
9 |
10 | We've just updated Deadline with these fixes/improvements:
11 |
12 | * Calendar feeds that don't need HTTP auth are now available for those of you who want to subscribe to Deadline in *Google Calendar*
13 | * Reminders are now switched off/on properly (thanks *debaire*)
14 | * Fixed parsing of phrases like "hunt rabbit 3am tomorrow" (thanks *voamash*)
15 |
16 | These issues have been acknowledged but not fixed yet:
17 |
18 | * Phrases containing "today" aren't interpreted 100% correctly yet
19 | * Jabber bot isn't working across Google Talk to Jabber. We're testing our own Jabber server, and it may be that we have to run a service for Google Talk and Jabber separately -- thanks to *dag* for helping us with this
20 |
21 | These are things we've been asked about a lot this week:
22 |
23 | * We're looking into the costs for SMS alerts and international support
24 | * Time zone support quality is being looked into
25 | * We are indeed building a Mac and iPhone application (Helipad iPhone will be out first)
26 | * If anyone builds a *cool* and user-friendly *Adobe Air application* we'll modestly reward you (possibly serious Amazon/iTunes vouchers, we haven't decided yet)
27 |
28 | h3. Tiktrac
29 |
30 | Tiktrac has new features tested and ready to go live, we're just waiting for the Deadline press to quiet down before deploying:
31 |
32 | * HH:MM display option is coming soon
33 | * Email imports will be going live with the HH:MM update, this will allow you to set up back office applications to email CSV files into Tiktrac
34 | * Interface bug fixes
35 |
36 |
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/_posts/2006-05-27-basecamp-mobile-away.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Basecamp Mobile Away!"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - code
7 | - announcements
8 | - rails
9 | - basecamp
10 | - mobile
11 | ---
12 |
13 | !http://static.flickr.com/78/154167597_f22452f7dc_m.jpg!:http://flickr.com/photos/63596294@N00/154167597
14 |
15 | I've been playing with Basecamp Mobile for about a week now, so I think it's ready for people to play with:
16 |
17 | http://basecamp.helicoid.net
18 |
19 | It provides a basic interface to your Basecamp account, suitable for mobile phones. It uses the XHTML Mobile Profile (for more on this, see my post, What is the XHTML Mobile Profile?)
20 |
21 | Of course, it provides limited access to your account. However, it's built as a Rails application, and I'll release the source code within a few weeks. This will allow you, or perhaps a colleague with the right skills, to install (and extend) it on your own server. Before releasing it, a few friends are helping me improve it to make it suitable for public release.
22 |
23 | Why did I build this? I thought being able to use Basecamp with my phone would be handy when I'm away from the office. I also wanted some experience working with the Basecamp API. And I really love using Backpack and Tiktrac with my phone!
24 |
25 | While it's being tested, you can report bugs and suggestions with our bugtagger.
26 |
27 | Enjoy!
28 |
29 |
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/_posts/2008-05-23-inspirational-reading.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Inspirational reading"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - inspiration
7 | - japan
8 | - design
9 | - craft
10 | ---
11 |
12 | "PingMag MAKE":http://make.pingmag.jp/ features interviews with entrepreneurs and craftsman in Japan. Some of them are people who have taken over an ancient family business and are dealing with business challenges presented by modern culture and economics. Others are people who have resurrected an old craft, to find a niche space in the market today.
13 |
14 | These interviews are literally a gold mine of ideas for designers, entrepreneurs or even programmers like me! In the most recent interview, "Kiri Woodcraft with a Modern Vision":http://make.pingmag.jp/2008/05/20/matsuda/, Katsunari Matsuda reveals how he gets inspiration for his products:
15 |
16 | bq. In my case, I get hit when I first open my eyes in the morning. When I wake up, and I’m just sitting there staring into space and thinking, an image will come to me and take shape.
17 |
18 | And a great story for dealing with unhappy customers:
19 |
20 | bq. One time, we received a complaint from a customer who had bought one of our rice storage bins. It was after the three year warranty period had expired, so the staff weren’t sure how to deal with the complaint. [..] When it arrived, we could see that it had a lot of wear, and we wouldn’t be able to repair it, so we sent a new one in replacement, and they were really pleased. We got a letter of thanks from the son, the daughter, and the mother, and that made us really happy.
21 |
22 | It's heartening to read about these people innovating their craft in the face of outsourcing and cheaper foreign production, and it's given me great ideas for my own company.
23 |
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/_posts/2006-02-28-choice.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Choice"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 |
6 | ---
7 |
8 | In "Breaking down barriers to Linux desktop adoption":http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1169030,00.html, an interview with Jono Bacon (an IT consultant who helps companies install Linux), the author makes the following comment:
9 |
10 | 11 | "they fault Linux OpenOffice desktops for not having all the features in Microsoft Windows Office, even though few actually use all of the Microsoft stuff. So, in essence, they're saying they want desktops cluttered with unnecessary features." 12 |13 | 14 | Now, he's really referring to the old 80/20 rule, something every computer science course seems to reinforce at some point in its lectures. What this means is that to make off the shelf software, you have to cram in every feature possible to try and satisfy the average user. 15 | 16 | However, our products, such as "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com, throw away this kind of thinking. Instead of adding features, we give the most efficient solution we can to a simple problem. Our theory is that by adding APIs to these solutions, customers will have: 17 | 18 | * The ability to tie our software into other products 19 | * A rich set of similar products to choose from 20 | * And the ability to migrate away from our products if they no longer want to use them 21 | 22 | Software isn't really about any one thing, and the software you use ultimately comes down to taste. 23 | 24 | What the author of the comment we've quoted above seems to forget is that some people might like Office and Windows. I certainly prefer Word to Open Office's word processor, and I used Linux as my main desktop operating system from 1998 to 2003. 25 | 26 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2006-11-14-helipad-beta-testers-thanks-for-the-help-so-far.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Helipad beta testers: Thanks for the help so far" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - helipad 7 | - thoughts 8 | --- 9 | 10 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/helipad.jpg! 11 | 12 | If you've read my previous posts on Helipad you'll know it was created by me, to solve a particular need I had: the fusion between my personal notepad and the web. 13 | 14 | It seems as if this was a relatively controversial thing to do: literally thousands of people are talking about Helipad. They're comparing it to other services, pointing out the differences, wondering what people will do with the add-on system and other interesting discussions. 15 | 16 | The upshot is, we've had almost 2000 signups in a week, which means Helipad is more popular than any other Helicoid application. And, many of the people who have signed up have provided feedback through our bug reporting system or by getting in touch with our contact form. Feedback is very important to us, so to all you who have emailed suggestions, ideas, bug reports and questions: thanks! We appreciate all your help. We endeavour to answer all your queries personally, even if it means we don't get to sleep much anymore, so keep 'em coming! 17 | 18 | You might be wondering what the future of Helipad is. As I mentioned, I'm working on a Mac client, so you can work on your notes offline. I'm also tinkering with a few plugins, one turns a document that contains a bulleted list into a dynamic to-do list. And hopefully, some of our faithful users will contribute themes and plugins too! Working on Helipad has been great fun so far, so I hope you enjoy using it as much as I have creating it. 19 | 20 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /_posts/2007-03-03-tiktrac-custom-branding-interface-added.textile: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | --- 2 | layout: post 3 | title: "Tiktrac custom branding interface added" 4 | author: Alex Young 5 | categories: 6 | - tiktrac 7 | - announcements 8 | --- 9 | 10 | I was sitting at my desk in my dressing gown this morning, wrestling with "Tiktrac's":http://tiktrac.com deployment scripts to get them as seamless as possible, to the dramatic sounds of Muse's latest album. Of course, I broke things, but after a few coffees everything is now better than ever! 11 | 12 | I had a reason to get up early and start work while Tiktrac's usage is low: we've added a new custom branding interface and cleaned up the settings area: 13 | 14 |
15 |
16 | This means you can now select your own colours for Tiktrac and upload a logo. But wait! It's more awesome that mere colour selection! It also generates gradients to soften the blow of most corporate colour schemes.
17 |
18 | To try it out, navigate to 'tiktrac settings'. The link's at the top right of any page. Then select 'appearance'. Play around with the colour sliders, then save and your changes will be visible:
19 |
20 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/branding_colours.gif!
21 |
22 | The logos will appear in your header, so it's best to keep them relatively small:
23 |
24 | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/blogs/branding_logos.gif!
25 |
26 | We've also refreshed the design of the settings area, since Tiktrac's so configurable they can't fit on one page.
27 |
28 | We've got two more features planned before Tiktrac goes live. So that's one down, two to go!
29 |
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/_posts/2009-02-14-add-sharethis-buttons-to-tumblr.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Add ShareThis buttons to Tumblr"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tumblr
7 | - blogging
8 | - social
9 | ---
10 |
11 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/helicoid/insider/sharethis.png! !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/helicoid/insider/tumblr.png!
12 |
13 | "Tumblr":http://tumblr.com can be extended heavily by editing the templates and by adding services through JavaScript. I just wrote this "ShareThis":http://sharethis.com JavaScript that will automatically add ShareThis buttons to your Tumblr posts. This will:
14 |
15 | * Add Digg/Delicious/etc buttons in a menu so people can easily Digg your articles
16 | * Add the correct link and title to pages on your Tumblr index page, as well as on the article pages themselves
17 |
18 | Here's the code:
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 | To use it follow these steps:
23 |
24 | * Sign up to "ShareThis":http://sharethis.com
25 | * Create JavaScript for "Other Blog" (*ShareThis JS*)
26 | * Login to Tumblr, and go to Customize, Theme
27 | * Get my JavaScript: "tumblr_sharethis.js":http://gist.github.com/64346
28 | * Replace the first *script* line with your ShareThis JavaScript (*ShareThis JS*)
29 | * Paste your edited tumblr_sharethis.js into the header of your Tumblr Template
30 | * Change the template where it says {Block:regular} to include <div class="ShareThis"></div> after {Body}
31 |
32 | I've been quite explicit with these instructions but it's actually very easy to do. Just remember that you need to edit my JavaScript with your ShareThis code, because ShareThis uses your publisher ID for its API.
33 |
34 | You can see this JavaScript in use on "QuiteUseful":http://quiteuseful.co.uk.
35 |
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/_posts/2008-07-12-loom-out-now.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Loom out now"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - loom
7 | - announcements
8 | ---
9 |
10 | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3117/2660247437_c787b7b444.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2660247437/
11 |
12 | "Loom":http://loomapp.com/, our issue tracker, is now out for beta testing. It's an evolution of Bugtagger, which we've been using internally for 2 years but never released publicly.
13 |
14 | Features include:
15 |
16 | * *Simple, extensible design*: everyone from programmers to plumbers should be able to use it
17 | * *Public forms*: so if you market a product or service you can collect support requests without requiring users to have accounts on Loom
18 | * *Email integration and messages*: customers can send email messages to issues
19 | * *Attachments*: Attach files to issues
20 | * *Search, tags, project organisation, RSS, mobile phone support*: All the usual features you'd expect form us!
21 | * *XML REST API*: We're planning on using Loom to collect support requests via our contact form, what will you use the API for?
22 |
23 | Loom Beta accounts are free and pretty much unrestricted. Price plans on launch will be similar to Tiktrac (cheap monthly subscriptions.) We'll also be making a special announcement about our pricing structure when Loom goes live.
24 |
25 | Tiktrac integration is coming, we're still working on the technical aspects of making this as seamless as possible. At the same time we're creating centralised authentication, which means your Loom and Tiktrac login will be the same. In fact, your login for all Helicoid applications will be the same. Centralised auth deployment will start with Helipad, and you'll be notified about email/password clashes so you won't get locked out of an app.
26 |
27 |
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/_posts/2008-09-02-art-commission-wallpapers-by-paintjerm.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Art commission: Wallpapers by Paintjerm"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - Commissions
7 | ---
8 |
9 | | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3232/2818400792_75c5d09c75_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2818400792/ | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3202/2820375025_6231d0b30d_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2820375025/ |
10 | |=. "wide":http://flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2818403036/, "standard":http://flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2818400792/ |=. "wide":http://flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2821214710/, "standard":http://flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2820375025/ |
11 |
12 | Our most recent "commission":http://flickr.com/photos/helicoid/collections/72157607055315472/ is by Paintjerm, an artist based in the Midlands, UK. These wallpapers were created by first sketching out the design, and then producing black and white vectors.
13 |
14 | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3078/2818398896_4e4bbe8141_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2818398896/
15 |
16 | h3. About the artist
17 |
18 | Paintjerm is a creative chap based in the Midlands (UK) working in a variety of media. Currently working on illustration, animation, graphic design and art workshops.
19 |
20 | bq. At home working in a box room on his computer or painting a 20ft picture of a goat in an abandoned warehouse.
21 |
22 | To get in touch with Paintjerm, email paintjerm@googlemail.com or "contact us":http://helicoid.net/contact
23 |
24 | h3. About our commissions
25 |
26 | We're spending our marketing budget on commissioning work from artists! If you're an artist and you'd like to contribute (and get paid for your work of course), "get in touch":http://helicoid.net/contact. If you're based in London we might take you out for a beer.
27 |
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/_posts/2008-01-26-tiktrac-tip-go-mobile.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac tip: Go mobile"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tips
7 | - helipad
8 | - ebiwrite
9 | - tiktrac
10 | ---
11 |
12 | !http://tiktrac.com/images/landing/mobile_time_sheets/sheet.gif!
13 |
14 | *Note*: This tip actually applies to all of our web applications, seeing as we carefully craft mobile interfaces for each of them.
15 |
16 | Did you know your "Tiktrac":http://tiktrac.com account has a mobile phone version? Just add /mob to your account's URL. Even though it provides a limited view on your account, it allows you to post tasks wherever you are with a mobile phone.
17 |
18 | This is great for anyone who leaves the office regularly, like tradesmen. We have a plumber friend who uses his phone to log time when he's out on a job , which means his time sheets are more accurate: no more end of week panics trying to remember what he worked on.
19 |
20 | Similarly, "Helipad":http://pad.helicoid.net allows you to read your documents when you're away from the computer. Just login with your phone at "http://pad.helicoid.net/mob":http://pad.helicoid.net/mob. This saved me a lot of time when I was setting up Helicoid, because I kept forgetting my company's registration details when I was out meeting banks and that kind of thing. I almost had to leave a bank and return to the office when I realised the information I needed was only a few clicks away on my phone!
21 |
22 | A great side-effect of these mobile interfaces is they also work well on other devices. Our friends use their Nintendo Wii and PSP to view Helipad documents, because they both have web browsers.
23 |
24 | So if you haven't already done so, check out our mobile interfaces, bookmark them on your phone, and always have that safety net (at least when you've got a signal!)
25 |
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/_posts/2008-04-14-helipad-upgrade-unleashed.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helipad upgrade unleashed"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - helipad
7 | - announcements
8 | ---
9 |
10 | "Helipad":http://pad.helicoid.net is now faster, prettier and easier to use!
11 |
12 | The old "edit" and "share" tabs have been replaced with the last few documents you edited. These buttons are at the bottom of the page.
13 |
14 | 
15 |
16 | The homepage has tweaked graphics to make it appear cleaner, and you can toggle the shared status of a document or view its shared URL.
17 |
18 | This page is also much faster than it used to be.
19 |
20 | 
21 |
22 | Sharing a document is now faster: it opens a window rather than reloading the page. This also makes viewing the share link quicker.
23 |
24 | 
25 |
26 | You can now preview as you edit, by clicking the preview button at the bottom of the page. You don't need to save to preview, it loads instantly (rather than leaving the edit page.)
27 |
28 | What's next? We're currently working on a few minor Internet Explorer glitches, and still ploughing away at the Helipad Mac GUI client.
29 |
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/_posts/2008-01-10-20-free-icons-dedicated-to-programmers.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "20 free icons dedicated to programmers"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - icons
7 | - graphics
8 | - images
9 | - free
10 | ---
11 |
12 | !http://code.helicoid.net/svn/graphics/helicoid_icon_set.gif!
13 |
14 | The _Helicoid Icon Set_ is a collection of icons we use in our applications, including:
15 |
16 | * Navigational cues
17 | * Credit card images
18 | * Scalable buttons
19 | * Images to enhance web applications
20 |
21 | h3. Why are we giving these icons away for free?
22 |
23 | As the lead programmer and designer of Helicoid's applications, I've worked ridiculously hard over the last year at two jobs: programming and design. Programming software is my passion, but I've had to teach myself design skills in order to get our applications released on a shoestring budget.
24 |
25 | I realised there might be a lot of programmers out there in a similar situation (especially open source developers), so these icons are dedicated to you. If you open them up in Adobe's Illustrator (or try the SVG file with an open source image editor) you'll find it's easy to change colours around and scale the icons.
26 |
27 | h3. License
28 |
29 | These icons are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
30 |
31 |
32 | 
33 |
34 | h3. Download
35 |
36 | * Illustrator vectors: "Helicoid Icon Set":http://code.helicoid.net/svn/graphics/helicoid_icon_set.ai.zip
37 | * SVG: "Helicoid Icon Set":http://code.helicoid.net/svn/graphics/helicoid_icon_set.svgz
38 | * PNG: "Helicoid Icon Set":http://code.helicoid.net/svn/graphics/helicoid_icon_set.png
39 |
40 |
41 |
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1 | ---
2 | layout: default
3 | title: Blog
4 | ---
5 |
6 |
16 | {% for category in post.categories %}
17 | {{ category }}
18 | {% endfor %}
19 |
20 | 
21 |
22 | A note for developers: the API has also been added in this release. It currently allows you to submit screenshots and fetch them. We're going to add more functionality in the future, but we felt posting screenshots was the killer feature to get right.
23 |
24 | We're working on the documentation for the API, but if you can understand Ruby, this will clue you in:
25 |
26 |
27 | require 'xmlrpc/client'
28 | require 'base64'
29 |
30 | server = XMLRPC::Client.new2("http://multitap.net/backend/Screenshot")
31 | image_data = Base64.encode64(File.new("C:/test_images/gw007.JPG", 'rb').read)
32 |
33 | result = server.call2("post", 'alex@example.com', 'aezmns', 'Screenshot Title', 'Screenshot description', 'some tags separated by spaces', 'gw007.jpg', image_data, 'image/jpg')
34 |
35 |
36 | The third parameter is your API token (look at your settings on multitap.net) That last parameter is the content type for your image file. If you think that's cool, or you can't get it to work, "get in touch!":http://multitap.net/contact
37 |
38 |
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/_posts/2008-06-10-art-commission-wallpapers-by-craig-humpston.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Art commission: Wallpapers by Craig Humpston"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - Commissions
7 | ---
8 |
9 | | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/thumbs/blue_brain_wide.jpg!:http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/blue_brain_wide.jpg | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/thumbs/pink_brain_wide.jpg!:http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/pink_brain_wide.jpg | !http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/thumbs/tash_man_wide.jpg!:http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/tash_man_wide.jpg |
10 | |=. "wide":http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/blue_brain_wide.jpg, "standard":http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/blue_brain.jpg |=. "wide":http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/pink_brain_wide.jpg, "standard":http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/pink_brain.jpg |=. "wide":http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/tash_man_wide.jpg, "standard":http://assets.helicoid.net/images/commissions/craig/tash_man.jpg |
11 |
12 | Sick of your desktop wallpaper? Scrap it and try one of these designs! These wonderful illustrations were commissioned by us and produced by Craig Humpston (also known online as ging_inferior). Craig's an artist and VJ based in Nottingham, England.
13 |
14 | Look how awesome they look on a real desktop:
15 |
16 | 
17 |
18 | If you'd like to get in touch with Craig about his work, please contact him at: ging_inferior@hotmail.co.uk.
19 |
20 | If you're an artist, illustrator or designer and you'd like to contact us about commissions or working on any of our web applications, please use our "contact form":http://helicoid.net/contact/! We pay well and if you're based around London we'll be sure to buy you a few beers too!
21 |
22 |
23 |
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/_includes/sidebar.html:
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1 | This blog contains news and product updates from Helicoid Limited, a London-based web applications company.
Get free email and IM reminders with Deadline
23 |
Ebiwrite: Tools for translators
27 |
Track time and expenses with Tiktrac
31 |
Write notes online with Helipad
35 |
13 |
14 | The product is Helipad, and it was inspired by my love of these little things:
15 |
16 | 
17 |
18 | A hardy notepad can go everywhere with you, can you can customise it beyond belief. People come up with their own annotation and organisation systems, with complete freedom to change their mind at any time.
19 |
20 | I've tried using a few web-based personal organisers systems over the last few years, but I always end up ditching my laptop and using the humble notepad. However, I constantly feel as if I need a digital cousin for my paper tools -- something that would let me write notes, to-do lists and categorise them with my own tagging schemes.
21 |
22 | Helipad lets me do all of this and more: I can view notes on my phone with the mobile version, download notes using the API to work offline -- I can even integrate my existing software with it! It even lets me colour tags (obviously I set the "important" tag to red!), and give links to friends for public documents.
23 |
24 | What really makes Helipad amazing, however, is the ability to create plugins. I can create JavaScript plugins or CSS themes which other Helipad users can share and use.
25 |
26 | All these features make Helipad my killer GTD tool, and I'd like to share it with you. I need help to take it from where it is right now to being a great product. If you think it sounds like a tool that's missing from your life, get in touch. It's not quite ready for a public release, thanks to Internet Explorer's quirks, but I'd love to get some feedback.
27 |
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/_posts/2009-04-18-deadline-notification-api-and-github-support.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline: Notification API and GitHub support"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | - github
8 | ---
9 |
10 | "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com now has a notification API (and it works with "GitHub":http://github.com/). Notifications are similar to reminders, except they're sent out in real time. Since adding notifications is so simple, you could hook up all kinds of software to Deadline to get alerts. Plus, you'll already have configured Deadline with your preferred means of receiving reminders: email, SMS, Jabber, etc, which means you'll get real time notifications the same way.
11 |
12 | h3. Notification API
13 |
14 | Accessing the API is simple: a URL is requested with a notification description, and it will be sent out straight away by your preferred reminder methods.
15 |
16 | Here's how it works:
17 |
18 | # Go to Settings, Feeds/iCal
19 | # Copy the Notification URL. This URL contains your secret code (which is like a password) and your user ID
20 | # Use the URL to send a notification
21 |
22 | Example:
23 |
24 |
25 | curl "http://deadlineapp.com/notifications/1/93jd81/create.xml/Alert,
26 | %20web%20server%201%20is%20down"
27 | 
15 |
16 | Constructing this particular report was easy enough for my grandma to do it. I added a new report, named it, then added two filters: one to search the task description field for "bug", and another to limit to a particular sheet.
17 |
18 | Here's how the filters look:
19 |
20 | 
21 |
22 | Spend some time experimenting with the new reports feature, and see what you can discover. If you find any really creative ways to use it, "let us know":http://helicoid.net/contact so we can share your thoughts with Tiktrac's fans. In return, we might just give you some *incredible discounts on Tiktrac's monthly fees*!
23 |
24 | By the way, I've also redesigned Tiktrac's homepage and generally made the whole app sexier. December has been an incredibly busy and tough month. Merry Christmas!
25 |
26 | 
27 |
28 |
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/_posts/2008-08-19-build-your-own-search-engine.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Build your own search engine"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - yahoo
7 | - api
8 | - rails
9 | ---
10 |
11 | !http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3050/2778083787_befe721b22_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/helicoid/2778083787/
12 |
13 | I recently used Yahoo!'s BOSS search API to build "search.helicoid.net":http://search.helicoid.net -- a tiny Rails app that searches our public-facing web sites. It's tied into our 404 pages which makes it easy for people to find things when they're lost.
14 |
15 | So how would you like to build your own search engine? The "BOSS API":http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/ searches Yahoo!'s index without any restrictions. This means you can freely search Yahoo!'s index with minimal hassle. The BOSS API is also incredibly simple to use.
16 |
17 | To get started, you need to sign up and get a BOSS ID. Visit the "BOSS page":http://developer.yahoo.com/boss, then click "Build an Application." I selected Browser Based Authentication in the sign-up form.
18 |
19 | Once you've got your appid using the API is easy. Simply send requests to the service like this:
20 |
21 | http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/{query}?appid=xyz[¶m1=val1¶m2=val2
22 |
23 | ... and you'll get back nicely formatted XML.
24 |
25 | To use our example Ruby on Rails code to build your own site, ensure you've got the following gems installed:
26 |
27 | # open-uri
28 | # will_paginate
29 | # hpricot
30 |
31 | Then download our Rails BOSS example: "code.helicoid.net/files/search_example.zip":http://code.helicoid.net/files/search_example.zip
32 |
33 | Next, unzip our example code and open config/environment.rb. Enter your BOSS ID at the bottom of the file. You should then be able to run script/server and try out the app.
34 |
35 | To customise the way the search works, take a look at app/models/search.rb and scroll down to line 53 -- this is where the search request is generated. Notice how I've supplied "site:helicoid.net" as part of the query: this makes Yahoo! search Helicoid's sites.
36 |
37 | If you create anything interesting with this please let us know via the comments!
38 |
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/_posts/2007-03-25-tiktrac-updates-new-search-interface-minor-enhancements.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Tiktrac updates: new search interface, minor enhancements"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - tiktrac
7 | ---
8 |
9 | "Tiktrac's":http://tiktrac.com search interface has just been updated, along with more export options and some minor usability enhancements.
10 |
11 | Search now allows you to narrow down your query by selecting a sheet or person. It also displays the total time for the tasks it finds.
12 |
13 | 
14 |
15 | Your entire account's data can now be exported. Look for the 'Data export' page under 'Tiktrac settings'.
16 |
17 | 'Daily summary' exports have also been added under the 'Export' tab found on sheets. This produces a CSV file with total time for each day. This was added because many contractors submit timesheets in a similar format. Hopefully this will save you some time!
18 |
19 | Developing the search update came from an accidental discovery. During a visit from a client, we got talking about a new feature for their application. The feature was conceptually similar to something else, but would have to be developed almost from scratch.
20 |
21 | To get a time estimate we struck upon the idea of using Tiktrac's search tool to find related tasks. Then we added up the results, and hey presto: a better estimate than simply guessing.
22 |
23 | We both realised at this point that Tiktrac would benefit from something to make this process easier. The whole point of Tiktrac is let you track and manage time, so it seemed natural.
24 |
25 | The other minor tweaks added this week are:
26 |
27 | * Report graphs now update properly
28 | * The sheet selection drop-down for add/edit tasks now has more friendly formatting, by grouping sheets by client
29 | * When opening the task addition form, the first field is now automatically selected (whether it's 'ref' or duration)
30 | * 'Ref' fields now have links everywhere
31 | * Colour selection sliders under 'appearance' now always reflect changes
32 | * Exports now hide 'ref' field when it isn't used
33 |
34 |
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/_posts/2008-11-11-deadline.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Deadline"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - announcements
7 | - deadline
8 | ---
9 |
10 | "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com is our latest app: a new take on the web calendar. It uses natural language parsing to interpret events you write in plain English. Searching is also intelligent: typing "next week" shows all your events for next week, whereas "meet kev" will look for those keywords.
11 |
12 | !http://deadlineapp.com/images/home/screenshots/interface.png!
13 |
14 | Deadline works with *Jabber/Gtalk*: it sends reminders and also allows you to delete, delay and hide events through your IM client.
15 |
16 | It also *accepts and sends email*. That means if your mobile phone supports email or MMS you can get and set reminders anywhere. There's also a mobile interface too just like the rest of Helicoid's projects.
17 |
18 | If it can't understand the date and time you've typed in, it'll prompt you to enter one with a form like this:
19 |
20 | !http://deadlineapp.com/images/home/screenshots/manual.png!
21 |
22 | Deadline is the second application to use "Helicoid":http://helicoid.net's auth server, which means if you have a "Helipad":http://pad.helicoid.net it's single sign-on!
23 |
24 | Deadline looks very different to our other web applications. There's barely any navigation and no footer. When you hover the logo minimal navigation appears. I really wanted to make something that looked graphical, almost like an album cover: big helvetica fonts, bold colours, with an emphasis on your data over application chrome.
25 |
26 | Accounts are free and signup is quick (remember you can just login if you use Helipad). If you'd like to know about the technical stuff, or upcoming API details, post a comment and I'll get back to you.
27 |
28 | There's also more details here: http://pad.helicoid.net/document/public/93f5a1ce
29 |
30 | *Updates*
31 |
32 | * 13th November: Cleaned up help text interface, fixed a typo on the homepage
33 | * 13th November: Improved IM and email help (inline help on the Settings page, complete with screenshots)
34 | * 12th November: Acknowledged that if you have a Helipad account and try to reset your password on Deadline it doesn't work if you haven't used Deadline before. This will be fixed soon.
35 |
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/_posts/2009-05-15-using-deadline-everywhere.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Using Deadline Everywhere"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - deadline
7 | - tips
8 | ---
9 |
10 | The ways "Deadline":http://deadlineapp.com/ can be accessed has grown to ridiculous proportions. Here's a summary of the apps, tools and hacks that work with it.
11 |
12 | h3. Mac Desktop
13 |
14 | !http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/deadline/deadline_mac_blog.png!
15 |
16 | Deadline will work with your Mac's desktop. For more details, read the initial blog announcement. "Download Deadline for Mac here":http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/221414/deadline/DeadlineGrowl.zip.
17 |
18 | h3. Mobile
19 |
20 | Visit /mob to access Deadline's cut-down mobile version: "deadlineapp.com/mob":http://deadlineapp.com/mob/
21 |
22 | h3. SMS
23 |
24 | We've had strong feedback from the people on the closed SMS beta, so we'll roll this out with payment plans soon. "Contact us":http://helicoid.net/contact if you want to try it for free until that happens.
25 |
26 | h3. Email
27 |
28 | Did you know you can email reminders to Deadline? Click Help, Email Input to get your customised email address. It's handy to add this to your computer and phone address books so you can quickly email Deadline wherever you are.
29 |
30 | h3. Jabber/Gtalk
31 |
32 | I've recently been working on making the Deadline Jabber/Gtalk bots respond faster, and they're working better than ever now. You can add talk@deadlineapp.com or deadline@helicoid.net (for Google Hosted Gtalk) to your buddy lists to talk to Deadline. It'll send you reminders and also let you schedule and search them.
33 |
34 | h3. Fluid
35 |
36 | Deadline is designed to work with "Fluid":http://fluidapp.com/. For more information on using site-specific browsers with Deadline, visit "deadlineapp.com/ssb":http://deadlineapp.com/ssb
37 |
38 | h3. Mozilla Ubiquity
39 |
40 | If you're a fan of "Ubiquity":https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/, check out our "Deadline Ubiquity scripts":http://deadlineapp.com/ubiquity. This allows you to schedule and search reminders from within Firefox.
41 |
42 | h3. API
43 |
44 | Deadline also has an "XML API":http://pad.helicoid.net/document/public/482ae365 so you can make your own applications with it. I'm currently building an iPhone app that uses it.
45 |
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/_posts/2006-12-14-helipad-updates-and-the-todo-list-plugin.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Helipad updates and the to-do list plugin"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - helipad
7 | ---
8 |
9 | I've just finished updating Helipad with some recent changes. I've also released the to-do list plugin, which I'm still working on but is now in a somewhat usable state. It's also a great example of what you can do with plugins.
10 |
11 | h3. Helipad internal changes
12 |
13 | Many of these changes came about through our bug reporting system, Bugtagger. So thanks for the bug reports!
14 |
15 | * Fixed a little bug where the tag help link on the edit broke
16 | * Improved printing: margins are bigger and links appear alongside the original URL
17 | * Added CSS to plugins, so your plugins can include their own styles
18 | * Made changelogs in plugins always appear in the same order
19 | * Improved usability of the mobile area
20 | * Made autosave more robust
21 |
22 | h3. To-do list plugin
23 |
24 | To enable to plugin:
25 |
26 | # Navigate to 'add-ons' and find it
27 | # Click 'install'
28 | # Tag a new document with 'todo'
29 | # Viewing the document on the preview page
30 | # Say, "yes, I want to use this plugin"
31 |
32 | Now you'll have a great dynamic to-do list on your Preview page, like this:
33 |
34 | 
35 |
36 | And the edit page is still readable:
37 |
38 | 
39 |
40 | The to-do list plugin actually modifies your documents to ensure they can still be edited in a text-friendly way. This means you can still use the document on your phone, or perform drastic editing operations that the plugin doesn't provide.
41 |
42 | h3. Tongue-in-cheek Christmas theme
43 |
44 | I've also added a Christmas theme, replete with snowflakes and seasonal colours. It's very silly, and I only hope it inspires somebody to do better!
45 |
46 | Merry Christmas!
47 |
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/_posts/2008-06-22-korg-ds10-a-synth-for-your-ds.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Korg DS-10: A synth for your DS"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - nintendo
7 | - games
8 | - music
9 | - audio
10 | ---
11 |
12 | The "Korg DS-10":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmIwZDVJSwI is an incredible piece of software: it's a sequencer and synth based on the "Korg MS-10":http://www.vintagesynth.com/korg/ms10.shtml, allowing you to make music on your Nintendo DS.
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 | There's excellent coverage of it in "this week's 1up show":http://gamevideos.com/video/id/19542, including interviews and jam sessions with the developers.
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
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/Rakefile:
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1 | require 'ftools'
2 |
3 | namespace :remote do
4 | task :validate do
5 | puts 'Validating _site/'
6 |
7 | # These files may be lost in a completely new _site
8 | unless File.exists? '_site/.htaccess'
9 | puts "[WARN] Copying .htaccess file"
10 | File.copy '.htaccess', '_site/.htaccess'
11 | end
12 |
13 | # The jekyll I first started using got this wrong
14 | unless File.exists? '_site/atom.xml'
15 | if File.exists? 'atom.xml'
16 | File.copy 'atom.xml', '_site/atom.xml'
17 | elsif File.exists? 'atom.html'
18 | puts "[WARN] An atom.html file has been generated instead of .xml"
19 | File.mv 'atom.html', 'atom.xml'
20 | File.copy 'atom.xml', '_site/atom.xml'
21 | end
22 |
23 | end
24 |
25 | File.copy '_site/atom.xml', '_site/feed.xml'
26 | puts 'Done.'
27 | end
28 |
29 | task :deploy do
30 | puts "Deploying..."
31 | Rake::Task['tags:generate'].invoke
32 | Rake::Task['remote:validate'].invoke
33 | puts `rsync -avz "_site/" blog.helicoid.net:/var/www/blog/`
34 | end
35 | end
36 |
37 | desc "Deploy"
38 | task :deploy do
39 | Rake::Task['remote:deploy'].invoke
40 | end
41 |
42 | namespace :tags do
43 | desc "Generate tags"
44 | task :generate do
45 | puts 'Generating tags...'
46 | require 'rubygems'
47 | require 'jekyll'
48 | include Jekyll::Filters
49 |
50 | options = Jekyll.configuration({})
51 | site = Jekyll::Site.new(options)
52 | site.read_posts('')
53 |
54 | html =<<-HTML
55 | ---
56 | layout: default
57 | title: Tags
58 | ---
59 |
60 |
64 |
65 | 
20 |
21 | Notice that this makes it possible to add a sheet dedicated to expenses. Here's how we've set up expenses ourselves:
22 |
23 | 
24 |
25 | h3. Reports improvements
26 |
27 | 
28 |
29 | * Reports now all use the same date direction
30 | * Line charts have been added for "busy" reports, making their appearance cleaner
31 | * The "People" graphs are now generated much faster
32 | * The "Overview" reports have been cleaned up
33 |
34 | h3. Help system upgrade
35 |
36 | 
37 |
38 | We now have a more flexible and friendly help system. Click on "help" at the top of the page to check it out. It prints out nicely too!
39 |
40 | h3. Other changes
41 |
42 | * If you've added your own icon, it will now be much larger
43 | * Changing a sheet's ordering (by clicking on the headers) is remembered after login!
44 |
45 |
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/_posts/2008-01-29-improve-customer-service-with-error-emails.textile:
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1 | ---
2 | layout: post
3 | title: "Improve customer service with error emails"
4 | author: Alex Young
5 | categories:
6 | - programming
7 | - maintenance
8 | - management
9 | ---
10 |
11 | Running a professional web application isn't an easy thing to do. Even the most finely crafted and well tested code will have bugs somewhere, so we try to employ as many tools as possible to cut down time spent on bugs. Unfortunately, customers often won't even report bugs, so if you're not careful people will leave your service without even telling you something is wrong.
12 |
13 | One technique we use to catch bugs is error email reporting. Depending on your development environment, it's relatively easy to catch exceptions, display an error page and email your support staff.
14 |
15 | Why are error emails so useful?
16 |
17 | * You can get in touch the person that caused the error to ask for more information about what they were doing, and to also let them know you're dealing with the problem
18 | * Letting your customers know you're aware of a problem even before someone raises a bug report is professional and good customer service
19 | * In our experience emails get checked more often than log files
20 | * Less technical staff can still send initial responses to customers when key support staff are busy
21 |
22 | Certain errors can be handled by your code without generating an email, like 404s. When we launch an application we leave error emails on for 404s to make sure we haven't slipped up on something obvious, but this usually gets turned off as the application gets popular and the number of weird requests gets too high to deal with in this manner.
23 |
24 | We include the following things in our error transcripts:
25 |
26 | * Errors always include a user ID or account ID so the original user can be referenced (personal details are not included for privacy reasons)
27 | * Transcripts can be produced including the exception class name and additional details if available
28 | * We also pluck objects out of ruby's objectspace to provide a more detailed trace (other languages have different ways of handling this)
29 |
30 | Unfortunately there are a few pitfalls to be aware of.
31 |
32 | * Ensure your error pages actually return 500s, else search engines like Google may misinterpret them
33 | * Be very careful with what information you append to the email. For example, if you dump the current environment in a human-readable form *don't* do this during payment processing! Emailing all your staff customer credit card details will quickly get you in trouble
34 | * When handling exceptions, don't micro-manage them. Just accept the fact your application will have bugs and allow customers to be aware there's a problem, rather than trying to catch all exceptions and present something that doesn't work
35 |
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