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When you're hosting a drawing, it's common to make the mistake that you'll be able to run an SQL query on command and randomly choose the winners.

Random.org is a random number generator. If you're hosting a drawing, compile a spreadsheet of the names of your entrants and use Random to spit out some numbers.

Match the number up to the corresponding name and you have a truly free number generator without using any development effort on your end.

Spent most of this week working in the lab on Balsamiq "Mockups". It's a great mockup tool but have you heard of/tried:

HotGloo

Mockingbird

See my review of Balsamiq Mockups

My Top Moments of 2011

2011, the year tech heads will come to mark as the death of Steve Jobs. It's been a crazy year in tech, and not just for that reason. We've had Siri, tons of startups, Facebook Timeline and we even saw a tablet war! Here are my personal favorite moments from 2011.

Facebook Changes to Timeline

Facebook changes have become almost meme-able every time they happen. With the Game of Thrones “Winter is Coming” meme on the rise, the announcement of Facebook Timeline was accompanied with a laundry list of complaints (mostly from folks not yet affected by Timeline itself). Facebook managed to totally change the way we use it in just a few short months, and can you even remember what it was like before all those blue corners and news tickers?

Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs Bio makes Mac Fanboys Cry

A certain podcast I heard referred to Walter Isaacson as “the wrong guy” for refusing to document more of the corporate life of Steve Jobs. The “unanswered question” of what made Steve unique was (and probably never will be) answered. Rather than accept this study of human life, Techmeme carried a ton of headlines from tech writers bashing the bio, and Daring Fireball's Gruber agreed with the most scathing of them.

After wading through WEEKS of news about Jobs, it was really amusing to learn that not even his bio was good enough to fill the void.

Tablet Wars

The Kindle Fire is an Android powered device, but you'd never know it by looking at the screen. Thus ends this year's spin on tablet wars, but with the iPad 3 looming the stage is set for one hell of a shake up. Next Christmas people might be tweeting angrily about not getting a Kindle Fire for Christmas instead of a Camaro.

“Arrow in the Knee”

If you're not a gamer, you don't know what it's like to have repetitive music and dialogue thrown at you in a controlled environment while you struggle to figure out what to do next. Since there are only a set number of canned phrases an NPC can speak, it becomes a sign of pride to speak these phrases to others and share in the experience. This year's meme of choice goes to Skyrim guards, who apparently all came to their current profession after having taken an arrow in the knee.

Everything Microsoft Did

Google and Apple are boring compared to the crazy stuff happening over at Microsoft this year! Microsoft dropped an entirely new dashboard on Xbox Live users that dramatically favors Kinect interaction (and advertisers), Windows Phone got Xbox interconnectivity and a new boss and Windows 8 was revealed and totally blew people's minds!

On the flipside, Windows Phone 7 continues to suck.

Siri... I Guess

I don't know. Everyone else thinks Siri is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Having used it, and met with 4S owners that “use” Siri every day, I find the feature is ultimately useless. Isn't that what everyone likes to bash Google over?

What were your top moments?

I write an email each week for Halo Wednesday. This week was SOPA themed

Fellow representatives, I come to you today, a simple man. I'm not a "nerd" as some might speculate. I don't know things about Halo, I'm not "good at it" as people like to allege that I am. I'm just an average American. Now I know that because I'm not good at Halo, those that are must be scheming against me. Nevermind your so called strategies, or using cover... If God had intended me to do it, I surely would have, as I've prayed on this very dilemma almost daily for the past several years. My fellow representatives, I do not represent the interests of some other party. I'm not asking you to curb some Halo players that I might get a chance at undue victory. I am simply positing that a man such as myself ought to have the inalienable right to be good at Halo. That no man shall hold weapons more powerful than I do, or strike a headshot when I am not able to. I urge you to disregard the testimony of other Halo players that would have you believe my argument is mere whining. This is a serious problem, and if we don't do something we will probably continue to lose forever. Americanly yours, -- Richard Bashara Wordsmith

Counselor Bashara, I fail to agree with you as to being good at Halo being expressly a right? As chairman Newbie, I do not see any bill in the Commandments of Halo Wednesday where it says that you have the right to be good at it. There are game producers out there that work tirelessly to make the game challenging so they may see the fruits of their labor, only to be robbed of their hard work because of your sense of entitlement to being good at Halo. Any sources explicitly or implicitly associated with hacks such as Wallers and Aimbots are a serious threat to the XBOX Live community at large, and we must severe the problem at the limb to keep the infection from spreading. We are not doing this to punish Americans. We are not doing this to control Americans. We are doing this because fair laws of equal gaming are being broken every minute by deviants who believe that just because these hacks are downloaded as a long string of ones and zeros, they are not really hacks. And, just because they found them somewhere else in the world, that these items are exempt from the United States of XBOX Live Fair Online Gaming Policy. Not only are these fair laws being broken, but disregarded. Thank you for your letter. I look forward to future correspondence with your team. Forever your Guest and Player Two C.N. Jeremu, 5150th committee.

A Christmas Flyer I did for my local comic book store. Always help the little guy ;)

The things MG picks on aren't things I think I'd care about? It's hard to say without the device in my hand. He docks Apple for having a home button that clicks, and docks Android for not displaying partial email text in their notifications. Having both devices, neither of these things bother me as much as they seem to bother MG.

The rest of the Galaxy Nexus hardware leaves something to be desired. The iPhone feels like a completely and thoughtfully designed object. By comparison, the Galaxy Nexus still feels rather cheap and plastic-y. It’s not awful, but you’d think Samsung could do better at this point. Some people will like having the option to remove to the back to get at the battery, but the method for doing so remains a joke. You essentially have to rip it off. I feel like I’m peeling a nail away from a finger every time I do it — it’s that unpleasant.

I really like this potential new HP logo. Simple and elegant.

just a kid having some fun in Time Square.

RIP Patrice O'Neal. Comedy lost another great

En avant, toujours plus avant

Last year, around this time, I was headed to Montreal to work with a group of people I'd never met in real life on a project I'd only just begun to get a handle on. I'd never been in the snow, and I was vetting the city to see if it would be a place I'd like to hang my hat. I stayed for three weeks, learning not just about the city, but about my French Canadian co workers. I saw their art, I heard their stories and I met one of the writers I work with.

That early test would define my relationship with Softcity. Steve Jobs talked about achieving an emotional connection between user and product; I suppose had this with my company. Softcity gave me opportunity and when I doubted my abilities they told me to reach higher. They tested me, and gave me even more responsibility when they saw that I could fly. I will never forget the time I spent working with such an amazing group of people, and it's with a heavy heart that I release the community that I've helped build into the wild. I hope the internet will treat it fairly, and maybe even add to it. I'd love to see it grow =)

As for me, I plan to spend a bit more time playing with my cats while I take on my new found freelance projects.

I hope you'll stick with me during my crazy adventures!

no one needs this setup, but it's nice to look at.

4Chan's been DDos'd

4chan's status page, which is hosted on Google's Blogger platform, announced on Sunday 13 November that the site was down due to a large DDoS attack. 4chan today revealed that the ongoing DDoS attack consists of a UDP packet flood on port 80. Such attacks typically aim to disrupt normal operation of a website, either by saturating all available bandwidth, or by exhausting the processing capacity of a web server, thus denying service to legitimate users.

Source

For my friends that "don't care" about Protect IP

I know it's not that you really don't care, rather that you suffer from the same problem our congress people suffer from. A lot of this stuff is just over your heads, and that's ok. I also know many of you are artists, musicians, designers, producers, composers and app developers.

You are currently allowed to post your music to sound cloud, your art to deviant art, or open a blog and discuss whatever the hell you want. The internet is a place to discover new ideas, share that knowledge and create. No longer are we confined to traditional publishing methods, we can now take our work directly to the public without the need to go through some big distributor.

Your work, and those freedoms, are in jeopardy because those with money are pushing legislation hard to allow "Big Content" to basically black list you if your work resembles something they have done. There is no court or trial process for it, they simply report you to whatever payment processor you use and within 5 days you're gone. There isn't really a formal appeals process and the bill is poorly worded over all:

As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the reliability and universality of the DNS evaporates.

It gets worse: Under SOPA's provisions, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. While PROTECT-IP targeted sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough). And it creates new powers to shut down folks who provide tools to help users get access to the Internet the rest of the world sees (not just the “U.S. authorized version”).

Source

Startups all across America need your help to keep this from happening. I urge you to please take a moment to visit this page and help fight for what's right.

Seriously, how does one even walk on this? (click for more)

I'm glad that people have found beauty and amazement in the iOS system, but you can't just say "post PC world" and be done with it.

#scrollbar #design #UI

Rick Perry is the number one result for the term "Gaffe"

blehmeng

breakingsoftware-blog

Having heard this from a second hand source (read it on the news) This is indeed the perfect meme for this particular gaffe.

seldo:

Rick Perry, you are the meme of the week.

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