A couple months ago, with all the press focusing on Apple’s announcement of the iPad, Steve Jobs made a comment that Flash is dying and that people need to push HTML5. Since this comment, I’ve heard from many clients who want new sites and want to avoid Flash because it’s a dead technology and has no future.

I never thought I’d do this, but I think I’m going to come to the defense of flash. I don’t like programming in flash all that much and I find it quite frustrating and annoying (I had hopes that when Adobe purchased Macromedia it’s type support would get better… not worse).

Don’t get me wrong, in 15 years I don’t see a huge place for Flash. But in the now, and in the next 5 years, it’s still going to have a very strong presence. I believe this for a couple reasons:

1. Upgradeability (Spell check is getting mad at me for that word, but it’s the best word for this reason): If you want to upgrade flash, you can now do it without having to restart your browser. In fact, it often takes less than 5 seconds (really!). It is such an easy process that almost everyone upgrades without even realizing what they are doing (I won’t get into if this is a good thing). Therefore, within 6 months of a new flash version over 96% of web users have it. That’s some amazing penetration. Web browsers on the other hand (Internet Explorer in particular) is on the complete other end of the spectrum. People still use IE6. Yes, it is in decline, but a lot of people (and more importantly, businesses) still use it. There is no easy way to upgrade. A user has to go through Windows Upgrades application (which studies have shown that most people do not use). Microsoft seems to have finally gotten back into the browser game and has released IE7, IE8 and is even working quickly on IE9, so perhaps this will get better. But the bottom line is that right now (and for the next couple years at least), most people do not upgrade their browsers.

2. Video. There is a lot of hype around the HTML 5 video tag. Sure, it makes it really easy to embed video. It’s just one tag. Sounds great right? I think it is, but the markup isn’t the problem here. The browsers are. Just like in the late 90’s and early 2000’s we had to have a Netscape version of a site and an IE version of a site. Now, we’ll have to have video in one format for some browsers and in another format for other browsers.  In my opinion, video is the one thing that flash does well. Why? Because of my reason number one above. Flash gets upgraded often, and can support better and better video codecs/formats as they come out. Browser manufacturers can’t agree on formats. And as time goes by and new formats come out, it will become even more of a mess.

In a perfect world, the browser manufactures would agree on standards. And as new versions came out, people would make sure the upgraded. These two things don’t happen. Therefore, flash isn’t going anywhere.

The claim that flash is dying reminds me of the late 90’s and all the claims that XML was going to revolutionize the world and every new site and application should make use of it. Sure, XML is a solid tool, but 90% of the hype wasn’t necessary. Flash will go away at some point. But not nearly at the speed that people claim.

Over the past year I’ve looked a bit into iPhone App Development. I have an iMac at home, I use a powerbook at work, and I talk on an iPhone. I love to work on mac’s. But I must admit that I have absolutely no desire to start developing iPhone apps.

It has nothing to do with the programming language, the IDE or anything regarding development.

It really comes down to two reasons.

One main reason is that I despise building something for one platform. I don’t want to build an iPhone app, rebuild the same project as an Android App, and then again as a Blackberry app…etc.

It’s the browser wars all over again where we had to build a Netscape version, an AOL version and an IE6 version…etc.

The other big reason has to do with Apple’s policy. It can take weeks for an app to get approved. And there is no gaurentee your app will even BE approved. I know one company that built an app for a client, submitted and had the app rejected because Apple didn’t think it would have a large audience. Really? So do we need to submit a business plan with our app that projects what Apple’s return will be?

Of late Apple has been critical of Adobe Flash and has been trying to promote the open standards of HTML5 (while I like Flash, I applaud a company the size of Apple trying to push HTML standards forward).

Last month, Apple removed over 5,000 apps that it deemed ‘inappropriate’. Really? So on one hand it promotes open standards, but on the other hand they want to create their own standards and change them after the fact. These apps were already in the store – meaning they had been approved. And many of them have been purchased many many times.

I hope they don’t pull an Amazon and go into the phone to remove the app.

I am no financial expert. So I will refrain from giving up too much advice. However, there was one item I should of included in my best of 2009 list. And that was paying off my car. And not just paying it off, but paying it off 2 years early.

It started about a year into my loan. I started putting 50 bucks extra with each payment. I’d start realizing that the 50 extra each month didn’t hurt too much. So before I knew it I was paying off two or three payments at once. Now, I know that two or three extra payments at once isn’t possible for everyone. But even just mailing in 20 or 30 bucks extra with each payment can help.

Paying it off, and paying it off early is a very, very good feeling

It’s the first day of 2010! What a better time than now to make a post about my favorite music of 2009? Just a quick note, I am not making a claim that this is the ‘best’ of 2009. Just my personal favorites.

Top 10 Albums:

1. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle. Bill Callahan (aka Smog) has been around for a while. I’ve always enjoyed his music. However, this one just put me in a trance. I found myself listening to it more than any other album that came out in 2009. It’s relaxing with a good hint of darkness to keep it interesting. Sadly he doesn’t have a video out, but you can listen to some tracks on the Drag City link above.

2. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion / Fall Be Kind EP. This was going to be number 3 on the list until Fall Be Kind came out. While technically it’s another album, I see it as a companion piece. Both the album and the EP are amazing and should be checked out.

3. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orcca. Another Domino release! I’m a programmer, not a writer. So, I’m going to end my descriptions here and just post the video :-)

 4. Cass McCombs – Catacombs. Domino Again!

 5. The XX – XX

6. Micachu – Jewellry

 7. The Monks – Black Monk Time. Yes, this is a re-release.. but it needs to be appreciated. The founders of punk.

 8. The Mantles – The Mantles. Sadly no video for these guys. But you can download their single off of their site here.

9. The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa. No clue if this is an ‘official’ video

 10. The Sandwitches – How to Make Ambient Sad Cake. No video for these gals either. But you can listen to the track ‘Back to the Sea’ here.

Apologies for going MIA. I had a bout of the swine flu and then came Thanksgiving, getting slammed at work and then Christmas. So least to say, it’s been quite busy.

And now, we are at that time of the year. The ‘year in review’ post. I’m a music junkie and I am an internet geek. That means I love making lists, and especially love making year end lists.

However, I don’t necessarily love writing a blog, so I’ll keep this short and quick. 3 lists. That’s all.

Top 6 things of the year:

1. Getting married. Yes, as cheesy as that sounds, it’s number one. It was a great time, and I couldn’t be happier.

2. I finally made it to Europe! For the honeymoon we went to Italy. We hit Venice, Rome and Cinque Terre. I can’t recommend Cinque Terre enough. If you want to go somewhere amazing, that isn’t packed with tourists, and isn’t outreagously expensive, I recommend Cinque Terre. You can read more of my thoughts on it on a past blog post.

3. I’m not going to put anything here. The first two deserve some separation from the rest of the pack.

4. Seattle. I have wanted to go to Seattle for more than 10 years. The climate always appealed to me (I have trouble breathing in humid/warm air, so cool climate gives me more energy). The beautiful scenery and all the national parks in close proximity sure doesn’t hurt either. It was all that I hoped it would be.

5. Pentax 6×7. While I’m a tech geek, I like to dabble with the old as well. I like collecting old photos, and I like taking photos with old cameras. For christmas my wife bought me a Pentax 6×7. I was borrowing one from a friend, Mark Katzman, and to my surprise, it is the one she bought me. So I was lucky enough to try the camera out before deciding that it was what I wanted. I have been looking for a medium format camera with a built in light meter for a while. And this one is perfect. The quality of the photos it takes are amazing. Now I have no excuses when I take bad photos! Also, the shutter sounds like a pump action shotgun, which makes me feel pretty bad ass.

6. Dropbox. Dropbox is by far one of the best tech finds of the year. It makes backing up files, quickly sharing photos, or moving files between home and work easy as can be.

Top 3 things I’m looking forward to next year:

1. MYOS. It’s a CMS I built at my work. It is still pretty young and immature. But it’s coming together better than I hoped. So far, it is making building CMS based sites infinitely easier, quicker and more solid.

2. Boxee. My wife and I just bought a tv for the bedroom. I had an old micro form computer sitting at my parents. I built it a couple years ago. It’s all passive heating and is super quiet. I plan on dusting it off and putting Boxee on it!

3. iMac. I think this may be the year I upgrade my iMac. The 27″ iMac’s look stunning. Hear’s to hoping the solve the flickering and the shipping problems that end up with a busted corner.

The final list, my favorite albums of the year will be coming shortly (i mean it).

At TOKY, we’ve built a couple sites for clients who wanted a site search. Rather than re-invent the wheel we’ve tried using Yahoo’s search (this was pre BOSS) as well as Google’s Custom Search Engine (CSE). We have had problems with both search applications. In particular, the results would be different from page to page. For instance, when searching an item it may tell me that there are 300 total results. But then three pages into those results it would tell me that there were really only 37 total search results.

This would make it quite difficult to include total search results for a search on the page. It also prevented us from providing pagination as a method of browsing the results. Instead we can only provide Previous Page / Next Page style navigation of the results.

I contacted Yahoo, and they explained that they were working on it. The issue was mainly because the search would hit a different server with each search call.

I tried contacting Google, but never had much luck getting an answer.

However, after testing CSE a bit more, I noticed that this issue was consistently happening on certain searches and at certain pages within the result set. Therefore, the issue couldn’t have been the same as it was with Yahoo’s search app.

I started playing with every parameter that can be customized when calling CSE. I found one that seems to fix the problem: filter. Here is what the API says about filter:

“Optional. The filter parameter activates or deactivates the automatic filtering of Google search results. See the Automatic Filtering section of this document for more information about Google’s search results filters.

The default value for the filter parameter is 1, which indicates that the feature is enabled.

Note: By default, Google applies filtering to all search results to improve the quality of those results.”

I turned this filter off and search results were consistent from page to page. Google may recommend that the filter is enabled, however, in the majority of my tests the first couple pages of results were the same with it on or off. If the filter was turned on, I would still encounter the issue where 3-5 pages into the results the total number of search results would drop dramatically.

If the main difference is that I get extra pages of search results, I’ll take it. I’d much prefer that over the chance of changing the total search results from page to page or even worse, using pagination and allowing the user to go a page of search results that doesn’t exist.

This plugin has a new home. It will now permanently be hosted on Wordpress.org:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vimeo-badge-widget/

If you downloaded it off my site, you may want to re-download it from Wordpress.org. One person who was trying to use the plugin was running into problems because their server didn’t have cURL installed. I found wp_remote_get() in the Wordpress Codex. Sadly, it’s not documented at all.

So, if you’d like to make a call to another server, it looks like wp_remote_get would be the function to use. It checks to see what is available on the server and then uses the appropriate function. You can use it as so:

$response = wp_remote_get($remote_url, array(‘timeout’ => 60));

About a week or two ago I was building a blog for a client who asked if a Vimeo Badge could be added to their sidebar. I expected there to be a plethora available. However, I was stunned to find that this was not the case. I tried Vimeo RSS, but I wasn’t really satisfied.

This afternoon I decided to write my own. Just a simple widget that allows a user to select the number of videos, and then grab the videos for a user, a users album, a group or even a channel.

It was also my first venture into Widgets since Wordpress released 2.8 and their new Widget API. I must say, I’m really impressed with the new API. For someone who has never used it before, I was able to develop a widget in under two hours. It’s nice, simple and very intuitive.

I’ve submitted it to Wordpress and hopefully it will be in their repository soon. In the mean time, you can grab it here: http://tylercraft.com/vimeo-badge-widget.zip

Tylr Slidr has been updated and is now at 1.5.

The latest release has had the following updates:

• Tested for 2.8.
• Upgraded swfobject from 2.1 to 2.2.
• Using Flickr slideshow swf version 71649

Download it here.

In June I finally made it to Europe. For our Honeymoon we went to Venice, Cinque Terre and Rome. I loved all three. However, I think I’d only go back to Rome and Cinque Terre. I liked Venice, but felt that the two nights I had there was the perfect amount. Whereas I could walk around Rome forever.

Then there is Cinque Terre. I haven’t been to a ton of places (almost every state in the continental US, but only Canada and Mexico after that), but it was by far the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. It’s 5 small towns on a rugged part of the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. We stayed in Riomaggiore through A Casa Terre.

I think Riomaggiore was our favorite town. It wasn’t the biggest or the smallest. So it had a good amount of restaurants and things to do.

Also, I’ve never been a huge nature guy. I like to take a shower at the end of the day and sleep in a nice bed. So Cinque Terre was perfect. You could go hiking all day, or sit with your feet in the water and then hike back to your town or just hop on a train that connects the 5 towns.

And the best part was to come back to our apartment, shower, and then get some food. The region is known for their pesto, white wine, olive oil and focaccia. I was in heaven.

Now were to go next?

View other Cinque Terre photos on my flickr.