A web-focused Git workflow

Using Git specifically for web development.

How to install Git on a shared host

Installing Git on your shared hosting plan so that you can use it for web-focused development.

Git Is Simpler Than You Think

An overview of the structure of a Git repo.

Pro Git

A fairly thorough guide to getting up and running with Git, based on the book Pro Git.

One of the best outcomes from November’s Wave Protocol Summit was a proposal for Wave to enter the Apache Software Foundation’s incubator program. Apache has a fantastic reputation for fostering healthy open source communities that create great software. Last week, that proposal was accepted, and we’re spinning up the project infrastructure so that the community can continue to grow in the Apache way.

That’s news straight from the Google Wave Developer Blog.

[Via Mashable]

We have many Google (and Google Apps) users using Zoho applications and integration between Google and Zoho Apps is increasingly becoming one of the most requested features. We previously integrated Zoho and Google at Sign-on level (both Google & Google Apps) and now, we are extending this integration to the application level.

Zoho is my preferred online application suite. Nice to know that it now plays nice with Google’s offerings.

Git, of course, is the new hotness in version and source control with both command-line and GUI interfaces such as Gitnub, GitX, and SmartGit available.

I use SVN, hosted by Springloops with Versions at the day job, but we’re considering a switch to Git and GitHub.

UPDATE: Turns out, I wasn’t wrong. I was just clairvoyant . WorldMate is working on an Android version of its application.

Hrm. It appears I was wrong about a WorldMate application for Android. I managed to find an unused download page (by typing “android site:www.worldmate.com” in Google) that listed Android as an option. I assumed — and y’all know how the rest of that goes — that meant there was a WorldMate for Android available now. The HTC device (running S60) pictured on the homepage added to my confusion. Nope. No, WorldMate Android app. My bad on that. The post has been updated below.

Yes, I stole the title from Chris Elliott‘s post on iPhone applications for travelers.

I’m (currently) an Android girl, so I wondered whether it was possible to find similar applications for my G1. I couldn’t find perfect matches for Elliot’s list, but here’s what I came up with.

Where

• What: Where is a series of GPS widgets that you can use to find points of interest, find the cheapest gas, check the weather, or find an area brewery
• Sort of like: Aroundme and Cheap Gas! for the iPhone
• Cost: FREE, but ad-supported.

WorldMate

• There is no WorldMate for Android. What: As Elliott explains, WorldMate offers a bunch of features, including a currency converter, flight updates, integration with Google maps, and an online travel planner with the ability to consolidate your itinerary.
• Sort of like: Um, WorldMate for iPhone.
• Cost: Most features are FREE. Some require a $39.99 subscription.

WeatherBug

• What: Location-aware weather reports for 8,000 U.S. cities. Displays the current temperature in the Android status bar.
• Sort of like: He didn’t mention a weather app, but I am including one anyway.
• Cost: FREE, but ad-supported. Don’t like ads? Try The Weather Channel‘s application.

BistroMath

• What: Determine who owes what and how much to tip — in case you’re not down with using the built-in calculator.
• Sort of like: CheckPlease!
• Cost: FREE

Unfortunately, a FREE flight tracker isn’t yet available for Android. But if you really need one, FlightStats costs $5.99.

Do you use a travel-related Android application? Tell us in the comments.

Well, first Mike Kronenberg cut out a few steps and released ies4osx. Then Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior added those changes into the latest version of ies4linux.

This isn’t yet a one-step operation. You will still need to install Darwine first.

What do you get in the pro edition that’s not available in the community version?

• JSON support
• Support for secure FTP connections (via SSH & SSL)
• JavaScript debugging for Internet Explorer
• Project reporting engine
• Priority support for one year
• Access to preview and nightly builds

Earlier, no-cost releases of Aptana supported SFTP server connections. I’m disappointed to see that change with the release of a professional version.

Aptana is, without question, one of the best front-end development environments available (I haven’t used its server-side language features much). At $99, it hits a sweet-spot between affordable text editors like Panic’s Coda (Mac only; currently $79; regularly $99), BBEdit (Mac-only; $125), or NoteTab (Window only; $29.95) and pricier editors such as Dreamweaver (Mac / Win; $399).

At its full $199 price, however, it becomes harder to justify its purchase. For $100 less, Coda gives you many of Aptana’s core features and adds some sexy bits (like a built-in shell emulator and CSS color picker) of its own. For $74 less, BBEdit gives you a wider range of language support and a deliciously uncluttered interface. Plus there are some powerful free text editors such as jEdit (Java-based; cross-platform) and HTML-Kit (Windows only) that are good enough for many developers.

What’s your take? Have you used Aptana? Would you consider a professional license? Are you too wedded to your current text editor to switch?

Related posts:

• Open source favorites
• What’s your favorite text editor or IDE?
• Aptana IDE: Is it the text editor you’ve been looking for?

I’ve been a Skype user for about a year now, in part to save money on my mobile phone bill. Rather than pay more money for a plan with more minutes, I turned to Skype and used it to make long distance calls to family, friends and clients.

A few months ago I also purchased a Nokia N80, a mobile phone with built-in WiFi / WLAN. A mobile with wireless internet power? Well that’s just a VoIP device waiting to happen. Think about it: super low-cost phone calls from any place with a wireless internet connection. Genius. So genius in fact, that Skype offers a mobile version, and a Skype-enabled WiFi phone.

Just one problem: the N80 runs Symbian. Skype Mobile only runs on Windows Mobile.

Foo on my dreams of making VoIP calls from my mobile, right? I could totally lose my ‘reach-ability’ whenever I visited my parents home where the wireless router singal is strong, but the mobile is not.

Enter Gizmo for S60. I downloaded the software back in May, installed it on my laptop and phone, then signed up for an account.

Then I forgot about it. That is, until Skype’s recent outage. Remembering that I had an account, I fired up Gizmo and poked around.

Know what I found?

• Built-in call recording. With Skype, you can choose from Pamela or Hot Recorder — both are for-pay products. Gizmo, however, lets you record calls without extra software.
• Interoperability with other instant messaging clients. Like Skype, you can make PC-to-PC calls and chat with any user. Unlike Skype, you can also call Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk or Windows Live users. Plus you can chat with AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger buddies.
• Integration with Adium. Yep. There’s a plugin.
• Free voicemail. Do I need to repeat that? FREE. VOICEMAIL. Skype’s voicemail costs €5 (just shy of US$7) for a three-month subscription. A small sum, granted, but an unnecessary one.
• Free conference calls. For landline and mobile users too.
• Free access number. Need to get a call from a landline or mobile? Give ’em one of 20 access numbers along with your Gizmo account number. Oh, there’s Gizmo Call In too if you want to let folks dial you directly. Cost? About 40% less than a SkypeIn line.

And oh yeah, Gizmo is a service backed by an international industry standard. That means Gizmo is interoperable with a ton of other VoIP systems.

What else? Your Call In number (if you purchase one) will show up the callee’s Caller ID whenever you phone them. None of the “+0123456″ or “Unknown” identifications that you get with Skype calls.

Let’s see: a cheaper Call In line, free voice mail and call recording, interoperability with instant messaging services — and it works on my phone? Someone please explain to me why was I using Skype.

Although I’m bashing Skype a bit, there is one area where Skype kicks ass: video calls. Gizmo is not video capable not. But since you can’t take advantage of this feature unless the callee also has Skype, I still think Gizmo is the better option.

*Okay, I haven’t yet ditched Skype, since my call out credits and SkypeIn number expire February and June 2008, respectively. And I’ll probably still keep Skype around since Skype-to-Skype calls are free, and I know a few people who use it.

I typically use paper, or FreeMind. Each has its advantages. In paper’s case, it’s portability. In FreeMind’s case, it’s that I can type faster than I can write. So what to make of MindMeister, an online mind-mapping application? How does it stack up?

Keep in mind that they’re currently in a private beta (which opened February 7, 2007).

Pros

• Import mind maps from FreeMind and Mindjet MindManager.
• Export mind maps to GIF or RTF format (premium mode only).
• Nodes are tied to WikiPedia search and del.icio.us tag search.
• Auto-links URLs
• Can share maps and collaboratively brainstorm on the same map at the same time (premium mode only).
• Easy to use with a simple, yet sexy interface.
• Can access your maps from any computer with an internet connection.

Cons

• Can’t export to FreeMind (which is an XML file) or MindManager (not yet, anyway)
• Because it’s an online, AJAX-driven application, there are some server lags that can get in the way of your flow.
• Free users will be limited to only five mind maps at any time.

During the private beta, users have access to all MindMeister features. I’ve got 16 invites. Email me if you’d like to try it.

Fresh from the Google Labs, we’ve got Google Spreadsheets. Google Spreadsheets has been in testing through an invitation-only beta since June. But it appears that they’re starting to roll it out for the rest of us. You can click the screenshot below to view a larger version.

Google Spreadsheets do most of what you would expect: formulas, column sorting, the ability to change font styles, column widths, and number formats. You can add multiple sheets to one file. And you can also save and retrieve saved files.

Google Spreadsheets also allows you to export or import Excel or CSV spreadsheets. You can also export as an HTML file. (As an aside, it’s startlingly easy to create dynamic Excel spreadsheet files for download. You just need to generate some special Microsoft-proprietary HTML and save the document with an .xls extension.)

Of course, since it’s web-based, you can also share the spreadsheet, which allows others to view and/or edit your file. They’ll need a Google account though. Those without a Google account will be prompted to create one.

So far Google Spreadsheets works with Internet Explorer 6.0+, and Gecko-based browsers — Firefox, Mozilla, Camino, and Netscape. Opera, and Safari users are S.O.L. for the time being.

I haven’t toyed around with Google Spreadsheets much. But if you’ve used it or another online spreadsheet service, let us know in the comments.

If you haven’t used an online documents service, what would get you to use one or keep you from using one?

Other online spreadsheet services

• Xcellery
• iRows
• Num Sum
• Zoho Sheet

Related online business software

• 30 boxes – calendar
• ajaxWrite – word processor
• Buzzword – word processor (purchased by Adobe)
• gOFFICE – web office suite
• JotSpot – wiki and calendaring (Purchased by Google)
• ThinkFree – web office suite
• Thumbstacks – presentation application
• Writely – word processor (in invite-only beta) (Purchased by Google)
• Zoho – web office suite
• Zoho Show – presentations

I’m sure there are more if you just care to run a Google search.

While reading and writing about Flock, I kept seeing mentions of a extension for Firefox that would handle blog publishing better than Flock does: the Performancing extension.

I installed it, and WHOA. This extension kicks some serious blogging-through-the-browser a**.

Below is a screen shot. Click to see a larger version.

Overall impressions

I road-tested this extension with WordPress 2.0.3.

Pros:

• Automatically loads recent posts and drafts from your blog for editing.
• Lets you save drafts locally (but prompts you that you are about to overwrite a note, even if you’re just saving changes to the same note).
• Also grabs your categories from your blogging software and uses check boxes for easier selection of multiple categories.
• Ability to post an entry or note to your blog as a draft post for editing from another computer.
• Option to use CSS rather than HTML for styling.
• Tight integration with Performancing.com services.
• Performancing operates in the same window, offering a split-pane view (that you can cklick-and-drag to resize).
• Ability to view Technorati inbound links and data for the active page in your browser window.
• Ability to add Technorati tags, bookmark the post at del.icio.us using the same tags, and submit TrackBacks URIs from the Performancing interface.
• WYSIWYG interface is a bit more robust, offering color and size options. However,  you still have to manually add headings, abbreviation and acronym tags, insert and delete tags, etc. by editing the source.
• Doesn’t re-write your custom code … sort of. My lowercase <h3> stayed a lowercase <h3> (see ‘Cons’ for more).
• Code removes most excess white space, which loads a bit faster (there’s a downside to this, however; Again see ‘Cons’ for more).
• Can upload an image at a time to your server via FTP, HTTP or HTTPs.
• Super-fast alerting that your post has been published.
• If you edit a post via your history, you can publish your changes as an edit, or as an entirely new post.

Cons:

• The option to use CSS over HTML for styling leads to things like <span style=”font-weight: bold;”> when <b> or <strong> would use fewer bytes and still be valid (x)HTML.
• If you save a post with HTML entities, then close your browser, your entities will be converted to their actual character codes. &lt; will become <. Ditto if you edit a post from your history.
• If you save a post and close your browser, you may wind up with extra tags. I think it had to do with the extension trying to close tags that became tags after &lt; was converted to <. (Did that make any sense?)
• Inserts some miscellaneous &nbsp; where they are not needed.
• Doesn’t always produce semantic code
• No SFTP option for uploading images.
• Can’t schedule a post for publication through the blogging interface.
• Lack of white space in the actual blog post makes it a NIGHTMARE to edit from your blogging software interface.

What it’s missing:

• A spell-checker. Should be mandatory for a blogging extension.

Why you may prefer Flock

• While this extension is a great blogging tool, that’s all it does. If you also want integration with photo-sharing services like Flickr and Photobucket, then you may prefer to use Flock. Performancing just doesn’t have that feature. To my knowledge, there isn’t yet a Firefox extension that provides an upload interface to Flickr.
• Flock offers the ability to drag-and-drop photos or text as a web snippet. It’s perfect for saving material that you plan to use in a blog entry.
• Flock handles RSS and news feeds far better than Firefox’ craptastic “Live Bookmarks.”

Are you using the Performancing extension? Is there another blogging browser extension that you use to publish your posts? Do you even like the idea of browser-based blogging?

Related posts: Flock browser: Is it worth the switch?

Technorati Tags: performancing extension, firefox, blogging, browsers

TagFetch pulls photos, video and blog posts from a range of sources, including Flickr, YouTube, Newsvine, and Technorati. I haven’t used it extensively (in fact, I did exactly one search), but it seems like it might turn out to be the useful tag searching application we’ve all been waiting for. [Via Lifehacker → Webby's World]