How to Test Your Startup Idea in a Weekend

General View comments

So you've got a brilliant startup idea that you're obsessed about. I'm going to show you how you can test it in a weekend without spending any money or finding a technical co-founder. This is going to save you from spending lots of time and money on a problem and solution you haven't validated. Read more

Twitter for Personal Use

Social Media View comments

Most of my peers don't understand the benefits of Twitter. This post explains how I use Twitter, the success I've had with it, and why you should join the conversation. Read more

Ruby on Rails, MAMP, MySQL, and OS X 10.6

Web Development View comments

I spent a very long time trying to get Ruby on Rails working with MAMP's MySQL on OS X 10.6. I was always getting this error message: $ rake db:migraterake aborted!uninitialized constant MysqlCompat::MysqlRes To eliminate the above error, my solution to the problem was simply: $ cd /usr/local/bin$ sudo mv ruby ruby.bak$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/ruby ruby Now, to tell your application to use MAMP's MySQL server, just add the socket parameter to your database.yml file, as demonstrated here. I hope that helps. Read more

Don't Be Disappointed by iPad

Gadgets View comments

Most people are disappointed by iPad. They shouldn't be. Read more

Google Analytics Goal Pages with CakePHP

Web Development, Web Analytics View comments

For those of you who are using Google Analytics (GA) goals with CakePHP, I'm going to show you how you can use some server-side scripting through the CakePHP controller to write some Javascript for GA.

To set up a goal in GA, you have to tell GA which page should be considered the goal page, and it's usually a receipt page or a thank you page. So for example, if you have a contact form (/contact) on your site like I do, and you wanted to set that up as a goal, you'd have to create a new thank you page (/contact/thanks)  and redirect there upon form submission. This is a problem because, although unlikely, the user could potentially bookmark that page and come back in another visit, causing additional goal conversions. Other than that, it's just a useless, static page and creates more work for you.

Instead, I recommend the following technique. Read more

HTC Magic Review

Gadgets View comments

It’s been about four weeks since I’ve had my HTC Magic so I thought I’d write a review. Read more

Finally, a place to call home

General View comments

Welcome to my new website! I've spent a lot of time working on it and I'm happy it's finally online. Please contact me if you find bugs or have suggestions. Expect some blog posts soon! I'm working on a HTC Magic Review post so subscribe to my RSS feed and stay tuned. Read more